Samantha Power votes March 2, 2016 to approve the toughest sanctions on North Korea in 20 years. (Credit: Seth Wenig/The Associated Press)
(…) “It turns out that Power — the diplomat whose authority inexplicably was used to unmask hundreds of Americans’ names in secret intelligence reports during the 2016 election — engaged in similar Trump-bashing on her official government email, according to documents unearthed by an American Center for Law and Justice lawsuit. The conservative legal group is run by Trump defense attorney Jay Sekulow.
The discovery could add a new dimension — a question of political bias — to a long-running congressional investigation into why Power’s authority was used to unmask hundreds of Americans’ names in secret National Security Agency intercepts during the election. That practice of unmasking continues to grow today.
Power’s barbs toward Trump started as early as the GOP primaries, when she used her email to connect Oskar Eustis, the artistic director at the Public Theater in New York, with oft-quoted think tank scholar Norman Ornstein, the memos show.
“Oskar, Norm will explain our political system, in a way that will fleetingly make it seem rational, though maybe not after Trump and Sanders win NH,” she wrote, predicting the future president and upstart socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would win the esteemed New Hampshire primary.
After Trump stunned the world with his general election win over Hillary Clinton, the observations of Power and those emailing her on her official government account turned more vitriolic.
“I am discouraged and frightened. Electing a right-wing president is something, but such a morally repugnant bully!” read a Nov. 14, 2016, email to Power from a sender whose name the State Department redacted for privacy reasons. The email referred to former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon as “an avowed racist” and predicted, “The worst is coming.”
There is no evidence in the released documents that Power responded or chastised the sender for using government email for such political animosity.
But there is ample evidence she engaged in similar Trump-bashing.
In December 2016, for example, when sent a news story about Trump’s effort to communicate a new policy direction for the U.N., Power snarkily replied: “This reflects the lack of understanding of history.”
When Trump announced his intent to withdraw the U.S. from a global climate deal, Power emailed a colleague: “Lord help us all.”
And when a routine diplomatic issue with Japan arose in late November 2016, Power emailed another colleague: “It is unreal how the Trump dynamic has changed things.”
Perhaps most telling are Power’s efforts to arrange media interviews and speeches during her final days in office, clearly aiming to counter the incoming president’s agenda and fan the narrative that Trump might be dangerously soft on matters involving Russia and mercilessly hard on immigrants.” (Read more: The Hill, 6/26/2019)
“The Obama administration distributed thousands of intelligence reports with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the 2016 election.
During his final year in office, President Obama’s team significantly expanded efforts to search National Security Agency intercepts for information about Americans, distributing thousands of intelligence reports across government with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the midst of a divisive 2016 presidential election.
The data, made available this week by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, provides the clearest evidence to date of how information accidentally collected by the NSA overseas about Americans was subsequently searched and disseminated after President Obama loosened privacy protections to make such sharing easier in 2011 in the name of national security. A court affirmed his order.
The revelations are particularly sensitive since the NSA is legally forbidden from directly spying on Americans and its authority to conduct warrantless searches on foreigners is up for renewal in Congress later this year. And it comes as lawmakers investigate President Trump’s own claims that his privacy was violated by his predecessor during the 2016 election.
(…) “The searches ultimately resulted in 3,134 NSA intelligence reports with unredacted U.S. names being distributed across government in 2016, and another 3,354 reports in 2015. About half the time, U.S. identities were unredacted in the original reports while the other half were unmasked after the fact by special request of Obama administration officials.
Among those whose names were unmasked in 2016 or early 2017 were campaign or transition associates of President Trump as well as members of Congress and their staffers, according to sources with direct knowledge.
The data kept by ODNI is missing some information from one of the largest consumers of NSA intelligence, the FBI, and officials acknowledge the numbers are likely much higher when the FBI’s activity is added.” (Read more: Circa, 5/3/2017)
“A trove of emails and handwritten notes from Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr exposes the continuous contact and communication between the DOJ attorney and anti-Trump dossier author Christopher Steele, according to notes and documents obtained by SaraACarter.com. The emails and notes were written between 2016 and 2017.
The notes and emails also reveal that Ohr was in communication with Glenn Simpson, the founder of the embattled research firm Fusion GPS, which was paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC to hire Steele.
In one of Ohr’s handwritten notes listed as “Law enforcement Sensitive” from May 10, 2017, he writes “Call with Chris,” referencing Steele. He notes that Steele is “very concerned about Comey’s firing, afraid they will be exposed.” This call occurred months after FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Intelligence Committee and revealed for the first time that the FBI had an open counterintelligence investigation into President Donald Trump’s campaign and alleged collusion with Russia.”
(…) “The documents from March 2017, reveal how concerned Steele is with Grassley’s committee and the letter from the senator’s office seeking answers from Steele on the dossier.
In June 2017, Steele tells Ohr, “We are frustrated with how long this re-engagement with the Bureau and Mueller is taking. Anything you can do to accelerate the process would be much appreciated. There are some new, perishable, operational opportunities which we do not want to miss out on.”
In October 2017, Steele notes that he is concerned about the stories in the media about the bureau delivering information to Congress “about my work and relationship with them. Very concerned about this. People’s lives may be endangered.”
And in November 2017, Steele, who is trying to engage with Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel, writes to Ohr saying, “we were wondering if there was any response to the questions I raised last week.”
Ohr responds by saying, “I have passed on the questions (apparently to the special counsel) but haven’t gotten an answer yet.”
Steele then says, “I am presuming you’ve heard nothing back from your SC (special counsel) colleagues on the issues you kindly put to them from me. We have heard nothing from them either. To say this is disappointing would be an understatement! Certain people have been willing to risk everything to engage with them in an effort to help them reach the truth. Also, we remain in the dark as to what work has been briefed to Congress about us, our assets and previous work.” (Read more: Sarah Carter, 8/16/2018)
“In either late 2015 or early 2016, the IC inspector general, Chuck McCullough, sent Frank Rucker and Janette McMillan to meet with the FBI in order to detail the anomaly that had been uncovered. That meeting was attended by four individuals, including Strzok, then-Executive Assistant Director John Giacalone, and then-Section Chief Dean Chappell. The identity of the fourth individual remains unknown, though Moffa, who also met with the IG at various times, is a possible candidate. Charles Kable, who also met with the ICIG at several points, is another possible candidate.
Priestap testified that he had not been briefed on the Clinton server anomaly by Strzok, noting “this would have been a big deal.”
“I am not aware of any evidence that demonstrated that. I’m also not aware of any evidence that my team or anybody reporting to me on this had advised me that there were anomalies that couldn’t be accounted for. I don’t recall that,” he said.
Priestap’s admission that this was all new information to him, prompted an observation from Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) that Strzok appeared to be exercising significant investigative control:
Mr. Meadows: “It sounds like Peter Strzok was kind of driving the train here. Would you agree with that?”
Mr. Priestap: “Peter and Jon, yeah.”
As Meadows noted during testimony, this matter still had to be officially “closed out” by the FBI before the official closing of the Clinton investigation. Strzok personally called the IC inspector general within minutes of Comey’s July 5, 2016, press conference on the Clinton investigation, telling him that the FBI would be sending a “referral to close it out.”
Meadows seemed genuinely surprised that Strzok had apparently kept this information successfully hidden from Priestap, noting, “I’m a Member from North Carolina, and you’re saying that I have better intel than you do?” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 1/31/2019)
Blumenthal appears on MSNBC on May 13, 2016. (Credit: MSNBC)
Sid Blumenthal is a Clinton confidant, reporter, and Clinton Foundation employee in the years Clinton is secretary of state. The interview will remain secret until it’s mentioned in a September 2016 FBI report.
The FBI identified at least 179 out of the over 800 emails that Blumenthal sent to Clinton containing information in an intelligence memo format. The State Department determined that 24 Blumenthal memos that contained information currently classified as “confidential,” as well as one classified as “secret” both currently and when it was sent.
Blumenthal tells the FBI that the content of the memos was provided to him from a number of different sources, including former US government officials and contacts, as well as contacts within foreign governments.
(In one email to Clinton, Blumenthal mentioned intelligence that he said came from an active US official, but apparently the FBI doesn’t ask him about this. The FBI report also will not mention emails in which Clinton sent Blumenthal classified information, despite him having no security clearance.)
Blumenthal’s memos contained a notation of “CONFIDENTIAL” in all capital letters. He claims this meant the memos were personal in nature and didn’t refer to the US government category of classified information at the “confidential” level.
Blumenthal claims he was not tasked to provide this information to Clinton, but he sent the emails because he thought they could be helpful. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
The State Department’s inspector general Steve Linick issues a report claiming that the department “repeatedly provided inadequate and inaccurate responses to Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] requests involving top agency officials, including a misleading answer to a request three years ago seeking information on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email use.”
Politico states the new report also points to “a series of failures in the procedures the office of the secretary used to respond to public records requests, including a lack of written policies and training, as well as inconsistent oversight by senior personnel.”
According to the report, “These procedural weaknesses, coupled with the lack of oversight by leadership and failure to routinely search emails, appear to contribute to inaccurate and incomplete responses.”
CREW’s Logo (Credit: CREW)
One important flawed department response was a letter sent to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) in May 2013 after the organization asked for details on email accounts used by Clinton. State’s response to CREW was, “no records responsive to your request were located.” The report says the inspector general’s office “found evidence that [Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills] was informed of the request at the time it was received and subsequently tasked staff to follow up.” However, according to the report, none of those officials appear to have reviewed the results of the search done in the department’s files, and there was “no evidence” that those staffers who did the search and responded to CREW knew about Clinton’s private email setup. CREW followed up last year by saying it never received any final response to its FOIA request.
The AP Logo (Credit: The Associated Press)
Other flaws pointed out by the inspector general’s report include extreme delays in other cases, such as an Associated Press FOIA request for Clinton’s schedules that was pending without substantive response for five years.
Politico also filed a FOIA request for legal and ethics reviews of former President Bill Clinton’s paid speeches. That request was pending for four years before the department began producing records.
The Gawker Logo (Credit: Gawker Media)
Another failed response involved a Gawker request for emails that former Clinton adviser Philippe Reines exchanged with 34 news organizations. Politico reports “that request initially received a “no records” response from [the] State [Department], even though State has now found 81,000 potentially responsive emails in its official files. At a court hearing last month, a government lawyer would not concede that the no-records response was inadequate.” (Politico, 1/7/2016)
(…) Starting on page 122 of Part 23 in the FBI Vault File concerning the mishandling of classified information by Hillary R. Clinton, a letter to Comey at his FBI headquarters address dated Jan. 10, 2016 begins with the following subject identified:
The letter opens directly:
“The purpose of this letter to you as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is to provide evidence which should lead to the conviction of former Secretary of State Hilary [sic] Clinton for lying to a Congressional House Committee investigating the situation surrounding what happened September 11, 2011 [sic]…I watched her lie in her testimony.”
Then it gets into matters long the focus of Senator Chuck Grassley’s interest:
“Additionally, this letter should provide evidence of criminal actions by Hilary [sic] Clinton and her personal and official staff, including some, who were also acting under the pay of other persons and organizations such as the Clinton Foundation and its partners in this crime against United States National Security. This evidence should also be used to convict those senior, major and minor employees of the United States directly involved in knowingly permitting or assisting and attempting to delay and block a Federal investigation of this case.”
Though asked by the whistleblower to confirm receipt of this lengthy letter and supporting documents, Comey and his office apparently did nothing.
An Unscheduled Follow-Up Visit
Comey’s inaction only increased interest on the part of the State Department whistleblower who made a trip to the Washington, D.C. F.B.I field office on Jan. 27, 2016, scant days before pivotal primaries began for Democrats and presidential contenders.
Record of the meeting is contained in Part VI of the FBI Vault File on Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of Classified Information, starting on page 11.
The internal F.B.I. memo says the visitor:
“…explained to writer he had sent evidence of Hillary Clinton’s misuse of classified documents to the F.B.I. Director earlier in January 2016, but when he called to confirm receipt he could not do so and therefore wanted to make sure the information was received by the right people at the F.B.I., specifically the “task force” working on the Clinton email.scandal.”
Courageously, the visitor:
“…explained he was a long-time government employee and had previously worked for many years at the Department of State. He provided a resume and a U.S. Foreign Service Employee Evaluation Report to prove his bonafides.”
According to the F.B.I. report, the informant:
“…did not go into detail as to what the evidence was as he had provided other types of documents explaining the evidence to the unclassified level he could.”
He offered to be interviewed in a S.C.I.F. so he could talk at a higher classification level to further explain other evidence he had.
All other documents [he] provided …are being attached in a 1-A for further review by the appropriate personnel reviewing this matter.”
“A recently declassified government document suggests the FBI opened its most recent investigation of Paul Manafort in January 2016, two months before President Trump hired the lobbyist as a senior official in his campaign. The revelation is prompting new questions about why the bureau did not provide the GOP candidate with a defensive briefing.
The information about the start of the Manafort probe was contained in footnote 332 of a spreadsheet that FBI analysts constructed analyzing the lack of corroboration for Christopher Steele’s now infamous dossier alleging Trump and Russia colluded to hijack the 2016 election, an allegation that has since been disproven.
The spreadsheet was declassified earlier this month, revealing the FBI found little to no corroboration for Steele’s allegations against Trump but nonetheless used the dossier to support a FISA surveillance warrant to spy on the Trump campaign through adviser Carter Page.
The information in the footnote and spreadsheet states an “opening EC” or electronic communication was generated in the Manafort probe on Jan. 13, 2016, and by August 2016 “Manafort is an active subject of a money laundering and tax evasion criminal case out of Washington Field Office.”
The timing suggested in the spreadsheet is consistent with an account from Ukrainian prosecutors, who revealed last year they were summoned on short notice to Washington by the Obama White House for a series of meetings in January 2016 during which Justice Department officials pressed them to find evidence against Manafort and his work for the Ukrainian Party of Regions. The prosecutors also stated the Obama DOJ officials asked the Ukrainians to drop their investigation of the Hunter Biden-related Burisma Holdings gas company and let the FBI take it over.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson last week wrote a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray asking for verification of the claim in the spreadsheet and demanding to know why Trump wasn’t given a courtesy warning before he hired Manafort if in fact the probe into the lobbyist started in January 2016 like the spreadsheet stated.
Presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton, have gotten defensive briefings over the years when an issue involving national security concerns affects their campaigns.
“What steps, if any, did the FBI take to alert the Trump campaign about its investigation into Manafort when he joined the Trump campaign in March 2016?” Johnson wrote. Wray has yet to respond. (Read more: Just the News, 10/26/2020)(Archive)
“Some of the information that passed through Hillary Clinton’s private email server was so sensitive that high-level officials examining the account had to get special security clearance before they could proceed with their probe, NBC’s Ken Dilanian reported on Tuesday.
That is according to an intelligence official familiar with the probe into the former secretary of state’s “homebrew” server, which is being led by the intelligence community’s inspector general, Charles McCullough.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also been looking into whether classified material was mishandled during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department from 2009 to 2013.
Some of the emails found on Clinton’s account — according to a letter McCullough sent to senior lawmakers on January 14 and obtained by Fox News and other publications — contained intelligence so sensitive that it has since been allocated to a special access program (SAP) designation.
SAPs are designed to safeguard information deemed more sensitive than even “top secret.”
“The special access program in question was so sensitive that McCullough and some of his aides had to receive clearance to be read in on it before viewing the sworn declaration about the Clinton emails,” Dilanian reported.” (Read more: Business Insider, 1/21/2016)
“As Donald Trump began his meteoric rise to the presidency, the Obama White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington to coordinate ongoing anti-corruption efforts inside Russia’s most critical neighbor.
The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ).
The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination. But Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long — during the meetings and afterward — to realize the Americans’ objectives included two politically hot investigations: one that touched Vice President Joe Biden’s family and one that involved a lobbying firm linked closely to then-candidate Trump.
U.S. officials “kept talking about how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united,” said Andrii Telizhenko, then a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington tasked with organizing the meeting.
Telizhenko, who no longer works for the Ukrainian Embassy, said U.S. officials volunteered during the meetings — one of which was held in the White House’s Old Executive Office Building — that they had an interest in reviving a closed investigation into payments to U.S. figures from Ukraine’s Russia-backed Party of Regions.
(…) Telizhenko said he couldn’t remember whether Manafort was mentioned during the January 2016 meeting. But he and other attendees recalled DOJ officials asking investigators from Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) if they could help locate new evidence about the Party of Regions’ payments and its dealings with Americans.
“It was definitely the case that led to the charges against Manafort and the leak to U.S. media during the 2016 election,” he said.
That makes the January 2016 meeting one of the earliest documented efforts to build the now-debunked Trump-Russia collusion narrative and one of the first to involve the Obama administration’s intervention.” (Read more: The Hill, 4/25/2019)(Archive)
Eric Ciaramella shakes hands with President Obama. (Credit: public domain)
On January 19, 2016, Eric Ciaramella chaired a meeting of FBI, Department of Justice and Department of State personnel, which had two main objectives:
To coerce the Ukrainians to drop the Burisma probe, which involved Vice President Joseph Biden’s son Hunter, and allow the FBI to take over the investigation.
To reopen a closed 2014 FBI investigation that focused heavily on GOP lobbyist Paul Manafort, whose firm long had been tied to Trump through his partner and Trump pal, Roger Stone.
That is, contain the investigation of Biden’s son and ramp up the investigation of Paul Manafort.
According to White House logs, the attendees at the January 19, 2016 meeting in Room 230A of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building were:
Eric Ciaramella – National Security Council Director for Ukraine
Liz Zentos – National Security Council Director for Eastern Europe
David G. Sakvarelidze – Deputy General Prosecutor of Ukraine
Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko (l) and Joe Biden pose for the media prior to meeting on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 20, 2016. (Credit: Michel Euler/Reuters)
“In January 2016, top Ukrainian corruption prosecutors and officials from Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ) met in Washington, according to an April 26article by The Hill.
The meeting, which was reportedly billed as “training,” apparently also touched on two other matters—the revival of a closed investigation into payments to U.S. figures from Ukraine’s Russia-backed Party of Regions and the closure of an ongoing Ukrainian investigation into Burisma.
According to The Hill’s reporting, the Ukrainian Embassy confirmed that meetings were held, but said it “had no record that the Party of Regions or Burisma cases came up in the meetings.”
A Jan. 22, 2016, NABU press release confirmed that NABU Director Artem Sytnyk was in Washington from Jan. 19 to 21.
At the same time as the NABU meeting with Obama officials, Vice President Biden also met with senior Ukrainian officials. On Jan. 21, 2016, Biden met with Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine. According to the White House release, the two leaders agreed “to continue to move forward on Ukraine’s anti-corruption agenda.”
Biden shakes hands with Ukraine Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman in Biden’s ceremonial office in Washington DC, June 15, 2016. (Credit: The Associated Press)
Just six days earlier, on Jan 15, 2016, Biden had met with Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, promising to commit $220 million in new assistance to Ukraine that year.
Notably, several months later, Sytnyk and Ukrainian Member of Parliament Serhiy Leshchenko would publicly disclose the contents of the Ukrainian “black ledger” to the media, which implicated Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort. The revelation would force Manafort from the campaign.
Leshchenko also served as a source for various individuals, including journalist Michael Isikoff and Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative Alexandra Chalupa. In addition, Leshchenko served as a direct source of information for Fusion GPS—and its researcher, former CIA contractor Nellie Ohr.
Another Ukrainian-related meeting also took place in January 2016 when Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American, informed an unknown senior DNC official that she believed there was a Russian connection with the Trump campaign. Notably, this theme would be picked up by the Clinton campaign in the summer of 2016. Chalupa also told the official to expect Manafort’s involvement in the Trump campaign.
Alexandra Chalupa (Credit: public domain)
How Chalupa knew to expect Manafort’s involvement with the Trump campaign in January remains unknown, but her forecast proved prescient, as Manafort reached out to the Trump campaign shortly after, on Feb. 29, 2016, through a mutual acquaintance, Thomas J. Barrack Jr. According to Manafort, he and Trump hadn’t been in communication for years until the Trump campaign responded to Manafort’s offer.
As The Epoch Timespreviously reported, on May 30, 2016, Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr sent an email to her husband, high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr, and three other DOJ officials to alert them of the discovery of the “Reported Trove of Documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions’ ‘Black Cashbox.’” It was this discovery that led to Manafort’s resignation from the Trump campaign in August 2016.
On Aug. 14, 2016, The New York Times published an article alleging that payments to Manafort had been uncovered from the Party of Regents’ “black box”—the 400-page handwritten ledger released by Leshchenko. The article proved to be a fatal blow for Manafort, who resigned from the Trump campaign just days later. (Read more: The Epoch Times, 4/26/2019)
“Laura Ingraham raised a series of questions Wednesday night about the impeachment whistleblower’s ties to the Biden family and what the person knew about Hunter Biden’s dealings with Ukrainian gas company Burisma as far back as 2016.
According to an “Ingraham Angle” investigation, State Department emails from May 1, 2019 show that New York Times reporter Ken Vogel inquired about a 2016 Obama White House meeting with Ukrainian prosecutors.
Vogel wrote that he planned to report that a State Department official attended the meeting on Jan. 19, 2016 “with Ukrainian prosecutors and embassy officials,” where U.S. support for prosecutions of Burisma Holdings in the United Kingdom and Ukraine was discussed. Vogel asked about “concerns that Hunter Biden’s position with the company could complicate such efforts.”
Ingraham said White House visitor logs for Jan. 19, 2016 showed that “numerous” Ukrainian officials were at the White House on the day Vogel claimed there was a meeting about the Bidens and Burisma.
“[The story] was never published. We asked Ken Vogel why nothing ever came of it but he didn’t respond. The New York Times‘ director of communications did, also refusing to answer our questions about why the story never ran, instead noting that Vogel’s request for comment was ‘consistent with their news-gathering process.’ Got it, nothing to see here,” said Ingraham, noting that the email from Vogel came just one week after former Vice President Joe Biden announced his presidential run.” (Read more: Fox News, 1/23/2020)(Archive)
“Samantha Power, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was ‘unmasking’ at such a rapid pace in the final months of the Obama administration that she averaged more than one request for every working day in 2016 – and even sought information in the days leading up to President Trump’s inauguration, multiple sources close to the matter told Fox News.
Two sources, who were not authorized to speak on the record, said the requests to identify Americans whose names surfaced in foreign intelligence reporting, known as unmasking, exceeded 260 last year. One source indicatedthis occurred in the final days of the Obama White House.
The details emerged ahead of an expected appearance by Power next month on Capitol Hill. She is one of several Obama administration officials facing congressional scrutiny for their role in seeking the identities of Trump associates in intelligence reports – but the interest in her actions is particularly high.
In a July 27 letter to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said the committee had learned “that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence-related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama Administration.”
The “official” is widely reported to be Power.
John Brennan (l) and Trey Gowdy (Credit: CSpan)
During a public congressional hearing earlier this year, Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina pressed former CIA director John Brennan on unmasking, without mentioning Power by name.
Gowdy: Do you recall any U.S. ambassadors asking that names be unmasked?
Brennan: I don’t know. Maybe it’s ringing a vague bell but I’m not — I could not answer with any confidence.
Gowdy continued, asking: On either January 19 or up till noon on January 20, did you make any unmasking requests?
Brennan: I do not believe I did.
Gowdy: So you did not make any requests on the last day that you were employed?
Brennan: No, I was not in the agency on the last day I was employed.
Brennan later corrected the record, confirming he was at CIA headquarters on January 20. “I went there to collect some final personal materials as well as to pay my last respects to a memorial wall. But I was there for a brief period of time and just to take care of some final — final things that were important to me,” Brennan said.” (Read more: Fox News, 9/20/2017)
An internal review of Clinton’s private paid speeches is conducted by campaign aides, in an effort to survey the political damage her remarks could cause if they ever became public. The review is conducted by Clinton’s research director Tony Carrk. On this day, Carrk sends the results of the review to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta and other Clinton aides. His email consists of dozens of pages of potentially politically damaging quotes from Clinton’s speeches. It will get released on October 7, 2016 when WikiLeaks starts publishing emails from Podesta’s private email account. Clinton will confirm the authenticity of the email two days later.
Below are some notable revelations from Carrk’s email:
Clinton said that with everybody watching “all of the back room discussions and the deals… you need both a public and a private position.”
Clinton said she had to leave her phone and computer in a special box when traveling to China and Russia, but there is evidence she sent at least one email from Russia.
Clinton admitted it was against the rules for some State Department officials to use BlackBerrys at the same time she used one.
Clinton said when she got to State Department, employees “were not mostly permitted to have handheld devices.”
Clinton asked why the computers of a fugitive whistleblower were not exploited by foreign countries “when my cell phone was going to be exploited.”
Clinton said that her department officials “were not even allowed to use mobile devices because of security issues.” (Wikileaks, 10/7/2016)
“Recent hackeddocuments have revealed an international network of politicians, journalists, academics, researchers and military officers, all engaged in highly deceptive covert propaganda campaigns funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), NATO, Facebook and hardline national security institutions.
This “network of networks”, as one document refers to them, centers around an ironically named outfit called the Integrity Initiative. And it is all overseen by a previously unknown Scotland-based think tank, the Institute for Statecraft, which has operated under a veil of secrecy.
The whole operation appears to be run by, and in conjunction with, members of British military intelligence.
Simon Bracey-Lane (Credit: AFP News)
(…) “On December 11, Kit Klarenberg of Sputnik Radioentered the covert propaganda mill’s neo-gothic offices. As soon as he identified himself as a journalist, he was angrily ejected by an Institute for Statecraft staffer named Simon Bracey-Lane.
“You need to leave right now!” Bracey-Lane barked at Klarenberg. “You haven’t arranged to see us! Go! Right now! Please leave immediately! Leave!”
Bracey-Lane is a 20-something British citizen with no publicly acknowledged experience in intelligence work. But as Klarenberg noted, there are some unusual details in the young staffer’s bio.
In 2016, Bracey-Lane appeared out of nowhere to work in Iowa as a field organizer for the Bernie Sanders campaign for president.
“I spent a year working, saving all my money, just thought I was gonna go on a two month road trip from Seattle to New York and I thought, you know what? I’m gonna stay and work for the Bernie Sanders campaign,” Bracey-Lane told a reporter for AFP on January 27, 2016.
He said that after he decided to work for Bernie, he first went to England to “get a visa and get everything legal,” then came back to join the campaign in earnest.
Bracey-Lane also claimed to AFP, “I’m not sure there’s a place for me in British politics… I’ve never been struck by an urge to work in my own political system.”
However, a February 1, 2016profile of Bracey-Lane by Buzzfeed’s Jim Waterson said the Brit-for-Bernie “was inspired to rejoin the Labour party in September [2015] when Corbyn was elected leader. But by that point, he was already in the US on holiday.”
It is clearly odd for Bracey-Lane to tell one reporter that he had never had any interest in British politics, while claiming to another that he had been eager to support Corbyn before he joined the Bernie campaign. What’s more, as Klarenberg reported, Bracey-Lane went on to establish a get-out-the-vote effort for various progressive politicians and parties in Britain’s 2017 general election, gaining inside access to a wide array of campaigns.
The contradiction in Bracey-Lane’s narrative raises serious questions about his real role on the Bernie campaign, as does his suddenly transition from progressive politics to a staff position at a military-backed propaganda farm that waged a covert information war on Corbyn and other left-leaning politicians across the West.” (Read more: The Grayzone Project – Inside the Temple of Covert Propaganda, 12/17/2018)
Andrew McCabe (Credit: Pete Marovich/Getty Images)
“FBI Director James B. Comey has named Andrew McCabe as the Bureau’s new deputy director. Mr. McCabe most recently served as the FBI’s associate deputy director. As deputy director, Mr. McCabe will oversee all FBI domestic and international investigative and intelligence activities and will serve as acting director in the director’s absence.
Mr. McCabe joined the FBI in 1996. He began his career in the New York Field Office, where he focused on organized crime. Throughout his career, Mr. McCabe has held leadership positions in the Counterterrorism Division, the National Security Branch, and the Washington Field Office.
“Andy’s 19 years of experience, combined with his vision, judgment, and ability to communicate make him a perfect fit for this job,” announced Director Comey.
Mr. McCabe will assume this new role on February 1, 2016, when current Deputy Director Mark Giuliano retires from the FBI after 28 years of service.” (FBI Press Release, 1/29/2019)
“Judicial Watch announced today that it has received 47 pages of records from the Department of Justice, including email exchanges between fired FBI official Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page revealing that FBI officials used unsecured devices in discussing how the U.S. could improve the sharing of sensitive data with the European Union top executive governing commission.
The documents also reveal that high-ranking FBI officials were not properly read-in to top secret programs.
(…) “The newly obtained emails came in response to a May 21order by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton to the FBI to begin processing 13,000 pages of records exchanged exclusively between Strzok and Page between February 1, 2015, and December 2017. The FBI refuses to timely process the records and will not complete review and production of all the Strzok-Page materials until at least 2020.
James Baker (Credit: public domain)
In a January 30, 2016 email exchange sent entirely over unsecure devices, top former FBI officials including General Counsel Jim Baker, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Strzok, Page, unidentified individuals from the DOJ’s National Security Division and NSA General Counsel Glenn Gerstell, discuss a draft document with the subject line: “Revised IC Safe Harbor Letter (from [redacted] using [redacted] iPad).”
Baker notes in the exchange that he is attempting to work on the document using his smartphone: “So it is not possible to read the redlines on my smartphone. If you are still at the office, can you please save the redline version as a PDF and then resend? Thanks.”
Also, in the exchange, Strzok writes to Page:
IC Safe Harbor refers to a European Commission data-sharing arrangement with the United States that allowed for the transfer of personally identifiable information from the EU to the U.S. The arrangement was invalidated by the European Court of Justice after disclosures of NSA surveillance operations by Edward Snowden. The court ordered that a new, stronger version of the arrangement be reached by January 31, 2016.
Five hundred million Yahoo! accounts reportedly were hacked in 2014. And, “a different attack in 2013 compromised more than 1 billion accounts. The two attacks are the largest known security breaches of one company’s computer network.” According to IT experts, the iPad is also notoriously insecure from hacking.
In a February 5, 2016, email Strzok indicates to Page that at least two, and possibly more, top FBI officials had not been properly “read-in” to top secret, compartmented programs. Those included McCabe and Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Bill Preistap. It is indicated Page needs some read-ins as well.
Center: HILLARY CLINTON and BARACK OBAMA, ringleaders. Counterclockwise from top left: JOSEPH MIFSUD, Maltese professor/Western intelligence operative; STEFAN HALPER, academic and CIA operative since 1970s; GLENN SIMPSON, founder of Fusion GPS; CHRISTOPHER STEELE, former MI6 now private contractor; BRUCE OHR, then-top-level DOJ executive who conspired with Brennan, Simpson, Steele, and his wife Nellie; NELLIE OHR, CIA asset who covertly passed along fictional dirt on Trump from Simpson, Steele, and her husband Bruce to Brennan; MARC ELIAS, Deep-State lawyer for Obama, Clinton, and the DNC, laundering money from them to Simpson; JAMES COMEY, then-Director of FBI; JOHN BRENNAN, then-Director of CIA; LISA PAGE, FBI counsel and secret lover of Peter Strzok; SENATOR HARRY REID, then-Democratic Leader; PETER STRZOK, CIA/FBI liaison; GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS, Trump campaign; CARTER PAGE, Trump campaign; BILL PRIESTAP, head of FBI Counterintelligence. (Credit: Chalet Reports)
“I was chatting last night with a retired CIA colleague, a person well connected to many folks still working at our former employer, and he dropped a bombshell–he had learned that John Brennan set up a Trump Task Force at CIA in early 2016.
This is definitely something Prosecutor John Durham should explore. A “Task Force” normally is a short term creation comprised of operations officers (i.e., guys and gals who carry out espionage activities overseas) and intelligence analysts. The purpose of such a group is to ensure all relevant intelligence capabilities are brought to bear on the problem at hand.
While a “Task Force” can be a useful tool for tackling issues of terrorism or drug trafficking, it is not appropriate or lawful for collecting on a U.S. candidate for the Presidency. But Brennan did it, so I’m told, and it had the blessing of the Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper.
The Task Force members were handpicked. The job was not posted. Instead, people were specifically invited to join up. Not everyone accepted the invitation, and that is now a problem for John Brennan. If those folks are talking to Durham’s folks then Brennan’s days are numbered.
Brennan reportedly took it upon himself to recruit foreign intelligence organizations, such as MI-6, the Aussies, the Italians and the Israelis, to help in spying on Trump and his campaign. He sold it as a “counter-intelligence” mission citing his fear that Trump was a Russian puppet. And these foreign services agreed to help. But they did more than passive collection. They helped create and implement covert actions, such as entrapping Michael Flynn as a foreign agent and cultivating and ensnaring George Papadopoulos.
The case officers on the task force managed the tasking and monitoring of actions with the foreign services. This included travel overseas. The Task Force also apparently was involved in working with Ukraine to help manufacture intel that could be used against Paul Manafort. The point is, this Task Force was working furiously on a broad front to go after Donald Trump and his campaign team. Most importantly, there is documentary evidence on specific task officers were directed to carry out. And there are also financial records–e.g., money was spent to fund travel overseas and to pay cooperating assets.
I think Durham’s investigators will discover that Azra Turk, the honey pot sent to a meeting with George Papadopoulos, was a member of the Brennan Task Force. It also is highly likely that elements of this task force played a key role in the drafting of the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Interference in the US Presidential Election.” (Read more: Sonar21/Larry C. Johnson, 10/26/2019)(Archive)
The American Thinker writes of a secret trip Brennan takes to Moscow in March 2016.
“The Russians say he did, and while some might say, well, these are the same Russians who helped put together the Steele dossier filled with “salacious and unverified” material, and may once again be playing with us, there is evidence that Brennan, the man who voted for communist Gus Hall for president, did make the trip in March 2016 for purposes unknown:
“It’s no secret that Brennan was here,” claimed Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov. “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.”
No further remarks clarify what Brennan was allegedly doing in Moscow or what he discussed with the FSB. Syromolotov insists it had nothing to do with Russia’s withdrawal from Syria.
Sputnik News, a Kremlin-controlled propaganda outlet, quotes CIA Director of Public Affairs Dean Boyd as affirming that Brennan did, in fact, 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 [President Bashar] Assad’s departure in order to facilitate a transition that reflects the will of the Syrian people.”
The website GlobalSecurity.Org goes into somewhat more detail about Brennan’s Moscow trip without clearing up confusion about what the purpose of the trip might have been:
News of the CIA chief’s visit to the Russian capital was first made public on Monday by a Russian foreign ministry spokesman and subsequently confirmed by the CIA.
“It’s no secret that Brennan was here,” the Interfax news agency quoted foreign ministry spokesman Oleg Syromolotov as telling journalists in Moscow.
He added that the visit was not linked to Moscow’s decision to start withdrawing military forces from Syria, which President Vladimir Putin announced on March 14.
Dean Boyd, director of the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs, confirmed Monday that Brennan visited Moscow.
“Director Brennan traveled to Russia in early March to emphasize with Russian officials the importance of Russia and the Assad regime following through on their agreements to implement the cessation of hostilities in Syria,” said Boyd.
He added that Brennan “also reiterated the U.S. 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.”
Now, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for a CIA director to make a trip to Moscow, but when a Russian deputy foreign minister says he didn’t visit the Foreign Ministry itself but did visit the KGB’s successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB), it raises some eyebrows.
Consider that John Brennan is a Trump-hating perjurer who lied to Congress about secret surveillance. He is the crown prince of a Deep State fiefdom that has its own agenda. The end justifies the means in their world, and Brennan may have been up to his eyeballs in developing that “insurance policy” against a Trump victory.” (The American Thinker, 4/24/2018)(Archive)
Brennan appears on MSNBCMay 16, 2018 to discuss the task force he set up:
Interesting comment by John Brennan on the Trump-Russia investigation, who talks about a “Fusion Cell” that he assembled of agents and officers between FBI, CIA, and NSA for sharing information between them, to make a collective effort to connect all the dots. pic.twitter.com/yd2OZfrWpK
(Timeline editor’s note: This is an estimated date for the start of Brennan’s task force. If you look at the late 2015/early 2016 timelines as a whole, January 30, 2016 fits in the middle of the Spygate/intelligence operations that were occurring at the time.)
“According to agreements on international technical support, the British government is going to provide the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine with equipment for its forensic lab. The US Federal government for its part is going to hand over equipment for converting case materials to electronic format, as reported by Artem Sytnyk in his interview for the Channel 112.
The Director reminded that the Memorandum of cooperation in joint investigations would soon be signed between the NABU and the FBI.
Artem Sytnyk also pointed out that, according to the law “On the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine”, the only sources of funding allowed for the NABU were state budget and financial support under the international technical assistance.” (National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), 2/01/2016)(Archive)
A month later NABU publishes another press release that states:
NABU includes photos of their new equipment in their press release. (Credit: NABU)
“The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has provided the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) with computers, advanced analytical software, and high-speed scanners which can digitize paper documents and make them electronically searchable. Thanks to this equipment all physical documents can now be digitized which will enhance investigative abilities by providing a means to search through disparate data and link clues from various sources. The FBI will also provide the NABU with a database server that allows for advanced analysis and a platform for shared resources.
As told by Keith Hall, an FBI Supervisory Special Agent, a team of the FBI experts will come to the NABU to provide training and support on these tools.
“My colleagues and I will be providing consultancy to the detectives, analysts and IT specialists of the NABU. We will conduct training sessions on the proper usage and maintenance of the equipment and software provided” – said Hall.
The arrangements on cooperation with the FBI in the sphere of conducting collegial investigations were made in the course of a working visit of the Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to Washington, D.C.” (NABU, 3/02/2019) (Archive)
“On February 2, 2016, according to White House logs, Eric Ciaramella chaired a meeting in Room 374 of the Eisenhower Executive Office, which seems to be a planning session to re-open an investigation of Paul Manafort (Note: one of the crimes of which Manafort was accused was money laundering, an area covered by the Department of the Treasury). The attendees were:
Jose Borrayo – Acting Section Chief, Office of Special Measures, U.S. Department of the Treasury, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
Julia Friedlander – Senior Policy Advisor for Europe, Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, U.S. Department of the Treasury
Michael Lieberman – Deputy Assistant Secretary, Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, U.S. Department of the Treasury
Scott Rembrandt – Anti-Money Laundering Task Force, Assistant Director/Director, Office of Strategic Policy, Department of the Treasury
Justin Rowland – Special Agent (financial crimes), Federal Bureau of Investigation
It appears that Paul Manafort became a vehicle by which the Obama Deep State operatives could link Trump to nefarious activities involving Russians, which eventually evolved into the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. Remember, the key claim of the follow-up Steele dossier, the centerpiece of the Mueller investigation, was that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was the focal point of a “well-developed conspiracy between them [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership.” (Read more: American Thinker, 12/06/2019)(Archive)
Bloombergreported that “at the time Biden made his ultimatum [to fire prosecutor], the probe into the company — Burisma Holdings, owned by Mykola Zlochevsky — had been long dormant”
This appears to be untrue.
Bloomberg’s statement is based on information from Kasko, the rival to prosecutor Shokin. In May 2019interview, Shokin says that they had been planning to interview Hunter Biden and Devon Archer.
Shokin says that he “finally crossed the threshold on February 2, 2016, when we went to the courts with petitions for re-arresting the property of Burisma.”
If Shokin had seized Burisma property on Feb 2, 2016, then the Prosecutor General’s investigation of Zlochevsky and Burisma was obviously not “dormant” as reported by Bloomberg. So … can seizure of Zlochevsky property on Feb 2, 2016, be confirmed or not?
There are public reports that the Prosecutor General Office (Shokin’s PGO) seized all of Zlochevsky’s “movable and immovable property” under suspicion of “illicit enrichment” under Part 3 of Article 368-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
This doesn’t prove that Biden’s demands that Shokin be removed were connected to Shokin’s seizure of property belonging to Hunter Biden’s patron and employer, Zlochevsky, but it does show that and others are shoveling disinformation about “dormant.”
The Atlantic Council had been demanding Shokin’s removal on the grounds that he had been insufficiently zealous in prosecuting Yanukovych associates.
Wendy Sherman is interviewed by the FBI. Sherman served as deputy secretary of state under Clinton (the third highest ranking post), and as under secretary of state for political affairs. Her name will later be redacted in the FBI summary of the interview, but the Daily Caller will identify the interviewee as Sherman due to details mentioned elsewhere in the interview.
Sherman served as chief negotiator on a nuclear deal between the US and Iran, which was agreed to in 2014. In the FBI summary of her interview, she said that she was not aware of any specific instances where she was notified of a potential hack of her State Department or personal email accounts or those of other department employees. However, she “explained [she] was sure people tried to hack into [her] personal email account and the accounts of [redacted] team approximately two years ago during [redacted] in the Iran negotiations. Specifically, [redacted] received a similar email. [She] reported the incident to [State Department] Diplomatic Security who reportedly traced the emails back to a [redacted].”
Elsewhere in the interview, she said that it “was not uncommon for [her] to have to use [her] personal Gmail account to communicate while on travel, because there were often times [she] could not access her [State Department] unclassified account.”
The Daily Caller will later comment, “While it is no surprise that hackers would attempt to infiltrate the negotiating teams’ email accounts — the US government has robust spy operations that try to do the same thing — Sherman’s use of a personal account while overseas likely increased her chances of being hacked.” (The Daily Caller, 9/24/2016) (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/23/2016)
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell writes an email to former Reagan White House chief of staff Kenneth Duberstein. “I didn’t tell Hillary [Clinton] to have a private server at home, connected to the Clinton Foundation, two contractors, took away 60,000 emails, had her own domain.”
On the same day, in a separate email to Condoleeza Rice, who succeeded him as secretary of state, Powell writes, “Been on the phone and email all afternoon. Hillary and Elijah Cummings have popped off.”
Also on this day, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a memo after reviewing the email practices of the past five secretaries of state. It was determined that 12 emails obtained by the inspector general contained classified national security information, two of which went to the personal email account of Powell and ten of which went to the personal email accounts of the immediate staff of Rice. The memo also states that the information was not marked as classified.
Elijah Cummings (Credit: public domain)
Representative Elijah Cummings (D) releases a statement in response to the OIG’s findings, and concludes, “Based on this new revelation, it is clear that the Republican investigations are nothing more than a transparent political attempt to use taxpayer funds to target the Democratic candidate for President.” (House Oversight Committee, 02/04/16)
Two days later, Rice writes back to Powell, “I don’t think Hillary’s — ‘everyone did it,’ is flying.” (Politico, 09/13/16)
The hacker website DCLeaks.com will publish Colin Powell’s hacked emails on September 13, 2016.
The FBI’s Clinton email investigation determines that Clinton used 11 BlackBerrys while she was secretary of state, and two more using the same phone number after she left office. On February 9, 2016, the Justice Department requests all 13 BlackBerrys from Williams & Connolly, the law firm of Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall.
Williams & Connolly replies on February 22, 2016 that they were unable to locate any of them. As a result, the FBI is unable to acquire or forensically examine any of Clinton’s BlackBerrys.
The FBI also identifies five iPads associated with Clinton which she could have used to send emails. The FBI obtains three of them, though it’s not clear if they come from Williams & Connolly or other sources. One iPad was given away by Clinton shortly after she bought it, so it is not examined by the FBI.
Out of the other two, one contains three previously unknown Clinton emails from 2012 in the “drafts”” folder. The FBI assesses the three emails and determines they don’t contain any potentially classified information. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
The first AP1000 nuclear power plant in Sanmen, China, gets approval to load nuclear fuel in April 2018. (Credit: public domain)
(…) Lawmakers told Just the News that the story of CEFC fits a pattern that Hunter Biden was willing to take money from countries or companies adversarial to the United States, including helping them try to acquire prize assets like the Michigan-based Heninges firm that Just the Newsreported Hunter Biden helped sell to a Chinese firm tied to the People’s Liberation Army.
(…) House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, who is leading the impeachment inquiry with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, said Wednesday that the Biden family’s close and lucrative relationship with China leaves Americans wondering whether foreign policy decisions today are being influenced today by business ties from the past.
“We’re very concerned. And when you look at the Biden administration, there’s no question in my mind that they’ve had a soft on China policy,” Comer said on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. “And there are certain policy decisions that this administration has made that are counter to what any American would want with respect to foreign policy relating to China.”
Some of the evidence about CEFC’s pursuit of Westinghouse was secured from the laptop that Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop and was later seized by the FBI in December 2019. The FBI shortly thereafter authenticated the laptop.
Gilliar and his partners, Hunter Biden and Walker, discussed in one email a “CEFC / [Westinghouse]” deal, though the contours of the proposed agreement were unclear in that correspondence.
“Good to see a couple of weeks ago, further to our discussions we have prepared a deck for my visit to CEFC board on Monday in Beijing, It has been made clear to me that CEFC wish to engage in further business relations with our group and we will present a few projects to them,” Gilliar wrote to Jim Bernhard of Bernhard Capital in February 2016.
“I attach [sic] the decks and a covering [sic] letter that lay out the principals as I see of a Westinghouse play, we have been a little presumptuous that you wish to be included, but we hope so ?” he added.
Gilliar also made clear that Hunter Biden was intimately familiar with the proposed deal. “P.S Im [sic] sure H can give you the heads up on the play if you need more details,” Gilliar wrote.
Attached to the email were two documents. One was a signed cover letter marked to be sent to CEFC China Energy, the energy conglomerate that began courting Hunter Biden while his father was finishing his last term as vice president. Some of the earliest communications with CEFC uncovered by the House Oversight Committee date to late 2015.
The cover letter mentioned by Gilliar, obtained by Just the News, sheds light on the extent of the planned deal, clearly detailing the scope of the team’s plan for helping CEFC acquire Westinghouse. This included facilitating CEFC’s dominance of the Chinese and global nuclear energy market and masking the acquisition behind firms that wouldn’t raise alarms in western capitals.
The letter shows Gilliar and team believed CEFC was uniquely positioned to acquire from Toshiba an ownership stake in the American nuclear company due to the Japanese conglomerate’s “market weakness” and the “indecision of the Japanese Nuclear industry.”
Gilliar highlighted how the Chinese market was highly dependent on international support by companies that use Westinghouse technologies. Additionally, China still had restrictions on the technologies that it could export. “The original license agreement with Westinghouse was only domestic,” Gilliar pointed out.
Yet, Gilliar and his team saw an opportunity for CEFC to fill an important role in the Chinese domestic nuclear market and around the world through the acquisition, and in the process, liberate China from its dependence on foreign nuclear technology.
(…) The documents make clear the team’s ambitions were nothing short of achieving a commanding influence for CEFC over the global nuclear power plant sector. “In summary, utilizing the U.S. face of Westinghouse, combined with the economic power of CEFC (China) is the perfect solution to control this global sector,” Gilliar wrote CEFC.
You can read the signed letter and the confidential report (parts 1 & 2) below:
There was just one problem: “It would be highly unlikely that Toshiba would sell Westinghouse to Chinese or Korean interests, certainly not for an attractive price,” one memo stated.
But Gilliar proposed a solution for CEFC: his company—the European Energy and Infrastructure Group—and Bernhard Capital Partners would “implement an acquisition structure” that would “create the correct support in Washington that guarantees CEFC to receive the right support and U.S. promotes for its operations.”
This plan would place the appearance of a layer between CEFC—a China-based company with close connections to the ruling Chinese Communist Party and component of its national energy strategy—and the iconic U.S.-based energy company. (Read more: Just the News, 3/13/2024)(Archive)
Platte River Networks (PRN) is the computer company managing Clinton’s private server from June 2013 until at least October 2015, and PRN employee Paul Combetta played a pivotal role in the deletion of Clinton’s emails from her server.
On February 18, 2016, Combetta is interviewed by the FBI for the first time. He says that between March 25 and 31, 2015, he realized he failed to change the email retention policy on Clinton’s email account on her server, as Clinton’s lawyer (and former chief of staff) Cheryl Mills told him to do in December 2014. This would result in the deletion of some of her emails after 60 days. However, he claims that despite this realization, he still didn’t take any action. Additionally, on March 9, 2015, Mills sent him and other PRN employees an email which mentioned that the House Benghazi Committee had made a formal request to preserve Clinton’s emails. Combetta tells the FBI that he didn’t recall seeing the preservation request referenced in the email.
On May 3, 2016, Combetta has a follow-up FBI interview, and his answers on key issues completely contradict what he said before. This time, he says that when he realized between March 25 and 31, 2015 that he forgot to change the email retention policy on Clinton’s email account, he had an “oh shit!” moment. Then, instead of finally changing the policy settings, he entirely deleted Clinton’s email mailbox from the server, and used the BleachBit computer program to effectively wipe the data to make sure it could never be recovered. He also deleted a Datto back-up of the data. And he did all this without consulting anyone in PRN or working for Clinton. Furthermore, he admits that he was aware of the mention in the March 9, 2015 email from Mills mentioning the Congressional request to preserve Clinton’s emails.
A September 2016 FBI report will simply note these contradictions. There will be no explanation why Combetta was not indicted for lying to the FBI, obstruction of justice, and other possible charges. There also will be no explanation why his answers changed so much in his second FBI interview, such as him possibly being presented with new evidence that contradicted what he’d said before. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
“Judicial Watch announced that it uncovered 422 pages of FBI documents showing evidence of “cover-up” discussions related to the Clinton email system within Platte River Networks, one of the vendors who managed the Clinton email system.
Witnesses, from left, Paul Combetta and Bill Thornton of Platte River Networks, and Justin Cooper are sworn in on Sept. 13, 2016, prior to testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Clinton aide, Bryan Pagliano, did not appear, empty seat at left. (Credit: Molly Riley/The Associated Press)
(…) FBI notes of an interview with an unidentified Platte River Networks official in February 2016 (almost a year after the Clinton email network was first revealed) show that Platte River “gave someone access to live HRC archive mailbox at some point.”
The same notes show that an email from December 11, 2014, exists that reads “Hillary cover up operation work ticket archive cleanup.” The interviewee said that the “cover up operation” email “probably related to change to 60 day [sic] email retention policy/backup.” The subject indicated that he didn’t “recall the prior policy.”
The notes also indicated, “[Redacted] advised [redacted] not to answer questions related to conv [conversation] w/DK [David Kendall] document 49 – based on 5th amendment.”
The subject said that “everyone @ PRN has access to client portal.”
A December 11, 2014, Platte River Networks email between redacted parties says: “Its [sic] all part of the Hillary coverup operation <smile> I’ll have to tell you about it at the party”
An August 2015email from Platte River Networks says: “So does this mean we don’t have offsite backups currently? That could be a problem if someone hacks this thing and jacks it up. We will have to be able to produce a copy of it somehow, or we’re in some deep shit. Also, what ever [sic] came from the guys at Datto about the old backups? Do they have anyway [sic] of getting those back after we were told to cut it to 30 days?”
In March 2015, Platte River Networks specifically discusses security of the email server.
[Redacted] is going to send over a list of recommendations for us to apply for additional security against hackers. He did say we should probably remove all Clinton files, folders, info off our servers etc. on an independent drive.
Handwritten notes that appear to be from Platte River Networks in February 2016 mention questions concerning the Clinton email system and state of back-ups
The documents show Platte River Networks’ use of BleachBit on the Clinton server. The BleachBit program was downloaded from a vendor called SourceForge at 11:42am on March 31, 2015, according to a computer event log, and over the next half hour, was used to delete the files on Hillary’s server.
The documents also contain emails and handwritten notes written in June and July 2015 from the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General discussing “concerns” over classified information. A redacted sender writes to State Department Official Margaret “Peggy” Grafeld that “inadvertent release of State Department’s equities when this collection is released in its entirety — the potential damage to the foreign relations of the United States could be significant. ICIG McCullough forwards the concern, saying: “Need you plugged in on this.”
Ukraine’s embattled prosecutor-general has officially submitted his resignation, a spokesman for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wrote on Twitter.
The presidential administration has received an official letter of resignation from Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin, presidential press secretary Sviatoslav Tsegolko wrote on February 19.
Calls for Shokin’s resignation mounted after Deputy Prosecutor-General Vitaliy Kasko resigned on February 15, accusing Shokin of hindering corruption investigations.
There were media reports that Shokin had resigned as early as February 16, but other reports said he had gone on an extended vacation.
During a telephone conversation on February 18, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told Poroshenko that the United States welcomed his efforts to replace Shokin, which Biden said “paves the way for needed reform of the prosecutorial service.”
In December 2014, a hrcoffice.com domain was created on a different private server, and apparently Clinton switched to using an email account on that server around that time.
On February 22, 2016, Williams & Connolly, the law firm of Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall, tells the FBI in a letter: “Secretary Clinton did not transfer her clintonemail.com emails for the time period January 21, 2009 through February 1, 2013 to her hrcoffice.com account.” This time period represents Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
The FBI apparently trusts Clinton’s lawyer. A September 2016 FBI report will state: “The investigation found no evidence Clinton’s hrcoffice.com account contained or contains potentially classified information or emails from her tenure as secretary of state. The FBI has, therefore, not requested or obtained equipment associated with Clinton’s hrcoffice.com account.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
“Hunter Biden and his Ukrainian gas firm colleagues had multiple contacts with the Obama State Department during the 2016 election cycle, including one just a month before Vice President Joe Biden forced Ukraine to fire the prosecutor investigating his son’s company for corruption, newly released memos show.
During that February 2016 contact, a U.S. representative for Burisma Holdings sought a meeting with Undersecretary of State Catherine A. Novelli to discuss ending the corruption allegations against the Ukrainian firm where Hunter Biden worked as a board member…
Just three weeks before Burisma’s overture to State, Ukrainian authorities raided the home of the oligarch who owned the gas firm and employed Hunter Biden, a signal the long-running corruption probe was escalating in the middle of the U.S. presidential election.
Hunter Biden’s name, in fact, was specifically invoked by the Burisma representative as a reason the State Department should help, according to a series of email exchanges among U.S. officials trying to arrange the meeting. The subject line for the email exchanges read simply “Burisma.”
At the time, Novelli was the most senior official overseeing international energy issues for State…
And Tramontano was a lawyer working for Blue Star Strategies, a Washington firm that was hired by Burisma to help end a long-running corruption investigation against the gas firm in Ukraine…
Tramontano and another Blue Star official, Sally Painter, both alumni of Bill Clinton’s administration, worked with New York-based criminal defense attorney John Buretta to settle the Ukraine cases in late 2016 and 2017. I wrote about their efforts previously here. (Read more: John Solomon, 11/4/2019) (Archive)
“FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were concerned about being too tough on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the bureau’s investigation into her email practices because she might hold it against them as president, text messages released on Thursday indicated.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley released new messages between bureau officials Page and Strzok, who were having an affair and exchanged more than 50,000 texts with each other during the election.
“One more thing: she might be our next president,” Page texted Strzok on Feb 25, 2016, in the midst of the presidential campaign, in reference to Clinton.
“The last thing you need [is] going in there loaded for bear,” she continued. “You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more [DOJ] than [FBI]?”
Hillary Clinton and Jennifer Palmieri on the 2016 campaign trail. (Credit: public domain)
“The Clinton campaign discussed assembling a “swift boat project” earlier this year to undermine Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to newly released emails from WikiLeaks.
In a Feb. 26, 2016, exchange involving Democratic strategist Joel Johnson, as well as Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri and chairman John Podesta, assembling a group to destroy Trump was discussed.
Swift-boating refers to the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that accused John Kerry of fabricating his exploits to win decorations during his military service in Vietnam when he ran for president in 2004.
Clinton and Sullivan have a discussion during the House Benghazi Committee hearing on October 22, 2015. (Credit: Saul Loeb / Agence France Presse/ Getty Images)
When Clinton was secretary of state, Sullivan first served as her deputy chief of staff for policy and then as the director of policy planning. The interview will remain secret until it’s mentioned in a September 2016 FBI report.
The FBI determined that seven email chains containing 22 emails were sent by Sullivan to Clinton were later deemed classified at the “top secret/Special Access Program” (TP/SAP) level, which is above “top secret.”
As a result, much of the interview regards these emails. The FBI asks Sullivan to review about 14 emails he sent or received “on unclassified systems” that were later determined to contain classified information up to the TS/SAP level.
Sullivan gives some reasons why the emails may have been sent on Clinton’s unclassified server. According to the FBI, “With respect to the SAP, Sullivan stated that it was discussed on unclassified systems due to the operational tempo at that time, and State [Department] employees attempted to talk around classified information. Sullivan also indicated that, for some of the emails, information about the incidents described therein may have already appeared in news reports. … Sullivan did not recall any instances in which he felt uneasy about information conveyed on unclassified systems, nor any instances in which others expressed concerns about the handling of classified information at State.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
Sullivan will also give his explanation of an email in which he wanted to send her a secure fax, but the fax machine wasn’t working and she told him to “send nonsecure.”
(…) FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault, a name previously unknown to most SpyGate sleuths, was recently brought to the public’s attention through some astonishing revelations from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Politically motivated activism by Thibault included the shutting down of an investigation into Hunter Biden in October 2020. Thibault did so by labeling information relating to Hunter as false information—even though many of the details were known to be accurate at the time. Grassley said that Thibault’s Democratic National Committee (DNC) partisanship had “impacted his official decision-making on sensitive public corruption investigations” and had “likely affected investigations briefed to, and approved by, senior Justice Department and FBI officials.” But there was another new piece of information within Grassley’s disclosures that’s been bothering us of late: Thibault’s association and interaction with Bruce and Nellie Ohr in Prague.
Grassley disclosed that Thibault, “while overseeing and directing the FBI’s most significant federal public corruption investigations, traveled to the Czech Republic to attend the same seminar with Bruce and Nellie Ohr in late February 2016.” As we shall see, that trip to Prague was more integrated and potentially much more significant than Grassley’s letter has indicated. Grassley rightly observed that, at the time of the trip, Nellie Ohr was employed by Fusion GPS, working to fabricate anti-Trump propaganda for use by the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC, and she was also involved in the fake Alfa-Bank narrative. Her husband Bruce Ohr, a senior DOJ official, was instrumental in pushing the Steele dossier, along with information from Glenn Simpson, into the FBI, and he maintained close contact with Steele until November 2017. Of particular note is the fact that in the days that followed the February 2016 Czech conference, the FBI’s New York field office suddenly requested permission to open an investigation into Carter Page. (Read more: Nation and State, 8/12/2022)(Archive)
“As Page noted during her testimony, “there were lots and lots and lots of disagreements between the FBI and the department.” One issue of ongoing contention was Clinton’s actual email server:
“There was a great deal of discussion between the FBI and the department with respect to whether to proceed, obtain the server which housed the bulk of Secretary Clinton’s emails, pursuant to consent or pursuant to a subpoena or other compulsory process.”
Additionally, access to the laptops of Clinton’s aides and personal lawyers was an area of particular contention:
“There were, I think, months of disagreement with respect to obtaining the Mills and Samuelson laptops. So Heather Mills and—Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson were both lawyers who engaged in the sorting. Once it had been identified that Secretary Clinton had these emails—I’m guessing it’s pursuant to the FOIA request, but I don’t really know—she—well, our understanding is that she asked her two lawyers to take the bulk of the 60,000 emails and to sort out those which were work-related from those which were personal and to produce the work-related ones to the State Department.
“They did so. That 30,000 is sort of the bulk of the emails that we relied on in order to do the investigative technique, although we found other emails a jillion other places. We, the FBI, felt very strongly that we had to acquire and attempt to review the content of the Mills and Samuelson laptops because, to the extent the other 30,000 existed anywhere, that is the best place that they may have existed.”
“And notwithstanding the fact that they had been deleted, you know, we wanted at least to take a shot at using, you know, forensic recovery tools in order to try to ensure that, in fact, the sorting that occurred between—or by Mills and Samuelson was done correctly.”
According to Page, the ongoing dispute with the DOJ ran from “February/March-ish of 2016” to June of 2016. Page also noted one other critical factor in the investigation: “the FBI cannot execute a search warrant without approval from the Justice Department.”
Notably, Page, an experienced lawyer, thought the legal case could be made that the Mills and Samuelson laptops should be made available for forensic examination. As she noted, the frustration within the FBI came, in part, from the DOJ’s “unwillingness to explain their reasoning.”
Page noted that the issue regarding the laptops rose to “the head of the OEO, the Office of Enforcement Operations, which is the unit at the Justice Department that would have to approve a warrant on a lawyer—because, of course, these were all lawyer laptops. It rose to that individual, it rose to George Toscas, over the course of this three months or so.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 1/11/2019)
“President Biden sent his inner circle a devastating analysis of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s looming legal troubles during the 2016 race after he opted against running, according to an email stored on his son Hunter’s infamous laptop.
“Interesting,” Biden wrote in the subject line of the email, which contained a link to a column published by Real Clear Politics.
In it, University of Chicago political science professor Charles Lipson wrote that Clinton, then the presumptive Democratic nominee, President Barack Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch faced “a treacherous bridge to cross” due to the FBI investigation of Clinton’s private email server.
Lipson said it was “clear that CIA and FBI investigators already fear an administration whitewash and have leaked damaging information to the press.”
He also predicted that if then-FBI Director James Comey recommended prosecution, “he will put [the Department of Justice] and the White House in a very tight box.”
As a veteran prosecutor, Comey “will only present strong, winnable cases” and “won’t present one or two charges,” Lipson said.
“He will present evidence of dozens and dozens of felonies,” he wrote.
“Indictment on even a few felonies is a torpedo beneath the waterline for Clinton.”
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)
(…) 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 byFox 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.…
“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” @DailyCallerhttps://t.co/LNhZnzMwAO
(…) 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.”
“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.
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.
“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 2016filing, 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 Timesnoted 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 WaPointroduction 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)
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.”
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 WikiLeakspublished 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.”
“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.
“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.
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.”
“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)
“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)
“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)
“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 recentarticle in the Washington Postrevealed 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)
Clinton accepts the Democratic nomination for the presidency on July 27, 2017. (Credit: Thomson Reuters)
“There has been much confusion in the media — and thereby, the public — about who funded the infamous Trump dossier. Some outlets have incorrectly reported that Republicans began financing the dossier before the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee took over last Spring.
But that is incorrect. Democrats are solely responsible for the dossier, which was passed around by their research firm, Fusion GPS, to Beltway reporters and select lawmakers during the heat of the presidential campaign.
Here is the definitive timeline of how it all transpired.
Oct. 2015: It was reported late Friday that the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by GOP mega-donor Paul Singer, hired Fusion GPS to investigate Trump. Free Beacon’s editor said Friday that the research was standard opposition research and that it was not tied to the dossier work that would follow several months later. It is not clear what, if anything, Singer knew about Free Beacon’s hiring of Fusion. The hedge fund manager was Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s biggest backer.
Feb. 20, 2016: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush drops from the Republican primary.
Early March: Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie, the law firm for the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. Perkins Coie general counsel revealed this week that Fusion offered to continue Trump opposition research it had started while working for a Republican candidate.
March 15: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio drops from the Republican primary after losing to Trump in his home state.
April: Perkins Coie, using money from the Clinton campaign and DNC, hires Fusion GPS. Marc Elias, a Perkins Coie partner and general counsel for both the campaign and DNC, would serve as the bagman.
That month, Federal Election Commission records show that the Clinton campaign paid Perkins Coie a total of $150,000 for legal services. The DNC paid the firm around $107,000. It is unclear how much of that went to Fusion GPS. Both the campaign and DNC would pay Perkins Coie hundreds of thousands more dollars throughout the campaign. (Read more: The Daily Caller, 10/28/2017)(Perkins Coie Letter, 10/24/2017)
“In anticipation of voting in the April 19, 2016, presidential primary in New York, Kathleen Menegozzi checked her registration online. The Brooklyn resident, a registered Democrat since 2008, learned three weeks before the election that she had been struck from the rolls. Another Brooklyn Democrat, Casey James Diskin, who first joined the party in 2012, discovered five days before the primary that he was not registered at all.
In Manhattan, Michael Hubbard, a Democrat since 2015, checked his status online 17 days before planning to vote, only to find that he too was no longer registered. Meanwhile, in Queens, Benjamin Leo Gersh, who also had been a registered Democrat since 2015, checked on his voter status, and saw two weeks before the primary that he too had been purged.
Then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman would eventually reveal that they were among 200,000 New York City voters who had been illegally wiped off the rolls and prevented from voting in the presidential primary. But by January of 2017, when Schneiderman announced that he would intervene in a federal lawsuit against the New York City Board of Elections, along with the U.S. Department of Justice, the news fell on deaf ears.
The announcement had come just seven days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Although it was the first time the total number of purged voters had been disclosed, the media was consumed with a different statistic: the crowd size at Trump’s inauguration. At the same time, a snowballing narrative that Russia had hacked the U.S. election would overshadow the indisputable fact that a domestic government agency had committed election fraud.
The lack of media attention was in stark contrast to the recent barrage of headlines about a right-wing push to purge eligible voters from the rolls. Much of the media ignored New York’s proven case of election fraud, perhaps because it had been facilitated by Democrats, and not by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican with a national profile for championing stricter voter ID legislation.
Schneiderman’s lawsuit, which was initially launched by a coalition of three voter rights groups, never went to trial – the New York City Board of Elections didn’t even try to dispute the attorney general’s findings. “The New York City Board of Elections got caught with their hand in the cookie jar,” said Jose Perez, general counsel for one of the plaintiffs, Latino Justice PRLDEF.
In October of 2017, the city’s elections board quietly settled the lawsuit by admitting it broke federal and state election laws. It agreed to a vague list of reforms in a consent decree, including that it “overhaul its voter registration and list maintenance procedures, adequately train relevant staff, submit to regular monitoring of its voter registration and list maintenance activities, and review every registration cancelled since July, 1, 2013.” (Read more: City & State New York, 11/06/2018)
“Rep. Nunes is not the first Republican to question what role the Shearer memo may have played in the FBI’s investigation into the Trump team and its possible role in securing the warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Chairman Charles Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham of the Senate Judiciary Committee alluded to the Shearer document in a memorandum attached to a Jan. 4, 2018 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein referring Steele to the Department of Justice for a criminal inquiry. In their redacted classified memorandum, the two Republican senators hint at the possibility that the FBI’s probe into the Trump team’s possible ties to Russia is the result of an operation managed by the Clinton inner circle.
“One memorandum by Mr. Steele that was not published by BuzzFeed is dated October 19, 2016,” write Grassley and Graham. “Mr. Steele’s memorandum states that his company ‘received this report from [REDACTED] US State Department,’ that the report was second in a series, and that the report was information that came from a foreign sub-source who ‘is in touch with [REDACTED], a contact of [REDACTED], a friend of the Clintons, who passed it to [REDACTED].’ It is troubling enough that the Clinton campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele’s allegations raises additional concerns about his credibility.”
Writing in his Feb. 8Washington Post op-ed about getting the Shearer memo from Sidney Blumenthal in September 2016, Obama State Department official Winer explained that soon after the Blumenthal meeting, he met with Christopher Steele. Winer had known Steele, a longtime associate who often used Winer as his point of contact at the State Department. Steele had shown Winer the memos he’d written on Trump’s possible ties to Russia.
Winer asserted that in reading Shearer’s memo, he was “struck … how some of the material echoed Steele’s but appeared to involve different sources.” He shared Shearer’s memo with Steele, who described it as “potentially ‘collateral’ information,” presumably to buttress his own findings. The FBI, as Winer explained, had asked Steele to provide any supporting information. From the Grassley-Graham letter, it appears that Steele gave the FBI the Shearer report titled “FSB Interview,” “the second in a series.” He either withheld the first, “The Compromised Candidate” report, or Winer never gave it to him.
During the same period, late summer and early fall, the FBI was seeking a FISA warrant on Carter Page. A Department of Justice spokesperson declined comment when RCI emailed to ask if the Shearer memo was used as part of the Steele dossier to secure the warrant on Page’s communications that was granted Oct. 21, 2016.
When news of the Shearer memo broke more than a year later, the Guardianreported in a Jan. 30, 2018 article that the FBI “is still assessing details in the ‘Shearer memo’ and is pursuing intriguing leads.” The memo, the Guardian explained, “was initially viewed with skepticism, not least because he had shared it with select media organizations before the election.”
Even as his FSB memo was provided to the FBI before the election, it appears that Shearer was shopping his information to press outfits while also comparing rumors with leading journalists. Shearer’s first report, “The Compromised Candidate,” is a record of various journalists and media personalities explaining how they’ve heard the same rumors, and even tried, unsuccessfully, to report the story that Shearer is pushing in the second report.
Robert Baer (Credit: CNN)
(…) In the same report, Shearer quotes a conversation with former CIA officer Robert Baer, again hinting at another intermediary between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Shearer writes that Baer told him “the Russians had established an encrypted communication system with a cut out between the Trump campaign and Putin.”
Baer told RCI that “he’d heard that story from acquaintances at the New York Times who were trying to run the story down.”
Baer said he remembered speaking with Shearer about Trump and Russia in “March or April” of 2016. If Baer’s memory is correct then Shearer was investigating the Trump story at around the same time the Clinton campaign and the DNC hired Fusion GPS to compile opposition research on the Trump campaign.
Shearer writes in his first report that he was told by Alan Cullison of the Wall Street Journal that Fusion GPS principals and former Journal reporters, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch (Shearer misspells both names in the memo) had been hired by the DNC to “rack [sic] down Trump compromised story.”
(…) The inaccuracies in Shearer’s account fuel suspicions that he misidentified the source of the information on who was funding the Steele dossier. What matters is that Shearer knew who was paying for Fusion GPS’s work on Trump. More important, if Steele received both of Shearer’s reports in September 2016, that would contradict the information in the FBI’s warrant application that said Steele didn’t know who was paying for his work. The source of the funding was right there in Shearer’s first memo. The FBI’s warrant application, however, says Simpson “never advised Source No. 1 [Mr. Steele] as to the motivation behind the research into candidate’s #1 [Mr. Trump’s] ties to Russia.” If Steele had both of Shearer’s reports, he knew he was being paid by the DNC.
This Washington Post Steele dossier timeline indicates Steele’s memo dated September 14, 2016, sounds very similar to Shearer’s FSB “pee-pee” memo that Jonathan Winer gave to Steele in the same month. (Credit: Washington Post)
The members of the press corps whom Simpson and Steele were briefing during that period almost certainly knew who was paying. Shearer’s notes, according to the Feb. 9, 2018Journal article, “circulated in political and journalistic circles in Washington in late 2016.” Whoever saw both of Shearer’s reports would have known that the DNC was paying for the Fusion GPS campaign—long before the information became public a year later, in October 2017.
Cullison, who declined to comment for this story, was the Wall Street Journal’s Moscow correspondent for 20 years. The memo has him telling Shearer that since May 2016 he, too, had been looking into rumors of Trump’s activities in Moscow, including allegations of his sexual activities.
“Our reporter was unable to corroborate these allegations,” WSJ spokesperson Severinghaus said in the FebruaryJournal article, “and determined the information provided by Mr. Shearer did not meet our high standards for fair and accurate reporting.”
To this date, no journalist has been able to confirm on its own any of the incendiary allegations of Trump-Russia collusion story since the rumors surfaced during the 2016 presidential campaign. The first accounts of the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia were published by Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News (Sept. 23, 2016) and David Corn of Mother Jones (Oct. 31). Both were sourced to Steele’s research.
Shearer’s first report shows that the story was circulating through the press corps for months, and no one was able to confirm it.
Shearer tried to drum up interest in the collusion narrative but no one in the press was biting. No one was willing to sink time and prestige on material sourced to unnamed Russian intelligence officials that was provided by a Clinton political operative whose partner, Sidney Blumenthal, had an even more controversial reputation.
But it would be different if it came from someone else, an intelligence operative whose American handlers worked up a suitable legend of his exploits in a glamorous, allied clandestine service, and his deep knowledge of all things Russian. So what did it matter if Steele had become an executive in a corporate intelligence firm whose official cover had been blown a decade before and who hadn’t been to Russia in years? The byline of a former MI6 agent could credential a compendium of unsubstantiated rumors when the names of Clinton confederates Cody Shearer and Sidney Blumenthal could not.” (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 4/26/2018)(Archive)
On July 25, 2016, the Washington Post will report that the FBI warns the “Clinton campaign and dozens of lawmakers” that they are being targeted by hackers. Later reporting by Yahoo News will indicate that the Clinton campaign is first warned by the FBI in March 2016. The timing of the warning to lawmakers is less clear, except that the Post mentions it takes place “weeks before” a media report on June 14, 2016 that hackers had broken into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer network.
It still has not been proven that hack on the lawmakers have been successful. However, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D) has told the Post that his email account was hacked recently. But he hasn’t been given any indication if law enforcement is investigating or who the hacker might be. (The Washington Post, 7/25/2016)
“While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC).
The focus on AntAC — whose youthful street activists famously wore “Ukraine F*&k Corruption” T-shirts — was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted.
The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, where the Obama administration took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and the group.
“The investigation into the Anti-Corruption Action Center (sic), based on the assistance they have received from us, is similarly misplaced,” then-embassy Charge d’ Affaires George Kent wrote the prosecutor’s office in April 2016 in a letter that also argued U.S. officials had no concerns about how the U.S. aid had been spent.
At the time, the nation’s prosecutor general had just been fired, under pressure from the United States, and a permanent replacement had not been named.
Yuriy Lutsenko (Credit: Hill TV)
A few months later, Yuri Lutsenko, widely regarded as a hero in the West for spending two years in prison after fighting Russian aggression in his country, was named prosecutor general and invited to meet new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
Lutsenko told me he was stunned when the ambassador “gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute.” The list included a founder of the AntAC group and two members of Parliament who vocally supported the group’s anti-corruption reform agenda, according to a source directly familiar with the meeting.
It turns out the group that Ukrainian law enforcement was probing was co-funded by the Obama administration and liberal mega-donor George Soros. And it was collaborating with the FBI agents investigating then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s business activities with pro-Russian figures in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (second left) and George Soros (right), founder and chairman of the Open Society Foundations, during a meeting in Kiev. (Credit: Nikolay Lazarenko/Sputnik)
The implied message to Ukraine’s prosecutors was clear: Don’t target AntAC in the middle of an American presidential election in which Soros was backing Hillary Clinton to succeed another Soros favorite, Barack Obama, Ukrainian officials said.
“We ran right into a buzzsaw and we got bloodied,” a senior Ukrainian official told me.
Lutsenko suggested the embassy applied pressure because it did not want Americans to see who was being funded with its tax dollars. “At the time, Ms. Ambassador thought our interviews of the Ukrainian citizens, of the Ukrainian civil servants who were frequent visitors in the U.S. Embassy, could cast a shadow on that anti-corruption policy,” he said.
State officials told me privately they wanted Ukraine prosecutors to back off AntAC because they feared the investigation was simply retribution for the group’s high-profile efforts to force anti-corruption reforms inside Ukraine, some of which took authorities and prestige from the Prosecutor General’s Office.
But it was an unusual intervention, the officials acknowledged. “We’re not normally in the business of telling a country’s police force who they can and can’t pursue unless it involves an American citizen we think is wrongly accused,” one official said.” (Read more: The Hill, 3/26/2019)
Huma Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, is interviewed by the FBI. During the interview, she discloses she had four email accounts while working at the State Department:
an official State Department email account.
an account on Clinton’s clintonemail.com private email server.
a personal Yahoo account.
another personal email account that she had previously used to support the political activities of her husband Anthony Weiner.
Huma Abedin stops for a moment to text a message. (Credit: Polaris)
Abedin says she “routinely” forwarded State Department emails and documents to both her clintonemail.com account and her Yahoo account so she could more easily print them.
She is asked about one classified email sent to her State Department account from an aide to Richard Holbrooke, a special State Department envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. She had forwarded the email to her Yahoo account in order to print it, but tells the FBI she was “unaware of the classification of the document and stated that she did not make judgments on the classification of material she received. Instead, she relied on the sender to make that assessment and to properly make and transmit the document.”
In October 2016, it will be discovered that copies of at least some of Abedin’s emails wound up on the computer of her husband Weiner, leading FBI Director Comey to at least partially reopen the Clinton email investigation. Yahoo News will later suggest that Abedin’s FBI interview offered hints that “there might be relevant material on her husband’s personal devices. But agents do not appear to have followed up on the clues.” Furthermore, “there is no indication” for the FBI interview summary that the FBI “ever pressed her on what has now turned into an explosive issue in the final days of the 2016 campaign:”
Joseph DiGenova, who Yahoo News will describe as “a former US attorney and independent counsel who has been a strong critic of Comey and the FBI probe,” will call this evidence that the FBI investigation was “not thorough” and was “fatally flawed.” He will add, “The first thing [FBI agents] should have done was gotten a sworn affidavit about all her accounts and devices.” Then they should have immediately attempted to obtain the devices, including Weiner’s.
On June 28, 2016, Abedin will be deposed as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by Judicial Watch. Testifying under oath, she will give answers that differ from her FBI interview. When asked about her email accounts, she will claim she rarely used her personal Yahoo account, and when she did she only used it to forward State Department “press clips” so she could print them. (Yahoo News, 10/29/2016)
“Former Vice President Joe Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has locked into a specific story about the controversy in Ukraine.
He insists that, in spring 2016, he strong-armed Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor solely because Biden believed that official was corrupt and inept, not because the Ukrainian was investigating a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, that hired Biden’s son, Hunter, into a lucrative job.
There’s just one problem.
Hundreds of pages of never-released memos and documents — many from inside the American team helping Burisma to stave off its legal troubles — conflict with Biden’s narrative.
And they raise the troubling prospect that U.S. officials may have painted a false picture in Ukraine that helped ease Burisma’s legal troubles and stop prosecutors’ plans to interview Hunter Biden during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
For instance, Burisma’s American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Biden forced the firing of the country’s chief prosecutor and offered “an apology for the dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures” about the Ukrainian prosecutors, according to the Ukrainian government’s official memo of the meeting. The effort to secure that meeting began the same day the prosecutor’s firing was announced.
In addition, Burisma’s American team offered to introduce Ukrainian prosecutors to Obama administration officials to make amends, according to that memo and the American legal team’s internal emails.
The memos raise troubling questions:
1.) If the Ukraine prosecutor’s firing involved only his alleged corruption and ineptitude, why did Burisma’s American legal team refer to those allegations as “false information?”
2.) If the firing had nothing to do with the Burisma case, as Biden has adamantly claimed, why would Burisma’s American lawyers contact the replacement prosecutor within hours of the termination and urgently seek a meeting in Ukraine to discuss the case?
Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John Buretta (Credit: public domain)
(…) At the time, Blue Star worked in concert with an American criminal defense lawyer, John Buretta, who was hired by Burisma to help address the case in Ukraine. The case was settled in January 2017 for a few million dollars in fines for alleged tax issues.
Buretta, Painter, Tramontano, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s campaign have not responded to numerous calls and emails seeking comment.
On March 29, 2016, the day Shokin’s firing was announced, Buretta asked to speak with Yuriy Sevruk, the prosecutor named to temporarily replace Shokin, but was turned down, the memos show.
Blue Star, using the Ukrainian embassy worker it had hired, eventually scored a meeting with Sevruk on April 6, 2016, a week after Shokin’s firing. Buretta, Tramontano and Painter attended that meeting in Kiev, according to Blue Star’s memos.
Sevruk memorialized the meeting in a government memo that the general prosecutor’s office provided to me, stating that the three Americans offered an apology for the “false” narrative that had been provided by U.S. officials about Shokin being corrupt and inept.” (Read more: The Hill, 9/26/2019)(Archive)
The revelations of the so-called Panama Papers that are roiling the world’s political and financial elites this week include important facts about Team Clinton. This unprecedented trove of documents purloined from a shady Panama law firm that arranged tax havens, and perhaps money laundering, for the globe’s super-rich includes juicy insights into how Russia’s elite hides its ill-gotten wealth.
Almost lost among the many revelations is the fact that Russia’s biggest bank uses The Podesta Group as its lobbyist in Washington, D.C. Though hardly a household name, this firm is well known inside the Beltway, not least because its CEO is Tony Podesta, one of the best-connected Democratic machers in the country. He founded the firm in 1998 with his brother John, formerly chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, then counselor to President Barack Obama, Mr. Podesta is the very definition of a Democratic insider. Outsiders engage the Podestas and their well-connected lobbying firm to improve their image and get access to Democratic bigwigs.
Which is exactly what Sberbank, Russia’s biggest financial institution, did this spring. As reported at the end of March, the Podesta Group registered with the U.S. Government as a lobbyist for Sberbank, as required by law, naming three Podesta Group staffers: Tony Podesta plus Stephen Rademaker and David Adams, the last two former assistant secretaries of state. It should be noted that Tony Podesta is a big-money bundler for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign while his brother John is the chairman of that campaign, the chief architect of her plans to take the White House this November.
Sberbank (Savings Bank in Russian) engaged the Podesta Group to help its public image—leading Moscow financial institutions not exactly being known for their propriety and wholesomeness—and specifically to help lift some of the pain of sanctions placed on Russia in the aftermath of the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine, which has caused real pain to the country’s hard-hit financial sector.
It’s hardly surprising that Sberbank sought the help of Democratic insiders like the Podesta Group to aid them in this difficult hour, since they clearly understand how American politics work. The question is why the Podesta Group took Sberbank’s money. That financial institution isn’t exactly hiding in the shadows—it’s the biggest bank in Russia, and its reputation leaves a lot to be desired. Nobody acquainted with Russian finance was surprised that Sberbank wound up in the Panama Papers.
Although Sberbank has its origins in the nineteenth century, it was functionally reborn after the Soviet collapse, and it the 1990s it grew to be the dominant bank in the country, today controlling nearly 30 percent of Russia’s aggregate banking assets and employing a quarter-million people. The majority stockholder in Sberbank is Russia’s Central Bank. In other words, Sberbank is functionally an arm of the Kremlin, although it’s ostensibly a private institution.
Certainly Western intelligence is well acquainted with Sberbank, noting its close relationship with Vladimir Putin and his regime. Funds moving through Sberbank are regularly used to support clandestine Russian intelligence operations, while the bank uses its offices abroad as cover for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service or SVR. A NATO counterintelligence official explained that Sberbank, which has outposts in almost two dozen foreign countries, “functions as a sort of arm of the SVR outside Russia, especially because many of its senior employees are ‘former’ Russian intelligence officers.” Inside the country, Sberbank has an equally cozy relationship with the Federal Security Service or FSB, Russia’s powerful domestic intelligence agency.
Ukraine has pointed a finger at Sberbank as an instrument of Russia’s aggression against their country. In 2014, Ukraine’s Security Service charged Sberbank with “financing terrorism,” noting that its branches were distributing millions of dollars in illegal aid to Russian-backed separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv’s conclusion, that Sberbank is a witting supporter of Russian aggression against Ukraine, is broadly supported by Western intelligence. “Sberbank is the Kremlin, they don’t do anything major without Putin’s go-ahead, and they don’t tell him ‘no’ either,” explained a retired senior U.S. intelligence official with extensive experience in Eastern Europe.
In addition, Ukrainian intelligence has alleged that the FSB collaborated with Sberbank in the bombings of two of the bank’s branches in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in June 2015. The attacks caused no casualties but got major coverage in Russian state media as “proof” of Ukraine’s instability and violent anti-Russian nature. Although the notion that Russian spies would plant bombs as a provocation, what the Kremlin terms provokatsiya, may sound outlandish to those unacquainted with espionage, in fact Russian spies have been doing such things since tsarist times. What I’ve termed “fake terrorism” is a longstanding Kremlin core competency, and it can only be pulled off with logistical support, including with finances.
Predictably, Sberbank has blown off the Panama Papers revelations as nothing of consequence, but the fact that they are an arm of the Kremlin and they do plenty of shady things in many countries is a matter of record. As is the fact that the Podesta Group is their lobbyist in America.
Among the Sberbank subsidiaries that the Podesta Group also represents are the Cayman Islands-based Troika Dialog Group Limited, the Cyprus-based SBGB Cyprus Limited, and the Luxembourg-based SB International. As reported this week by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a consortium of journalists exploring the Panama Papers leak, Sberbank and Troika Dialog are used by members of Mr. Putin’s inner circle to shift public funds into sometimes questionable private investments. In other words, this is top-level money laundering of a brazen kind. As the OCCRP stated plainly, “Some of these companies were initially connected to the Troika Dialog investment fund, which was controlled and run by Sberbank after the bank bought the Troika Dialog investment bank. Troika and Sberbank declined to comment.”
Adding to shadiness of all this, the Podesta Group is playing along with the useful charade that Sberbank is simply a private financial institution, rather than the state-owned bank that it is, since that would require the lobbyists to register as agents of the Russian government under the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
John and Tony Podesta aren’t fooling anyone with this ruse. They are lobbyists for Vladimir Putin’s personal bank of choice, an arm of his Kremlin and its intelligence services. Since the brothers Podesta are presumably destined for very high-level White House jobs next January if the Democrats triumph in November at the polls, their relationship with Sberbank is something they—and Hillary Clinton—need to explain to the public. (Observer, 4/07/2016)(Archive)
Mills was Clinton’s chief of staff when Clinton was secretary of state and since then has been one of Clinton’s lawyers. The date and most details of the interview will remain secret until it’s mentioned in a September 2016 FBI report.
Mills refuses to answer some questions, claiming attorney-client privilege.
Cheryl Mills and Clinton at the House Benghazi Committee hearing on October 23, 2015. (Credit: Chip Somodaville / Getty Images)
The FBI shows Mills seven emails that she forwarded to Clinton which contain information later determined to be classified. Acccording to the FBI, although “Mills did not specifically remember any of the emails, she stated that there was nothing in them that concerned her regarding their transmission on an unclassified email system. Mills also stated that she was not concerned about her decision to forward certain of these emails to Clinton.”
Apparently, some of the emails reviewed by Mills are classified at the “top secret/Special Access Program” (TP/SAP) level. Because the FBI will mention that while “reviewing emails related to the SAP referenced above, Mills explained that some of the emails were designed to inform State [Department] officials of media reports concerning the subject matter and that the information in the emails merely confirmed what the public already knew. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
In late March 2015, Paul Combetta, an employee of Platte River Networks (PRN), deleted all of Clinton’s emails from her private server and then used a computer program to permanently wipe them. Cheryl Mills, one of Clinton’s lawyers and her former chief of staff, had communications with Combetta in that time period, including speaking in a conference call in which he also participated just after the deletions were done, on March 31, 2015.
However, Mills is interviewed by the FBI on this date, and the FBI will later report that “Mills stated she was unaware that [Combetta] had conducted these deletions and modifications in March 2015.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
Mills’ claim is particularly surprising considering that Mills has continued to work as one of Clinton’s lawyers and in August 2015, it was reported that Clinton’s campaign had acknowledged “that there was an attempt to wipe [Clinton’s private] server before it was turned over last week to the FBI.” (NBC News, 8/19/2015)
“In an April 12, 2016, email exchange initiated by an email from Strzok to [Redacted] within the Justice Department’s National Security Division (NSD), Strzok asks the NSD official if he’d like to add anything to the agenda of a meeting to occur three days later between FBI and DOJ attorneys.
[Redacted] NSD official responds: Would like to see what you have on your agenda so we could see what we might want to add on our end. I will mention to [Redacted]. Also interested in understanding FBI OGC’s analysis of the privilege and ethics issues we are facing.
Strzok forwards to Page: Pretty nonresponsive.…
Page responds: Why provide them an agenda? I wouldn’t do that until you have a sense of how Andy [McCabe] wants to go. So no. We’ll talk about what we’re going to talk about and then they can talk about what they want to talk about. Also, seriously Pete. F him. OGC needs to provide an analysis? We haven’t done one. But they seem to be categorical that it’s just impossible, I’d just like to know why.
And now I’m angry before bed again.?
Total indulgence, there’s a TV in here. Here’s hoping I can find something to sufficiently melt my brain???
Strzok replies: Because I want to make this productive! Why NOT provide them an agenda!?!? We all talk about what we want to talk about and that’s a waste of time.
They haven’t done one either (legal analysis)
Assume noble intent.
How do we maximize this use of time?
Page writes: I’m ignoring all this and going to bed.
Strzok and Page were discussing a meeting that the Justice Department and FBI were about to have concerning, among other things, “privilege and ethics issues we are facing.” (Read more: Judicial Watch, 2/15/2019)
The DOJ Office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz, releases the investigative report of Asst. FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe that led to his firing. Inspector General Michael Horowitz referred the issues with McCabe’s false testimony under oath to the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). After a review of the IG investigation, and after discussion with Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (and counsel), the OPR recommended to the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, that Andrew McCabe be terminated from employment. This is the Inspector General report.
“A 2016 DOJ criminal investigation was suppressed and buried by the DOJ/FBI that involved a major NY Democratic power broker, the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation.
The investigation revolved around the illegal sale of controlled US Homeland Security technology to Russia and China in the years before the 2016 election by a company named AGT International.
The DOJ terminated its internal investigation in 2016 despite clear and irrefutable evidence of criminal activity and hid it from the public!
In Part I of our series we discussed the Clinton Foundation and the donations to the Foundation from the COB (Martin L. Edelman) and CEO (Mati Kochavi) of AGT International as well as from Sheikhs in the UAE. These donations in the millions of dollars were for favors from the Clintons, in return the Clintons helped promote AGT International.
In Part II of our series we discussed the illegal actions that AGT International took to generate revenues around the globe. Highly sensitive US defense technology and ITAR regulated products were provided to China, Russia and other countries in the name of sales growth. These actions were beyond criminal, they were treasonous.
(Below is an AGT International internal post about its premier defense software from its company 4D Security Solutions.)
In Part III of our series we discussed the investigation that the FBI/DOJ started into AGT International and the Clinton Foundation but then terminated and covered up before the 2016 Presidential election despite irrefutable crimes!
In Part IV of our series we discussed the activities by individuals associated with AGT International in obtaining entrance to a highly sensitive US Intel facility circumventing the access controls in place that prevent illegal entries to the site.
In Part V of our series we discussed the efforts by AGT International to obtain top secret US Intel for the sole purpose of selling/sharing it with the Russians. AGT International personnel used the information as a means to entice sales from US adversaries. AGT International offered Russians the ability to conduct counter-Intel operations (e.g. cell phone intercepts, object and vehicle tracking, etc.). All of this information provided to the Russians was highly classified and never should have been placed in their hands. This information was provided by AGT International senior managers like Gadi Lenz, a US national who also held a CTO executive position at the US based defense contractor 4D Security Solutions.
The image below shows an AGT International C4I system deployed in Liaoyuan China. The system among other things was designed to automatically track and create a detailed pattern of motion of vehicles belonging to western embassies.
In Part VI of our series we showed the shady efforts AGT International took to obtain contracts in the US and abroad. AGT International utilized its COB (Martin Edelman) and the Clintons to gain access to highly placed Law Enforcement Agents (LEA’s) and former Federal and political figures in in the US and used bribes around the world to initiate contracts.
In Part VII of our series we provided evidence that AGT International hid its employees identities in the US market by using aliases for all its employees at 3i-MIND and other subsidiaries.
AGT International management sent an email to the employees at 3i-MIND and noted that “since the blog will be used in the US as well, we are and we will not be allowed identifying ourselves using our real names.” This poorly written comment provides evidence that the company encouraged its employees to hide their identities in the US.
Today in Part VIII of our series we’ll provide evidence that AGT International assisted a group of Chinese officials to inconspicuously enter the US without properly identifying the real purpose of their visit, which was to obtain highly sensitive and classified US Homeland security information and sensitive operational information.
On June 5, 2012, AGT International announced in its company newsletter that it had just signed an agreement in Guangzhou, China, with a group of Chinese and Singapore individuals to implement its highly classified and sophisticated ‘safe city’ system in the world’s largest metropolitan area.
(…) “In March of 2016, NSA Director Rogers became aware of improper access to raw FISA data (Page 83 of Court Ruling).
In April of 2016, Rogers directed the NSA’s Office of Compliance to conduct a “fundamental baseline review of compliance associated with 702” (Senate testimony & Page 83-84 of Court Ruling).
On April 18, 2016, Rogers shut down all outside contractor access to raw FISA information – specifically outside contractors working for the FBI. The discovery that outside contractors were accessing raw FISA data is probably the event that precipitated Rogers ordering a full compliance review (Page 84 of Court Ruling).
On April 18, 2016, both the FBI and DOJ’s NSD become aware of Rogers’ compliance review. They may have known earlier but they were certainly aware after outside contractor access was halted. (Read more: themarketswork.com, 4/05/2018)
“A Tablet investigation using public sources to trace the evolution of the now-famous dossier suggests that central elements of the Russiagate scandal emerged not from the British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s top-secret “sources” in the Russian government—which are unlikely to exist separate from Russian government control—but from a series of stories that Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and his wife Mary Jacoby co-wrote for TheWall Street Journal well before Fusion GPS existed, and Donald Trump was simply another loud-mouthed Manhattan real estate millionaire.
Understanding the origins of the “Steele dossier” is especially important because of what it tells us about the nature and the workings of what its supporters would hopefully describe as an ongoing campaign to remove the elected president of the United States.
(…) In a Facebook post from June 24, 2017, that Tablet has seen in screenshots, Jacoby claimed that her husband deserves the lion’s share of credit for Russiagate. (She has not replied to repeated requests for comment.) “It’s come to my attention that some people still don’t realize what Glenn’s role was in exposing Putin’s control of Donald Trump,” Jacoby wrote. “Let’s be clear. Glenn conducted the investigation. Glenn hired Chris Steele. Chris Steele worked for Glenn.”
This assertion is hardly a simple assertion of family pride; it goes directly to the nature of what became known as the “Steele dossier,” on which the Russiagate narrative is founded. (Read more: Tablet, 12/20/2017)
The Conservative Treehouse elaborates further:
(…) “The dates here are important because they tell a story.
The origin of the Clinton effort with Fusion-GPS was April 2016. That’s the same month Fusion hired Nellie Ohr, wife of DOJ Deputy Bruce Ohr, to gather opposition research on candidate Trump. It would be most likely that Nellie Ohr was in contact with Christopher Steele. DOJ Deputy Attorney Bruce Ohr was later demoted for his unreported contacts with Christopher Steele and Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson.
However, there was another event in this April 2016 timeline which enhances the trail of the Dossier origination. (Hat Tip Katica)
In April 2016 Mary Jacoby shows up on White House visitor logs meeting with President Obama officials. In April 2016 the Clinton Campaign and DNC hired Fusion-GPS to organize the Russia research, that later became known as the “Steele Dossier”.
The wife of Glenn Simpson (Fusion GPS), Mary B. Jacoby, with years of Russia-angled reporting –including Donald Trump– visits the White House in April 2016, at the same time as the DNC and Clinton hire Fusion GPS to conduct the opposition research on Donald Trump, surrounding Russia?
This timeline is entirely too obvious to be coincidental.
Expand slightly and consider:
April: Mary Jacoby, wife of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, visits the White House. The Clinton Campaign and DNC then hire Fusion GPS to conduct ‘Opposition Research’, with a Russian emphasis. Fusion GPS then hires Nellie Ohr who specializes in Russian-centric counterintelligence. Nellie Ohr then contacts MI6 agent Christopher Steele to write a Russian Dossier. A month later, May 2016: Nellie Ohr’s husband inside the DOJ, Bruce Ohr, is then working with FBI counterintelligence head Peter Strzok. By June 2016: Peter Strzok, Bruce Ohr and DOJ Attorney Lisa Page then apply for a FISA warrant.
June 24th, 2017, Mary Jacoby appears on Facebook taking credit for the origination of the Russiagate narrative.
This timeline is so transparent it’s deafening.
(More from the Tablet)] Simpson and Jacoby had ID’d Manafort as a world-class sleazeball and they were right. A slick Georgetown Law grad running in GOP circles since the Reagan campaign, Manafort used his talents and connections to get paid by some very bad people. I would only add here that, in my personal experience, journalists are not in the habit of forgetting major stories they’ve written, especially stories with a character like Manafort at the center.
So when the Trump campaign named Paul Manafort as its campaign convention manager on March 28, 2016, you can bet that Simpson and Jacoby’s eyes lit up. And as it happened, at the exact same time that Trump hired Manafort, Fusion GPS was in negotiations with Perkins Coie, the law firm representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, to see if there was interest in the firm continuing the opposition research on the Trump campaign they had started for the Washington Free Beacon. (more)
Mary Jacoby and Glenn Simpson (Credit: public domain)
If the counterintelligence FISA warrant was obtained through deception, misleading/manipulated information, or fraud; and that warrant is what led to the wiretapping and surveillance of candidate Donald Trump and General Flynn; and that warrant was authorized by FISA Court Judge Contreras –who was the judge in Flynn’s case, and is now recused– the entire tenuous FBI and DOJ operation begins to collapse and the outline of a “conspiracy” becomes clearly evident.
The back-story to the FISA warrant is the cornerstone. The back-story contains both the FBI and the DOJ scheme. Expose it, remove it, and the entire ‘muh Russia’ conspiracy fraud collapses under the weight of sunlight. WATCH:
“Remember, previous media reporting -in conjunction with Clinton campaign admissions- have confirmed the DNC and Clinton Campaign financed Fusion-GPS through their lawyers within Perkins Coie. Fusion then sub-contracted with retired British MI6 agent Christopher Steele to write the dossier.
The dates here are important because they tell a story.
The origin of the Clinton effort with Fusion-GPS was April 2016. That’s the same month Fusion hired Nellie Ohr, wife of DOJ Deputy Bruce Ohr, to gather opposition research on candidate Trump. It would be most likely that Nellie Ohr was in contact with Christopher Steele. DOJ Deputy Attorney Bruce Ohr was later demoted for his unreported contacts with Christopher Steele and Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson.
However, there was another event in this April 2016 timeline which enhances the trail of the Dossier origination. [Hat Tip Katica] Check this out:
On April 19, 2016 Mary Jacoby shows up on White House visitor logs meeting with President Obama officials. In April 2016 the Clinton Campaign and DNC hired Fusion-GPS to organize the Russia research, that later became known as the “Steele Dossier.”
“The wife of Glenn Simpson (Fusion GPS), Mary B. Jacoby, with years of Russia-angled reporting –including Donald Trump– visits the White House in April 2016,at the same time as the DNC and Clinton hire Fusion GPS to conduct the opposition research on Donald Trump, surrounding Russia?
Mary B. Jacoby (Credit: public domain)
April: Mary Jacoby, wife of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, visits the White House. The Clinton Campaign and DNC then hire Fusion GPS to conduct ‘Opposition Research’, with a Russian emphasis. Fusion GPS then hires Nellie Ohr who specializes in Russian-centric counterintelligence. Nellie Ohr then contacts MI6 agent Christopher Steele to write a Russian Dossier. A month later, May 2016: Nellie Ohr’s husband inside the DOJ, Bruce Ohr, is then working with FBI counterintelligence head Peter Strzok. By June 2016: Peter Strzok, Bruce Ohr and DOJ Attorney Lisa Page then apply for a FISA warrant.
The revelation comes as both Ohrs remain under intense scrutiny for their ties to Fusion GPS and British ex-spy Christopher Steele, the author of the anti-Trump dossier that was used to obtain warrants to wiretap a member of President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained a series of April 2016 emails from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department that show a correspondence between the Ohrs, an aide to Bruce Ohr named Lisa Holtyn, and Stefan Bress, a first secretary at the German Embassy.
They discussed setting up a dinner for the German delegation as well as a meeting to discuss Russian organized crime. Included in a proposed agenda is the “Impact of Russian influence operations in Europe (‘PsyOps/InfoWar’).”
On April 20, responding to the email thread with the subject line, “Analyst Russian Organized Crime – April 2016,” came the email from Nellie Ohr about deleting the emails. “Thanks! I’m deleting these emails now,” she said.
Bruce Ohr was an associate deputy attorney general and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force while his wife Nellie was an independent contractor and Russia specialist.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 5/18/2019)
“Former president Barack Obama’s official campaign organization has directed nearly a million dollars to the same law firm that funneled money to Fusion GPS, the firm behind the infamous Steele dossier. Since April of 2016, Obama For America (OFA) has paid over $972,000 to Perkins Coie, records filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show.
The Washington Post reported last week that Perkins Coie, an international law firm, was directed by both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to retain Fusion GPS in April of 2016 to dig up dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump. Fusion GPS then hired Christopher Steele, a former British spy, to compile a dossier of allegations that Trump and his campaign actively colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election. Though many of the claims in the dossier have been directly refuted, none of the dossier’s allegations of collusion have been independently verified. Lawyers for Steele admitted in court filings last April that his work was not verified and was never meant to be made public.
OFA, Obama’s official campaign arm in 2016, paid nearly $800,000 to Perkins Coie in 2016 alone, according to FEC records. The first 2016 payments to Perkins Coie, classified only as “Legal Services,” were made April 25-26, 2016, and totaled $98,047. A second batch of payments, also classified as “Legal Services,” were disbursed to the law firm on September 29, 2016, and totaled exactly $700,000. Payments from OFA to Perkins Coie in 2017 totaled $174,725 through August 22, 2017.
FEC records as well as federal court records show that Marc Elias, the Perkins Coie lawyer whom the Washington Post reported was responsible for the payments to Fusion GPS on behalf of Clinton’s campaign and the DNC, also previously served as a counsel for OFA. In Shamblin v. Obama for America, a 2013 case in federal court in Florida, federal court records list Elias as simultaneously serving as lead attorney for both OFA and the DNC.” (Read more: The Federalist, 10/29/2017)
“In London, Papadopoulos met an unidentified Russian academic (referred to as “the Professor”), who claimed to have significant ties to Putin-regime officials and who took an interest in Papadopoulos only because he boasted of having Trump-campaign connections. There appears to be no small amount of puffery on all sides: Papadopoulos suggesting to the Russians that he could make a Trump meeting with Putin happen, and suggesting to the campaign that he could make a Putin meeting with Trump happen; the Professor putting Papadopoulos in touch with a woman who Papadopoulos was led to believe was Putin’s niece (she apparently is not); and lots and lots of talk about potential high- and low-level meetings between Trump-campaign and Putin-regime officials that never actually came to pass.
In the most important meeting, in London on April 26, 2016, the Professor told Papadopoulos that he (the Prof) had just learned that top Russian-government officials had obtained “dirt” on then-putative Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The dirt is said to include “thousands of emails” — “emails of Clinton.” The suggestion, of course, was that the Russians were keen to give this information to the Trump campaign.
This may raise the hopes of the “collusion with Russia” enthusiasts. But there are two problems here.
First, Papadopoulos was given enough misinformation that we can’t be confident (at least from what Mueller has revealed here) that the Professor was telling Papadopoulos the truth. Remember, by April 2016, it had been known for over a year that Hillary Clinton had used a private email system for public business and had tried to delete and destroy tens of thousands of emails. The Russians could well have been making up a story around that public reporting in order further to cultivate the relationship with Papadopoulos (whom they appear to have seen as potentially useful). Note that the Professor suggested the Russians had Clinton’s own emails. But the emails we know were hacked were not Clinton’s — they were the DNC’s and John Podesta’s (Hillary is on almost none of them). So, Papadopoulos’s Russian interlocutors could well have been weaving a tale based on what had been reported, rather than on what was actually hacked and ultimately released by WikiLeaks.
Second, and more significant: If the proof, at best, implies that the Russians acquired thousands of Clinton emails and then had to inform a tangential Trump campaign figure of this fact so he could pass it along to the campaign, that would mean Trump and his campaign had nothing to do with the acquisition of the emails.” (Read more: National Review, 10/31/2017)
“Attorney General William P. Barr may have one particular storyline in mind when he says liberal media were doing “all they could to sensationalize and drive” the empty Russia scandal: the Mayflower Hotel.
The press wrote scores of stories in 2017 about candidate Donald Trump’s foreign policy speech at the downtown D.C. landmark. The articles promoted scandalous Russia ties and supposed out-and-out lying. They centered on three men who were in the same room that April 27, 2016: Mr. Trump, Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican.
In the end, perhaps no other anti-Trump story involving Russia promised so much only to produce investigative findings of virtually nothing.
(…) Mr. Trump’s foreign policy campaign speech at the Mayflower Hotel was sponsored by The National Interest, a publication of the Center for the National Interest, and its director, Dimitri Simes. The center works to build better relations between Washington and Moscow.
A year later, in the spring of 2017, the Mayflower became one of the hottest media topics on ties between Mr. Trump and Russia. Reporters began churning out scores of accusatory stories. That March, then-FBI Director James B. Comey announced that the entire Trump apparatus was under scrutiny for any links to Russia. Trump aides say that from that day forward, they felt like they had a target on their back for any time they ever talked to a Russian.
Here is a sampling of Mayflower stories:
⦁ NBC News: “Five current and former U.S. officials said they are aware of classified intelligence suggesting there was some sort of private encounter between Trump and his aides and the Russian envoy, despite a heated denial from Sessions, who has already come under fire for failing to disclose two separate contacts with Kislyak.”
⦁ The Independent, a British news website: “The meeting between the two men took place while Mr. Trump was at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington April 27, 2016. The reports directly contradict the president’s repeated denials about contact with Russian officials prior to his election.”
⦁ The Wall Street Journal: Mr. Trump warmly greeted Mr. Kislyak in a reception line before his speech.
⦁ Bloomberg News: “President Trump met last April with the Russian ambassador at the center of a pair of controversies.”
⦁ HuffPost: “It is not clear what Trump and Kislyak discussed, or how extensive the interaction was.”
⦁ Newsweek: “Sessions’s lies about his Russia Contacts: Chapter and Verse … Lying to Congress is a felony and special counsel Robert Mueller may have jurisdiction here since these statements materially relate to the investigation of Trump campaign relations with Russia.”
⦁ CNN: “Investigators on the Hill are requesting additional information, including schedules from Sessions, a source with knowledge tells CNN. They are focusing on whether such a meeting took place April 27, 2016, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, where then-candidate Donald Trump was delivering his first major foreign policy address.”
⦁ The Washington Post: Intercepts of Mr. Kislyak’s phone calls to superiors has him saying he talked about the 2016 campaign with Trump aides at the Mayflower.
“Current and former U.S. officials said that that assertion is at odds with Kislyak’s accounts of conversations in two encounters during the campaign, one in April ahead of Trump’s first major foreign policy speech [at the Mayflower] and another in July on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention,” The Post said.
⦁ The New York Times: “The origin of the Mayflower story can be traced, according to several American officials, to raw intelligence picked up by American spy agencies last year that is now held at C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia. The intelligence appears to be based on intercepts of Mr. Kislyak discussing a private meeting he had with Mr. Sessions at a Trump campaign event last April at the luxury hotel.”
The Washington Post reports that Michael Sussman, a partner with Perkins Coie and who represents the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, is responsible for hiring Crowdstrike.
“DNC leaders were tipped to the hack in late April. Chief executive Amy Dacey got a call from her operations chief saying that their information technology team had noticed some unusual network activity.
“It’s never a call any executive wants to get, but the IT team knew something was awry,” Dacey said. And they knew it was serious enough that they wanted experts to investigate.
That evening, she spoke with Michael Sussmann, a DNC lawyer who is a partner with Perkins Coie in Washington. Soon after, Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor who handled computer crime cases, called Henry, whom he has known for many years.
Within 24 hours, CrowdStrike had installed software on the DNC’s computers so that it could analyze data that could indicate who had gained access, when and how. (Read more: Washington Post, 6/14/2016)
Hillary Clinton makes a stop at Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s campaign office on August 9, 2016. (Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
“The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.
Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.
After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the company in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
The Clinton campaign and the DNC, through the law firm, continued to fund Fusion GPS’s research through the end of October 2016, days before Election Day.” (Read more: Washington Post, 10/24/2016)
Senator Charles Grassley (Credit: Brendan Smialowski / Agence France Presse / Getty Images)
Senator Charles Grassley (R), head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, writes a letter to the State Department. He asks if some of Clinton’s former top aides, including Huma Abedin, Jake Sullivan, and Philippe Reines have kept their security clearances “in light of the fact that classified information has been discovered” on Clinton’s private server.
However, the State Department declines to tell him, saying it won’t discuss the status of any individuals’ security clearance. (The New York Times, 7/6/2016)
It has previously been reported that Clinton and her former chief of staff Cheryl Mills have kept their security clearances.
James Comey (Credit: Michael Reynolds/European Press Agency)
“Transcripts reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee reveal that former FBI Director James Comey began drafting an exoneration statement in the Clinton email investigation before the FBI had interviewed key witnesses. Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senator Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, requested all records relating to the drafting of the statement as the committee continues to review the circumstances surrounding Comey’s removal from the Bureau.
“Conclusion first, fact-gathering second—that’s no way to run an investigation. The FBI should be held to a higher standard than that, especially in a matter of such great public interest and controversy,” the senators wrote in a letter today to the FBI.
Last fall, following allegations from Democrats in Congress, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) began investigating whether Comey’s actions in the Clinton email investigation violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from using their official position to influence an election. In the course of that investigation, OSC interviewed two FBI officials close to Comey: James Rybicki, Comey’s Chief of Staff, and Trisha Anderson, the Principal Deputy General Counsel of National Security and Cyberlaw. OSC provided transcripts of those interviews at Grassley’s request after it closed the investigation due to Comey’s termination.
Both transcripts are heavily redacted without explanation. However, they indicate that Comey began drafting a statement to announce the conclusion of the Clinton email investigation in April or May of 2016, before the FBI interviewed up to 17 key witnesses including former Secretary Clinton and several of her closest aides. The draft statement also came before the Department entered into immunity agreements with Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson where the Department agreed to a very limited review of Secretary Clinton’s emails and to destroy their laptops after review. In an extraordinary July announcement, Comey exonerated Clinton despite noting “there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information.”
In their letter, the two chairmen requested all drafts of Comey’s statement closing the Clinton investigation, all related emails and any records previously provided to OSC in the course of its investigation.
OSC is the permanent, independent investigative agency for personnel matters in the federal government and is not related to Robert Mueller’s temporary prosecutorial office within the Justice Department.
Hillary wins the Democratic party’s nomination for president. (Source: Times of Israel)
“In the days before Hillary Clinton launched an unprecedented big-money fundraising vehicle with state parties last summer, she vowed “to rebuild our party from the ground up,” proclaiming “when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”
But less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by that effort has stayed in the state parties’ coffers, according to a Politico analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission filings.
The venture, the Hillary Victory Fund, is a so-called joint fundraising committee comprised of Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees. The setup allows Clinton to solicit checks of $350,000 or more from her super-rich supporters at extravagant fundraisers including a dinner at George Clooney’s house and a concert at Radio City Music Hall featuring Katy Perry and Elton John.
The victory fund has transferred $3.8 million to the state parties, but almost all of that cash ($3.3 million, or 88 percent) was quickly transferred to the DNC, usually within a day or two, by the Clinton staffer who controls the committee, Politico’s analysis of the FEC records found.” (Read more: Politico, 05/02/2016)
Alexandra Chalupa, a consultant for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), has been working for several weeks on an opposition research file about Paul Manafort, the campaign manager of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Manafort has a long history of advising politicians around the world, including controversial dictators. Logging into her Yahoo email account, she gets a warning entitled “Important action required” from a Yahoo cybersecurity team. The warning adds, “We strongly suspect that your account has been the target of state-sponsored actors.”
Paul Manafort (Credit: Linked In)
Paul Manafort was a key adviser to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from 2004 until 2010. Yanukovych is a controversial figure frequently accused of widespread corruption and was overthrown after a massive series of protests in February 2014, and has since been living in Russia, protected by the Russian government. Chalupa had been drafting memos and writing emails about Manafort’s link to pro-Russian Ukrainian leaders such as Yanukovych when she got the warning. She had been in contact with investigative journalists in Ukraine who had been giving her information about Manafort’s ties there.
Chalupa immediately alerts top DNC officials. But more warnings from Yahoo’s security team follows. On May 3, 2016, she writes in an email to DNC communications director Luis Miranda, “Since I started digging into Manafort, these messages have been a daily occurrence on my Yahoo account despite changing my password often.”
A photo capture of the Yahoo security warning appearing on DNC consultant Alexandra Chalupa’s computer screen. (Credit: Yahoo News)
In July 2016, she will tell Yahoo News, “I was freaked out,” and “This is really scary.” Her email message to Miranda will later be one of 20,000 emails released by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016, showing that there was good reason to be concerned about hacking attempts.
Chalupa’s email to Miranda, results in concern amongst top level DNC officials. One unnamed insider will later say. “That’s when we knew it was the Russians,” since Russia would be very interested in Chalupa’s research and other countries like China would not. This source also says that as a precaution, “we told her to stop her research.”
Yahoo will later confirm that it did send numerous warnings to Chalupa, and one Yahoo security official will say, “Rest assured we only send these notifications of suspected attacks by state-sponsored actors when we have a high degree of confidence.” (Yahoo News, 7/25/2016)
Hunter Biden had executives at Burisma set up a bank account for him at a bank that later closed because of a money laundering investigation.
Emails taken off of Hunter Biden’s laptop reveal that he provided Burisma executive, Vadym Pozharskyi, with his passport and multiple bank statements to open up an account with Satabank in 2016. The bank went under due to money laundering investigations in 2018.
In order to set up the account, Hunter needed to provide a “certified declaration of source wealth,” have it notarized, and then sent it to an auction house in Malta, Ukraine.
The auctioneer, Pierre Pillow, was also charged with money laundering accusations back in 2020. Burisma’s’ owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, rented Pillow’s apartment in Malta back in 2014. (Read more: The Post Millennial, 6/19/2023) (Archive)
From a Wikileaks email sent by Alexandra Chalupa to Luis Miranda, Communications Director of the DNC:
(Credit: Wikileaks)
Two points.
Open World is a supposedly non-partisan Congressional agency.
Michael Isikoff is the same journalist Christopher Steele leaked to in September 2016:
The Carter Page FISA application extensively cited a September 23, 2016, Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff, which focused on Page’s July 2016 trip to Moscow. This information was used to corroborate the Steele Dossier.
Steele leaked to Isikoff who wrote the article for Yahoo News. The Isikoff article was then used to help obtain a Title I FISA grant to gather information on Page. This search was then leaked by Steele to David Corn at Mother Jones.
Isikoff accompanied Chalupa to a reception at the Ukrainian Embassy immediately after the Library of Congress event.
Remember when we learned last week that Michael Isikoff’s Fusion GPS-supplied “reporting” was used as evidence to confirm supposed veracity of TrumpRussia dossier?
He was simultaneously recruited by DNC/Clinton to dig up anti-Trump dirt.
“Donald J. Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on Tuesday with a landslide win in Indiana that drove his principal opponent, Senator Ted Cruz, from the race and cleared the way for the polarizing, populist outsider to take control of the party.”
Michael Horowitz & Sally Yates (Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP, Pete Marovich/Getty)
“The Justice Department took steps Tuesday to restore the access of some government watchdogs to sensitive internal records, but officials called on Congress to enact a permanent, wider fix.
The inspector general offices for 72 agencies across the federal government charged that legal policy changes made by the Obama administration over the last several years had curtailed their access to records, harmed a wide range of investigations and compromised their independence.
At least 20 investigations into topics such as sexual abuse at the Peace Corps and fatal shootings by the Drug Enforcement Administration were slowed, hindered, or sometimes closed as a result of the changes, the inspectors general said.
Justice Department officials said Tuesday that a new directive and an accompanying legal opinion would address some of those concerns.
In a memo dated Monday, Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates said that responding to investigations by the Justice Department’s inspector general “is of the highest priority” for the department, and she directed officials to provide timely access to all the material requested.
That includes grand jury documents, wiretapping records and other confidential materials that a controversial Justice Department legal opinion last year concluded could be withheld in some circumstances. Ms. Yates’s memo was first reported by The Associated Press.
In December, a congressional spending bill signed by President Obama threatened to cut off funding if records were improperly withheld from the inspectors general for the Justice Department and five others covered by the bill: the Commerce Department, NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Legal Service Corporation.
A legal opinion last week by the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel — replacing the one that came out last year — said that because of that funding measure, all material must now be turned over to those watchdogs through the end of the fiscal year in September.
In a telephone interview, Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general and leader of the governmentwide association of inspectors general, said it was unfortunate that it had taken the threat of a cutoff in funding by Congress for his office to see its full access to investigative records restored for now.
“Barack Obama’s spy chiefs never believed that Donald Trump was a Russian spy. The Trump-Russia collusion narrative originated as a diversionary tactic in the event emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server went public. FBI Headquarters attached itself to the project, devoting manpower and resources to investigating Trump, when the Bureau learned that foreign intelligence services had her correspondence.
U.S. Attorney John Durham’s nearly two-year-long investigation into the origins of the FBI’s probe of the 2016 Trump campaign is, according to news reports, making “excellent progress” and expanding. The shape of the case has been clear for some time, as I reported in my 2019 book, “The Plot Against the President”: the Clinton campaign was worried about the candidate’s emails going public. The decision to protect her could not possibly be made by mid-level FBI field agents and lawyers but only by senior U.S. officials.
(…) The FBI seemed to have become aware several months earlier that her emails had been compromised and was already planning the second leg of its cover-up before it had concluded the first. On May 4, FBI agent Peter Strzok texted FBI lawyer Lisa Page “Now the pressure really starts to finish [Midyear Exam].” Page texted back: “It sure does.”
I asked the former Obama official why the FBI’s interests dovetailed with those of the Clinton campaign. Was the Bureau concerned that its counterintelligence mission would be tarnished with Clinton’s emails in possession of a foreign spy service? “They were on Team Hillary,” says the former Obama official. “They didn’t care about their mission. According to John Brennan’s handwritten notes, Russia knew what the Clinton campaign was doing with its Russia collusion plan. The FBI must have also known Russia knew and went ahead with it anyway. And then Brennan used it as the basis of the January 2017 intelligence community assessment, even though the Russians knew it was based on a fabrication.”
Government documents further substantiate the assessment that the purpose of Crossfire Hurricane was to defend against the potential release of Clinton’s emails and protect her candidacy.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 12/17/2020)(Archive)
At the same time Donald Trump becomes the presumed Republican presidential nominee, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page feel an added pressure to end the Clinton email investigation.
On May 6, 2016, an obscure source reports the following:
“An intriguing Security Council (SC) report circulating in the Kremlin today suggests that a “war of words” has broken out between the Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov and Chairwoman of the Council of Federation Valentina Matviyenko over the issue of releasing to the Western media tens-of-thousands of top secret and classified emails obtained by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) from the private, but unsecured, computer (email server) belonging to former US Secretary of State, and present American presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.
According to this report, beginning in 2011, SVR intelligence analysts began “serious/concerning” monitoring of a Romanian computer hacker named Marcel Lazăr Lehel (aka Guccifer) after he attempted, unsuccessfully, to break into the computer system of the Federation funded RT television network.
Following SVR procedures for the monitoring of international computer hackers, this report continues, Guccifer’s activities were followed and recorded (both physically and electronically) allowing these intelligence analysts, in 2013, to not only detect his breaking into the private computer of Secretary Clinton but allowing the SVR to copy all of its contents too.
Shortly after the SVR obtained these tens-of-thousands of top-secret and classified emails from Secretary Clinton’s private computer, this report notes, Chairwoman Matviyenko personally authorized a “partial/limited” release of them to RT—who then, on 20 March 2013, published an article about them titled Hillary Clinton’s ‘hacked’ Benghazi emails: FULL RELEASE—but which barely any Western mainstream media sources reported on at the time.” (Read more: WhatDoesItMean, 5/06/2016)(Archive)
On May 9, 2016, Judge Napolitano appears on Fox News and mentions the same report, creating a buzz of discussion about the missing emails and speculations on what the Kremlin could have.
4. Here’s an early morning tweet (May 10, 2016) of Judge Nap on FOX the previous night (May 9, 2016) with the story:
“The New York Times provided us an introduction to FBI reasoning in launching the Trump-Russia Inquiry – drunken comments from George Papadopoulos:
During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Alexander Downer (Credit: The Australian)
About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign.
The information that Mr. Papadopoulos gave to the Australians answers one of the lingering mysteries of the past year: What so alarmed American officials to provoke the F.B.I. to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign months before the presidential election?
The Papadopoulos/Downer meeting has been portrayed as a chance encounter in a bar. That does not appear to be the case. Papadopoulos was introduced to Downer through a chain of two intermediaries. Papadopoulos knew an Israeli embassy official in London named Christian Cantor who introduced Papadopoulos to Erika Thompson. Thompson was a counselor to Downer and served in Australia’s London embassy.
On May 4, 2016, Papadopoulos gave an interview to the London Times in which he stated then-UK Prime Minister David Cameron should apologize to Trump for negative comments. The interview was not well-received. According to the Daily Caller, Thompson reached out to Papadopoulos two days after the story appeared and said Downer wanted to meet with Papadopoulos. The meeting between Papadopoulos and Downer took place on May 10, 2016. Downer reportedly told Papadopoulos to “leave David Cameron alone.”
We know Papadopoulos mentioned “thousands of emails” in his FBI Interview regarding his April 26, 2016 meeting with Mifsud. That comment is noted in the July 28, 2017Affidavit and the October 5, 2017Statement of the Offense. However, there is nothing regarding comments made to Alexander Downer in either document.
What does Alexander Downer have to say about the May 10, 2016 meeting. From a news.com.au article:
“We had a drink and he (Papadopoulos) talked about what Trump’s foreign policy would be like if Trump won the election.”
He (Trump) hadn’t got the nomination at that stage. During that conversation he (Papadopoulos) mentioned the Russians might use material that they have on Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the election, which may be damaging.
On April 28, 2018, Downer gave an interview toThe Australian. The story, which I’ve read, is behind a paywall – but the Daily Caller provides some details:
“We didn’t know anything about Trump and Russia and we had no particular focus on that,’’ Downer says of the Papadopoulos meeting. “For us we were more interested in what Trump would do in Asia” Downer told The Australian. “He [Papadopoulos] didn’t say dirt; he said material that could be damaging to her. No, he said it would be damaging. He didn’t say what it was.”
“By the way, nothing [Papadopoulos] said in that conversation indicated Trump himself had been conspiring with the Russians to collect information on Hillary Clinton. It was just that this guy, [Papadopoulos], clearly knew that the Russians did have material on Hillary Clinton — but whether Trump knew or not? He didn’t say Trump knew or that Trump was in any way involved in this. He said it was about Russians and Hillary Clinton; it wasn’t about Trump.”
Interestingly, the Schiff Memo appears to back this account up. From page two:
“Papadopoulos’ disclosure occurred against the backdrop of Russia’s aggressive covert campaign to influence our elections, which the FBI was already monitoring. We would later learn in Papadopoulos’ plea that the information the Russians could assist by anonymously releasing were thousands of Hillary Clinton emails.”
Despite initial reporting to the contrary, it appears neither “political dirt” nor Clinton emails were ever mentioned at the Papadopoulos/Downer meeting. Notably, Papadopoulos didn’t mention anything to indicate Trump knew of the Clinton information, or had any role in its collection or potential distribution.
There’s been some confusion over how Papadopoulos’ comments made their way to the FBI. Downer stated in his interview that he reported the conversation back to Australia almost immediately…” (Read much more: themarketswork.com, 8/15/2018)
After then-Vice President Joe Biden succeeded in pressuring Ukraine to remove its prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, the next person to hold the job had ties to Hunter Biden.
Yuri Lutsenko, the prosecutor general who took over for Shokin after his ouster in 2016 [May 12, 2016], had relied on the same lobbyists representing Ukrainian energy company Burisma and its chief executive for years, State Department emails suggest. Hunter Biden personally brought those lobbyists into the Burisma deal in 2015 for the purpose of shutting down investigations of Burisma’s chief executive, according to his own emails.
(…) An IRS whistleblower told lawmakers in May that, in 2020, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf shut down an effort to get a search warrant for Blue Star Strategies’s emails.
Whether Shokin was indeed investigating Burisma and Zlochevsky at the time then-Vice President Joe Biden called for Shokin’s removal has become a flashpoint in the partisan debate over the Biden family’s business.
Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, offered little clarity to the debate.
Archer conceded that Shokin was a “threat” to Burisma and that his removal benefited the company.
“Then he was fired, and then somehow Burisma was let off the hook,” Archer told Tucker Carlson in an interview last week.
But he also said Burisma board members were provided a different version of events.
Archer said during a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee that the “D.C. team” had suggested to the board that the firing of Shokin would pose problems for Zlochevsky because Shokin was “under control,” which Archer took to mean that the then-prosecutor general had been bribed.
A bribe was paid to a prosecutor general during Archer’s tenure on the Burisma board, and the removal of that prosecutor was indeed bad for Burisma, but it did not appear to be Shokin.
According to the State Department emails, the Obama administration believed Zlochevsky, Burisma’s chief executive, had “almost certainly” paid a bribe to Shokin’s predecessor, Vitaly Yarema, in December 2014 to shut down an investigation.
Archer and Hunter Biden were already on the Burisma board at that point, having joined the board earlier in 2014.
Yarema, the Ukrainian prosecutor general before Shokin, wasaccused of helping Zlochevsky by taking steps that resulted in the release of assets that a British court had seized from him. Yarema was the Ukrainian prosecutor who, the State Department believed, had received a bribe from Zlochevsky.
Shokin took over for Yarema in February 2015 and began investigating Burisma, evidence suggests, more aggressively.
In February 2016, which was after Joe Biden began calling for Shokin’s removal, Shokin’s office seized assets belonging to Zlochevsky, undermining the claim that Shokin was not investigating Burisma.
Under Lutsenko, the Ukrainian prosecutor who replaced Shokin and who seemingly had ties to Hunter Biden’s business orbit, the investigation into Zlochevsky ended.
The audio recording of a conversation between @JoeBiden and @poroshenko on May 13, 2016. Discussion of the issue of financing the “Samopomich” fraction in the Ukrainian Parliament.
An audio recording of a conversation between Vice President of the United States Joe Biden and President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko on May 13, 2016. Discussion of the new tariff.
An audio recording of Joe Biden and Petro Poroshenko on May 13, 2016. They discuss the newly appointed Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko, who replaces recently fired Viktor Shokin.
“On May 15, 2016, James Rybicki, former chief of staff to Comey, sends FBI General Counsel James Baker; Bill Priestap, former assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division; McCabe; Page; and others an email with the subject line “Request from the Director.”
James Rybicki (Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/The Associated Press)
Rybicki writes: By NLT [no later than] next Monday, the Director would like to see a list of all cases charged in the last 20 years where the gravamen of the charge was mishandling classified information.
It should be in chart form with: (1) case name, (2) a short summary for content (3) charges brought, and (4) charge of conviction.
If need be, we can get it from NSD [National Security Division] and let them know that the Director asked for this personally.
Please let me know who can take the lead on this.
Thanks!
Jim
Page forwards to Strzok: FYSA [For your situational awareness]
Strzok replies to Page: I’ll take the lead, of course – sounds like an espionage section question… Or do you think OGC [Office of the General Counsel] should?
And the more reason for us to get feedback to Rybicki, as we all identified this as an issue/question over a week ago.
Page replies: I was going to reply to Jim [Rybicki] and tell him I can talked [sic] to you about this already. Do you want me to? (Read more: Judicial Watch, 2/15/2019)
Hillary Clinton and Peter Strzok (Credit: Getty Images)
“Foreign actors” obtained access to some of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails — including at least one email classified as “secret” — according to a new memo from two GOP-led House committees and an internal FBI email.”
(…) “The House committees, which conducted a joint probe into decisions made by the DOJ in 2016 and 2017, addressed a range of issues in their memo including Clinton’s email security.
“Documents provided to the Committees show foreign actors obtained access to some of Mrs. Clinton’s emails — including at least one email classified ‘Secret,'” the memo says, adding that foreign actors also accessed the private accounts of some Clinton staffers.
The memo does not say who the foreign actors are, or what material was obtained, but it notes that secret information is defined as information that, if disclosed, could “reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the national security.”
The committees say that no one appears to have been held accountable either criminally or administratively.
Relatedly, Fox News has obtained a May 2016 email from FBI investigator Peter Strzok — who also is criticized in the House memo for his anti-Trump texts with colleague Lisa Page. The email says that “we know foreign actors obtained access” to some Clinton emails, including at least one “secret” message “via compromises of the private email accounts” of Clinton staffers.” (Strzok Email, 5/17/2016)(Read more: Fox News, 6/14/2018)
The Special Counsel that was formed to investigate “RussiaGate” appears to have been oblivious to the fact that emails were exported from Luis Miranda’s mailbox on May 23, 2016. Did the Special Counsel choose to omit information or did the evidence from Crowdstrike not inform them of all activity that occurred at the DNC?
For those who don’t already know, analysis of the leaked DNC emails that were published by WikiLeaks was carried out earlier this year and it revealed that the emails were acquired in multiple batches on different days. (This is something that can easily be verified independently by simply looking at the last modified dates in the metadata of WikiLeaks’ collection of DNC emails.)
The first batch of emails acquired in May were mostly from Luis Miranda’s mailbox (which was also the source of most of the emails dubbed as “damaging” by the media), however, emails from Jeremy Brinster, Ryan Banfill and Andy Crystal also appear to have been acquired on this date.
These emails were exported to EML files on May 23, 2016.
Strangely, though, there is no mention of this date in the Netyksho indictment or the Mueller report.
The phrase “during that time” implies that research attributed to Yermakov occurred between the dates cited.
However, we already know that DNC emails published by WikiLeaks started to be acquired before that time.
To clarify, this means emails (from mailboxes of Miranda, Brinster, Banfill and Crystal) were exported on May 23, 2016 and then, approximately 2 days later, Yermakov allegedly researched PowerShell commands to export emails and the DNC’s mail server was allegedly accessed by GRU officers who then took a batch of emails spanning multiple mailboxes.
(I say “allegedly accessed” because both the Netyksho indictment and the Mueller report lack sufficient evidence to demonstrate that infrastructure attributed to the GRU was genuinely controlled by the GRU.)
And it seems the activity relating to May 23, 2016 may be unknown to the Special Counsel for some reason.
CrowdStrike had started monitoring the network two weeks prior to the email acquisition on May 23, 2016. So, they should have captured and recorded evidence of this activity but, oddly, it seems the Special Counsel was unaware of it.” (Read more: Adam Carter, 10/20/2019)(Archive)
Samuelson is one of three Clinton lawyers who sorted Clinton’s emails to decide which ones were work-related and which ones were personal. She did most of the sorting, but she was supervised by Clinton lawyers Cheryl Mills and David Kendall. The FBI mostly asks her about this sorting process. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
“The State Department’s inspector general report on Wednesday offered little absolution for Hillary Clinton or several of her top aides who refused to cooperate with the investigation into the former secretary of state’s exclusive use of a private email server.
The 83-page document, which was given to lawmakers and leaked to the press, noted systemic problems with records at the State Department but zeroed in on Clinton, concluding that she had violated federal rules with her private email server.
1. Clinton’s email setup was never approved by State security agencies
Even though department policy mandated throughout Clinton’s tenure at Foggy Bottom that day-to-day operations should be conducted via authorized means, the IG report found no evidence that the secretary of state “requested or obtained guidance or approval to conduct official business via a personal email account on her private server.”
According to interviews with officials in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Information Resource Management, Clinton would have had to “discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business with their offices, who in turn would have attempted to provide her with approved and secured means that met her business needs.”
But those officials said they approved no such setup because of department rules and the inherent security risks.
The report said those departments “did not — and would not — approve her exclusive reliance on a personal email account to conduct Department business.”
2. Clinton never sought assistance to set up her email system to transmit certain sensitive information
The department’s policy also mandated that employees use approved and secure devices to transmit information known as SBU — “sensitive but unclassified” — outside State’s OpenNet network, and that if they did so on a regular basis to non-department addresses, they should reach out to the Bureau of Information Resource Management.
“However, OIG found no evidence that Secretary Clinton ever contacted IRM to request such a solution, despite the fact that emails exchanged on her personal account regularly contained information marked as SBU,” the report states.
3. The arrangement made staffers nervous — and management told them to keep quiet
The IG report noted that two Information Resources Management staffers had communicated their concerns with their departmental boss in late 2010.
“In one meeting, one staff member raised concerns that information sent and received on Secretary Clinton’s account could contain Federal records that needed to be preserved in order to satisfy Federal recordkeeping requirements,” the report noted.
The staff member recalled that the director said Clinton’s personal system had already been reviewed and approved by legal staff “and that the matter was not to be discussed any further,” according to the report’s language.
“As previously noted, OIG found no evidence that staff in the Office of the Legal Adviser reviewed or approved Secretary Clinton’s personal system,” the next line of the report reads.
The other staff member who raised concerns said the director stated that the department’s mission is to “support the Secretary and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.”
4. Clinton’s chief of staff suggested setting up a separate computer
Speaking with senior officials in the Office of the Secretary and its Executive Secretariat, as well as with Patrick F. Kennedy, the department’s undersecretary for management, Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills in January 2009 suggested that a separate stand-alone computer might be set up for the secretary of state “to enable her to check her emails from her desk.”
That discussion came as Clinton expressed her desire to take her BlackBerry into secure areas. Kennedy called it a “great idea” and “the best solution,” although the IG report found that no such arrangement was ever made.
5. Clinton worried about ‘the personal being accessible’
The report’s next bullet point recalls a November 2010 conversation between Clinton and top aide Huma Abedin, her deputy chief of staff for operations. According to the report, the email discussion centered around emails from Clinton’s account not being able to be received by State employees. Abedin suggested, “we should talk about putting you on state email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam.”
Clinton responded: “Let’s get separate address or device but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible.”
The former secretary of state declined the OIG’s request for an interview, while Abedin did not respond, according to the report.
6. Abedin rejected the idea for Clinton to use two devices
State Department officials in August 2011 discussed providing Clinton with an agency-issued BlackBerry to replace her “malfunctioning” personal BlackBerry because “her personal email server is down.” Then-Executive Secretary Stephen D. Mull suggested that he would provide Clinton two devices — “one with an operating State Department email account (which would mask her identity, but which would also be subject to FOIA requests), and another which would just have phone and internet capability.”
Abedin shot down the proposal because it “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.” The IG did not find any evidence that Clinton received a new device or address after the discussion.
7. Clinton’s email system needed troubleshooting
According to emails the OIG said it reviewed from between “2010 through at least October 2012,” messages between State Department staff and two individuals who provided technical support for Clinton’s email server showed operational issues. “For example, in December 2010, the Senior Advisor worked with S/ES-IRM and IRM staff to resolve issues affecting the ability of emails transmitted through the clintonemail.com domain used by Secretary Clinton to reach Department email addresses using the state.gov domain,” the report states.
Staffers with the office handling information technology for the Office of the Secretary met with a Clinton top technology staffer to resolve the situation. “The issue was ultimately resolved and, on December 21, 2010, S/ES-IRM staff sent senior S/ES staffers an email describing the issue and summarizing the activities undertaken to resolve it,” the report stated.
The unnamed Clinton technology staffer also met with staffers in Cyber Threat Analysis Division on another occasion, the report said. The third interaction occurred in late October 2012 when Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the New York City area. An email exchange between Abedin and another member of Clinton’s staff “revealed that the server located in Secretary Clinton’s New York residence was down.”
The Clinton technology staffer then met with Office of Information Resources Management staffers to see whether State could provide support. According to the report, S/ES-IRM staff said they told the Clinton aide they could not because the server was private.
8. The server was briefly shut down over hacking concerns
The report noted that on Jan. 9, 2011, a non-State technical adviser retained by former President Bill Clinton informed Abedin that he had shut down the server because he thought “someone was trying to hack us and while they did not get in i didnt [sic] want to let them have the chance to.”
The same person wrote Abedin later the same day, stating, “We were attacked again so I shut [the server] down for a few min.”
“On January 10, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations emailed the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Chief of Staff for Planning and instructed them not to email the Secretary ‘anything sensitive’ and stated that she could ‘explain more in person,'” the report stated, with Abedin being the person who sent the email.
9. Clinton and her staffers worried about being hacked but didn’t report to security personnel
On May 13, 2011, the IG report states that “two of Secretary Clinton’s immediate staff discussed via email the Secretary’s concern that someone was ‘hacking into her email’ after she received an email with a suspicious link.”
Hours after that discussion, an email from William Burns, then-undersecretary of state for political affairs, appeared in Clinton’s inbox carrying a link to a suspect URL and nothing else in the message.
“Is this really from you? I was worried about opening it!” Clinton responded hours later.
The IG report referenced pre-existing department policy requiring employees to report suspicious incidents to Information Resources Management officials when it comes to their attention, including that it is also “required when a user suspects compromise of, among other things, a personally owned device containing personally identifiable information.”
“The Democratic National Committee last month denied a claim made by its former chairwoman, Donna Brazile, about the timeline of the hacking of the committee’s systems, the latest of many contradictions related to the crucial days when thousands of emails were allegedly stolen from the party’s mail server.
In her 2018 book, Brazile wrote that after learning that alleged Russian hackers were inside its systems, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) asked Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity firm it hired to defend against the hack, to wait one month before kicking out the intruders.
Midway through the month-long wait, the hackers are said to have stolen the 40,000 emails that would eventually be published by Wikileaks.
Brazile’s claim gained renewed significance last month with the release of the final Russia report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). The report (pdf) stated that the DNC was aware that the hackers had already stolen files from its systems before the postponement request described by Brazile.
“No one asked anyone to wait,” a senior DNC official told The Epoch Times. “There was a period of time between when we discovered the breach and fully remediated, but that is incredibly fast and everyone was working around the clock to get ready to totally flip our system as fast as possible.”
(…) Brazile did not respond to a request for comment. The former DNC chairwoman wrote in her book that the committee requested the one-month delay in May 2016 because staff needed their computers during the state primaries.
“In May, when CrowdStrike recommended that we take down our system and rebuild it, the DNC told them to wait a month, because the state primaries for the presidential election were still underway, and the party and the staff needed to be at their computers to manage these efforts. For a whole month, CrowdStrike watched Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear operating,” Brazile wrote, referring to the codenames Crowdstrike assigned to the two intruders discovered on the DNC network.
(…) The contradiction between the committee and its chairwoman is among a number of clashing accounts about the emails that were taken from the DNC, the crime at the origin of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. Special counsel Robert Mueller, who took over the FBI probe of the Trump campaign in May 2017, and Crowdstrike are at odds about whether the DNC’s mail server was hacked and if emails were taken. (Read more: The Epoch Times, 9/03/2020)(Archive)
According to a 2016 State Department inspector general’s report, department officials alleged that John Bentel, the director of the Office of the Executive Secretariat for Information Resource Management, discouraged them from raising concerns about Clinton’s use of personal email. The report also alleges that Bentel falsely claimed that Clinton had legal approval for the use of her computer system.
At some point between the release of this report on May 25, 2016 and the conclusion of the FBI’s Clinton investigation by July 5, 2016, Bentel is interviewed by the FBI. According to an FBI summary, “Bentel denied that State [Department] employees raised concerns about Clinton’s email to him, that he discouraged employees from discussing it, or that he was aware during Clinton’s tenure that she was using a personal email account or server to conduct official State business.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
Cynthia McFadden interviews Guccifer in Romania in April 2016. (Credit: NBC News)
Guccifer, whose real name Marcel-Lehel Lazar, is interviewed by the FBI as part of the FBI’s Clinton email investigation. He appears to have spoken to the FBI previously, but these may have been about other matters, since he hacked dozens of US citizens.
Around the end of April 2016, Guccifer had high-profile interviews with Fox News and NBC News. It was already known that he broke into the email account of Clinton confidant Sid Blumenthal in March 2013 and learned Clinton’s private email address. In both media interviews, Guccifer claimed that he then gained access to Clinton’s private server. But the FBI will later say that Guccifer admitted in his FBI interview that he lied about this.
Additionally, “FBI forensic analysis of the Clinton server during the timeframe [Guccifer] claimed to have compromised the server did not identify evidence that [he] hacked the server.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hunter Biden (Credit: The Associated Press)
A White House scheduling email sent to then-Vice President Joe Biden ahead of a call with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was also sent to his son, Hunter, who was serving on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm looking to escape a corruption probe.
In the call, the elder Mr. Biden urged Mr. Poroshenko to continue reforming Ukraine’s prosecutor general office. It’s unclear whether Hunter Biden was involved in the call outside of getting an email alert about it.
The timing of the call, however, coincides with Hunter Biden‘s $1 million-a-year job on the board for Burisma, which allegedly hired him to help dodge charges from the Ukraine prosecutor general.
The White House scheduling email was sent on May 26, 2016, from Mr. Biden‘s assistant, John S. Flynn. It was disclosed by the National Archives in response to a Freedom of Information Request and mined by an online FOIA sleuth who gave it to The Washington Times.
The scheduling email from Mr. Flynn provided both Mr. Biden and Hunter Biden with the details for the vice president’s upcoming trips to Delaware and Rhode Island as well as the call to Mr. Poroshenko.
“Boss — 8:45 a.m. prep for 9 a.m. phone call with Pres Poroshenko. Then we’re off to Rhode Island for infrastructure event and then Wilmington for UDel commencement. Nate will have your draft remarks delivered later tonight or with your press clips in the morning,” Mr. Flynn wrote to Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden.
It’s not clear why Mr. Biden‘s son was included as a recipient of the email.
Mr. Flynn did not respond to an inquiry from The Times.
Mr. Biden’s call to Mr. Poroshenko occurred as executives of the Burisma energy company were seeking Mr. Biden‘s help through Hunter Biden to end the corruption probe, according to recently released information from a paid FBI informant. (Read more: The Washington Times, 7/03/2023) (Archive)
“Manafort joined Trump’s campaign on March 29, 2016, and then was promoted to campaign chairman on May 19, 2016.
NABU leaked the existence of the ledgers on May 29, 2016. Later that summer, it told U.S. media the ledgers showed payments to Manafort, a revelation that forced him to resign from the campaign in August 2016.” (Read more: The Hill, 4/25/2019)(Archive)
“On May 30, 2016, Nellie Ohr sent an email to Bruce Ohr, Holtyn, Ivana Nizich, and Joe Wheatley—then both trial attorneys in the DOJ’s Organized Crime and Gang Section. Nizich had previously worked for Bruce Ohr. The email held a subject line that read “Reported Trove of Documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions’ ‘Black Cashbox.’” Within the email was the text from an article penned the day before by Nikolai Holmov, a blogger at Odessatalk, with the title bolded and enlarged. It also contained a link to the underlying article.
“Documentation regarding that Party of Regions’ ‘chyornaya kasse’ has now seemingly found its way to NABU, the Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Bureau,” the article stated.
The article contained a tweet that led to another article, in Russian, from May 28, 2016, providing further details on the “chyornaya kasse” or black box ledger:
“On Saturday, published in the Weekly Mirror, Ukraine, an interview was made public with the former First Deputy Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Viktor Trepak, who claims that he handed over documents confirming illegal payments of cash by the Party of Regions to a number of former and current senior officials. According to him, we are talking about the so-called “black bookkeeping” of the Party of Regions with total payments of about $2 billion.”
Trepak reportedly claimed his information regarding the more than $2 billion fund implicated “officials of the highest level, ministers and heads of departments, people’s deputies, famous politicians, public figures, representatives of international organizations, judges, including the highest judicial instances.”
(UPDATE) Interestingly, when one goes to Holmov’s Twitter feed, the last retweet sent (as of publication of this article) was on Jan. 11, 2019. It is a retweet of an announcement from Mark Galeotti that he was “joining the pre-eminent security think tank @RUSI_org as a Senior Associate Fellow.” Galeotti, as previously mentioned, had been referenced with some frequency in Ohr’s emails. In addition to being the author of numerous articles, Galeotti penned an article for Tablet Magazine, titled, “The ‘Trump Dossier,’ or How Russia Helped America Break Itself.”
Some questions raised in Holmov’s article would later prove prescient. “Have copies of these documents made their way to other, perhaps foreign security services? To what end?” he asked. “If there are foreign personalities involved, are those relevant documents to be shared with those nations—and when?”
Holmov addressed the motivations of the person responsible for disclosing the ledger, noting, “Not all informants are informants for cash reward—there are other (and perhaps more dangerous) motivators.”
He also wondered about the timing, observing that the documents had “not just appeared from nowhere. Somebody has kept it, knowing it to be what it is, for quite some time. Thus why now has it come to light and been given to the authorities?”
Interestingly, Holmov noted that no names or specifics have been made public “for now” as any such disclosure “could very well impede subsequent investigations by NABU.” A Ukrainian court later determined that a NABU official played a role in the leaking of documents to The New York Times.
Nellie’s May 30, 2016, email would prove prophetic. It alerted officials within the Justice Department of a discovery that would have far-reaching implications for Manafort—and the Trump campaign—months before the news reached a national level. (Read more: themarketswork, 4/11/2019)(Archive)
“Clinton operatives pushed a dossier during the 2016 presidential campaign that appeared to be a classic “rope-a-dope” scheme being peddled by purported Russian spies, according to a person who was briefed on the documents by one of the Clinton insiders during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The dossier in question was written by Cody Shearer, a notorious Clinton fixer. It was passed to the Department of State by Sidney Blumenthal, a friend of Shearer’s and another Clinton operative.
The eight-page document eventually made its way to the FBI through Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote a dossier of his own.
While the FBI is reportedly investigating the claims made in the Shearer memos, one person who discussed the document with Shearer during the campaign says it appeared at the time to be a ruse.
According to the source, who spoke to The Daily Caller News Foundation on condition of anonymity, Shearer claimed that members of Russia’s spy service, the FSB, had video tape of Trump engaged in sexually compromising acts.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 5/01/2018)
4/7) Must👂👇 Haitian American Joseph Mathieu a member of the Haitian community that had been in the streets protesting against Hillary Clinton in 2016 telling Luke Rudkowski @Lukewearechange who interviews him: “The Clintons have destroyed Haiti for decades…they are our number… pic.twitter.com/RW9LmisZMZ
“FBI official Peter Strzok testified Thursday that he can’t recall using his work computer to soften the wording of a statement exonerating Hillary Clinton of mishandling classified information.
Strzok conceded during a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees that metadata indicates his computer made the change, but said he can’t remember doing it.
The June 2016 edit changed “grossly negligent,” a term that carries legal liability under the Espionage Act, to “extremely careless.
(…) “My recollection, sir, is that somebody within our office of general counsel did, it was one of the attorneys, I don’t remember which one,” Strzok said. “It was a legal issue that one of the attorneys brought up.”
After a meeting, the change was made on Strzok’s computer.
“I don’t recall specifically when it happened,” he testified.
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., noted that metadata indicated that Strzok’s computer made the change.
“I am aware as well of that metadata,” Strzok said. “My recollection is of working on the draft with a group of us in my office because it was the largest office and taking the inputs of probably five or ten different people.”
Sensenbrenner asked Strzok to confirm that his computer made the change.
“Based on my subsequent review of that metadata, I believe that to be true,” Strzok said.”
“Two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community have confirmed to Heat Street that the FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October, giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia.
Contrary to earlier reporting in the New York Times, which cited FBI sources as saying that the agency did not believe that the private server in Donald Trump’s Trump Tower which was connected to a Russian bank had any nefarious purpose, the FBI’s counter-intelligence arm, sources say, re-drew an earlier FISA court request around possible financial and banking offenses related to the server. The first request, which, sources say, named Trump, was denied back in June, but the second was drawn more narrowly and was granted in October after evidence was presented of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign, and its alleged links to two banks; SVB Bank and Russia’s Alfa Bank. While the Times story speaks of metadata, sources suggest that a FISA warrant was granted to look at the full content of emails and other related documents that may concern US persons.
The FBI agents who talked to the New York Times, and rubbished the ground-breaking stories of Slate ( Franklin Foer) and Mother Jones (David Corn) may not have known about the FISA warrant, sources say, because the counter-intelligence and criminal sides of the FBI often work independently of each other employing the principle of ‘compartmentalization’.
The FISA warrant was granted in connection with the investigation of suspected activity between the server and two banks, SVB Bank and Alfa Bank. However, it is thought in the intelligence community that the warrant covers any ‘US person’ connected to this investigation, and thus covers Donald Trump and at least three further men who have either formed part of his campaign or acted as his media surrogates. The warrant was sought, they say, because actionable intelligence on the matter provided by friendly foreign agencies could not properly be examined without a warrant by US intelligence as it involves ‘US Persons’ who come under the remit of the FBI and not the CIA. Should a counter-intelligence investigation lead to criminal prosecutions, sources say, the Justice Department is concerned that the chain of evidence have a basis in a clear warrant.
In June, when the first FISA warrant was denied, the FBI was reportedly alarmed at Carter Page’s trip to Moscow and meetings with Russian officials, one week before the DNC was hacked. Counter intelligence agencies later reported to both Presidential candidates that Russia had carried out this hack; Donald Trump said publicly in the third debate that ‘our country has no idea’ if Russia did the hacking. The discovery of the Trump Tower private Russian server, however, communicating with Alfa Bank, changed matters, sources report. (Read more: Heat Street, 11/07/2016)
(Timeline editor’s note: We do not consider Louise Mensch to be a credible source, however, we do find it interesting she was the first “journalist” to report on the FISA warrant, the day before the 2016 election.)
Former CIA director John Brennan testifies before the House Intelligence Committee in May 2017. (Credit: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
“Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was – allegedly – a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.
It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States. The CIA cannot act domestically against American citizens so a joint counter-intelligence taskforce was created.
The taskforce included six agencies or departments of government. Dealing with the domestic, US, side of the inquiry, were the FBI, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Justice. For the foreign and intelligence aspects of the investigation, there were another three agencies: the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency, responsible for electronic spying.
Lawyers from the National Security Division in the Department of Justice then drew up an application. They took it to the secret US court that deals with intelligence, the FISA court, named after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They wanted permission to intercept the electronic records from two Russian banks.
Their first application, in June, was rejected outright by the judge. They returned with a more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again. Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before election day.” (Read more: BBC, 1/12/2017)
“Contacted by Fox News, investigators for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) confirmed that Nellie H. Ohr, wife of the demoted official, Bruce G. Ohr, worked for the opposition research firm last year. The precise nature of Mrs. Ohr’s duties – including whether she worked on the dossier – remains unclear but a review of her published works available online reveals Mrs. Ohr has written extensively on Russia-related subjects. HPSCI staff confirmed to Fox News that she was paid by Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016.
Fusion GPS has attracted scrutiny because Republican lawmakers have spent the better part of this year investigating whether the dossier, which was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee,
(…) “Until Dec. 6, when Fox News began making inquiries about him, Bruce Ohr held two titles at DOJ. He was, and remains, director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force; but his other job was far more senior. Mr. Ohr held the rank of associate deputy attorney general, a post that gave him an office four doors down from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The day before Fox News reported that Mr. Ohr held his secret meetings last year with the founder of Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, and with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the dossier, the Justice Department stripped Ohr of his deputy title and ousted him from his fourth floor office at the building that DOJ insiders call “Main Justice.” (Read more: Fox News, 12/11/2017)
“Before Trump Jr. was set to meet with the Russian lawyer as his father campaigned for the presidency, Trump Jr. was told Veselnitskaya’s potentially damning information about Clinton was from the Kremlin, according to emails he released.
Trump Jr. has maintained that Veselnitskaya did not have any information to share and instead wanted to discuss other matters, such as the Magnitsky Act which enacts sanctions on certain Russian officials as punishment for human rights violations.
“After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton,” Trump Jr. said in a statement.
“Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered,” Trump Jr. continued.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended the meeting, along with a translator.
Rob Goldstone, a music publicist who set up the meeting, was also in attendance, as well as Rinat Akhmetshin, a prominent Russian-American lobbyist, Ike Kaveladze, a business associate of a Moscow-based developer and a translator.
A spokesperson for Trump’s outside legal team said Trump “was not aware of and did not attend the meeting.” Trump Jr. said he “wouldn’t have wasted his time” by telling him about the meeting. (Read more: Fox News, 5/16/2018)
Glenn Simpson (Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)
“The co-founder of Fusion GPS, the firm behind the unverified Trump dossier, met with a Russian lawyer before and after a key meeting she had last year with Trump’s son, Fox News has learned. The contacts shed new light on how closely tied the firm was to Russian interests, at a time when it was financing research to discredit then-candidate Donald Trump.”
(…) “The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya occurred during a critical period. At that time, Fox News has learned that bank records show Fusion GPS was paid by a law firm for work on behalf of a Kremlin-linked oligarch while paying former British spy Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Trump through his Russian contacts.
But hours before the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, Fusion co-founder and ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson was with Veselnitskaya in a Manhattan federal courtroom, a confidential source told Fox News. Court records reviewed by Fox News, email correspondence and published reports corroborate their presence together. The source told Fox News they also were together after the Trump Tower meeting.”
(…) “NBC News first reported that Veselnitskaya and Simpson were both at a hearing centered around another Fusion client, Russian oligarch Denis Katsyv. His company, Prevezon Holdings, was sanctioned against doing business in the U.S. for its alleged role in laundering more than $230 million. Fox News obtained audio records from that hearing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
The wrongdoing had been uncovered by Russian lawyer and whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, who was beaten to death in a Russian prison in 2009 after being arrested for probing Prevezon and other companies with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In December 2012, the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act was passed into U.S. law, freezing Russian assets and banning visas for sanctioned individuals. Fusion’s Simpson is believed to have been working with Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet counter-intelligence officer turned Russian-American lobbyist, to overturn the sanctions.” (Read more: Fox News, 11/7/2017)
Texas attorney Ty Clevenger (Credit: Dallas Morning News)
A recent FOIA request by attorney Ty Clevenger resulted in the release of a letter (pdf pgs 12-16), dated October 5, 2016, written by Senator Grassley and co-signed by three members of congress. It is addressed to AG Loretta Lynch, and reveals how the DOJ/FBI and Cheryl Mill’s attorney, Beth Wilkinson, wrote and agreed to the rules that grossly limited the scope of the Clinton email investigation.
Here are some of the concerns listed by Senator Grassley and congress members Jason Chaffetz, Devin Nunes and Bob Goodlatte. They also have questions for AG Lynch at the end of the letter and they can be found at the source link provided above and below:
1. There were two letters addressed to the DOJ from attorney Beth Wilkinson on behalf of her client Cheryl Mills, that were made available for an in camera review by our committees.
2. The Wilkinson letters are both dated June 10, 2016 and incorporated by reference into the immunity agreements for Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson that was related to the FBI criminal investigation into Clinton’s email server.
3. The letters set out the precise manner in which the Department and the FBI would access and use federal records and other information stored on .PST and .OST email archives from Ms. Mills’ and Ms. Samuelson’s laptops.
4. Ms. Wilkinson and lawyers from the Justice Department drafted the letters jointly before they were sent them to DOJ.
5. They express concerns about “the process by which Congress was allowed to view the Wilkinson letters, that the letters inappropriately restrict the scope of the FBI’s investigation, and that the FBI inexplicably agreed to destroy the laptops knowing that the contents were the subject of Congressional subpoenas and preservation letters.”
6. The viewing restrictions imposed on congress as a condition of cooperating voluntarily, the DoJ limited access to the letters to only members of certain committees and one or two staff, prohibited members and staff from “taking notes or photos, or otherwise seeking to record the information contained in the memos,” and redacted the names of all DOJ and FBI personnel on the documents.
7. The Wilkinson letters only permitted the FBI to review email archives from Platte River Networks created after June 1, 2014, and before February 1, 2015, that included emails sent or received from Secretary Clinton’s four email addresses during her tenure as Secretary of State. Limitations would necessarily have excluded, for example, any emails from Cheryl Mills to Paul Combetta in late 2014 or early 2015 directing the destruction or concealment of federal records. Similarly, these limitations would have excluded any email sent or received by Secretary Clinton if it was not sent or received by one of the four email addresses listed, or the email address was altered. Notably, in December 2014, Mr. Combetta deleted all Clinton emails older than 60 days, which was in effect all of Secretary Clinton’s emails from January 2009 to October 2014. He admitted this “change in retention policy” during his second FBI interview in February 2016.
8. In March 2015, Mr. Combetta had two conference calls with David Kendall, attorney for Secretary Clinton, and Ms. Mills. Mr. Combetta admitted to the FBI in his third interview in May 2016 that after the second conference call on March 31, 2015, he used BleachBit to destroy any remaining copies of Clinton’s emails and PST files that he was able to locate. Per the agreement with Ms. Wilkinson, emails from around the time of the conference calls (and subsequent deletion of records) would not have been covered by the FBI’s review of Ms. Mills’ and Ms. Samuelson’s laptops. Importantly, before the FBI agreed to the Wilkinson letters in June 2016, it already knew of the conference calls between Secretary Clinton’s attorneys and Mr. Combetta, his use of BleachBit, and the resulting deletions, further casting doubt on why the FBI would enter into such a limited evidentiary scope of review with respect to the laptops.
The Wilkinson letters went on to provide that the FBI would destroy any records which it retrieved that were not turned over to the investigatory team, meaning the FBI might proceed to delete such an email, after determining it should not be sent to the investigatory team. Further, the Wilkinson letters memorialized the FBI’s agreement to destroy the laptops. This is simply astonishing given the likelihood that evidence on the laptops would be of interest to congressional investigators.
9. The Wilkinson letters raise serious questions about why DOJ would consent to such substantial limitations on the scope of its investigation, and how Director Comey’s statements on the scope of the investigation comport with the reality of what the FBI was permitted to investigate.
10. The Committees requested unredacted copies of Wilkinson letters; the two immunity agreements for Mr. Bryan Pagliano; the immunity agreement for Mr. Paul Combetta; the immunity agreement for Mr. John Bentel; the immunity agreement for Ms. Cheryl Mills; and the immunity agreement for Ms. Heather Samuelson.
“The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), has just obtained previously unreleased documents related to the Clinton investigation and immunity agreements given to top Clinton aids by the Obama DOJ.
At the ACLJ we have been busy litigating multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the Deep State and Obama-era holdovers in various agencies in Washington, D.C.
In one of those FOIA lawsuits, the ACLJ took the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to court to force production of various records surrounding former FBI Director James Comey’s sham investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of private email servers and mishandling of classified information.
After months of litigation, the ACLJ’s diligence and persistence is paying off.
Heather Samuelson (l) and Cheryl Mills (Credit: YouTube)
The ACLJ has obtained the DOJ’s infamous immunity agreements with Hillary Clinton’s top aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson – documents previously unreleased to the public.
These documents were directly responsive to a FOIA request the ACLJ had submitted to the DOJ and FBI awhile back, and we were forced to file a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C., to get them. Our FOIA request sought:
All records concerning the immunity agreements entered into between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and witnesses and/or subjects of the FBI’s Clinton investigation, including but not limited to Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, and all other such agreements whereby the DOJ agreed to destroy any records retrieved.
Forced to comply under the court’s supervision in our lawsuit, in March 2019, DOJ produced to the ACLJ a set of records which the FBI had sent to the DOJ “for processing and direct response to you [the ACLJ].” These records consisted of the immunity agreements reached between the DOJ National Security Division (NSD) and both Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson. According to the DOJ’s immunity agreement with Mills:
As we have advised you, we consider Cheryl Mills to be a witness based on the information gathered to date in this investigation. We understand that Cheryl Mills is willing to voluntarily provide the Mills Laptop to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, if the United States agrees not to use any information directly obtained from the Mills Laptop in any prosecution of Cheryl Mills for the mishandling of classified information and/or the removal or destruction of records as described below.
That, subject to the terms of consent set forth in a separate letter to the Department of Justice dated June 10, 2016, Cheryl Mills will voluntarily produce the Mills Laptop to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for its review and analysis.
That no information directly obtained from the Mills Laptop will be used against your client in any prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) and/or (f); 18 U.S.C. § 1924; and/or 18 U.S.C. § 2071.
That no other promises, agreements, or understandings exist between the parties except as set forth in this agreement, and no modification of this agreement shall have effect unless executed in writing by the parties.
The agreement was then executed by Cheryl Mills.
The immunity agreement with Samuelson reads the same.
Importantly, in item #1 of both the Mills and Samuelson immunity agreements we obtained, the DOJ NSD referenced and incorporated the terms of a “separate letter” of the same date (June 10, 2016) containing the “terms of consent” to which the FBI/DOJ agreed to comply.
We are pleased to report that, as a result of our continued negotiations and efforts in this case, we have now secured assurances that the DOJ will produce to us those two separate letters the DOJ has thus far withheld from production.
These documents are especially relevant given “the thousands of pages of testimony” released by congressional committees in the past few months “about how the bureau handled the probe into Clinton’s use of a private server to send classified government emails” – and the recent headlines that testimony is generating. Portions of that testimony reveal “the intricate role of the DOJ in attempting to limit the FBI’s ability to gain access to laptops belonging to two Clinton confidants Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson.”
The documents we received, and the ones we have now secured an agreement to receive, confirm our earlier report – more than a year ago – that, based on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation and interviews:
The DOJ entered into “highly unusual” immunity agreements with key witnesses in the investigation, including Cheryl Mills (Clinton’s top aide) and Heather Samuelson (the aide tasked with going through the Clinton emails and deciding which should be made public and which deleted). It is reported that Mills and Samuelson agreed to allow the agency access to their computers in exchange for immunity – i.e. DOJ’s assurances that the findings of those searches would not be used against them.
(…) “Peter Strzok, a former deputy to the assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, also was confirmed to have changed former FBI Director James Comey’s early draft language about Hillary Clinton’s actions regarding her private email server from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless.”
The language being edited was important because classified material that’s been mishandled for “gross negligence” calls for criminal consequences, analysts point out.”
(…) “The wording change came to light last month after newly reported memos to Congress showed that a May 2016 draft of Comey’s statement closing out the email investigation accused the former secretary of state of being “grossly negligent.” A June 2016 draft stated Clinton had been “extremely careless.”
The modified language was final when Comey announced in July 2016 that Clinton wouldn’t face any charges in the email investigation.” (Read more: Fox News, 12/4/2017)
Clinton’s email deleting attorneys David Kendall (l), Cheryl Mills (c) and Heather Samuelson (r). (Credit: public domain)
“Judicial Watch announced today [6/28/2019] that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s White House Liaison at the State Department, and later Clinton’s personal lawyer, Heather Samuelson, admitted under oath that she was granted immunity by the U.S. Department of Justice in June 2016:
Samuelson: I was provided limited production immunity by the Department of Justice.
Judicial Watch: And when was that?
Samuelson: My recollection, it was June 2015 [later corrected to 2016].
A complete copy of her deposition transcript is available here. Samuelson also revealed that, contrary to what she told the FBI in 2016, she was, in fact, aware that Sec. Clinton used a private email account while secretary of state:
Judicial Watch: Ms. Samuelson, when did you first become aware that Secretary Clinton used the e-mail address hdr22@clintonemail.com while she was at the State Department?
Samuelson: I believe I first became aware when either she e-mailed me on personal matters, such as wishing me happy birthday, or when I infrequently would receive e-mails forwarded to me from others at the department that had that e-mail address listed elsewhere in the document.
Judicial Watch: Okay. And who were the State Department officials?
Samuelson: I recall Cheryl Mills, but it could have been others.
Samuel’s admission to Judicial Watch that she became aware of Clinton’s non-State.gov emails during her service in the Clinton State Department White House Liaison Office during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state (January 2009 – February 2013) contradicts the notation in the FBI’s May 24, 2016 302 report on Samuelson’s interview with FBI agents:
Samuelson did not become aware of Clinton’s use of a private email account and server until she was serving as Clinton’s personal attorney.
After Clinton left office, Samuelson worked for a year in the office of the White House Counsel before becoming Clinton’s personal attorney, where, in 2014, she was primarily responsible for conducting the review of Clinton emails and sorting out “personal” emails from government emails, which were returned to the State Department under the direction of Cheryl Mills and Clinton lawyer David Kendall. After the emails were returned to State, Clinton deleted the rest of the “personal” emails from her server, wiping it clean. Samuelson conducted the review of emails on her laptop, using Clinton server files downloaded from Platte River Networks, which housed the Clinton email server. Judicial Watch questioned her about a “gap” in the emails she discovered:
Judicial Watch: I believe you, during your interview with the FBI, you were asked about a gap in e-mails that you noticed in Secretary Clinton’s e-mails from January 2009 to March of 2009. Do you recall that?
Samuelson: I do.
Judicial Watch: Okay. Can you explain to me what that gap was?
Samuelson: My understanding is — well, I’m sorry. I should say my recollection is when we received the documents — the file from Platte River Networks, there was a period of time that was missing in her e-mails. And that period of time was January 2009 to March 2009.
Judicial Watch: And what did you do as the result of discovering this gap in the e-mails from January 2009 to March 2009?
Samuelson: I asked Platte River why we did not have — why they did not provide those.
Judicial Watch: And what did they tell you?
Samuelson: They said they did not have that information.
Judicial Watch: Did Platte River have access during to the server that housed Secretary Clinton’s e-mails to her Clintonemail.com account –
– and was there any discussion as to whether they could obtain Secretary Clinton’s e-mails from that server from January 2009 to March 2009?
Samuelson: I did ask them, and they said they did not have any e-mails from that period.
Samuelson also testified in her deposition that she created an “after action memo” in or around December 2014 to memorialize the email search. Samuelson’s lawyer directed her not to answer questions about this memo.” (Read more: Judicial Watch, 6/28/2019)
On June 12, 2016, in an interview with ITV’s Robert Peston, Julian Assange confirmed that WikiLeaks had emails relating to Hillary Clinton that the organization intended to publish.
“In his final report in a three-part series, Guccifer 2’s West Coast Fingerprint, the Forensicator discovers evidence that at least one operator behind the Guccifer 2.0 persona worked from the West Coast of the United States.
The Forensicator’s earlier findings stated that Guccifer 2.0’s NGP-VAN files were accessed locally on the East Coast, and in another analysis they suggested that a file published by Guccifer 2.0 was created in the Central time zone of the United States. Most recently, a former DNC official refuted the DNC’s initial allegations that Trump opposition files had been ex-filtrated from the DNC by Russian state-sponsored operatives.
So, if Guccifer 2.0’s role was negated by the statements of the DNC’s own former “official” in a 2017report by the Associated Press, why do we now return our attention to the Guccifer 2.0 persona, as we reflect on the last section of new findings from the Forensicator?
The answer: Despite almost two years having passed since the appearance of the Guccifer 2.0 persona, legacy media is still trotting out the shambling corpse of Guccifer 2.0 to revive the legitimacy of the Russian hacking narrative. In other words, it is necessary to hammer the final nail into the coffin of the Guccifer 2.0 persona.
As previously noted, In his final report in a three-part series, the Forensicator discusses concrete evidence that at least one operator behind the Guccifer 2.0 persona worked from the West Coast of the United States. He writes:
“Finally, we look at one particular Word document that Guccifer 2 uploaded, which had “track changes” enabled. From the tracking metadata we deduce the timezone offset in effect when Guccifer 2 made that change — we reach a surprising conclusion: The document was likely saved by Guccifer 2 on the West Coast, US.”
The Forensicator spends the first part of his report evaluating indications that Guccifer 2.0 may have operated out of Russia. Ultimately, the Forensicator discards those tentative results. He emphatically notes:
“The PDT finding draws into question the premise that Guccifer 2 was operating out of Russia, or any other region that would have had GMT+3 timezone offsets in force. Essentially, the Pacific Timezone finding invalidates the GMT+3 timezone findings previously described.”
The Forensicator’s new West Coast finding is not the first evidence to indicate that operators behind the Guccifer 2.0 persona were based in the US. Nine months ago, Disobedient Mediareported on the Forensicator’s analysis, which showed (among other things) that Guccifer 2.0’s “ngpvan” archive was created on the East Coast. While that report received the vast majority of attention from the public and legacy media, Disobedient Media later reported on another analysis done by the Forensicator, which found that a file published by Guccifer 2.0 (on a different occasion) was probably created in the Central Timezone of the US.
Adding to all of this, UK based analyst and independent journalist Adam Carter presented his own analysis which also showed that the Guccifer 2.0 Twitter persona interacted on a schedule which was best explained by having been based within the United States.” (Read more: Disobedient Media, 5/29/2018)
(…) On June 12, 2016, in an interview with ITV’s Robert Peston, Julian Assange confirmed that WikiLeaks had emails relating to Hillary Clinton that the organization intended to publish. This announcement was prior to any reported contact with Guccifer 2.0 (or with DCLeaks).
On June 14, 2016, an article was published in The Washington Post citing statements from two CrowdStrike executives alleging that Russian intelligence hacked the DNC and stole opposition research on Trump. It was apparent that the statements had been made in the 48 hours prior to publication as they referenced claims of kicking hackers off the DNC network on the weekend just passed (June 11-12, 2016).
On that same date, June 14, DCLeaks contacted WikiLeaks via Twitter DM and for some reason suggested that both parties coordinate their releases of leaks. (It doesn’t appear that WikiLeaks responded until September 2016).
(CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry testified under oath behind closed doors on Dec. 5, 2017, to the U.S. House intelligence committee that his company had no evidence that Russian actors removed anything from the DNC servers. This testimony was only released earlier this month.) (Read more: Consortium News, 5/24/2020)(Archive)
“Guccifer2.0 stated in an interview with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai (for Motherboard / Vice News) on June 21, 2016, that he breached the server using a “0-day exploit of NGP-Van”.
ThreatConnect, although still apparently unswayed from their assessment that Guccifer2.0 is a collective of Russians did report some very useful facts that serve to debunk Guccifer2.0’s claims.
(…) “Russia-Tainted Metadata” Reportage Mostly Ignored A Key Piece of Metadata
Warren Flood (Credit: LinkedIn)
There is a key fact about some non-Russian metadata that nobody seems to have reported and it certainly seems to be of critical importance – and that is the document creation timestamps…
There were multiple documents shared with TheSmokingGun, Gawker, ArsTechnica and others.
The first document, “1.doc” (mirror), was given considerable coverage, while the name “Warren Flood” was reported, the date in the report (rather than in the metadata) was reported and so it was attributed to Warren Flood on December 19, 2015.
Gawker incorrectly claimed the metadata showed the document was created in 2015 when it actually indicated the document was created by Warren Flood at a much later date.
The truth is that the metadata shows the document being created 30 minutes before Guccifer2.0 appears to have gotten his hands on it:
Created by Warren Flood on 15th of June at 13:38
Modified by Феликс Эдмундович on 15th of June at 14:08
The other document, “2.doc” (mirror) was not mentioned so much, but it too had interesting metadata:
Created by Warren Flood on 15th of June at 13:38
Modified by Феликс Эдмундович on 15th of June at 14:11
How did this get missed? – My guess is that people who investigated were using MS-Word. Recent versions of MS-Word tend to show limited metadata from RTF1 format files, for example, MS-Word 2010 shows:
If you open “2.doc” in OpenOffice though, you will spot what first alerted me to the timestamp correlations in the first place:
If you look at the raw data of “1.doc” you can see an ever closer correlation:
UPDATE (18 Feb 2017)
It was pointed out to me that I’d only focused on 2 documents and that there were more released by Guccifer2.0. – He had actually released a set of 5 RTF1-format documents, all had creation/modification dates as 15th of June and another one of them had Flood listed as it’s creator:
MD5 sums and mirror links are provided below in case the originals are altered or removed in future:
(Live links at source link)
A more detailed look at the actual contents of documents (eg. RSIDs of different changes and correlations across files) gives further clues about the procedures used to intentionally stick “Russian fingerprints” on some of the files.
Who is Warren Flood? (UPDATED June 3rd, 2018)
Warren Flood was Biden’s former IT director at the White House.
A document that Flood authored in 2008 and that was attached to one of John Podesta’s emails, was used by Guccifer 2.0 as a template into which he then copied the contents of the Trump Opposition Research, copied from this file(which is also attached to this leaked email). It is Flood’s document that the “CONFIDENTIAL” text in the background derives from.
The copy of the Trump research Guccifer 2.0 had was actually a document originally authored by Lauren Dillon (DNC research director) and modified (and sent to John Podesta) by Tony Carrk (Research Director at Hillary for America). (Read more: Adam Carter/g-2.space, 2/18/2017)(Archive)
In June 2016, a month that is key to the origin story of the Steele dossier, the primary source for that salacious document met with an official in the Russian ministry of energy and a journalist friend in Russia, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
Igor Danchenko, a Russia analyst who worked for Christopher Steele, met with Sergey Abyshev, who was then a deputy director in the energy ministry, and Ivan Vorontsov, the editor-in-chief of a Russian finance website, according to a Facebook post by Vorontsov and confirmation from Abyshev.
It is not entirely clear what relevance the rendezvous might have to the dossier, but it helps fill in the timeline of Danchenko’s interactions and movements at a critical stage in the development of the provocative report.
At the time of the meeting, Danchenko was well at workfor Steele collecting information about Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia.
Sergey Abyshev (Credit: LinkedIn)
Danchenko, a Russian national who lives in Washington, D.C., told the FBI in January 2017 that Steele, a former MI6 officer, tasked him in June 2016 to dig up dirt on Trump. Steele was hired in May 2016 by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm working for the Clinton campaign and DNC.
Vorontsov posted a photo on June 16, 2016 from the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), an annual business conclave, saying he had met the prior evening with Danchenko and Abyshev.
“The night before was so nice with Sergey Abyshev and Igor Danchenko,” Vorontsov wrote.
Four days later, on June 20, 2016, Steele penned the first of 17 memos that make up what is colloquially known as the dossier. Steele has said that most of the information was collected by a single source who worked as an independent contractor for his firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 8/07/2020)(Archive)
More photos of Source 2, from Ivan Vorontsov’s Facebook page:
Source 2, Ivan Vorontsov (Credit: Facebook)
A footnote on page 239 of the Mueller Report describes the source of the pee-pee tapes:
We have been told by mainstream press (citing anonymous intelligence officials) that Guccifer 2.0 was a GRU officer. We have also seen this asserted in an indictment that emerged in July 2018.
However, there are many reasons why this attribution remains doubtful, and, unlike the attribution, these reasons are based on verifiable evidence that is already in the public domain.
This project (“Guccifer 2.0: Game Over”) was built upon a simple, yet effective principle:
In order to even begin to understand who Guccifer 2.0 could have been, it was imperative to first understand WHAT Guccifer 2.0 was.
This site links to evidence and discoveries made during the past two years that help to explain what Guccifer 2.0 was. Much of the evidence has been disregarded by the mainstream press and is routinely omitted in their reportage despite the volume of evidence and how comprehensive and detailed some of the analysis has been (especially with regard to studies published by third parties). (See Guccifer 2.0 Timeline, 1/12/2019)
“A State Department official who served in the U.S. embassy in Kiev told Congress that the Obama administration tried in 2016 to partner with the Ukrainian gas firm that employed Hunter Biden but the project was blocked over corruption concerns.
George Kent, the former charge d’affair at the Kiev embassy, said in testimony released Thursday that the State Department’s main foreign aid agency, known as USAID, planned to co-sponsor a clean energy project with Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas firm that employed Hunter Biden as a board member.
At the time of the proposed project, Burisma was under investigation in Ukraine for alleged corruption. Those cases were settled in late 2016 and early 2017. Burisma contested allegations of corruption but paid a penalty for tax issues.
Kent testified he personally intervened in mid-2016 to stop USAID’s joint project with Burisma because American officials believed the corruption allegations against the gas firm raised concern.
“There apparently was an effort for Burisma to help cosponsor, I guess, a contest that USAID was sponsoring related to clean energy. And when I heard about it I asked USAID to stop that sponsorship,” Kent told lawmakers.
When asked why he intervened, he answered: “Because Burisma had a poor reputation in the business, and I didn’t think it was appropriate for the U.S. Government to be co-sponsoring something with a company that had a bad reputation.
(…) Kent’s newly released testimony also confirmed several other elements of my earlier reporting about Ukraine, including that the U.S. embassy exerted pressure on Ukrainian prosecutors not to pursue certain investigations.” (Read more: John Solomon Reports, 11/07/2019)(Deposition Transcript)
Journalist Joe Conason is writing a book about Bill Clinton’s post-presidential years. The New York Times calls Conason “a longtime defender of the Clintons.” While researching for his book, he contacts Powell spokesperson Margaret Cifrino about an alleged dinner party incident. Due to a leak by hackers in September 2016 of all of Powell’s emails from 2014 to late August 2016, the entire correspondence will be made public.
Conason initializes contact with an email to Cifrino on June 17, 2016: “My inquiry chiefly concerns a dinner party he [Powell] attended for then-Senator Clinton in January 2009, which was hosted by former Secretary Madeleine Albright and attended by several former secretaries of state.”
After some back and forth, Conason replies with his questions:
Did [Powell] attend that dinner, along with former secretaries Kissinger, Christopher, Albright, and Rice?
Does he recall Secretary Albright asking all of them to give Secretary-designate Clinton one piece of advice from their own time at the State Department?
Did he advise Mrs. Clinton to use her own email account rather than a State Department account, as he did?”
Margaret Cifrino (Credit: public domain)
Cifrino passes on Powell’s reply to Conason:
“Our records show that the dinner was in June, not January. He doesn’t recall Items 2 or 3. He also publicly and widely used his personal email account, but he also had a State Department computer on his desk for classified communications. He does recall sharing with Secretary Clinton his use of his email account and how useful it was and trans-formative for the Department. He knew nothing then or until recently about her private home servers and a personal domain, nor, therefore, could he have advised her on that or suggested it. By June her system may have already been set up.”
On August 18, 2016, the New York Times publishes an article mainly based on Conason’s depiction of the Albright party. Conason claims that Albright asked all of the former secretaries of state at the party to provide one piece of advice to Clinton, and “Powell suggested that she use her own email.” Conason will also include this claim in his book published not long after that.
Madeleine Allbright (Credit:
However, in Powell’s response in the email exchange mentioned above, Powell clearly said he doesn’t recall Albright even asking that question, but did remember the email he exchanged with Clinton on January 23, 2009. Conason appears to be confusing the email with the dinner party. (New York Times, 08/18/16)
Then Conason writes an article for Newsweek on August 22, 2016 accusing Powell of giving “a very different answer” several months earlier. He quotes from the email exchange he had with Cifrino: “[Powell] does recall sharing with Secretary Clinton his use of his email account and how useful it was and trans-formative for the Department. He knew nothing then or until recently about her private home server and a personal domain, nor, therefore, could he have advised her on that or suggested it. By June I would assume her email system was already set up.”
Conason then comments in Newsweek: “So it is perplexing for him to say he doesn’t remember that dinner conversation at all now, since, according to his own assistant, he remembered at least some of what he said as recently as two months ago.”
Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell (Credit: public domain)
Note Conason doesn’t quote Powell’s response to the question about the party, and instead gives Powell’s answer about the January 2009 email exchange with Clinton. (Newsweek, 08/16/16)
Additionally, the email leak will also include an exchange between Powell and Rice on August 28, 2016. Powell writes, “I was [with] Maddy [Madeline Albright] the other evening and she doesn’t remember an email conversation or even asking us a question recently.”
Rice writes back, ” Yes — I’m sure it never came up.”
Thus, not only does Conason misquote Powell, but the alleged Albright question at her party may never have happened at all.
“A claim is being widely reported in the US media which supported Hillary Clinton for president that President-elect Donald Trump paid for at least two ladies to urinate on the bed in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel of Moscow. A former British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) agent named Christopher Steele has reported the episode in a memorandum dated June 20, 2016, because he was paid by a US client to do it; and also because he was paid to speculate that the Russian Security Service (FSB) filmed it, and has been blackmailing Trump ever since.
Trump has responded that Steele is a “failed spy”. That is not an impetuous tweet. It’s the assessment of both US and British intelligence agencies, including MI6, for which Steele worked undercover in Moscow between 1994 and 1996. His cover was blown; he was evacuated; and as British intelligence sources report this week, Steele has been unable to enter Russia for a decade. “No Russian with official links and knowledge would risk communicating with Steele for fear of being detected by Russian counter-intelligence,” said an intelligence source in London, Said another: “I met [Steele] a couple of times and thought that for a relatively undistinguished man who never made very senior rank he was a smug, arrogant s.o.b. So I don’t work with him. The description of his being the top expert on Russia in MI6 is bollocks. ”
The story of the Obama-Trump bed, according to Steele, comes from 2013. Another story, the one of the Putin bed on which Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had sex with a prostitute in Rome, dates from 2009. The true part has been verified with a tape the lady made of Berlusconi boasting about the source of the bed as he exercised himself on it. Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Putin then and now, says the Trump-Obama bed story is “a complete fake. It’s total nonsense.” But about the Putin-Berlusconi bed, he said at the time: “We reject this information. I am not in a position to explain.” In short, that bedtime story may be true.
The Steele dossier contains 35 pages, commencing on June 20, 2016, and ending on December 13, 2016. The published form can be read here. It comprises 17 reports. But the file numbering from 2016/ 080 to 2016/166 implies there were 86 such reports altogether, so only one in five has become public. What was in the remaining 67 reports is unknown. Unknown, too, is whether it’s possible that over six months Steele was producing reports on Russia at the rate of 11 per month, 3 per week, one every two days.
A London newspaper claims Steele was paid £200,000 for his job. The newspaper also claims that a friend of Steele “who does not want to be named, says he sold them in installments at $15,000 (£12,300) a time every three weeks to anti-Trump Republicans looking for dirt on the tycoon in the run-up to the presidential nomination.” This means there were no other reports in the series; the numbering was intended to mislead. That’s not all.
The Guardian newspaper, the Financial Times and US newspapers claim the dossier has been circulating “for months and acquired a kind of legendary status among journalists, lawmakers, and intelligence officials who have seen them”, according to one reporter. According to Financial Times reporter Courtney Weaver (right), she “investigated some of the allegations contained in the report but was unable to confirm them.” She has published them, nonetheless. For more on Weaver’s record for veracity in Moscow, read this.
A source at a London due diligence firm which is larger and better known than Steele’s Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd. says “standard due diligence means getting to the truth. It’s confidential to the client, and not leaked. There are also black jobs, white jobs, and red jobs. Black means the client wants you to dig up dirt on the target, and make it look credible for publishing in the press. White means the client wants you to clear him of the wrongdoing which he’s being accused of in the media or the marketplace; it’s also leaked to the press. A red job is where the client pays the due diligence firm to hire a journalist to find out what he knows and what he’s likely to publish, in order to bribe or stop him. The Steele dossier on Trump is an obvious black job. Too obvious.”
Steele’s career in Russian intelligence at MI6 had hit the rocks in 2006, and never recovered. That was the year in which the Russian Security Service (FSB) publicly exposed an MI6 operation in Moscow. Russian informants recruited by the British were passed messages and money and dropped their information in containers fabricated to look like fake rocks in a public park. Steele was on the MI6 desk in London when the operation was blown. Although the FSB announcement was denied in London at the time, the British prime ministry confirmed its veracity in 2012. Read more on Steele’s fake rock operation here, and the attempt by the Financial Times to cover it up by blaming Putin for fabricating the story.
The wet bed story, as Steele reported it to his client who then leaked it to the media, looks like this:
The bedroom, the bed and a piece of 19th century soft porn on the wall look like this:
(Credit: Ritz Carlton)
The June 20, 2016, memo, which started the wet bed story, reports seven sources, identified as Source A through G. No other report in the dossier has as many sources; some of the original seven reappear in the series. Look carefully to detect what the Clinton media have missed.
Source D isn’t Russian at all. He is American; Steele reports him as a “close associate of Trump who organized and managed his trips to Moscow”. D claims to have been “present”; there is a bedside armchair in the Ritz Carlton photograph, so “present” is possible.
Source E’s identity has been blacked out in the first memo, but he is identified elsewhere in the series as another American – a “Russian émigré figure close to… Trump’s campaign team” – not to Trump himself. Within the space of a paragraph, however, he turns into an “émigré associate of Trump”. Several memos and weeks later, on August 10, this source has become “the ethnic Russian associate of Trump”.
The others reported by Steele to have been in on the wet bed story include Source F, “a female staffer at the hotel when Trump stayed there”. From the dossier it appears she told her story to an American who was an “ethnic Russian operative” of the company run by Source E, the émigré. So Source F isn’t a direct or independent source at all. If this is beginning to bewilder you, it should. The only sources for the wet bed story turn out to be Americans, not Russians at all.” (Read more: John Helmer, 1/18/2017)(Archive)
Franco Roberti, (l) Italy’s chief anti-mafia and anti-terrorism prosecutor, and Michael Gaeta, (r) an FBI agent and current Assistant Legal Attaché at the US Embassy, for “A Roundtable Discussion: The Challenges of Transnational Organized Crime Today” on October 25, 2016. (Credit: John Cabot.edu)
“A little-known FBI unit played an outsized role in allowing controversial claims by a former British MI6 spy about Donald Trump to reach the highest levels of the FBI and State Department.
The Eurasian Organized Crime unit, which was headed by Michael Gaeta at the time, specializes in investigating criminal groups from Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine.
Gaeta, an FBI agent and assistant legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, has known the former spy, Christopher Steele—who authored the controversial dossier on then-candidate Donald Trump—since at least 2010, when Steele provided assistance in the FBI’s investigation into the FIFA corruption scandal, over concern that Russia might have been engaging in bribery to host the 2018 World Cup.
(…) Steele would complete his first memo on June 20, 2016, and send it to Fusion via enciphered mail.
It is at this point that Steele reportedly began to reconnect with his old FBI contacts from the Eurasian serious-crime division:
“In June, Steele flew to Rome to brief the FBI contact with whom he had cooperated over FIFA,” The Guardian reported. “His information started to reach the bureau in Washington.”
It’s not entirely clear if Steele met with the head of the Eurasian division, Gaeta, or another FBI agent. Either way, Steele met with Gaeta shortly thereafter in London.
The purpose of the London visit was clear. Steele was personally handing the first memo in his dossier to Gaeta for ultimate transmission back to the FBI and the State Department.
Victoria Nuland (Credit: CBS, Face the Nation)
For this visit, the FBI sought permission from the office of Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Nuland, who had been the recipient of many of Steele’s reports, gave permission for the more formal meeting. On July 5, 2016, Gaeta traveled to London and met with Steele at the office’s of Steele’s firm, Orbis.
Nuland provided this version of events during a Feb. 4, 2018, appearance on Face the Nation:
“In the middle of July, when he [Steele] was doing this other work and became concerned, he passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding and our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That’s something for the FBI to investigate.”
In September 2016, Steel would travel back to Rome to meet with the FBI Eurasian squad once again. It’s likely that the meeting contained several other FBI officials as well:
“In September, Steele went back to Rome. There, he met with an FBI team. Their response was one of ‘shock and horror,’ Steele said,” according to The Guardian. “The bureau asked him to explain how he had compiled his reports, and to give background on his sources. It asked him to send future copies.”
According to a House Intelligence Committee minority memo, Steele’s reporting didn’t reach the FBI counterintelligence team until mid-September 2016—the same time as Steele’s September trip to Rome.
There’s one other central figure in the Trump–Russia investigation who had meaningful overlap with the FBI’s Eurasian squad: former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe:
“McCabe began his career as a special agent with the FBI in 1996,” the FBI states on its website. “He first reported to the New York division, where he investigated a variety of organized crime matters. In 2003, he became the supervisory special agent of the Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force.”
“Christopher Steele completes the first of 16 “pre-election reports,” submitting it to Fusion GPSFusion GPSA Washington-based private intelligence firm founded in 2009 by former journalists. The firm was hired first by the Free Beacon, a conservative publication, and then by Perkins Coie, a law firm representing Hillary Clinton’s campaign, to do research on Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. a few days later. The first report alleges that Russia has been cultivating Trump for five years and has compromising material from the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow. These 16 reports, plus one more written in December 2016, would come to be known as the Steele dossier.” (Daily Caller, 10/27/2017)
In Glenn Simpson’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on August 22, 2017, he claims the first “pre-election report” is useless and not believable. Yet it remains a part of the overall dossier.
In February 2014, an unnamed Platte River Networks (PRN) employee created a Gmail email account and briefly transferred all of Clinton’s emails into it from a back-up of Clinton’s server made in the spring of 2013. He transferred the Clinton emails to a new version of this server, but most of the emails on this server will later be destroyed. He also will tell the FBI that he deleted all of the emails from his Gmail account after completing the transfer.
However, the FBI will later report that on June 21, 2016, FBI investigators discovered 940 Clinton emails that were still on the Gmail account somehow. It has not been explained if the PRN employee simply failed to delete them all or if deleted emails were recovered.
All of the 940 emails date from October 25, 2010 to December 31, 2010. 56 of them were later deemed to be classified at the “confidential” level. 302 of them were not in the over 30,000 emails that Clinton gave to the State Department in December 2014. It has not been specified how many of these were deemed work-related. But of the 302 emails, the FBI gave 18 of them to other departments to for classification review. The State Department decided one email was classified “secret” when it was sent, but then later was downgraded to “confidential.” Another email was “confidential” when it was sent and later downgraded to be unclassified. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
Bloomberg News reports, “If the Democrats can show the hidden hand of Russian intelligence agencies, they believe that voter outrage will probably outweigh any embarrassing revelations [in Wikileaks pending release of DNC and Podesta emails], a person familiar with the party’s thinking said.”
In the same article, Clinton spokesperson Glen Caplin refuses to comment on details about recent hacking attacks or confirm if any of Clinton’s campaign staff got successfully hacked. However, Caplin does say, “What appears evident is that the Russian groups responsible for the DNC hack are intent on attempting to influence the outcome of this election.”
The DNC [Democratic National Committee] similarly won’t comment on details or confirm reports of successful attacks. However, the DNC issues a written statement that it believes recent leaks by Guccifer 2.0 are “part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians.”
The email undercuts Clinton’s claim that she used a private email account and private server for “convenience.” This email was not included in the 30,000 work-related emails Clinton turned over in late 2014.
One unnamed “Clinton ally” says, “If Donald Trump didn’t have some major problems right now, I’d be worried. It basically sums up that she was aware of what was happening. It’s yet another headache for us.”
RNC (Republican National Committee) spokesperson Michael Short says: “The fact that such a key email, which contained damning information about her use of a private server, was not turned over casts doubt on the notion that this may have been an oversight and raises questions about what other work-related emails may have been deleted or inappropriately withheld.”
An unnamed “former senior aide to President Obama who supports Clinton” says Clinton’s email controversy in general “gives Trump something he can hammer her on. It’s something that the Republican base can actually rally behind. It adds fuel to the fire. Anytime there’s another drip, voters are distracted from whatever dumb thing Trump is saying so it’s not helpful. The more things that come out, the more it highlights the larger trust problem [with Clinton].”
Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, says the controversy is the “continuing story that plagues the Clinton campaign. The great danger is to her credibility because this has gone on for a long time and there are various incompatible details about why she did the things she did and it reminds people that they have been for decades been suspicious of the Clintons.” (The Hill, 6/24/2016)
“On June 24, 2016, Steele’s fifty-second birthday, Simpson called, asking him to submit the dossier. The previous day, the U.K. had voted to withdraw from the E.U., and Steele was feeling wretched about it. Few had thought that Brexit was possible. An upset victory by Trump no longer seemed out of the question. Steele was so nervous about maintaining secrecy and protecting his sources that he sent a courier by plane to Washington to hand-deliver a copy of the dossier. The courier’s copy left the sources redacted, providing instead descriptions of them that enabled Fusion to assess their basic credibility. Steele feared that, for some of his Russian sources, exposure would be a death sentence.
Steele also felt a duty to get the information to the F.B.I. Although Trump has tweeted that the dossier was “all cooked up by Hillary Clinton,” Steele approached the Bureau on his own. According to Simpson’s sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Steele told him in June, 2016, that he wanted to alert the U.S. government, and explained, “I’m a former intelligence officer, and we’re your closest ally.” Simpson testified that he asked to think about it for a few days; when Steele brought it up again, Simpson relented. As Simpson told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “Let’s be clear. This was not considered by me to be part of the work we were doing. This was like you’re driving to work and you see something happen and you call 911.” Steele, he said, felt “professionally obligated to do it.” Simpson went along, he testified, because Steele was the “national-security expert,” whereas he was merely “an ex-journalist.” (Read more: The New Yorker, 3/12/2018)
“In 2016, Lynch — the U.S. attorney general under Barack Obama — secretly met for 30 minutes with Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in Arizona. At the time, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was being investigated by the FBI over her 30,000 deleted emails and her destroyed government-issued phones, which she and her team smashed with hammers.
Several days after the tarmac meeting, the DOJ (which was headed by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch) decided not to file any charges against Hillary for her unauthorized use of an unsecured, private email server to conduct government business and her mass-deletion of 30,000 emails.
Page 203 of the IG report suggests that Bill Clinton’s Secret Service detail had contacted Lynch’s FBI detail to set up the meeting when their planes were on the tarmac:
(Credit: DOJ OIG Report, June 2018)
As BizPac Review has reported, Lynch and Clinton claimed they only discussed grandchildren and golf during their rendezvous.
(Credit: New York Post)
(…) Furthermore, page 209 of the IG Report suggests that people nearby were instructed not to take any photos of the tarmac meeting: “The OPA Supervisor said that there was a photographer outside, and he recalled telling the photographer that Lynch would not be taking pictures. The OPA Supervisor said that he remembered telling the photographer that he (the photographer) needed to go back in his car.”
And page 210 of the IG report states:
“The Senior Counselor said that when she tried to go back on the plane, she was stopped by the head of Lynch’s security detail, who was at the door of the plane.
The Senior Counselor said that she told him that Lynch’s meeting with former President Clinton was not a good idea, and that she needed to get back on the plane, but he still would not let her on.”
Less than a week after the Lynch-Clinton tarmac meeting, then-FBI Director James Comey (whose boss was Loretta Lynch) announced that the FBI would not recommend an indictment against Hillary. Coincidence? (Read more: BizPac Review, 7/01/2018)
Headlines displayed on a photo capture of a CBS News report on June 27, 2016. (Credit: CBS News)
On the night of June 27, 2016, Clinton and Lynch are in separate airplanes at the international airport in Phoenix, Arizona. According to an account by Lynch two days later, Clinton walks uninvited from his plane to her plane and talks with her for about half an hour. On June 30, 2016, CBS News will report, “An aide to Bill Clinton says that he spotted her on the tarmac, but CBS News has been told that she was in an unmarked plane.” (CBS News, 6/30/2016)
Lynch will say: “He did come over and say hello, and speak to my husband and myself, and talk about his grandchildren and his travels and things like that. That was the extent of that. And no discussions were held into any cases or things like that.” However, this encounter causes what the New York Times calls a “political furor” and “storm,” because Bill Clinton’s wife Hillary is being investigated by the FBI.
Furthermore, the FBI is expected to make a recommendation to indict her or not “in the coming weeks,” according to the Times. If the FBI does recommend indictment, then the decision to actually indict or not will rest with Lynch. Thus, many Republican politicians and even some Democrats criticize Bill Clinton and Lynch simply for meeting at all during such a politically charged time.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump calls it “one of the big stories of this week, of this month, of this year.” He says it was a “sneak” meeting, exposing that Clinton’s possible indictment is already a rigged process.
Republican Senator John Cornyn says that as a lawyer and attorney general, Lynch “must avoid even the appearance” of a conflict of interest, and renews his call for a special prosecutor to take charge of the Clinton investigation instead of Lynch.
David Axelrod, President Obama’s former senior adviser, says he takes Clinton and Lynch at their word that their conversation didn’t touch on the FBI investigation, but that it was “foolish to create such optics.”
Democratic Senator Chris Coons says he is convinced Lynch is “an independent attorney general. But I do think that this meeting sends the wrong signal… I think she should have steered clear, even of a brief, casual, social meeting with the former president.”
Senator Chris Coons (Credit: public domain)
White House spokesperson Josh Earnest refuses to say whether the meeting was appropriate or not.
New York University law school professor Stephen Gillers comments: “It was the height of insensitivity for the former president to approach the attorney general. He put her in a very difficult position. She wasn’t really free to say she wouldn’t talk to a former president. […] He jeopardized her independence and did create an appearance of impropriety going onto her plane.” He adds that the meeting “feeds the dominant narrative that the Clintons don’t follow the usual rules, that they’re free to have back channel communications like this one and that’s true even if we assume as I do that nothing improper was said.” (NPR, 6/30/2016)
Starting a new thread regarding the signifigance of June 27, 2016.
Too many coincidences all tied together that day, yet journalists still fail to tie them together😏
— Mccabe’s Porsche on Blocks (@Larry_Beech) May 1, 2018
Let’s start with Friday, June 24, 2016.
John Podesta meets with Claire McCombs (c.o.s. to wh counsel) at the white house at 2 pm.
At the exact same moment, Obama is at Stanford with Mark Zuckerberg.
That same day (June 24th), Podesta schedules another appointment for Monday, June 27th.
That appointment also included Mook and Donilon and was made to meet at the Vice President’s residence.
So on Monday, June 27, 2016, Podesta and Mook were meeting with Biden at the VP residence, the VERY same day that Bill Clinton tried to secretly meet with Lynch on the tarmac in Phoenix!
But it wasn’t just Biden, Podesta, Donilon, and Mook huddling up. I think someone else was involved too.
Very sneaky of Barry. And lots of free time that afternoon too.
Now that coincidence is something….but there’s more.
Remember that lengthy New Yorker article about Christopher Steele back in March?
So at the same time Podesta meets with McCombs (June 24) and sets up the June 27 Obama, Biden, Mook, Donilon, Podesta get-together…Glenn Simpson urgently requests Steele give him installment #1 of the dossier?
And Steele responds by urgently having it delivered by personal courier?
Was that cause someone needed it to present to high-level folks on June 27, 2016?
Remember reportedly Mook and Podesta got frequent updates…
And that’s still not all. I find this really interesting too:
That afternoon (6/27) Guccifer 2.0 seemed awfully interested in finding out about the pending DNC lawsuit in DM’s with Cassandra Fairbanks:
It’s very odd that “Guccifer 2.0” was so interested in the rumored lawsuit about to be filed…
So put it all together and answer these questions:
1) Who actually was G2 and who were his puppet masters?
2) Did higher-ups know ahead of time on June 24 and arrange the BC/LL tarmac mtg?
3) When did Obama first learn about Steele and the dodgy dossier?
Pretty sure Feinstein rushing out the Simpson transcript was to make the cabal aware of their talking/points and script to follow.
Nothing is more critical to them than hiding the fact that Obama was “briefed” on the project in June.
But they made too many slip-ups and will be caught in the end. Perjury to protect Obama at all costs. We just need more people to start asking the hard questions.
The report is over 800 pages. and comes after 15 months of investigation, at a cost of over $7 million. However, the New York Times comments that the report “offers a handful of new details but nothing that will alter the conventional narrative about the events of September 11, 2012,” the date of the terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The report does point out numerous failures regarding the US government’s response to the attack, but those were mostly outside the control of Clinton’s State Department, such as a slow response time from the US military.
The Times also comments that “after nearly four years and eight congressional investigations, Mrs. Clinton emerged largely unscathed. […] In the end, the biggest revelation unearthed by the [committee] came 15 months ago: the disclosure that Hillary Clinton had used a private email address and server during her four years as secretary of state.”
Clinton comments, “I’ll leave it to others to characterize this report, but I think it’s pretty clear that it’s time to move on.” (The New York Times, 6/28/2016)
Some files from Clinton volunteer Sarah Hamilton are sent to the Smoking Gun website by the hacker known as Guccifer 2.0. Hamilton, who works for Clinton’s publicity office, appears to have fallen for a “spear phishing” attack, making the contents of her email inbox accessible. The Smoking Gun says this revealed many documents, “from schedules and talking points to briefing books and assorted logistics. But the records are absent the kind of intel for which hackers were probably searching, like policy discussions and confidential deliberations.”
Details of a February 2016 email chain are revealed, showing efforts by Clinton’s campaign to keep journalists, especially CNN producer Dan Merica, physically separated from Clinton so she wouldn’t be asked difficult questions. Hamilton, press secretary Nick Merrill, and others treated Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet the same way in mid-March 2016. In sending the documents, Guccifer 2.0 also reiterates his claim to be a lone hacker not working with the Russian government. (The Smoking Gun, 6/28/2016) (The Washington Post, 6/28/2016)
An ABC News report on Huma Abedin’s deposition on June 29, 2016. (Credit: ABC News)
Abedin was Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, and continues to play a major role as the vice chair of Clinton’s presidential campaign. She is deposed under oath for nearly six hours as part of a civil suit brought by Judicial Watch regarding the State Department’s slow response to certain Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests relating to Clinton’s emails. (The Washington Post, 6/29/2016)
Amongst other things, Abedin says:
She isn’t aware whether Clinton personally deleted any emails while still in office.
She cannot recall whether she or Clinton discussed with any State Department officials Clinton’s using only her own server for government business.
She never searched or was asked to search her government or her private email accounts in response to requests or lawsuits under FOIA. But a review of all requests to the State Department during that time found several asking specifically for her emails on a number of subjects.
Clinton didn’t want the private emails that she mixed in with work-related emails to be accessible to “anybody.” (The Associated Press, 6/29/2016)
Abedin responds to some questions but is forgetful about others. The lack of definitive answers from her and the other former aides deposed in the same lawsuit could open the door to Clinton herself being deposed, if the judge allows it through the unusual discovery process he has approved so far.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton comments, “I think it’s striking that even Mrs. Clinton’s top aide had concerns about how the system affected Mrs. Clinton’s ability to do her job. We’re considering what next steps to take and what additional discovery we need.” (The Washington Post, 6/29/2016)
“In today’s story, we expose Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, when Former aide Justin Cooper said in a Judicial Watch deposition that he worked with Huma Abedin in 2009 to set up the unsecured private email account used by the former secretary of state.
Cooper’s statement contradicts Abedin’s claim in a 2016 deposition as she made a statement saying something completely different.” (The Epoch Times, 6/21/2019)
During the deposition of Clinton’s former deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin by Judicial Watch, she is asked if she used her private email account hosted on Clinton’s clintonemail.com private server for any State Department work.
Huma Abedin (Credit: David McGlynn)
Abedin responds, “My practice was to use my state.gov email. I did the vast majority of my work on state.gov, at my computer and on my BlackBerry when we traveled. And I used Clinton email for just about everything else. I used that for the Clinton family matters and, frankly, I used it for my own personal e-mail, as well.”
She is pressed, “But you also used it at times for state-related matters?”
She replies, “Yes. There were occasions when I did do that, correct.”
She is then asked, “And were there occasions when you used that with Secretary Clinton, where both of you used only the clintonemail.com accounts?”
Peter Strzok (l) and James Rybicki. (Credit: public domain)
“Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson on Thursday formally sought “all email communications” between Hillary Clinton and former President Obama, saying the Justice Department was blocking their release — even though they could shed light on whether the former secretary of state discussed sensitive matters on her unsecured personal email system while she was overseas.
Johnson’s letter came as House Democrats approved procedures for their impeachment inquiry against President Trump, warning he may have endangered U.S. national security by allegedly withholding aid to Ukraine for political reasons. Earlier this month, a State Department report into Clinton’s use of a private email server for government business found dozens of people at fault and hundreds of security violations.
In a letter to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Johnson, R-Wis., said summer 2016 communications from FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok to FBI Director James Comey’s Chief of Staff James Rybicki hinted at the existence of the Clinton-Obama messages that were relevant to the issues raised by her private server.
Johnson noted that on June 28, 2016, a week before Comey’s public statement declaring that “no reasonable prosecutor” would charge Clinton, Strzok wrote:
“Jim – I have the POTUS – HRC emails [Director Comey] requested at end of briefing yesterday. I hesitate to leave them, please let me know a convenient time to drop them off.”
“I write to request email communications between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama,” Johnson wrote, setting a deadline of Nov. 14, 2019. “In January 2018, I requested the Department of Justice (DOJ) produce emails Secretary Clinton sent to President Obama while she was located in the ‘territory of a sophisticated adversary.'”
He added: “Given that DOJ acknowledged that they ‘are not in a position’ to produce emails to the committee that contain ‘equities of other executive branch entities,’ I ask that, pursuant to the Presidential Records Act, you please provide all email communications between Secretary Clinton and President Obama.
The information was contained in a letter and interview transcripts sent by the majority staff on Johnson’s Homeland Security Committee to senior Senate Republicans including Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. The letter also noted that “neither the committees nor the FBI were able to confirm whether an intrusion into the server occurred.” (Read more: Fox News, 11/01/2019)
The Washington Post reports that “disclosures over the past several weeks have revealed dozens of emails related to Clinton’s official duties that crossed her private server and were not included in the 55,000 pages of correspondence she turned over to the State Department when the agency sought her emails in 2014.”
At least 127 of the new emails have come to light through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests initiated by Judicial Watch, especially the first two batch releases of Huma Abedin’s emails. Since Abedin was Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, many of the emails were to or from Clinton about obvious work matters, yet weren’t included in the over 30,000 emails turned over by Clinton. Additionally, more of Clinton’s emails came to light through the May 2016 State Department inspector general’s report, as well as previous leaks to the media, for a total of at least 160 emails.
The Post comments, “The newly disclosed gaps in Clinton’s correspondence raise questions about the process used by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and her lawyers to determine which emails she turned over to the department.”
Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon says that both Clinton and Abedin provided “all potentially work-related emails in their possession” to the State Department. “We understand Secretary Clinton had some emails with Huma that Huma did not have, and Huma had some emails with Secretary Clinton that Secretary Clinton did not have.” However, the Post notes that Fallon “has not provided a full explanation for all of the gaps” with her emails. The State Department also has not fully addressed the gaps.
The campaign for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump releases a statement saying, “We now know that Clinton’s repeated assertion that she turned over everything work-related from her time at the State Department is not true.”
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton says, “The most charitable interpretation is that the process she and her attorneys used to cull government emails from the emails she took with her didn’t work. The less charitable interpretation is that these emails were not helpful to Mrs. Clinton, so they were not turned over.” (The Washington Post, 6/29/2016)
Former Ambassador-at-Large Melanne Verveer (left) (Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Michael Fuchs (right) (Credit: Center for American Progress)
Conservative group Citizens United has a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking emails that former State Department officials Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Ambassador-at-Large Melanne Verveer, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Fuchs exchanged with employees of the Clinton Foundation or Teneo Consulting, a company closely tied to the Clintons. The court has ordered the emails to be released by July 21, 2016.
However, Justice Department lawyers acting on behalf of the State Department ask US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras for an extension until October 2018 – more than two years. The State Department says they thought in March 2016 that there were only 6,000 pages of emails to process. But an error was discovered and they now believe there are more than 14,000 pages. The department also complains they are falling behind responding to FOIA requests and lawsuits in general.
Citizens United president David Bossie says, “This is totally unacceptable; the State Department is using taxpayer dollars to protect their candidate Hillary Clinton. The American people have a right to see these emails before the [November 2016 presidential] election. […] The conflicts of interest that were made possible by the activities of Hillary Clinton’s State Department in tandem with the Clinton Foundation are of significant importance to the public and the law enforcement community.” (Politico, 6/29/2016)
Russian President Vladimir Putin (Credit: Agence France Presse)
The Washington Times claims that an unnamed US intelligence official says US intelligence agencies are closely watching Russian online blogs and other Internet locations for any signs that Russian hackers have obtained Clinton’s emails from her time as secretary of state and are preparing to publicly release them. At least two postings suggest this could be happening, but the evidence cannot be confirmed as authoritative.
Additionally, an unnamed State Department official says Russia, China, and Israel are the three foreign governments most likely to have obtained all of Clinton’s emails, including her deleted ones, through covert hacking operations.
It is known that many organizations and people connected to Clinton have been hacked in recent months, and the Russian government is suspected, but their involvement has not been confirmed. If the Russians are involved, one possible motive would be to influence the FBI’s Clinton investigation and thus the 2016 presidential election. Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, calling him someone he could “get along very well with,” while Clinton espouses policies that frequently conflict with Russian aims. (The Washington Times, 6/29/2016)
A Memorandum of Understanding is renewed between the NABU and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on June 29,2017, by NABU Director Artem Sytnyk (l) and the Head of the FBI Criminal Division Mathew Moon. (Credit: public domain)
“For strengthening the existing cooperation, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (International Corruption Unit) have signed the Memorandum of Understanding. This document establishes the parties’ joint work on crimes related to international money laundering, international asset recovery, and Ukrainian high-level officials’ bribery and corruption.
At the meeting with the FBI colleagues, the NABU Director pointed out that he sees three possible ways the FBI can support the Bureau, namely the possibility of receiving the operative information on USD flows distribution, experience sharing on the operative and technical work and the work of undercover specialists, possibility of providing the NABU divisions with material and technical support.
The FBI Acting Deputy Assistant Director Mathew S. Moon emphasized that international cooperation can significantly facilitate the work of law enforcement agencies.
“If, for instance, your criminal proceeding has the accordant proceedings in the US, you can give us the numbers of the bank accounts and it will be the reason for us to issue a notice of suspicion for a person and receive the necessary information much faster. Thus, our mutual understanding will positively influence our work,” stressed Mr. Moon.
The NABU head and the FBI representatives came to the agreement that the parties will exchange the information and cooperate in the spheres of mutual interest. The FBI is going to train detectives; they will also send an invitation letter for one NABU specialist to complete a 9-week-course at the FBI National Academy, where representatives of the law enforcement agencies from more than 50 states study.
Artem Sytnyk thanked the FBI representatives for previously conducted training and for the new equipment for the Bureau.
“I`m sure that on having signed the Memorandum we strengthen our cooperation,” pointed out the NABU Director.
The Memorandum of Understanding is valid for a year since the date of signing.
It should be reminded that the agreement on cooperation between the NABU and the FBI in the sphere of collegial investigation was reached during the NABU Director’s working visit to Washington. (Read more: NABU, 6/30/2016)
Datto Headquarters in Norwalk, Connecticut. (Credit: Stephen A. Schwartz / Daily Mail)
From around June 2013 until August 2015, Clinton’s private server containing her emails from her time as secretary of state was managed by Platte River Networks. But another company, Datto Inc., was making monthly back-up copies of all the server’s data in the Internet cloud. Datto has 600 employees and is valued at $1 billion, but two people tell the Daily Mail that the company is extremely incompetent.
Marc Tamarin, president of Virtual IT Consulting, was a Datto business partner from 2009 until early 2016. He says he frequently worked with Datto’s technical support, but “Those guys were really morons. They weren’t qualified to handle our back-up and that was the biggest concern for us. … If they’re inept at the basic principles of technology, how are they going to handle something advanced like security? Most companies like mine trust their vendor that they are doing due diligence. I’ve never heard anything this bad before in my life, the dataincompetence was shocking.”
An unnamed former employee, who spent three years at the company, has even more complaints. “If you’re talking about high-level data security, at the political, presidential level, the security level of data [at Datto] … was nowhere near something that could have been protected from a good hacker that knows how to spread out their points at which to infiltrate. It’s not something that Datto was focused on. It was more about getting the data off-site quickly and cost-effectively than securing the data and keeping it from being hacked. There’s no doubt in my mind that someone could easily hack them – even today.”
He calls Datto’s security “a joke.” He claims a potential hacker could walk in off the street and sit down at an unused computer and access all the company’s data. There were no security guards, the receptionists didn’t ask questions of strangers, there was no key card access or other security features, passwords were not regularly changed, and so on. People who said they had lost their security pass would be let in without questions. Unused computers were frequently left on and logged in to the network.
He says, “For years, any Datto employee, even low-level ones, could go in any customer’s device, see their backups, restore files, and delete files.” Oftentimes, Datto customers would find themselves logged into the data of another customer without even wanting to. Datto’s internal servers were hacked in 2010. However, complaints were swept under the rug and security was not improved. (The Daily Mail, 6/30/2016)
In July 2016, the FBI uncovers evidence that two state election databases may have been recently hacked, in Arizona and Illinois. Officials shut down the voter registration systems in both states in late July 2016, with the Illinois system staying shut down for ten days.
Jeh Johnson (Credit: public domain)
On August 15, 2016, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson heads a conference call with state election officials and offers his department’s help to make state voting systems more secure. In the call, he emphasizes that he is not aware of “specific or credible cybersecurity threats” to the November 2016 presidential election.
Three days later, the FBI Cyber Division issues a warning, titled “Targeting Activity Against State Board of Election Systems.” It reveals that the FBI is investigating hacking attempts on the Arizona and Illinois state election websites. The warning suggests the hackers could be foreigners and asks other states to look for signs that they have been targeted too. Out of the eight known IP addresses used in the attacks, one IP address was used in both attacks, strongly suggesting the attacks were linked.
An unnamed “person who works with state election officials calls the FBI’s warning “completely unprecedented. … There’s never been an alert like that before that we know of.” In the Arizona case, malicious software was introduced into its voter registration system, but apparently there was no successful stealing of data. However, in the Illinois case, the hackers downloaded personal data on up to 200,000 state voters.
Tom Kellermann (Credit: BBC News)
It is not known who was behind the attacks. One theory is that the Russian government is responsible. A former lead agent in the FBI’s Cyber Division said the way the hack was done and the level of the FBI’s alert “more than likely means nation-state attackers.” Tom Kellermann, head of the cybersecurity company Strategic Cyber Ventures, believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is ultimately behind the attacks, and thinks it is connected to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other recently targeted US political targets. Kellermann says of Putin, “I think he’s just unleashed the hounds.”
But another leading theory is that common criminals are trying to steal personal data on state voters for financial gain. Milan Patel, former chief technology officer of the FBI’s Cyber Division, says, “It’s got the hallmark signs of any criminal actors, whether it be Russia or Eastern Europe.” But he adds, “the question of getting into these databases and what it means is certainly not outside the purview of state-sponsored activity.” Some cybersecurity experts note that hackers often target government databases for personal information they can sell.
Rich Barger (Credit: Threat Connect)
So far, the motive and identity of the hackers remains uncertain. Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer for ThreatConnect, says that one of the IP addresses listed in the FBI alert previously surfaced in Russian criminal underground hacker forums. However, sometimes these groups work alone, and other times they work for or cooperate with the Russian government. Barger also claims the method of attack on one of the state election systems appears to resemble methods used in other suspected Russian state-sponsored cyberattacks. But cybersecurity consultant Matt Tait says that “no robust evidence as of yet” connects the hacks to the Russian government or any other government.
US officials are considering the possibility that some entity may be attempting to hack into voting systems to influence the tabulation of results in the November 2016 election. A particular worry is that all of six states and parts of four others use only electronic voting with no paper verification. Hackers could conceivably use intrusions into voter registration databases to delete names from voter registration lists. However, this is still considered only a remote possibility. But the FBI is warning states to improve their cybersecurity to reduce the chances this could happen.
News of these attacks and FBI alerts will be made public by Yahoo News on August 29, 2016. (Yahoo News, 8/29/2016) (Politico, 8/29/2016)
FBI official Stephen Kelly sends a letter to Senator Charles Grassley (R), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in reponse to his questions. The letter reveals that FBI agents taking part in the FBI’s Clinton email investigation were sworn to secrecy. The agents signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) called a “Case Briefing Acknowledgement” which says the disclosure of any information about the investigation is “strictly prohibited” without prior approval.
The NDA reads in part: “I (FBI agent) also understand that, due to the nature and sensitivity of this investigation, compliance with these restrictions may be subject to verification by polygraph examination.”
The FBI claims that “no one refused to sign” the NDA or “raised any questions or concerns” about it.
A sample of the non-disclosure (NDA) Agreement the FBI agents were required to sign. (Credit: public domain)
An unnamed recently retired FBI agent says that this kind of NDA is reserved for “the most sensitive of sensitive cases,” and can have a “chilling effect” on agents, who understand “it comes from the very top and that there has to be a tight lid on the case.” This person adds that such NDAs can also contribute to “group think” because investigators cannot bounce ideas off other agents, only those within a small circle. (Fox News, 7/14/2016)
An upper-ranking retired FBI official says, “This is very, very unusual. I’ve never signed one, never circulated one to others.” And a current FBI agent says, “I have never heard of such a form. Sounds strange.” (The New York Post, 7/12/2016)
Senator Chuck Grassley (Credit: The Associated Press)
Grassley first wrote to the FBI with questions about NDAs on February 4, 2016, after a media report that FBI agents were asked to sign additional non-disclosure agreements in some cases.
Grassley comments that he finds it “troubling that the FBI tried to gag its agents with a non-disclosure agreement on this matter, in violation of whistleblower protection statutes.” Agents are only allowed to speak without permisssion in a limited number of circumstances, such as communications with Congress regarding waste, fraud, and abuse. (Fox News, 7/14/2016)
Information about this NDA will be first reported by The New York Post on July 12, 2016, shortly after the FBI announced Clinton would not be indicted. Fox New will wait for a follow-up letter to Grassley which won’t come until just after that announcement. (Fox News, 7/14/2016) (The New York Post, 7/12/2016)
Jonathan Capehart interviews Attorney General Loretta Lynch in Aspen, Colorado, on July 1, 2016. (Credit: MSNBC)
Attorney General Loretta Lynch says of the FBI’s Clinton investigation, “The recommendations will be reviewed by career supervisors in the Department of Justice and in the FBI, and by the FBI director, and then as is the common process, they present it to me and I fully expect to accept their recommendations.”
She doesn’t completely recuse herself from the process, saying that if she did that she wouldn’t even be able to see the FBI’s report. She says, “While I don’t have a role in those findings, in coming up with those findings or making those recommendations as to how to go forward, I will be briefed on it and I will be accepting their recommendations.” (Politico, 7/1/2016)
The New York Times comments, “Her decision removes the possibility that a political appointee will overrule investigators in the case.” The Justice Department supposedly had been moving towards the arrangement since at least April 2016, but a private meeting on June 27, 2016 between Lynch and Hillary’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, “set off a political furor and made the decision all but inevitable.” (The New York Times, 7/1/2016)
Lynch claims that she had been planning to essentially recuse herself for months, although there is no evidence of this. But it seems clear her controversial meeting with Clinton played a role. She says of the meeting, “I certainly wouldn’t do it again. Because I think it has cast a shadow.” (Politico, 7/1/2016)
The Times says that the US attorney general often follows the recommendations of career prosecutors, so she “is keeping the regular process largely intact.” However, when the FBI, led by Comey, wanted to bring felony charges against former CIA Director David Petraeus in 2013, Lynch’s predecessor Eric Holder arranged a plea deal, reducing the charge to a misdemeanor and no jail time. The created a “deep and public rift” between the FBI and the Justice Department. (The New York Times, 7/1/2016)
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest says President Obama didn’t play a role in Lynch’s decision, nor did he offer input on her decision to make that announcement. (Politico, 7/1/2016)
Attorney General Loretta Lynch arrives in Arizona for a planned visit to promote community policing. (Credit: ABC News)
At the same time that Attorney General Loretta Lynch announces she will mostly recuse herself from deciding if Clinton should be indicted or not, she also says that she regrets having a private meeting with Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton. The meeting took place four days earlier, on June 27, 2016.
She says, “I certainly wouldn’t do it again. Because I think it has cast a shadow. The most important thing for me as attorney general is the integrity of this Department of Justice. And the fact that the meeting I had is now casting a shadow over how people will view that work is something that I take seriously and deeply and painfully.”
Politico points out, “Republicans have long complained that the Justice Department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server constitutes a conflict of interest by default. They have argued that Lynch, a Democratic political appointee, might seek to protect the Democratic presidential nominee.” Additionally, Bill Clinton appointed Lynch to be US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York in 1999. (Politico, 7/1/2016)
“Judicial Watch today released 16 pages of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents related to the June 2016 tarmac meeting between former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton showing involvement of the FBI’s former Chief of Counterespionage Peter Strzok.”
(…) “In a previously unseen email, on July 1, 2016, Strzok forwarded to Bill Priestap, assistant director of FBI counterintelligence, and other FBI officials an article in The New York Times titled then “ Lynch to Remove Herself From Decision Over Clinton Emails, Official Says.” Priestap comments on it, saying: “The meeting in PX is all over CNN TV news this morning …” Strzok replies: “Timing’s not ideal in that it falsely adds to those seeking the ‘this is all choreographed’ narrative. But I don’t think it’s worth changing … later won’t be better.” Priestap responds “Agreed.”
In November 2017, Judicial Watch revealed 29 pages of FBI documents showing officials were concerned about a leak that Bill Clinton delayed his aircraft taking off in order to “maneuver” a meeting with the attorney general. The resulting story in the Observer was discussed in this production of documents. The Strzok email was absent from this production.
Another Strzok email suggest the decision on the Clinton email matter has been under discussion since April 2016—three months before then-FBI Director James Comey announced he would recommend no prosecution.
On July 3, 2016, an email with the subject line “Must Read Security Article” someone from the FBI’s Security Division (SECD) forwards the article in the Observer and reveals concern:
I believe that the source quoted in the article is one of the local Phoenix LEO’s [law enforcement officers]. Needless to say that I have contacted the Phoenix office and will contact the local’s [sic] who assisted in an attempt to stem any further damage. This is exactly why our Discretion and Judgement are the foundation of the AG’s trust in our team, which is why we can never violate that trust, like the source did in this article.” [Emphasis in original]
A July 1, 2016,email from an unidentified official in the FBI Security Division sent to officials m in several FBI offices with the subject line “Media Reports***Not for Dissemination***”, sent in the wake of the tarmac meeting, an FBI official warns his colleagues (with emphasis) “Our job is to protect the boss from harm and embarrassment.” [Emphasis in original] He emphasizes that FBI officials should ask themselves “What issues are currently being reported in the media? And what actions/interactions/situations that the Director may be in could impact them.” The official then cites an example of a public relations disaster near-miss when Comey’s plane “literally just missed Clinton’s plane” when they flew into the White Plains, NY airport (HPN) a few months earlier, and saying, “Imagine the optics and the awkward situation we would have put the Director in we would have been at the FBO at the same time as Secretary Clinton.”
In a July 1, 2016email exchange FBI Section Chief Rachel Rojas warns a colleague to “stay away” from discussion of the Clinton Lynch tarmac meeting following publication of the meeting, unless they hear from a “higher up”. The colleague responds the next day, telling Rojas not to worry because, “I know better <winking.>” He/she adds that “it was DOJ opa [Office of Public Affairs] who threw us under the bus.” Rojas replies “Doj is likely overwhelmed so in [sic] hoping it wasn’t intentional. I know it wasn’t you guys because I know you have great judgement. Nothing good would come from that. Her staff should have avoided that scenario. The bu[reau] will be fine but obviously disappointed on how this is happening. Unfortunately, she’s taking heat from all over the place and I feel bad for her. I know she didn’t want this on her plate or for this to happen.” The colleague then concludes by saying that he/she thought the leaker was “a Phoenix cop assisting with the motorcade.”
“These emails are astonishing, no wonder the FBI hid them from Judicial Watch and the court,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “They show anti-Trump, pro-Clinton FBI Agent Peter Strzok admitting the decision not to prosecute the Clinton email issue was made back in April 2016 – long before even Hillary Clinton was interviewed. And the new emails show that the FBI security had the political objective of protecting then-Director Comey from ‘embarrassment’—which is, frankly, disturbing.” (Read more: Judicial Watch, 6/07/2018)
“Judicial Watch today released 16 pages of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents related to the June 2016 tarmac meeting between former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton showing involvement of the FBI’s former Chief of Counterespionage Peter Strzok.
The FBI originally informed Judicial Watch they could not locate any records related to the tarmac meeting. However, in a related FOIA lawsuit, the Justice Department located emails in which Justice Department officials communicated with the FBI and wrote that they had communicated with the FBI. As a result, by letter dated August 10, 2017, the FBI stated, “Upon further review, we subsequently determined potentially responsive documents may exist. As a result, your [FOIA] request has been reopened …” This is the second batch of documents the FBI produced since telling Judicial Watch they had no tarmac-related records.
(…) “On July 3, 2016, an email with the subject line “Must Read Security Article” someone from the FBI’s Security Division (SECD) forwards the article in the Observer and reveals concern:
A July 1, 2016, email from an unidentified official in the FBI Security Division sent to officials in several FBI offices with the subject line “Media Reports***Not for Dissemination***”, sent in the wake of the tarmac meeting, an FBI official warns his colleagues (with emphasis) “Our job is to protect the boss from harm and embarrassment.” [Emphasis in original] He emphasizes that FBI officials should ask themselves “What issues are currently being reported in the media? And what actions/interactions/situations that the Director may be in could impact them.” The official then cites an example of a public relations disaster near-miss when Comey’s plane “literally just missed Clinton’s plane” when they flew into the White Plains, NY airport (HPN) a few months earlier, and saying, “Imagine the optics and the awkward situation we would have put the Director in we would have been at the FBO at the same time as Secretary Clinton.”
Rachel Rojas (Credit: YouTube)
In a July 1, 2016email exchange FBI Section Chief Rachel Rojas warns a colleague to “stay away” from discussion of the Clinton Lynch tarmac meeting following publication of the meeting, unless they hear from a “higher up”. The colleague responds the next day, telling Rojas not to worry because, “I know better <winking.>” He/she adds that “it was DOJ opa [Office of Public Affairs] who threw us under the bus.” Rojas replies “Doj is likely overwhelmed so in [sic] hoping it wasn’t intentional. I know it wasn’t you guys because I know you have great judgement. Nothing good would come from that. Her staff should have avoided that scenario. The bu[reau] will be fine but obviously disappointed on how this is happening. Unfortunately, she’s taking heat from all over the place and I feel bad for her. I know she didn’t want this on her plate or for this to happen.” The colleague then concludes by saying that he/she thought the leaker was “a Phoenix cop assisting with the motorcade.”
(…) “These emails are astonishing, no wonder the FBI hid them from Judicial Watch and the court,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.” “…the new emails show that the FBI security had the political objective of protecting then-Director Comey from ‘embarrassment’—which is, frankly, disturbing.” (Read more:Judicial Watch, 6/07/2018)
Bruce Ohr (l) and Christopher Steele (Credit: public domain)
“The then-No. 4 Department of Justice (DOJ) official briefed both senior FBI and DOJ officials in summer 2016 about Christopher Steele’s Russia dossier, explicitly cautioning that the British intelligence operative’s work was opposition research connected to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and might be biased.
Ohr’s briefings, in July and August 2016, included the deputy director of the FBI, a top lawyer for then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and a Justice official who later would become the top deputy to special counsel Robert Mueller.
At the time, Ohr was the associate attorney general. Yet his warnings about political bias were pointedly omitted weeks later from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant that the FBI obtained from a federal court, granting it permission to spy on whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to hijack the 2016 presidential election.
Ohr’s activities, chronicled in handwritten notes and congressional testimony I gleaned from sources, provide the most damning evidence to date that FBI and DOJ officials may have misled federal judges in October 2016 in their zeal to obtain the warrant targeting Trump adviser Carter Page just weeks before Election Day.” (Read more: The Hill, 1/16/2019)
CNN Transcript: […] “New this morning, lawmakers on Capitol Hill getting their hands on a new batch of text messages between two FBI officials who worked, albeit briefly, for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. We’re talking about 400 pages of text.
[10:50:09] Joining me now, CNN justice reporter Jessica Schneider. Jessica, what are you learning?
Jessica Schneider (Credit: CNN)
JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, well, these texts of course have become — they’ve become the focus for Republican lawmakers who have repeatedly criticized the FBI. So this latest batch was partially released over the weekend by Homeland Security chair Ron Johnson. They’re texts between FBI agent Peter Strzok, who worked on the Clinton e-mail server investigation and then the Russia probe until he was pulled off this summer for anti-Trump texts. And they were between him and an FBI lawyer Lisa Page with whom Strzok was having a romantic relationship.
So in that handful of texts that were released this weekend, there is this one from July 1st, 2016. It was about then Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s decision to accept the FBI’s decision on the Clinton matter when she essentially recused herself after she met with Bill Clinton on board her plane.
So here it is. You see Peter Strzok, he texts, “The timing looks like hell, will appear to be choreographed.” That’s when the attorney for the FBI, Lisa Page, she eventually texted back, “And, yes, it’s a real profile in courage since she knows no charges will be brought.”
So in releasing that text message, Senator Johnson, he wrote to the DOJ in response, he said it appears by those texts that Attorney General Lynch knew that no charges would be brought when she made her announcement to let the FBI handle the investigation. (CNN, 1/22/2018)
(…) “Between July and October 2016, Clinton-connected lawyers, emissaries and apologists made more than a half-dozen overtures to U.S. officials, each tapping a political connection to get suspect evidence into FBI counterintelligence agents’ hands, according to internal documents and testimonies I reviewed and interviews I conducted.
(…) Ex-FBI general counsel James Baker, one of the more senior bureau executives to be targeted, gave a memorable answer when congressional investigators asked how attorney Michael Sussmann from the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party, came to personally deliver him dirt on Trump.
“You’d have to ask him why he decided to pick me,” Baker said last year in testimony that has not yet been released publicly. The FBI’s top lawyer turned over a calendar notation to Congress, indicating that he met Sussmann on Sept. 19, 2016, less than two months before Election Day.
(…) Baker’s detailed account illustrates how a political connection — Sussmann and Baker knew each other — was leveraged to get anti-Trump research to FBI leaders.
“[Sussmann] told me he had cyber experts that had obtained some information that they thought they should get into the hands of the FBI,” Baker testified.
“Please come get this,” he recalled telling his colleagues. Baker acknowledged it was not the normal way for counterintelligence evidence to enter the FBI.
But when the bureau’s top lawyer makes a request, things happen in the rank-and-file.
The overture was neither the first nor the last instance of Clinton-connected Trump dirt reaching the FBI.
(…) During a trip to Washington later that month, Steele reached out to two political contacts with the credentials to influence the FBI.
Then-senior State Department official Jonathan Winer, who worked for then-Secretary John Kerry, wrote that Steele first approached him in the summer with his Trump research and then met again with him in September. Winer consulted his boss, Assistant Secretary for Eurasia Affairs Victoria Nuland, who said she first learned of Steele’s allegations in late July and urged Winer to send it to the FBI.
Cheryl Mills, Katherine Turner and David Kendall sit behind Clinton as she testifies to the House Select Committee on Benghazi on October 22, 2015. (Credit: Getty Images)
When an FBI summary of Clinton’s FBI interview on this day will be released in September 2016, it will reveal that five of Clinton’s lawyers are present during her questioning: Cheryl Mills, David Kendall, Heather Samuelson, Katherine Turner, and one whose name is redacted. Three of these lawyers – Mills, Kendall, and Samuelson – also have a key role to play in the Clinton email controversy the FBI investigated, because they were the ones who sorted over 60,000 of Clinton’s emails, which led to the controversial deletion of over 31,000 of them. Both Mills and Samuelson at least were interviewed by the FBI earlier in the investigation.
Furthermore, Mills was Clinton’s chief of staff and close aide through Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, only becoming one of Clinton’s lawyers in 2013 after Clinton became a private citizen again.
Andrew McCarthy (Credit: Gatestone Institute)
Andrew McCarthy, a former assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York later turned journalist, will note this in a later National Review article with the title: “Hillary Clinton’s Mind-Boggling FBI Interview – What Was Cheryl Mills Doing There?”
McCarthy will comment: “Mills was an actor in the facts that were under criminal investigation by the FBI. … [I]t is simply unbelievable to find her turning up at Mrs. Clinton’s interview – participating in the capacity of a lawyer under circumstances where Clinton was being investigated over matters in which Mills participated as a non-lawyer government official.”
He will add, “[L]aw enforcement never [interview] witnesses together – the point is to learn the truth, not provide witnesses/suspects with an opportunity to keep their story straight, which undermines the search for truth.” (National Review, 9/2/2016)
The Secret Service stands on guard at the home of Hillary Clinton in Washington, DC, on July 2, 2016. (Credit: Cliff Owen / The Associated Press)
After months of speculation and after interviews with Clinton’s top aides, the FBI finally directly interviews Hillary Clinton. The interview takes place on a Saturday morning over the Fourth of July weekend, and takes place at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. Although some news reports one day earlier correctly predicted the day it would take place, no photographers are able to take any pictures of her arriving or leaving.
The New York Times reports, “The interview had been weeks in the making as law enforcement officials and Mrs. Clinton’s team coordinated schedules. Democrats also hoped that holding the interview on a holiday weekend might ease the anticipated storm.”
The interview takes place just three weeks before Clinton is expected to be nominated for president at the Democratic convention. It lasts three and a half hours, a time some consider short after a year-long investigation. It is said to be voluntary, meaning she wasn’t subpoenaed.
Clinton is accompanied into the meeting by her personal lawyer David Kendall, her longtime aides and lawyers Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, and Katherine Turner and Amy Saharia, who are lawyers from Kendall’s firm Williams & Connolly. Eight officials from the FBI and the Justice Department conduct the interview.
Little is publicly revealed about the content of the interview. However, one unnamed person who is “familiar with the substance of the session” characterizes the meeting as “civil” and “businesslike.”
It is anticipated that the interview means the FBI’s interview is nearing a conclusion. However, the Times also reports, “Although the interview on Saturday was an important step toward closure on the email issue, technical analysis of the material remains to be done and could stretch on for an indeterminate period.” (The New York Times, 7/2/2016)
Several days later, it will be revealed that the interview was not recorded, due to FBI policy, and Clinton didn’t have to swear an oath to tell the truth. Also, FBI Director James Comey was not one of the five or six FBI officials to take part, although he had previously given indications that he would. (The Hill, 7/7/2016)
In Clinton’s FBI interview on this day, she is asked for her opinion on more than a dozen specific emails from her time as secretary of state. For just one of the emails mentioned in the FBI’s summary of her interview, the date of the email is redacted. This would indicate it is an email deemed “top secret” or above top secret, because only the dates of such emails have remained classified.
Clinton’s response about the email is also heavily redacted in the FBI’s summary. But it is mentioned that Clinton claims she doesn’t remember the email. Also, she is asked about a comment made by the man who sent her the email in which he wrote “let me know what you can via this channel.” That would suggest whoever wrote the email didn’t mind using private email matters to discuss top secret information, which would be why the FBI would ask about this email and that particular comment.
According to the later FBI summary, Clinton said that this was “representative of the emphasis he placed on handling information appropriately. Clinton had no concerns the displayed email contained classified information.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
Hours after the FBI interviews Clinton as part of their Clinton email investigation, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says, “It is impossible for the FBI not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton. What she did was wrong!”
The Republican National Committee (RNC) issues a statement after the interview, saying that Clinton “has just taken the unprecedented step of becoming the first major party presidential candidate to be interviewed by the FBI as part of a criminal investigation surrounding her reckless conduct.” (The New York Times, 7/2/2016)
In Clinton’s FBI interview on this day, she is asked about her role in sorting her emails from her tenure as secretary of state into work-related and personal emails.
An FBI report published in September 2016 will summarize her response: “In the fall of 2014, Clinton recalled receiving a letter from [the] State [Department] which was also sent to former Secretaries of State Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Madeline Albright. From the letter, Clinton understood State was concerned there were gaps in their records and requested Clinton’s assistance in filling those gaps. Clinton wanted to assist State, so she directed her legal team to assist in any way they could. Clinton expected her team to provide any work-related or arguably work-related emails to State; however, she did not participate in the development of the specific process to be used or discussions of the locations where her emails might exist. Additionally, Clinton was not consulted on specific emails as to their content being work-related or not. Clinton did not have any conversations regarding procedures if any potentially classified information was discovered during the review of her emails because she had no reason to believe classified information would be found in her email account.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
Clinton’s testimony differs from the known facts in one important detail. She claims that she didn’t direct her lawyers (David Kendall, Cheryl Mill, and Heather Samuelson) to begin the sorting process until she was formally asked about her email records at the same time other former secretaries of states were. That took place on October 28, 2014. The sorted work-related emails were given to the State Department on December 5, 2014, a little over one month later. However, Samuelson, the Clinton lawyer who did most of the sorting, said in her FBI interview that the sorting process took “several months.”
Furthermore, it is known that after the State Department informally asked for Clinton’s emails, Samuelson was first given some of Clinton’s emails to sort (all of those involving .gov email addresses) in late July 2014, and then was given all of Clinton’s emails to complete the sorting in late September 2014.
Clinton motions as she leaves a press conference in Las Vegas, NV, on August 18, 2015, where she jokes with reporter Ed Henry about wiping her server with a cloth. (Credit: David Becker / Reuters)
In late March 2015, Paul Combetta, an employee of Platte River Networks (PRN), deleted all of Clinton’s emails from her private server and then used a computer program to permanently wipe them. Two of Clinton’s lawyers, Cheryl Mills and David Kendall, had communications with Combetta in that time period, including speaking in a conference call in which he also participated just after the deletions were done, on March 31, 2015.
However, Clinton is interviewed by the FBI on this date, and the FBI will later report that “Clinton stated she was… unaware of the March 2015 email deletions by PRN.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
Clinton’s claim is particularly surprising considering that in August 2015, it was reported that Clinton’s campaign had acknowledged “that there was an attempt to wipe [Clinton’s private] server before it was turned over last week to the FBI.” (NBC News, 8/19/2015)
SCIF rooms are made of metal before the final plaster is put on the walls. (Credit: diaa.com)
At the beginning of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, the State Department outfitted Clinton’s houses in Whitehaven, Washington, DC, and Chappaqua. New York, with a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) so she could read highly classified documents. According to the FBI’s notes of Clinton’s July 2, 2016 FBI interview, Clinton claims, “Both SCIFs had a combination lock that only Clinton knew the combination to. … It was Clinton’s practice to lock the SCIF every time it was vacated.”
However, according to the FBI interview of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, “the SCIF door at the Whitehaven residence was not always locked, and Abedin, Hanley, and [redacted] had access to the SCIF.” Additionally, “Investigation determined the Chappaqua SCIF was not always secured, and Abedin, [Clinton aide Monica] Hanley, and [redacted] had routine access to the SCIF.”
Furthermore, the FBI will later report, “According to Abedin, [Bill Clinton aide Justin] Cooper, and [redacted], there were personally-owned desktop computers in the SCIFs in Whitehaven and Chappaqua. Conversely, Clinton stated to the FBI she did not have a computer of any kind in the SCIFs in her residences.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
When Clinton is interviewed by the FBI for three and a half hours, she often fails to give clear answers. According to CNN, “Clinton repeatedly told the FBI she couldn’t recall key details and events related to classified information procedures…” The FBI’s summary of the interview, released in September 2016, will indicate “Clinton told investigators she either does not ‘recall’ or ‘remember’ at least 39 times — often in response to questions about process, potential training, or the content of specific emails.” (CNN, 9/2/2016)
Mediaite will list 40 times when she says she couldn’t remember or recall something. (Mediaite, 9/2/2016)
A few examples from Mediaite’s list of 40 times Clinton couldn’t remember or recall something. (Credit: Mediaite)
The WashingtonPost will similarly note, “she repeatedly told agents she could not recall important details or specific emails she was questioned about.” Some of her forgetfulness is hard to believe, such as an observation by the Post that she claimed she “did not know much about how the government classified information. For instance, she said she did not pay attention to the difference between levels of classification, like ‘top secret’ and ‘secret,’ indicating she took ‘all classified information seriously.'” Additionally, when she was shown with the (C) marking, which is commonly used by the department to indicate classified information, she didn’t recognize it. (The Washington Post, 9/2/2016)
The FBI summary will mention that “in December of 2012, Clinton suffered a concussion and then around the New Year had a blood clot. Based on her doctor’s advice, she could only work at State for a few hours a day and could not recall every briefing she received.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
CNN photo of former FBI director Tom Fuentes in an interview with Fredricka Whitfield on July 3, 2016. (Credit: CNN)
Former FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes comments about the FBI’s Clinton investigation: “What I’ve been hearing is, is that the leaks that are supposedly being attributed that say she’s not likely to be charged are not being made by anybody that knows what they’re talking about. I’ve talked to people who at least know that there’s nothing leaking out of the FBI about any decision that’s been made.”
He continues, “I just question the leaks that are coming out. From what I’ve heard, there are no leaks coming out. And agents that even know and that have friends that are working on this case don’t know what’s going on. This has been tightly held. And also, within the FBI, any threat of a leak of the investigation against employees of the FBI is a career ender. It’s serious and they can be prosecuted. And they know that. And so that’s why you don’t often have leaks come out during the FBI part of it, but when they start disseminating it, especially when the report goes across the street to the Department of Justice, then you’re going to start hearing about that.” (CNN, 7/3/2016)
Former FBI assistant director, Tom Fuentes (Credit: CNN)
Former FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes is asked if anything can be surmised from the relatively short amount of time (three and a half hours) the FBI questioned Clinton. He says, “Oftentimes, the subject interview at the end of a case… may not be that important. That’s one reason why it could be short. It could be they already have all the evidence they need. It doesn’t matter, really, what she says. They have physical and documentary evidence to substantiate the case. Or they were asking her questions that may lead to additional interviews. We don’t know that. But oftentimes, a short interview with the main subject at the end of a case usually means the case has already been made and the evidence already obtained and they don’t really need other than what the subject can offer reasons or mitigation for the information the FBI already has.”
When asked if Clinton’s recent comment that she’s been waiting since August 2015 to be interviewed by the FBI is true, Fuentes says, “No. I don’t believe that’s true.”
He says that while she might have been ready to talk to them, they weren’t ready to talk to her until after they’d compiled all the other evidence. “[Then] when they were ready to talk to her in recent times, she hasn’t been as quick to be interviewed, and I’ve heard discussions about the timing of that.” (CNN, 7/3/2016)
Judicial Watch announced today it received from the U.S. Department of Justice 119 pages of records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) revealing that, after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement denying the transmission of classified information over her unsecure email system, former FBI official Peter Strzok sent an email to FBI officials citing “three [Clinton email] chains” containing (C) [classified] portion marks in front of paragraphs.”
The records containing emails from Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page also reveal senior FBI officials’ concerns over articles written about the “tarmac meeting” between former President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Strzok specifically cited a CBS News report terming the meeting “shocking, absolutely shocking,” and adding that, “the appearance of impropriety is just stunning.”
In a July 4, 2016, email exchange with Priestap, Moffa, and unidentified Office of the General Counsel officials, a Daily Beastarticle titled “Is Hillary Clinton Telling the Truth About Emails?” is discussed in which Clinton is quoted saying that she never sent or received emails with material marked classified.
“Christopher Steele, a former British MI-6 intelligence officer who specialized in Russian operations, had been hired as an investigator by an opposition research firm. According to one of the sources, it was Steele who first alerted FBI agents on July 5 to evidence he had compiled that advisers to the Trump campaign and Kremlin officials were in contact about the 2016 election.”
James Comey (Credit: Jim Watson/Agence France Presse/Getty Images
(…) “The early contact between Steele and the bureau now appears to have set in motion a chain of events that led to Monday’s extraordinary testimony by Comey that the bureau has been actively investigating possible links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin since “late July” — or more than three months before Election Day.
“I’ve been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” Comey told members of the House Intelligence Committee in a prepared opening statement. “That includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”
(…) “It is not a cloud that is likely to be lifted any time soon. Comey said there was no timetable on the probe, that he couldn’t predict how long it would take, and wouldn’t commit to giving any “updates” to the Congress about the status of the probe. When asked directly by Rep. Teri Sewell, D-Ala., “Was Donald Trump under investigation during the campaign?” Comey responded: “I’m not going to answer that.” He added quickly that the members shouldn’t draw any “inferences” from his answer.” (Read more: Yahoo News, 3/20/2017)
FBI Director James Comey announces his recommendation in a press conference on July 5, 2016. (Credit: Cliff Owen / The Associated Press)
FBI Director James Comey gives a public speech in front of a group of reporters. The timing is surprising, since this brings an end to the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s email practices, and just a Sunday and the Fourth of July holiday separate this from the FBI’s interview of Clinton on July 2, 2016. Comey spends most of his speech criticizing Clinton, but ends it by saying he will not recommend that the Justice Department pursue any indictment of Clinton or her aides.
Comey’s fifteen-minute speech includes the following information, in order, with key phrases bolded to assist in understanding.
Comey begins by describing the FBI investigation:
The investigation started with a referral from Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough, and “focused on whether classified information was transmitted” on Clinton’s personal email server during her time as secretary of state. It specifically “looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way, or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.” The FBI “also investigated to determine whether there is evidence of computer intrusion in connection with the personal email server by any foreign power, or other hostile actors.”
The FBI found that Clinton “used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send email on that personal domain. As new servers and equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and decommissioned in various ways…”
The FBI analyzed the over 30,000 work emails that Clinton did turn over to the State Department in December 2014, working with other US government departments to determine which emails contained truly classified information at the time they were sent, and which ones were justifiably classified later.
James Comey (Credit: Fox News)
From the group of 30,068 emails Clinton returned to the State Department, “110 emails in 52 email chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was ‘top secret’ at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained ‘secret’ information at the time; and eight contained ‘confidential’ information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional emails were ‘up-classified’ to make them ‘confidential’; the information in those had not been classified at the time the emails were sent.”
It had previously been reported that the FBI had recovered most or all of the 31,830 emails that Clinton had deleted, allegedly because they contained personal information only. However, Comey reveals that was not the case, and thousands of emails were not recovered. He gives an example of how when one of Clinton’s servers was decommissioned in 2013, the email was removed and broken up into millions of fragments.
The FBI “discovered several thousand work-related emails” that were not included in the 30,068 emails Clinton returned to the State Department, even though Clinton claimed under oath that she had returned all her work-related emails. The FBI found these after they “had been deleted over the years and we found traces of them on devices that supported or were connected to the private email domain.” Others were found in the archived government email accounts of other government employees whom Clinton frequently communicated with. Still others were found “from the laborious review of the millions of email fragments” of the server decommissioned in 2013.
Out of these additional work emails, three were classified at the time they were sent or received – none at the ‘top secret’ level, one at the ‘secret’ level, and two at the ‘confidential’ level. None were found to have been deemed classified later.
Furthermore, Comey claims “we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related emails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Our assessment is that, like many email users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted emails or emails were purged from the system when devices were changed. Because she was not using a government account—or even a commercial account like Gmail—there was no archiving at all of her emails, so it is not surprising that we discovered emails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s system in 2014, when she produced the 30,000 emails to the State Department.”
The three Clinton attorneys who deleted emails are David Kendall (left), Cheryl Mills (center), and Heather Samuelson (right). (Credit: public domain)
However, he also admits that “It could also be that some of the additional work-related emails we recovered were among those deleted as ‘personal’ by Secretary Clinton’s lawyers when they reviewed and sorted her emails for production in 2014.” He claims that the three lawyers who sorted the emails for Clinton in late 2014 (David Kendall, Cheryl Mills, and Heather Samuelson) “did not individually read the content of all of her emails…” Instead, they used keyword searches to determine which emails were work related, and it is “highly likely their search terms missed some work-related emails” that were later found by the FBI elsewhere.
Comey states it is “likely” that some emails may have disappeared forever. because Clinton’s three lawyers “deleted all emails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.” But he says that after interviews and technical examination, “we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort.”
Comey then begins stating his findings:
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
As an example, he points out that “seven email chains concern matters that were classified at the ‘Top Secret/Special Access Program’ [TP/SAP] level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending emails about those matters and receiving emails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.”
He adds that it was a similar situation with emails classified at the “secret” level when they were sent, although he doesn’t specify how many.
He comments, “None of these emails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these emails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at departments and agencies of the US government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.”
He notes that “only a very small number of the emails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked ‘classified’ in an email, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.”
He then criticizes the State Department as a whole. The FBI found evidence that “the security culture” of the State Department “was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.” This was especially true regarding the use of unclassified email systems.
Then he addresses whether “hostile actors” were able to gain access to Clinton’s emails. Although no direct evidence of any successful hacking was found, he points out that “given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.”
After laying out the evidence of what the FBI found, Comey moves to the FBI’s recommendation to the Justice Department. He admits that it is highly unusual to publicly reveal the FBI’s recommendation, but “in this case, given the importance of the matter, I think unusual transparency is in order.”
James Comey (Credit: NPR)
Then he comes to these conclusions:
“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.”
To justify this decision, he claims he examined other cases involving the mishandling or removal of classified information, and “we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.”
He then says, “To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now. As a result, although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.”
He concludes by saying the FBI’s investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently, and without any kind of outside influence.
He doesn’t address the possibility of recommending the indictment of any of Clinton’s aides or other figures like Sid Blumenthal or Justin Cooper. He also doesn’t make any mention of the Clinton Foundation, though there have been media reports the FBI has been investigating it as well. After finishing his speech, he leaves without taking any questions from the media. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 7/5/2016)
Lisa Page references Christopher Steele’s FBI handler during her testimony July 13, 2018:
An Orbis Business Intelligence ad that states, “”We provide strategic advice, mount intelligence-gathering operations and conduct complex, often cross-border investigations.” (Credit: public domain)
“When the FBI first receives the reports that are known as the dossier from an FBI agent who is Christopher Steele’s handler in September of 2016 at that time, we do not know who—we don’t know why these reports have been generated.”
Steele’s handler is almost certainly Michael Gaeta, head of the FBI’s Eurasian Crime Squad. Gaeta, an FBI agent and also assistant legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, has known the former MI6 spy since at least 2010, when Steele provided assistance in the FBI’s investigation into the FIFA corruption scandal over concern that Russia might have been engaging in bribery to host the 2018 World Cup.
On July 5, 2016, Gaeta traveled to London and met with Steele at the offices of Steele’s firm, Orbis. For this visit, the FBI sought permission from the office of Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Nuland, who had been the recipient of many of Steele’s reports, gave permission for the more formal meeting.
Nuland provided this version of events during a Feb. 4, 2018, appearance on CBS News’ “Face the Nation”:
“In the middle of July, when he [Steele] was doing this other work and became concerned, he passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding and our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That’s something for the FBI to investigate.”
In September 2016, Steele would travel back to Rome to meet with the FBI Eurasian squad again. It was at this meeting that Steele gave a copy of his dossier—what there was of it at that time—to the FBI counterintelligence team investigators.
One individual who had previous involvement with the Eurasian Crime Squad was former FBI Deputy Director McCabe:
“McCabe began his career as a special agent with the FBI in 1996,” the FBI states on its website. “He first reported to the New York division, where he investigated a variety of organized crime matters. In 2003, he became the supervisory special agent of the Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force.”
McCabe remained with the Eurasian squad until 2006, when he was moved to FBI headquarters in Washington.
The question that has yet to be answered was who, exactly, did Gaeta give the dossier to and when. Was it transmitted to FBI leadership? If so, why did the counterintelligence team have to travel to Rome in September to get their first copy from Steele?
And finally, potentially the biggest question: Did Brennan receive a copy of the dossier via Gaeta—or whomever he transmitted a copy to—in the summer of 2016 following Gaeta’s return?” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 1/11/2019)
One of the judges, David Sentelle, writes, “It would make as much sense to say that the department head could deprive requestors of hard-copy documents by leaving them in a file at his daughter’s house and then claiming that they are under her control.”
The case involves the private email account of Dr. John Holdren, an official working for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, a branch of the White House. It overturns a March 2015 lower court ruling that said his privately stored emails were not subject to FOIA searches.
While the case doesn’t directly involve Clinton, it has obvious implications for her since the issue of Clinton storing her emails on her private server is so similar. For instance, in June 2016, a federal judge put a FOIA lawsuit related to Clinton’s privately held emails on hold, saying it would be “wise” to wait for this court’s ruling before proceeding with the suit. (The Washington Post, 7/6/2016) (The Associated Press, 7/5/2016)
President Barack Obama talks with FBI Director James Comey during his installation as FBI director, Oct. 28,2013. (Credit: Charles Dharapak / The Associated Press)
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest says, “I can first confirm what [FBI] Director [James] Comey said with regard to the White House, which is that no one from the White House received advance notice of his comments. In fact, no one from the White House received advance notice that he was planning to make comments today.”
Earnest refuses to comment on Comey’s assessment that Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” in their handling of sensitive classified material, or Comey’s recommendation that he nonetheless would not recommend she be indicted. (Politico, 7/5/2016)
Representative Chris Stewart (Credit: public domain)
In his public speech ending the FBI’s Clinton investigation, FBI Director James Comey mentions Clinton’s emails contained eight chains containing “top secret’ information, instead of the previously reported seven chains of 22 emails. The New York Times reports that it is “not immediately clear what subject the eighth chain Mr. Comey cited involved, but his statement means that more than 22 emails already disclosed included ‘top secret’ information. Officials at the FBI did not respond to inquiries seeking further explanation.” (The New York Times, 7/5/2016)
On February 3, 2016, Representative Chris Stewart (R), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who viewed Clinton’s 22 “top secret” emails, claimed that there are seven more Clinton emails with a classification of “top secret” that the government has not revealed. (The Washington Examiner, 3/3/2016) Comey’s remarks suggest Stewart was correct.
This is according to public comments by FBI Director James Comey. Three of these were not included in the emails Clinton turned over to the State Department, but were discovered by the FBI through other means. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 7/5/2016)
The New York Times comments that this means those emails “should never have been sent or received on an unclassified computer network — not hers, not even the State Department’s official state.gov system. That fact refutes the core argument she and others have made: that the entire controversy turned on the overzealous, after-the-fact classification of emails as they were being made public under the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA], rather than the mishandling of the nation’s secrets.” (The New York Times, 7/5/2016)
Although FBI Director James Comey announces he will not recommend an indictment of Clinton, comments in his public speech reveal information that could be very politically damaging for Clinton. It was previously known that Clinton’s emails contained 22 “top secret” emails in seven different email chains. However, Comey reveals, “Those chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending and receiving emails about those same matters.”
This contradicts previous news reports that Clinton had only been the recipient of “top secret” emails. Comey also says that seven email chains contain “top secret / special access program” (TP/SAP) information, which is above top secret, plus one more previously unknown email chain at the “top secret” level. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 7/5/2016)
The New York Times notes, “Those emails have been widely reported to include information about the Central Intelligence Agency’s program to use drones to track and kill terrorism suspects. … Only a small number of officials are allowed access to those programs, which are the nation’s most sensitive intelligence operations.”
Another 36 chains were “secret,” which means it includes information that “could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security.” Eight more chains had information classified at the “confidential” level.
The Times comments that Comey’s speech “was, arguably, the worst possible good news Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign could have hoped for: no criminal charges, but a pointed refutation of statements like one she flatly made last August,” when she said, “I did not send classified material.” (The New York Times, 7/5/2016) (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 7/5/2016)
Chris Swecker (Credit: North Carolina Government Crime Commission)
Chris Swecker is a former FBI assistant director for the Criminal Investigative Division. He comments on FBI Director James Comey’s announcement earlier in the day that the FBI will not recommend that Clinton be indicted. Swecker believes that Comey should have recommended an indictment, as “he seemed to be building a case for that and he laid out what I thought were the elements under the gross negligence aspect of it, so I was very surprised at the end when he said that there was a recommendation of no prosecution. And also, given the fact-based nature of this and the statement that no reasonable prosecutor would entertain prosecution, I don’t think that’s the standard.”
He concludes, “The facts are the facts, and in this case I think there are a lot of things that are very unusual about this.” (MSNBC, 7/5/2016)
Clinton addresses the National Education Association (NEA) in Washington, DC, on July 5, 2016. (Credit: Molly Riley / The Associated Press)
Clinton happens to be giving a prescheduled campaign speech to a convention of the National Education Association (NEA) at the exact time FBI Director James Comey publicly announces he will not recommend Clinton’s indictment. She also doesn’t make any public comment immediately afterwards.
However, Clinton’s spokesperson Brian Fallon says, “We are pleased that the career officials handling this case have determined that no further action by the department is appropriate. As the secretary has long said, it was a mistake to use her personal email and she would not do it again. We are glad that this matter is now resolved.”
The Washington Post notes that Fallon simply ignores “Comey’s criticism of Clinton’s handling of classified material in her email…” (The Washington Post, 7/5/2016)
Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the House, says he thought FBI Director James Comey was going to recommend prosecution, based on the first part of Comey’s public speech earlier in the day. He says Comey “shredded” Clinton’s defense of her email practices while serving as secretary of state, she had been “grossly negligent,” and “people have been convicted for far less.”
Ryan says the fact that the FBI decided not to recommend charges “underscores the belief that the Clintons live above the law.” He explains Republican hearings will be lead by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz. Ryan also says Clinton should be blocked from accessing classified information as a presidential candidate, and the FBI should release all of its findings regarding the Clinton email investigation. (The Hill, 7/5/2016)
James Kallstrom is interviewed by Megyn Kelly on Fox News, on July 5, 2016. (Credit: Fox News)
On July 5, 2016, former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom is interviewed by Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly about FBI Director James Comey’s announcement earlier in the day that he won’t recommend to indict Clinton.
He says, “I have defended him in the past, but those days are over… I thought the events of the last week there was something fishy going on… then he comes to that nonsensical conclusion that really wasn’t his to make.” He adds that he has spoken with about 15 current and former agents who “are basically worried about the reputation of the agency they love, that they’ve worked hard for all their life.” (The Washington Free Beacon, 7/6/2016)
On September 6, 2016, Kallstrom is interviewed by Kelly again, four days after the FBI Clinton email investigation’s final report and Clinton’s FBI interview summary are publicly released. He says he is “shocked and furious and dismayed” at Comey “pull[ing] the old political trick of waiting until a three-day holiday weekend and then releasing information,” as well as how the FBI conducted the interview of Clinton. He adds, “Megyn, I’ve had contact with 50 different people, both inside and outside, retired agents, that are basically disgusted. And, you know, it’s part of the last straw.” (Fox News, 9/6/2016)
On September 28, 2016, Kallstrom speaks on air to Kelly again. He says he has been contacted by hundreds of people, including “a lot of retired agents and a few on the job.” He claims the agents “involved in this thing feel like they’ve been stabbed in the back. … I think we’re going to see a lot more of the facts come out in the course of the next few months. That’s my prediction.”
James Kallstrom on November 3, 2016. (Credit: Mary Altaffer)
On November 3, 2016, the Daily Beast will publish an article largely based on a recent interview with Kallstrom. It will note that he recently endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump for president. Kallstrom, a former Marine, founded a charity decades ago called the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation. Trump’s personal charity, the Trump Foundation, gave Kallstrom’s charity $1,000,000 in May 2016, $100,000 in March 2016, and another $230,000 in prior years. These are unusually large numbers for Trump’s foundation. When Trump owned casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, he allowed Kallstrom’s charity to hold fundraisers for free in them. Kallstrom met Trump on occasion over the years, often during public events.
Kallstrom tells the Daily Beast that he has gotten hundreds and hundreds of calls and emails from both active and retired agents. He claims that in all but two cases the agents have been supportive of what he’s said in his Fox News appearances, except for two agents who told him he should be more supportive of Comey. He claims that he’s never been in contact with agents directly involved with the Clinton email investigation, and has not tried to give them advice.
He says he’s apolitical and a registered independent voter, and although he plans to vote for Trump, he has never been involved in a campaign, including Trump’s. (The Daily Beast, 11/3/2016)
In a July 5, 2016 public speech, FBI Director James Comey addresses the possibility that Clinton’s emails were accessed by outsiders. He says, “We did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal email domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 7/5/2016)
The next day, the New York Times reports that although Comey said there was no “direct evidence” Clinton’s email account had been successfully hacked, “both private experts and federal investigators immediately understood his meaning: It very likely had been breached, but the intruders were far too skilled to leave evidence of their work.”
The Times says that Comey’s comments were a “blistering” critique of Clinton’s “email practices that left Mrs. Clinton’s systems wide open to Russian and Chinese hackers, and an array of others.” However, “the central mystery — who got into the system, if anyone — may never be resolved.”
Adam Segal (Credit: public domain)
Adam Segal, a cybersecurity expert at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), says, “Reading between the lines and following Comey’s logic, it does sound as if the FBI believes a compromise of Clinton’s email is more likely than not. Sophisticated attackers would have known of the existence of the account, would have targeted it, and would not have been seen.”
Before Comey’s comments, Clinton and her spokespeople had said on numerous occasions that her server had never been hacked. In an October 2015 interview, President Obama came to a similar conclusion about her server: “I don’t think it posed a national security problem.”
The Times also comments that Comey’s “most surprising suggestion” may have been his comment that Clinton used her private email while in the territory of “sophisticated adversaries.” This is understood to mean China and Russia and possibly a few more countries.
Former government cybersecurity expert James Lewis says, “If she used it in Russia or China, they almost certainly picked it up.” (The New York Times, 7/6/2016)
Cybersecurity consultant Morgan Wright says the most likely suspects are Russia, China and Israel, “in that order.”
Ben Johnson, a former National Security Agency official and security strategist, says “Certainly foreign military and intelligence services” would have targeted Clinton’s emails. “They’re going to have a lot of means and motives to do this.” He also says it wasn’t just likely countries such as China and Russia, but “any country that’s looking to potentially have adversarial relations with us or just [desires] more relations with us.” He specifically cites Middle East countries specifically as having a likely motive. (Politico, 7/5/2016)
A Donald Trump tweet on July 6, 2016 (Credit: public domain)
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump responds to FBI Director James Comey’s decision not to recommend Clinton’s indictment through Tweets posted on Twitter.
Several hours after Comey’s public speech, Trump writes, “FBI director said Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow! #RiggedSystem”
Then, the next morning, Trump writes in another Tweet, “I don’t think the voters will forget the rigged system that allowed Crooked Hillary to get away with ‘murder.’ Come November 8, she’s out!” (The Washington Post, 7/6/2016)
(…) “On July 6, 2016, just days before Halper dined with Page and a dozen other select guests at Magdalene College, Halper spoke at a plenary lecture series at Cambridge on “the phenomenon which is ‘Trump’s maverick candidacy.’” A write-up of the talk noted that Halper “explain[ed] the deficits in Clinton’s campaign which have caused the campaign to become almost too close to call,” and then “concluded his talk by stating that if the media focuses on Clinton, she will lose, whereas if they continue to focus on Trump, he will lose.”
Vin Weber (l), Chair: Steven Schrage (c), and Madeline Albright (r) (Credit: YouTube)
“This will be true despite Trump’s adept handling of the media that has resulted in him receiving two billion dollars’ worth of free media coverage,” Halper said, according to the blog post.
Four days after sharing his sage insights with the attendees of the lecture series, Halper welcomed Clinton surrogate and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, and former Republican Party strategist and outspoken Never Trumper Vin Weber, to the same Cambridge conference Page attended. According to the Washington Post, Page’s presence at that conference came at the behest of Halper, whose grad student called and emailed Page an invitation to the seminar. The Post also reported that Cambridge paid for Page’s air travel and accommodations—a strange arrangement given that Page was not a featured speaker at the conference.
While at Cambridge, Page dined with Halper and a small group of other dignitaries. On August 5, 2016, the Washington Post also reported that while at the Cambridge conference, Page attended “a closed-door session co-chaired by former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright and Republican consultant Vin Weber.” Page declined to comment on the article, though, which portrayed Page as a Russian patsy and further laid the groundwork for the Russia-collusion conspiracy theory.
But if Page did not speak with reporters, who told the Post that Page participated in a “closed-door session” with Albright and Weber? Could it have been Halper?
This same time frame—late July to early August—was when Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, in concert with and on the payroll of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign, also began promoting the Russia-conspiracy hoax in earnest. While Steele worked the FBI, details from the dodgy dossier were also peddled to the press, as demonstrated by this July 26, 2016 text from Damian Paletta—then with the Wall Street Journal—show.
The text’s mention of Page’s supposed meeting in Moscow with Igor Sechin, and the Russian’s possession of “solid kompromat on Clinton as well as Trump,” mirrored portions of Steele’s July 19, 2016 memorandum. This suggests either Steele or Fusion GPS had begun plying the press with the dossier almost as soon as Steele penned that work of fiction.” (Read more: The Federalist, 3/13/2020)(Archive)
The FBI field office in Kansas City. (Credit: public domain)
On July 5, 2016, FBI Director James Comey announces that he is recommending to not indict Clinton or any of her aides, effectively ending the FBI’s Clinton email investigation.
CNN will later report, “But blow back from some current and former agents was immediate. As Comey made his rounds of visits to field offices around the country, he heard stinging criticism, particularly from retired agents. At one meeting in Kansas City, Comey was confronted with stinging criticism of the probe. He pushed back, saying the career agents who knew the most of the case arrived at the conclusion that the case against Clinton wasn’t even a close call.” (CNN, 11/2/2016)
As a result, on September 7, 2016, Comey will write a letter to all FBI personnel, defending his decision not to recommend Clinton’s indictment. The letter will immediately be leaked to the public.
Former FBI Assistant Director Ron Hosko, who worked under FBI Director James Comey, comments on Comey’s decision not to recommend Clinton’s indictment. He believes Comey has “impeccable morality and ethics,” and says, “For an indictment you need probable cause, but prosecutors and investigators are looking for far more. You’re looking down the road at a substantial likelihood of success at trial that’s beyond a reasonable doubt.”
However, Hosko also believes the elements for an indictment were clearly met based on the wording of the federal “gross negligence” statute to which Comey referred in his July 5, 2016 public speech. He notes that Comey stated, “Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
Hosko highlights Comey’s use of the phrase “extremely careless.” “To me, that has the same DNA as gross negligence that the statute requires. Those are identical twins.” He says that Comey seemed to introduce an element of intent that is not in that statute. (CNBC, 7/6/2016)
The New York Times reports that although the FBI has decided not to recommend the indictment of Clinton or her former aides, the FBI’s Clinton investigation has “cast a cloud of doubt over the political futures of a number of her top advisers, including some expected to hold high-level jobs in her administration if she is elected president.”
On July 5, 2016, FBI Director James Comey said that although there was no clear evidence that Clinton or her aides intended to violate national security laws, “there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” He also noted that people in similar situations “are often subject to security or administrative sanctions.”
The Times suggests this could affect the security clearances of “several dozen State Department advisers who, records show, facilitated Mrs. Clinton’s unorthodox email arrangement or used it to send her classified documents.” Those facing the most scrutiny are her former top advisers Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, and Jake Sullivan, who continue to work closely with Clinton.
The State Department has restarted an internal investigation into Clinton’s email usage, and that could lead to some security clearances being revoked. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R) has said that, based on the conclusions of the FBI’s investigation, Clinton should be denied the classified briefings normally given the major presidential nominees.
Bill Savarino, a lawyer specializing in security clearances, says, “I’ve never seen anything quite like this. You’ve got a situation here where the woman who would be in charge of setting national security policy as president has been deemed by the FBI unsuitable to safeguard and handle classified information.” He adds that if any of Clinton’s former top aides involved in the controversy were to ask him for help seeking a future security clearance, “I’d tell them that you’ve got a fight on your hands.'”
Sean M. Bigley, another lawyer specializing in security clearances, says his law firm has routinely defended clients who have lost their security clearances because of violations that were “much less egregious” than those described by Comey. “The folks who were involved with this, even on a peripheral basis, at least are going to be facing administrative action, or should be, based on the historical cases we’ve dealt with.” He says the threshold for administrative punishment is much lower than for criminal prosecution. (The New York Times, 7/6/2016)
A Washington Post news analysis comments, “Of the more than 2,000 words FBI Director James Comey said in his unusually detailed statement [on July 5, 2016] that all but cleared Hillary Clinton of criminal indictment over the long-running probe into her email, two in particular got the most attention. ‘Extremely careless,’ Comey’s phrase to describe Clinton and her colleagues’ handling of classified information, has been called the statement’s ‘money quote,’ perhaps the biggest headline of the statement other than its absence of recommended charges, and the one nearly certain to any minute now be put on repeat in ads for presumptive [Republican] nominee Donald Trump.”
The Post also notes that in national polls, Clinton rates very poorly on honesty and trustworthiness, butt high on competence. However, the “extremely careless” quote could be used by Trump to criticize Clinton on one of her greatest perceived strengths.
Furthermore, it’s possible that “Comey’s comment will simply bounce off Clinton’s long-cultivated armor of competence.” But it’s also possible that the phrase could leave a permanent mark on her reputation. “Coming from a law enforcement official who has served both political parties and not shied away from conflict with either, it bears plenty of weight.” (The Washington Post, 7/6/2016)
Loretta Lynch holds a press conference on June 29, 2016 to explain her private meeting with Bill Clinton at the Arizona airport. (Credit: ABC News)
One day after FBI Director James Comey announced that he would not give the Justice Department a recommendation to indict Clinton, Attorney General Loretta Lynch says the Justice Department agrees with Comey and will not pursue the indictment. Comey did not publicly discuss Clinton’s former aides, but Lynch says there will not be any indictments of her aides either. She also announces that this closes the investigation into Clinton’s email practices during her tenure as secretary of state.
Lynch says, “Late this afternoon, I met with FBI Director James Comey and career prosecutors and agents who conducted the investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State. I received and accepted their unanimous recommendation that the thorough, year-long investigation be closed and that no charges be brought against any individuals within the scope of the investigation.”
On July 1, 2016, Lynch said she would accept whatever recommendations Comey and her top prosecutors would give after it was discovered she’d had a meeting with Bill Clinton, Hillary’s husband, several days earlier.
Lynch’s announcement comes one day before Comey is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee, in order to explain his decision to not recommend any indictments.
Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Reince Priebus criticizes Lynch’s decision, saying, “By so blatantly putting its political interests ahead of the rule of law, the Obama administration is only further eroding the public’s faith in a government they no longer believe is on their side.” (Politico, 7/6/2016)
“Jason Chaffetz, Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, asked the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, Charles McCullough, “Can you provide this committee, in a secure format, the classified emails?”
“I cannot provide a certain segment of them because the agency that owns the information for those emails has limited the distribution on those,” McCullough explained. “They are characterizing them as OrCon, ‘originator control,’ so I can’t give them to even Congress without getting the agency’s permission to provide them.”
“Which agency?” Chaffetz interjected.
“I can’t say that in an open hearing sir,” McCullough replied.
Chaffetz, in disbelief, responded, “So you can’t even tell me which agency won’t allow us, as members of Congress, to see something that Hillary Clinton allowed somebody without a security clearance, in a non-protected format to see. That’s correct?”
The chairman then asked McCullough if he can generally tell the committee what the emails were about.
“We shouldn’t get into the details of these emails in an open hearing,” McCullough responded.
“I don’t want to violate that but the concern is it was already violated by Hillary Clinton,” Chaffetz told the IG. “It was her choice and she set it up and she created this problem and she created this mess. We shouldn’t have to go through this, but she did that.”
McCullough responded with the final nail into how serious these emails were, telling the congressional committee that, “This is the segment of emails that I had to have people in my office read-in to particular programs to even see these emails. We didn’t posses the required clearances.“
“So even the Inspector General for ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] didn’t have the requisite security clearances?” Chaffetz clarified.
“That’s correct. I had to get read-ins for them,” McCullough said.
Since Clinton is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, she is unlikely to face any punishment for her email practices, despite FBI Director James Comey calling her “extremely careless” with highly classified information. Once she officially becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, she will automatically get security briefings. If she wins the presidency in the November 2016 election, she won’t have to apply for a security clearance.
William Cowden (Credit: public domain)
National security lawyer Gregory Greiner says that if a typical low-level government employee did what Clinton did, “he would have lost his clearance and lost his job.” William Cowden, a former Justice Department lawyer, similar says, “If she were currently a federal employee, she would be sanctioned.” But Clinton isn’t currently employed in the government, and the FBI chose not to take away Clinton’s security clearance during their investigation into her email practices, even though that is routine in similar cases.
Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who specializes in national security employment law, says he is particularly interested to see whether Clinton’s former aides will get security clearances if she wins the presidency. “Having seen the hundreds of people I’ve represented over a 20-plus year career who have lost their clearances for doing far less” than Clinton and her top aides, “I’m going to be really, really bothered and troubled” if they come out unscathed in the security clearance process.
The Washington Post notes that “losing a security clearance often is the equivalent of being fired. In some agencies, all jobs or most of the good ones, require a security clearance. Many of the individual contractors who work for those agencies also must have a security clearance. If you lose it, you could lose the ability to work in your field.” (The Washington Post, 7/7/2016)
James Comey is questioned before Congress on July 7, 2016. (Credit: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg News)
On July 5, 2016, FBI Director James Comey gave a fifteen-minute public speech, in which he criticized Clinton’s handling of classified information but announced he would not recommend that she be indicted for any crime. He did not take any questions from reporters afterwards. But only two days later, he appears at a Congressional hearing to further explain and defend his comments.
Comey was invited by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R), who is chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to speak in front of the committee. Comey takes questions for four and a half hours.
Not surprisingly, Republicans use the hearing to look for more evidence to attack Clinton with, while Democrats attempt to defend Clinton’s behavior.
The New York Times notes that Comey defended himself “against an onslaught of Republican criticism for ending the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, but he also provided new details that could prove damaging to her just weeks before she is to be named the Democrats’ presidential nominee.”
He “acknowledged under questioning that a number of key assertions that Mrs. Clinton made for months in defending her email system were contradicted by the FBI’s investigation.” However, he also defends his decision not to seek any indictment. (The New York Times, 7/7/2016)
Comey repeats some of the main points he made in his July 5, 2016 speech: “I think she was extremely careless. I think she was negligent — that I could establish. What we can’t establish is that she acted with the necessary criminal intent.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
Bill and Hillary Clinton attend an open plenary session for the Clinton Global Initiative on September 22, 2014. (Credit: John Moore / Getty Images)
In a Congressional hearing, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R) asks Comey: “Did you look at the Clinton Foundation?”
Comey replies, “I’m not going to comment on the existence or nonexistence of any other investigations.”
Chaffetz then asks, “Was the Clinton Foundation tied into this investigation?”
Comey responds, “Yeah, I’m not going to answer that.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
It has previously been reported by Fox News in January 2016 that the Clinton Foundation is being investigated by the FBI, but that hasn’t been officially confirmed. An unnamed “FBI source” also told the Daily Mail in April 2016 that the FBI is conducting an investigation of the Clinton Foundation separate from its Clinton email investigation. (The Daily Mail, 7/7/2016)
In October 2016, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post will report that there actually is an FBI investigation and it has been in existence since at least 2015, but it has been hobbled by a lack of support from the Justice Department.
In Congressional testimony, FBI Director James Comey essentially argues that Clinton was guilty of gross negligence, which doesn’t require proof of intent, but he was only willing to indict her on intent-related charges, and there wasn’t enough evidence for that. He says: “Certainly, she should have known not to send classified information. As I said, that’s the definition of negligent. I think she was extremely careless. I think she was negligent. That, I could establish. What we can’t establish is that she acted with the necessary criminal intent.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
Representative William Hurd (Credit: Alchetron)
Representative William Hurd (R) asks, “What does it take for someone to misuse classified information and get in trouble for it?”
Comey answers, “It takes mishandling it and criminal intent.” He admits that Clinton mishandled the information by having it on a private server, but he doesn’t see evidence of criminal intent. (CNN, 7/7/2016)
He further comments, “There’s not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that she knew she was receiving classified information or that she intended to retain it on her server. There’s evidence of that, but when I said there’s not clear evidence of intent, that’s what I meant. I could not, even if the Department of Justice would bring that case, I could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt those two elements.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
At another point in the hearing, he argues, “The question of whether [what she did] amounts to gross negligence frankly is really not at the center of this because when I look at the history of the prosecutions and see, it’s been one case brought on a gross negligence theory.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
The law criminalizing gross negligence in national security lapses was enacted in 1917. Comey says, “I know from 30 years there’s no way anybody at the Department of Justice is bringing a case against John Doe or Hillary Clinton for the second time in 100 years based on those facts.”
James Smith (Credit: CNN)
The FBI later confirms to Politico that James Smith is the one case Comey is referring to. Smith, a longtime FBI agent, was arrested in 2003 and charged with gross negligence. However, he later pleaded guilty in return for having the charges reduced to one count of making false statements. (Politico, 7/7/2016)
But Comey’s claim that gross negligence has only been used once in recent decades is true only if one looks at cases brought by the Justice Department. Cases have also been brought in the military justice system.
Additionally, Politico points out, “Comey’s universe was also limited to cases actually brought, as opposed to threatened. The gross negligence charge is often on the table when prosecutors persuade defendants to plead guilty to the lesser misdemeanor offense of mishandling classified information.” (Politico, 7/7/2016)
Later in the hearing, Representative Blake Farenthold (R) says, “So Congress when they enacted that statute said ‘gross negligence.’ That doesn’t say ‘intent.’ So what are we going to have to enact to get you guys to prosecute something based on negligence or gross negligence? Are we going to have to add, ‘and oh by the way, we don’t mean — we really do mean you don’t have to have intent there?'”
Comey replies, “That’s a conversation for you all to have with the Department of Justice. But it would have to be something more than the statute enacted in 1917. Because for 99 years, they’ve been very worried about its constitutionality.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
Representative Tim Walberg (Credit: Twitter)
Representative Tim Walberg (R) asks him, “Do you believe that the — that since the Department of Justice hasn’t used the statute Congress passed, it’s invalid?”
Comey responds, “No. I think they are worried that it is invalid, that it will be challenged on Constitutional grounds, which is why they’ve used it extraordinarily sparingly in the decades.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
During the hearing, it is pointed out several times that felony crime based on negligence and not intent are common at both the state and federal level, for intance manslaughter instead of murder, and their consitutionality has never been successfully challenged. At one point, Comey admits other negligence cases have been sustained in the federal system: “They’re mostly, as you talked about earlier, in the environmental and Food and Drug Administration [FDA] area.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
But he is adamant about not indicting any cases without being able to prove intent. At one point, he even suggests he is philosophically opposed to any laws based on negligence when he mentions, “When I was in the private sector, I did a lot of work with the Chamber of Commerce to stop the criminalization of negligence in the United States.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
In a Congressional hearing, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R) asks Comey, “So there are hundreds of classified documents on [Clinton’s private] servers, how many people without a security clearance had access to that server?”
Comey replies, “I don’t know the exact number as I sit here, it’s probably more than two, less than ten.” He also says, “Yes, there’s no doubt that uncleared people had access to the server because even after [Bryan] Pagliano there were others who maintained the server who were private sector folks.” [This is a likely reference to Justin Cooper and possibly others, such as Oscar Flores, Jon Davidson, and Doug Band.]
Additionally, he reveals that Clinton’s three lawyers who sorted her emails and deleted over 31,000 of them — David Kendall, Cheryl Mills, and Heather Samuelson — did not have the “security clearances needed.”
He is asked by Chaffetz, “Does that concern you?”
Comey replies, “Oh yes, sure.”
Chaffetz asks, “Is there any consequence to an attorney rifling through Secretary Clinton’s, Hillary Clinton’s, e-mails without a security clearance?”
Comey responds, “Well, not necessarily criminal consequences, but there’s a great deal of concern about an uncleared person not subject to the requirements we talked [about] potentially having access [to classified information].”
Chaffetz then asks, “What’s the consequence? They don’t work for the government, we can’t fire them, so is there no criminal prosecution of those attorneys. Should they lose their bar license? What’s the consequence to this?”
Comey replies that he doesn’t have proof “they acted with criminal intent or active with some mal-intent…”
Chaffetz complains, “So there’s no intent? It doesn’t matter if these people have security clearances?” He suggests they and Clinton should be prosecuted for this violation.
Eight people and two businesses were given unauthorized access to Clinton’s private server where top secret information was held. From top left to right they are David Kendall, Cheryl Mills, Platte River Networks, Heather Samuelson and Bryan Pagliano. From bottom left to right they are Douglas Band, Jon Davidson, Datto, Inc., Justin Cooper and Oscar Flores. (Credits have been given to each photo, in the timeline.)
Then he adds, “I asked you at the very beginning, does Hillary Clinton, is there a reasonable expectation that Hillary Clinton would send and receive if not day — hourly if not daily, classified information. That’s reasonable to think that the secretary of state would get classified information every moment. She’s not the head of Fish and Wildlife, so the idea that she would turn over her emails, her system, her server to, what it sounds like, up to ten people without security clearances and there’s no consequence. So why not do it again?”
After more back and forth, he asks, How can [it be] there’s no intent there? Does she not understand that these people don’t have security clearances?”
Comey replies, “Surely she understands at least some of them don’t have security clearances.”
Chaffetz then says, “So she understands they don’t have security clearances and it’s reasonable to think she’s going to be [emailing] classified information. Is that not intent to provide a non-cleared person access to classified information?”
Comey says, “I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume… that someone who is maintaining your server is reading your emails. In fact, I don’t think that’s the case here. There’s a separate thing, which is when she is engaging counsel to comply with the State Department’s request, are her lawyers then exposed [to] information that may be on there that’s classified, so…”
Comey goes on to suggest that there’s no proof that any of her three lawyers read any of Clinton’s classified emails while sorting them. “I don’t know whether they read them at the time.” Then, although he admits that Clinton gave non-cleared people access to classified information, he again argues that proving intent is necessary, and concludes, “I don’t see the evidence there to make a case that she was acting with criminal intent in her engagement with her lawyers.”
Chaffetz comments, “I read criminal intent as the idea that you allow somebody without a security clearance access to classified information. Everybody knows that, Director, everybody knows that.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
In a Congressional hearing, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R) asks Comey, “How did the Department of Justice, or how did the FBI, view the incident in which Hillary Clinton instructed Jake Sullivan to take the markings off of a document that was to be sent to her?” (This is in reference to a June 17, 2011 email in which Clinton wrote to Sullivan about a classified fax: “Turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.”)
Comey answers, “Yes, we looked at that pretty closely. There was some problem with their secure fax machine and there was an email in which she says in substance, take the headers off of it and send it as a non-paper and as we’ve dug into that more deeply, we’ve come to learn that at least this one view of it that is reasonable, that a ‘non-paper’ in State Department parlance means a document that contains things we could pass to another government. So essentially take out anything that’s classified and send it to me. Now it turned out that didn’t happen. We actually found that the classified fax was then sent, but that’s our best understanding of what that was about.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
Comey testifies to the House Benghazi Committee on July 7, 2016. (Credit: Jack Gruber / USA Today)
In a Congressional hearing, Comey says, “The challenge of security is not binary, it’s just degrees of security. [Clinton’s private server] was less secure than one at the State Department, or as I said, even one at a private commercial provider like a Gmail.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
Representative Rod Blum (R) asks, “Director Comey, are you implying in [your comments] that the private email servers of Secretary Clinton’s were perhaps less secure than a Gmail account that is used for free by a billion people around this planet?”
Comey replies, “Yes. And I’m not looking to pick on Gmail. Their security is actually pretty good; the weakness is individual users. But, yes, Gmail has full-time security staff and thinks about patching, and logging, and protecting their systems in a way that was not the case here.”
Blum also comments, “I know some security experts in the industry. I check with them. The going rate to hack into somebody’s Gmail account, $129. For corporate emails, they can be hacked for $500 or less. If you want to hack into an IP address, it’s around $100. I’m sure the FBI can probably do it cheaper. This is the going rate.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
Former technical director of the National Security Agency (NSA) William Binney (Credit: Democracy Now)
William Binney is a former NSA official who was harassed by the US government for several years for blowing the whistle on a wasteful NSA program. (McClatchy Newspapers, 9/29/2015)
Binney worked at the NSA for 36 years, reaching the position of senior technical director and managing 6,000 employees. He believes Clinton’s poor email security has been “devastating” for US national security due to the revelation of some intelligence collection methods. (Washingtonsblog.com, 7/7/2016)
Binney points in particular to an email sent to Clinton by her confidant Sid Blumenthal on June 8, 2011. It mentioned conversations by rebel generals in Sudan that had taken place less than 24 hours earlier. (US Department of State, 1/6/2016)
This email revealed details of NSA collection abilities, and was based on four NSA reports, all of them classified at the “top secret / special intelligence” (TSSI) level, including at least one issued under the GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling code for extraordinarily sensitive information, such as decrypted conversations between top foreign leaders. (The New York Observer, 3/18/2016)
Binney concludes, “All in all, this is a rather devastating compromise of technical capability and a commensurate loss of high value intelligence. … In my view, this is much worse than what Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning or any of the other whistleblowers have done. Some are in prison for as many as 35 years. Others have just been ruined and kept from getting anything but menial jobs. But, those in high positions get a pass for much worse offenses.” (Washingtonsblog.com, 7/7/2016)
In the wake of FBI Director James Comey’s decision not to recommend Clinton’s indictment, the Washington Post reports, “The extraordinary case of Hillary Clinton and her emails raises intriguing questions for federal employees facing charges related to classified materials. … Because she has escaped prosecution, will others, too?”
Mark Zaid, a lawyer who specializes in national security employment cases, says that after former CIA Director David Petraeus got what was seen as a very generous plea deal, resulting in no prison time despite pleading guilty to mishandling classified material, he used that case to push for leniency for one of his clients “right away. I mean, literally, the ink was not dry.” Zaid’s client also was charged with mishandling classified information, but “We talked to the prosecutors and said, ‘We want the Petraeus deal.’ We got it.” Zaid plans to use Clinton’s case to push for leniency in future cases.
National security lawyer Gregory Greiner similarly argues that after Clinton’s non-prosecution, defense lawyers will try to raise the bar for prosecutors. He says that it only takes one person on a jury to argue that “this guy didn’t do anything different than what Hillary Clinton did.” (The Washington Post, 7/7/2016)
WikiLeaks posts a tweet that states: “The FBI did not ask us for copies of our upcoming Hillary Clinton leaks before concluding its investigation. Credible detective work! Not.” (WikiLeaks, 7/7/2016)
On June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks head Julian Assange said in a public interview that WikiLeaks is preparing to publish leaks relating to Clinton’s emails and the Clinton Foundation. (The Guardian, 6/12/2016) (ITV, 6/12/2016)
Also on July 7, 2016, WikiLeaks posts another tweet, suggesting that a release of Clinton documents will be coming soon: “Have more than 1,000,000 followers? Want early access to our pending Hillary Clinton publications? DM @WikiLeaks” (WikiLeaks, 7/7/2016)
At a Congressional hearing, FBI Director James Comey is asked by Representative Trey Gowdy (R), “Secretary Clinton said her lawyers read every one of the emails and were overly inclusive. Did her lawyers read the email content individually?”
Comey simply replies, “No.”
(Clinton’s lawyers involved in sorting her emails are David Kendall, Cheryl Mills, and Heather Samuelson.) In Congressional testimony under oath in October 2015, Clinton claimed that her lawyers did read every email.
Comey also says he doesn’t believe Clinton knew her legal team deleted thousands of work-related emails. And he says, “I don’t think there was any specific instruction or conversation between the secretary and her lawyers” in which Clinton approved that some work-related emails be deleted. He also believes that Clinton didn’t “know that her lawyers cleaned devices in such a way to preclude forensic recovery,” a matter about which the FBI asked Clinton in her FBI interview. (Politico, 7/7/2016) (CNN, 7/7/2016)
Comey motions while testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on July 7, 2016. (Credit: Yuri Gripas / Agence France Presse/ Getty Images)
At a Congressional hearing, FBI Director James Comey is questioned by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R) about whether Clinton would be able to get a security clearance if she applied for a job at the FBI.
Comey replies, “I didn’t say there’s no consequence for someone who violates the rules regarding the handling of classified information. There are often very severe consequences in the FBI involving their employment, involving their pay, involving their clearances. … I hope folks walk away understanding that just because someone’s not prosecuted for mishandling classified information, that doesn’t mean, if you work in the FBI, there aren’t consequences for it.”
Chaffetz asks, “So if Hillary Clinton or if anybody had worked at the FBI under this fact pattern, what would you do to that person?”
Comey replies, “There would be a security review and an adjudication of their suitability and a range of discipline could be imposed from termination to reprimand and in between, suspensions, loss of clearance. So you could be walked out or you could — depending upon the nature of the facts — you could be reprimanded. But there is a robust process to handle that.” (Politico, 7/7/2016) (CNN, 7/7/2016) (CNN, 7/7/2016)
David Petraeus (left), James Comey (center), Hillary Clinton (right) (Credit: public domain)
At a Congressional hearing, FBI Director James Comey is asked to compare the cases of Clinton and former CIA Director David Petraeus. Petraeus pled guilty to a misdemeanor in 2015 and served no jail time. Comey says that Petraeus’ case “illustrates the categories of behavior that mark prosecutions that are actually brought. Clearly intentional conduct. Knew what he was doing was violation of the law. Huge amounts of information if you couldn’t prove he knew, it raises the inference he did it, and effort to obstruct justice, that combination of things making it worthy of a prosecution. A misdemeanor prosecution but a prosecution nonetheless.” He says he stands by the FBI’s decision to prosecute Petraeus and not Clinton. (Politico, 7/7/2016) (CNN, 7/7/2016)
At a Congressional hearing, FBI Director James Comey is asked by Representative Trey Gowdy (R), “Secretary Clinton said there was nothing marked classified on her emails, either sent or received. Was that true?”
Comey replies, “That’s not true. There were a small number of portion markings on, I think, three of the documents.” Later in the day, the State Department says that two of those emails were incorrectly marked as classified when they were sent. Both of those emails, sent on April 8, 2012 and August 2, 2012, were released as part of the over 30,000 emails Clinton made public. It is unknown which email Comey is referring to in the third instance. It could be the part marked classified is redacted, or perhaps the email has not yet been released. (Politico, 7/7/2016) (CNN, 7/7/2016)
A September 2016 FBI report will give more information on these emails, including mentioning that the third email is still classified at the “confidential” level.
At a Congressional hearing, FBI Director James Comey is asked by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R) where Clinton’s servers were physically located.
Comey replies, “The operational server was in the basement of her home in New York. The reason I’m answering it that way is that sometimes after they were decommissioned they were moved to other facilities — storage facilities, but the live device was always in the basement. … It was an unauthorized location for the transmitting of classified information.”
Chaffetz asks, “Is it reasonable or unreasonable to expect Hillary Clinton would receive and send classified information?”
Comey answers, “As secretary of state, [it is] reasonable that the secretary of state would encounter classified information in the course of the secretary’s work.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
At a Congressional hearing, FBI Director James Comey is asked by Representative Trey Gowdy (R), “Secretary Clinton said neither she nor anyone else deleted work-related emails from her personal account. Was that true?”
Comey answers, “That’s a harder one to answer. We found traces of work-related emails in — on devices or in slack space. Whether they were deleted or whether when the server was changed out, something happened to them. There’s no doubt that the work-related emails were removed electronically from the email system.” (Politico, 7/7/2016) (CNN, 7/7/2016)
However, in September 2016, the FBI Clinton investigation’s final report will be released, based entirely on information learned by the FBI prior to Comey’s testimony. That makes clear that in late March 2015, someone used a computer program called BleachBit to delete all of Clinton’s emails off her server and then wipe them to prevent their later recovery. It is unknown why Comey fails to mention this.
In January 2016, it was reported that the State Department had started its own investigation into Clinton’s email practices while Clinton was secretary of state. (This is separate from the State Department inspector general’s investigation, which concluded in late May 2016). However, this investigation was put on hold in March 2016 in deference to the FBI’s investigation. Now that the FBI finished its investigation on July 5, 2016, the State Department is resuming its own investigation.
Department spokesperson John Kirby announces the resumption, but he doesn’t reveal many details about it. He also sets no deadline for when it will be completed.
It is believed the investigation will consider administrative sanctions against Clinton and her aides. Although most of them are out of government, they could face some problematic penalties, such as the loss of security clearances, which could prevent future government employment. The investigation is likely looking into the past behavior of aides such as Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, and Jake Sullivan, as well as Clinton herself. (The Associated Press, 7/7/2016)
The BBC comments that this means “Hillary Clinton – and some of her most trusted senior advisors – will twist in the wind a while longer. The State Department’s renewed inquiry into possible mishandling of classified information in emails is not nearly as serious as the recently closed FBI criminal investigation, but it keeps the email server story alive for an indeterminate period of time.”
Clinton cannot lose her security clearance if she’s elected president in November 2016, but she could be prevented from including some of her most trusted aides into positions in her administration if they lose their security clearances. The State Department’s investigation also is likely to help keep the controversy alive at least through Election Day. (BBC, 7/7/2016)
Carter Page was not the only Trump campaign adviser invited to a July 2016 event at the University of Cambridge, the storied British institution where “Spygate” is believed to have originated.
The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned that an invitation to attend the campaign-themed event was extended to Stephen Miller, another Trump campaign adviser who currently serves in the White House. Miller did not attend the event, which featured former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as a keynote speaker.
J. D. Gordon, the director of the campaign’s national security advisory committee, told TheDCNF he believes the invitation from Cambridge to Miller was sent in May 2016. That’s a month before a graduate assistant of FBI informant Stefan Halper sent an invitation to Page to visit the campus.
“The invitation was to Stephen Miller who could not attend,” Gordon, a former Pentagon spokesman, told TheDCNF. “In the midst of our policy office search for a surrogate, Carter Page informed me that he had also been invited and would like to attend.”
Gordon said he told Page the campaign preferred he did not attend the Cambridge conclave.
“Though since he wasn’t planning to make public remarks, conduct media interviews or otherwise represent the campaign, he was not required to fill in one of our request forms.”
Gordon said Miller, a former Senate aide to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, passed the Cambridge request to John Mashburn, a campaign policy adviser. Mashburn gave it to Gordon.
The three-day Cambridge conclave was where Page first met Halper, a former Cambridge professor who turns out to have also been working for the FBI as part of a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.
Page, an energy consultant, has said Halper, a veteran of three Republican administrations, offered advice about the campaign during a brief chat on the sidelines of the event.
The pair met numerous times over the course of the next 14 months, Page told TheDCNF. He visited Halper’s farm in Virginia and met with the 73-year-old academic in Washington, D.C. They stayed in contact through September 2017, the same month the U.S. government’s surveillance warrants against Page expired.
Halper, who has longstanding connections to the CIA, met with at least two other Trump campaign advisers — Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulos.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 6/05/2018)
Secret Service agents at the Washington home of Hillary Clinton on Saturday July 2, 2016. (Credit: Al Drago / The New York Times)
Speaking before a Congressional committee, FBI Director James Comey reveals that when Clinton was interviewed by FBI and Justice Department officials for over three hours on July 2, 2016, the interview was not recorded and Clinton wasn’t asked to swear an oath to tell the truth. However, Comey notes that if Clinton lied in the interview she could still be charged, because it is always a crime to lie to the FBI.
Comey also explains that it is FBI policy not to record interviews. An FBI memo from 2006 states, “Under the current policy, agents may not electronically record confessions or interviews, openly or surreptitiously,” except in rare circumstances. Civil libertarians and open government advocates have been against this policy for years.
However, the FBI did complete an FD-302, which is a federal form summarizing the interview. Republicans in the hearing immediately request that a copy of the form be given to the House oversight committee. (The Hill, 7/7/2016)
Representative Blake Farenthold (Credit: public domain)
In a Congressional hearing, Representative Blake Farenthold (R) brings up the case of the hacker known as Guccifer, and Guccifer’s claim that he looked into Clinton’s private server. After confirming that the FBI interviewed Guccifer, Farenthold asks FBI Director James Comey, “Can you confirm that Guccifer never gained access to her server?”
Comey replies, “Yeah he did not. He admitted that was a lie.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
An FBI report published in September 2016 will also assert that Guccifer admitted he lied.
In a Congressional hearing, Representative Blake Farenthold (R) points out that it has long been known that the hacker nicknamed Guccifer broke into the email account of Clinton confidant Sid Blumenthal and gained access to hundreds of her emails. Then he asks FBI Director James Comey, “During your investigation, were there other people in the State Department or that regularly communicated with Secretary Clinton that you can confirm were successfully hacked?”
Comey replies, “Yes.”
Farenthold confirms, “And were these folks that regularly communicated with the secretary?”
Comey again replies, “Yes.” However he doesn’t give any more details, such as how many such cases there were, or who they were. (Note that this is the only time Blumenthal is mentioned in Comey’s hearing.) (CNN, 7/7/2016)
A September 2016 FBI report will mention an incident in early January 2013, when an unnamed member of Bill Clinton’s staff has her email account on Clinton’s private server broken into by a hacker.
There has been a dispute over how many FBI agents were involved in the FBI’s Clinton investigation, with numbers ranging from a dozen to almot 150. It turns out different answers may be correct, depending on how one defines being involved. In a Congressional hearing, when FBI Director James Comey is asked how many FBI agents took part, he replies, “It changed at various times, but somewhere between 15 and 20. Then we used a lot of other FBI folks to help from time to time.” He also says they put three years of work into a single year. (CNN, 7/7/2016)
Representative William Hurd (Credit: public domain)
In a Congressional hearing, Representative William Hurd (R) asks, “Was this unanimous opinion within the FBI on your decision [not to recommend Clinton’s indictment]?”
Comey answers, “The whole FBI wasn’t involved, but the team of agents, investigators, analysts, technologists, yes.” Elsewhere in the hearing, he mentioned there were between 15 and 20 FBI agents working on the case at any given time, plus many more lending assistance. (CNN, 7/7/2016)
On July 12, 2016, it will be reported that some within the FBI are “furious” about Comey’s decision.
In a Congressional hearing, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R) asks FBI Director James Comey if Clinton’s computer technician Bryan Pagliano had the “requisite security clearance” to look at Clinton’s classified emails on her private server, which he was managing.
Comey replies, “As I sit here, I can’t remember. He was not a participant on the classified email exchanges though.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
Later in the hearing, Representative Buddy Carter (R) asks Comey about Pagliano, “Is anything going to be done to him? Any prosecution, or any discipline?”
Comey answers, “I don’t know about discipline, but there’s not going to be any prosecution of him.”
Chaffetz then asks, “My understanding, Director, is that you offered him immunity. Why did you offer him immunity and what did you get for it?”
Comey replies, “I’m not sure what I can talk about in open setting about that. … I want to be careful. I’m doing this 24 hours after the investigation closed. I want to be thoughtful, because we’re — we’re as you know, big about the law, that I’m following the law about what I disclose about that. So I’ll have to get back to you on that one. I don’t want to answer that off the cuff.” (CNN, 7/7/2016)
During a congressional hearing looking into the Hillary Clinton email investigation, Congressman Trey Gowdy finds out from the Inspector General of the State Department that Hillary Clinton declined to be interviewed by him.
Carter Page speaks at the New Economic School in Moscow on July 7, 2016.(Credit: Anton Denisov/Sputnik/The Associated Press)
(…) “That trip last July was a catalyst for the F.B.I. investigation into connections between Russia and President Trump’s campaign, according to current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials.
It is unclear exactly what about Mr. Page’s visit drew the F.B.I.’s interest: meetings he had during his three days in Moscow, intercepted communications of Russian officials speaking about him, or something else.
After Mr. Page, 45 — a Navy veteran and businessman who had lived in Moscow for three years — stepped down from the Trump campaign in September, the F.B.I. obtained a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing the authorities to monitor his communications on the suspicion that he was a Russian agent.”
(…) “In his talk at the New Economic School in Moscow, Mr. Page criticized American policy toward Russia in terms that echoed the position of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, declaring, “Washington and other Western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change.” His remarks accorded with Mr. Trump’s positive view of the Russian president, which had prompted speculation about what Mr. Trump saw in Mr. Putin — more commonly denounced in the United States as a ruthless, anti-Western autocrat.
Mr. Page’s relationship with Mr. Trump appears to have been fleeting. According to former Trump campaign officials, the two men have never met, though Mr. Page has said he attended some meetings where Mr. Trump was present.” (Read more: New York Times, 4/19/2017)
Comey (left) and Chaffetz (right) shake hands while Elijah Cummings looks on at the House Benghazi Committee hearing on July 7, 2016. (Credit: Getty Images)
In a Congressional hearing to clarify his public speech ending the FBI’s Clinton investigation given on July 5, 2016, FBI Director James Comey is asked questions related to testimony Clinton gave under oath to the House Benghazi Committee on October 22, 2015. Comey’s answers directly contradict what Clinton said then, for instance Clinton’s assertion that there was “nothing marked classified on my e-mails either sent or received.” He also contradicts her claims that there was only one private email server while she was secretary of state, and that her lawyers read each of her over 60,000 emails while sorting them.
As a result, Jason Chaffetz (R), chair of the House Oversight Committee, asks, “Did the FBI investigate her statements under oath on this topic?”
Comey replies, “Not to my knowledge. I don’t think there’s been a referral from Congress.”
Chaffetz then asks, “Do you need a referral from Congress to investigate her statements under oath?”
“Sure do,” Comey responds.
Chaffetz says, “You’ll have one. You’ll have one in the next few hours.”
The Washington Post later confirms that, by the end of the day, Chaffetz does formally request the FBI to investigate whether Clinton misled Congress.
The Post also notes, “While the just-concluded FBI investigation was requested by the intelligence community’s inspector general, a new probe of Clinton would be a product of Congress — a distinction that carries obvious partisan implications.” However, “That is a risk Republicans are ready to take.” (The Washington Post, 7/7/2016)
Chaffetz’s request is sent to Channing Phillips, the US attorney for the District of Columbia. (Salon, 9/6/2016)
Judicial Watch files a motion to depose Clinton as part a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit relating to Clinton’s emails. US District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan ordered six of Clinton’s former aides to be deposed, and left open the possibility that Clinton could be deposed later, depending on the answers given by the aides. All six finished their depositions by the end of June 2016.
Judicial Watch argues it has “attempted to obtain as much evidence as possible from other State Department officials, but Secretary Clinton is an indispensable witness and significant questions remain, including why records management officials apparently had no knowledge of [her email] system when so many other officials used the system to communicate with her. Consequently, Secretary Clinton’s deposition is necessary.”
Additionally, Judicial Watch is asking to depose two other former Clinton aides who had knowledge of Clinton’s private server, John Bentel and Clarence Finney. They also want to depose Clinton in a similar lawsuit presided by Judge Royce Lamberth.
Sullivan announces that the motion will be argued on July 18, 2016. (LawNewz, 7/8/2016)
Clinton appears with Wolf Blitzer on July 8, 2016. (Credit: CNN)
Clinton is interviewed by CNN journalist Wolf Blitzer. The State Department suspended an investigation into Clinton’s email because the FBI investigation took precedence. Now that the FBI investigation has finished, the State investigation has resumed.
Blitzer asks Clinton, “Will you cooperate with this new State Department investigation? Because I know you didn’t cooperate with the inspector general of the State Department in his investigation.”
Clinton replies, “Well, there was a Justice Department [and FBI] investigation going on at the time. And, of course, I fully cooperated with that.”
Blitzer repeats the question multiple times, since that answer is a deflection, but Clinton still doesn’t give a clear answer.
This new State investigation is not run by State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, who ran the investigation mentioned by Blitzer. Not only did Clinton fail to cooperate with that investigation, but nine of her former top aides didn’t cooperate either. (McClatchy Newspapers, 7/8/2016)
Clinton previously claimed she hadn’t sent or received any classified information via email, or that none of the emails contained information that was classified when they were sent. On July 5, 2016, FBI Director James Comey stated that over 100 emails contained information that was classified when Clinton sent or received them.
As a result, when she is asked about this by CNN journalist Wolf Blitzer, she changes her account again. “I think there are about 300 people in the government — mostly in the State Department but in other high positions in the government — with whom I emailed over the course of four years. They, I believe, did not believe they were sending any material that was classified.”
Blitzer notes that Comey said Clinton and her aides “should have known” that her emails were not secure. He asks Clinton, “Should you have known better?”
Clinton avoids a direct answer, and again blames other officials. “I just believe that the material that was being communicated by professionals, many with years of handling sensitive classified material, they did not believe that it was. I did not have a basis for second-guessing their conclusion, and these were not marked.”
Clinton also says that she now realizes her use of a private server was “the wrong choice.” (McClatchy Newspapers, 7/8/2016)
She makes very similar comments which blames other officials in various interviews given on the same day. The Washington Post comments, “The references to other government officials… represent a new line of defense in the long public debate over an issue that has led many voters to say they do not trust her.” (The Washington Post, 7/8/2016)
Clinton appears with MSNBC’s Lester Holt on July 8, 2016. (Credit: MSNBC)
When asked to respond to FBI Director James Comey’s July 5, 2016, comment that she had been “extremely careless” with highly classified material, Clinton says, “Well, I think the director clarified that comment to some extent, pointing out that some of what had been thought to be classified apparently was not.”
Comey also said that “it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.” But Clinton responds, “I think he was speculating. But if you go by the evidence, there is no evidence that the system was breached or hacked successfully. And I think that what’s important here is to follow the evidence.” (The New York Times, 7/8/2016)
“Three days after then-FBI Director James Comey’s press conference announcing that he would not recommend a prosecution of Mrs. Clinton, a July 8, 2016email chain shows that, the Special Counsel to the FBI’s executive assistant director in charge of the National Security Branch, whose name is redacted, wrote to Strzok and others that he was producing a “chart of the statutory violations considered during the investigation [of Clinton’s server], and the reasons for the recommendation not to prosecute…”
[Redacted] writes: I am still working on an additional page for these TPs that consist of a chart of the statutory violations considered during the investigation, and the reasons for the recommendation not to prosecute, hopefully in non-lawyer friendly terms.
Strzok forwards to Page, Jonathan Moffa and others: I have redlined some points. Broadly, I have some concerns about asking some our [sic] senior field folks to get into the business of briefing this case, particularly when we have the D’s [Comey’s] statement as a kind of stand alone document. In my opinion, there’s too much nuance, detail, and potential for missteps. But I get they may likely be asked for comment.
[Redacted] writes to Strzok, Page and others: The DD [Andrew McCabe] will need to approve these before they are pushed out to anyone. At the end of last week, he wasn’t inclined to send them to anyone. But, it’s great to have them on the shelf in case they’re needed.
[Redacted] writes to Strzok and Page: I’m really not sure why they continued working on these [talking points]. In the morning, I’ll make sure Andy [McCabe] tells Mike [Kortan] to keep these in his pocket. I guess Andy just didn’t ever have a moment to turn these off with Mike like he said he would.
Page replies: Yes, agree that this is not a good idea.
Neither these talking points nor the chart of potential violations committed by Clinton and her associates have been released.”
“Former FBI director Louis Freeh gave $100,000 to a private trust for Joe Biden’s grandchildren and met with the then-Vice President in 2016 ‘to explore with him some future work options’, emails reveal.
The emails suggest Freeh was trying to establish a future business relationship with Biden – and the White House has failed to disclose to DailyMail.com whether Joe Biden discussed private business with Freeh while in office.
According to the messages, obtained by DailyMail.com from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, the former FBI director was working for three foreign businessmen and officials at the time, who were all later convicted of various corruption charges, including a multi-billion-dollar ransacking of a Malaysian wealth fund.
Freeh himself was not implicated in those charges
The 71-year-old, who served as FBI director under Bill Clinton and George Bush, ran a consultancy firm with highly controversial clients including a now-jailed Malaysian prime minister who stole billions of dollars from his country, a Romanian real estate tycoon convicted of bribery, and a French-Israeli diamond magnate later convicted of bribery and a $145 million property graft.
Freeh, a former judge, emailed Joe’s son Hunter Biden in 2016, revealing he had spoken with the Vice President and proposed that they work together on private ventures once Biden left office.
In July that year, in an email marked ‘confidential and privileged’, Freeh wrote to Hunter that he ‘would be delighted to do future work with you.’
‘I also spoke to Dad a few weeks ago and would like to explore with him some future work options,’ Freeh said. ‘I believe that working together on these (and other legal) matters would be of value, fun and rewarding.’
The emails, obtained by DailyMail.com from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, show Freeh making overtures to the Bidens for business deals
Freeh brought up the idea again a month later – and mentioned that he was working for the then-Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, who was in the midst of a scandal over one of the world’s biggest financial frauds and was later sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2020.
‘I would like to talk with you and Dad about working together next year,’ Freeh wrote to Hunter.
‘No doubt both he and you have many options and probably some which are more attractive than my small shop.
‘As you know, we have both a law firm and ‘solutions/investigations’ group with a very good brand, DC and DEL (and NYC) offices, and a profitable and interesting global practice (eg., I’m currently representing the Malaysian PM and his family).
‘So if it’s something which interests you both, let’s talk about it at some point. I’m very flexible and we could set it up as an equity-share or whatever works best. It would certainly be an honor to work with you both.’
The emails, obtained by DailyMail.com from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, show that around the same time Freeh was making overtures to the Bidens for business deals, he also gave $100,000 to a trust for Joe Biden’s grandchildren.
The ‘donation’ was made to a trust for the children of Hallie Biden, the widow of Joe’s late son Beau who later became Hunter’s lover.”
Hillary arrives for her acceptance speech, July 28, 2016. (Credit: Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters)
(…) Hillary Clinton did not run a clean campaign.
She cheated.
If we want to be the kind of country that doesn’t care about that sort of thing, if fair play isn’t an American value, fine with me. But let’s go into this general election campaign with our eyes wide open.
Caucus after caucus, primary after primary, the Clinton team robbed Bernie of votes that were rightfully his.
Here’s how. Parties run caucuses. States run primaries. The DNC is controlled by Hillary Clinton allies like chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Democratic governors are behind Clinton; state election officials report to them. These officials decide where to send voting booths, which votes get counted, which do not.
You thought this was a democracy? Ha.
In the first in the nation Iowa caucus, Bernie Sanders pulled off a surprising tie where he was expected to lose badly — Hillary won by just 0.2 percent. However, party officials never bothered to send vote counters to the most rural parts of the state, where Bernie was favored over Hillary. About 5 percent of Iowa caucus votes were never counted. At other caucus sites, Democratic officials loyal to Hillary purposefully undercounted Sanders caucusers. No doubt about it, Bernie should have won that one, as well as votes in other states that would have been affected by a big Sanders upset.
Voters in pro-Sanders precincts in Arizona faced long lines because pro-Hillary elections officials didn’t provide enough voting booths. With lines of three hours or more still to go, the media called the state for Hillary.
New York State was arguably the most important contest of the primary season. Had Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in her adopted home state where she had served 1 1/3 terms as senator, he would have dealt her campaign a blow from which she might never have recovered, along with a pile of delegates. Because of her local roots and the fact that New York was a closed primary state in which independence were not allowed to vote, it was a long shot for Bernie. But like the LAPD in the O.J. Simpson case, the Clinton team wasn’t taking any chances.
Did they drop a line to Governor Andrew Cuomo, who endorsed Clinton? Or did state elections officials act on their own initiative? Either way, Bernie Sanders stronghold, the borough of Brooklyn where he was born, was targeted for massive voter suppression. At least 125,000 New Yorkers were illegally purged from the rolls, had their votes lost/thrown away, or were not permitted to vote due to broken voting machines — all in Brooklyn.
Even Mayor Bill de Blasio, who endorsed Clinton, was angry. “It has been reported to us from voters and voting rights monitors that the voting lists in Brooklyn contain numerous errors, including the purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists,” De Blasio said. “The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed.”
The skullduggery continued through the last major primary, California. The night before, the Associated Press put its thumb on the scale, declaring Hillary the nominee in an epic act of voter suppression. Who knows how many Sanders voters decided to stay home once they heard it was all over?
Hillary Clinton was declared the winner by a substantial margin, but after it turned out that state election officials, who report to Governor Jerry Brown, who endorsed Clinton, didn’t bother to count a whopping 2.5 million provisional ballots. According to investigative journalist Greg Palast, the nation’s leading expert on the manipulation of elections, Bernie Sanders actually should have won the state of California along with the majority of its delegates. (Disclosure: I work with Palast as a Fellow of his Investigative Fund.)
One of the most disreputable moves of the campaign was the Associated Press poll of party superdelegates, party insiders who are allowed to vote for whoever they want but, because they are party insiders, inevitably support the establishment candidate. Truth is, the superdelegate system itself is official cheating. But the AP survey made a terrible system even more deadly to democracy. (Read more: Rassmussen Reports, 7/08/2016)
Steven Schrage (l) moderates panel with former Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber and former Sec. of State Madeleine Albright, at University of Cambridge, July 11, 2016. (Credit: University of Cambridge/YouTube)
(…) A former State Department official who advised Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign, Steven Schrage invited Page to Cambridge. While the invitation has previously been reported, Page told the Daily Caller News Foundation he and Schrage remained in contact until after the 2016 election. They met at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and in the Washington, D.C., area, Page said in an exclusive phone interview this week.
It is unclear if Schrage played a role in the Trump-Russia investigation or if he was aware that Halper was an FBI informant. Page said he saw nothing during his encounters with Schrage that made him suspect he was involved in the government’s investigation of him.
“I never saw anything suspicious,” Page said of Schrage, noting he is reluctant to “point fingers” at anyone because of his own experience facing what he says are false accusations of being a Russian agent.
California Rep. Devin Nunes is not so reserved.
Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, dropped Schrage’s name out of the clear blue during his opening statement at the July 24 hearing with former special counsel Robert Mueller. When Nunes asked Mueller whether the special counsel’s office interviewed Schrage, the former FBI director replied, “In those areas, I am going to stay away from.”
Nunes said in a Fox News interview Sunday that he wants to know why Schrage invited Page to Cambridge and whether his contacts with the former Trump adviser were linked to the FBI’s own interests in the Trump campaign.
“What we’re trying to figure out is when did the FBI really start to run the investigation, what types of processes did they use, what was the predicate. Because, look, it really appears like they were spying on the Trump campaign,” Nunes said.
“Maybe [Schrage] was just a guy working for minimum wage sweeping the floors around Cambridge. I highly doubt it,” the Republican added. “And the fact that he hasn’t come forward in two-and-a-half years is highly suspect.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 8/01/2019)
A training session is held for FBI New York field agents. (Credit: public domain)
According to CNN in November 2016, shortly after the FBI begins its Clinton email investigation on July 10, 2015, FBI Director James Comey decides to run the investigation from FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, instead of the New York office, which normally would be the proper jurisdiction, since the Clinton private email server had been located in Chappaqua, New York. CNN will report, “That decision anger[s] some in New York who thought it was headquarters’ interference into their case.”
Comey then mostly picks agents from the Washington, DC, field office to handle the investigation. He assigns the case “to the counterintelligence section, which investigates cases of alleged mishandling of classified information. It [gives] the added advantage of being a section with a reputation for few media leaks and being close enough for Comey to get personal almost-daily updates.”
Furthermore, all agents working on the case are required to sign an unusual non-disclosure agreement and also agree to be subject to random lie detector tests.
One unnamed senior official will later say, “We’re in the middle of one of the most vitriolic campaigns in American history, and we’re investigating one of the candidates for president. We had to get this right.” (CNN, 11/2/2016)
James Clapper (Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / The Associated Press)
A request from Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R) to prevent Clinton from receiving intelligence briefings after the late July 2016 Democratic National Convention is denied.
Just a few days after Ryan made the request, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper tells Ryan in a letter that he “does not intend to withhold briefings from any officially nominated, eligible candidate. … Nominees for president and vice president receive these briefings by virtue of their status as candidates, and do not require separate security clearances before the briefings. Briefings for the candidates will be provided on an even-handed non-partisan basis.”
The briefings given both major party candidates are intended to prepare them with the information they’ll need to run the country if they win the general election.
Ryan made the request after FBI Director James Comey said that Clinton and her aides had been “extremely careless” handling highly classified intelligence. Ryan wrote in the request, “There is no legal requirement for you to provide Secretary Clinton with classified information, and it would send the wrong signal to all those charged with safeguarding our nation’s secrets if you choose to provide her access to this information despite the FBI’s findings.” (CNN, 7/11/2016)
ABC News / Washington Post graphic of the poll they conducted on July 11, 2016 (Credit: ABC News)
According to an ABC News / Washington Post poll, 56 percent disapprove of FBI Director James Comey’s recommendation not to indict Clinton, while just 35 percent approve. Very similar numbers agree or disagree that this worries them about how she might act if she is elected president.
However, most voters have already made up their minds about her: Only 28 percent say her email controversy makes them less likely to support her, while 10 percent say it makes them more likely to do so.
A large majority of Republicans think she should be indicted and a large majority of Democrats think she shouldn’t. But even about 30 percent of Democrats think she should be indicted, and about 60 percent of independents think so as well. (ABC News, 7/11/2016)
“(Stefan) Halper met campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page at a July 2016 symposium held at Cambridge regarding the upcoming election, Page told TheDCNF. The pair remained in contact for several months.
Halper’s intentions are unclear, while a source familiar with the investigations into Russian meddling told TheDCNF Halper’s name popped up on investigators’ radar. There is no indication of any wrongdoing on his part, and it is not clear if he has been in touch with investigators.”
(…) “Page is also a prominent figure in the investigation due to allegations made against him in the infamous Steele dossier. Page’s trip to Moscow in early July 2016 is a central piece of the dossier. Christopher Steele, the author of the Democrat-funded report, alleges Page met secretly with two Kremlin insiders as part of the Trump campaign’s collusion effort.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on July 12, 2016. (Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta / the Associated Press)
Lynch speaks before the House Judiciary Committee several days after the Justice Department ended the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s email usage as secretary of state. FBI Director James Comey answered questions about the investigation before a Congressional committee on July 7, 2016, but Lynch doesn’t follow suit. She says, “While I understand that this investigation has generated significant public interest, as attorney general, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further on the underlying facts of the investigation or the legal basis for the team’s recommendation.”
At one point, she says she can’t reveal details because she’s not familiar with them. “The director and I had very different roles in this investigation and, therefore, very different amounts of information about this investigation.” But at other times, she indicates she wouldn’t comment anyway. “It would not be appropriate in my role to discuss the specific facts and the law.”
After a meeting with Hillary Clinton’s husband Bill Clinton that many said was inappropriate, on July 1, 2016, Lynch distanced herself from the investigation but didn’t totally recuse herself from it. (Politico, 7/12/2016)
Many agents are said to express “disappointment.” This according to a New York Post article, citing “sources close to the matter.”
One unnamed source says, “FBI agents believe there was an inside deal put in place after the Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton tarmac meeting” on June 27, 2016. The article attributes quotes to both active and retired FBI agents critical of Comey, but it is not clear what this person’s job position is.
Another unnamed source, this one from the Justice Department, is “furious” with Comey, saying he’s “managed to piss off right and left.” (The New York Post, 7/12/2016)
All FBI agents taking part in the Clinton investigation are unable to comment because they have signed a non-disclosure agreements and are subject to lie detector tests to make sure they obey.
Representative Lamar Smith (R), the chair of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, and Senator Ron Johnson (R), the chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, jointly author a letter to Treve Suazo, the CEO of Platte River Networks (PRN). PRN is the company that managed Clinton’s private server from June 2013 until late 2015.
The letter notes that Johnson’s committee has been seeking to interview some PRN employees about the management and security of Clinton’s server since August 2015, while Smith’s has been asking to do the same since January 2016, but PRN has refused all interview requests.
The letter then asks again, specifically requesting to interview the following PRN employees:
Treve Suazo
Brent Allshouse
David DeCamillis
Paul Combetta
Sam Hickler
Bill Thornton
Craig Papke
The letter requests a response by July 26, 2016. If PRN does not comply, the letter threatens the use of the “compulsory process.” (US Congress, 7/22/2016)
Apparently, PRN will still refuse to agree, because on August 22, 2016 these committees will issue subpoenas for the interviews.
“On July 12, 2016, Eugene Kiely, the director of FactCheck.org, emailed the FBI about inconsistencies he’d identified between Comey’s congressional testimony and statements by Clinton and her campaign about her deletion of emails. Kiely noted that Comey testified to the House that Clinton did not give her lawyers any instructions on which of her emails to delete, whereas Clinton herself told the press that she made the decision on which emails should be deleted. Kiely also pointed out that Comey said in his testimony that there were three Clinton emails containing classification “portion markings,” whereas the State Department had said there were only two Clinton emails with classification markings. Kiely’s inquiry set off an internal discussion at the top of the FBI on how to respond to his questions.
Strzok writes: “We’re looking into it and will get back to you this afternoon; the answer may require some tweaking, the question is whether this is the forum to do it.” The email is addressed to FBI intelligence analyst Moffa; Rybicki; Michael Kortan, FBI assistant director for public affairs, now retired; Lisa Page and others.
Strzok’s suggested press response is fully redacted, but included is his deferral to the “7th floor as to whether to release to this reporter or in another manner.”
When asked “should we provide any additional information to FactCheck.org or would any updates more appropriately be give [sic] directly to Congress?” Strzok defers to “Jim/Lisa [Page]” and [Redacted].” (Read more: Judicial Watch: 2/15/2019)
“A former FBI chief told the New York Post that such a requirement is “very, very unusual.”
While FBI agents are typically required to sign vanilla non-disclosure agreements as part of their security clearances, law enforcement sources say they’ve never heard of a “Case Briefing Acknowledgment,” the agreement agents investigating Clinton were reportedly required to sign.
“FBI agents believe there was an inside deal put in place after the Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton tarmac meeting,” a source told the Post.” (Read more: The Federalist, 07/13/2016)
Department spokesperson Mark Toner says, “We will appropriately and with due diligence process any additional material that we receive from the FBI to identify work-related records and make them available to the public. That’s consistent with our legal obligations.” He says he doen’t know how many emails will be released, or when, but he vows to be “as transparent as we possibly can and try to give a timeframe. But at this point, we just don’t know.”
A day earlier, the FBI said it would return all the deleted emails to the State Department to determine whether they were subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. On July 5, 2016, FBI Director James Comey said that investigators “discovered several thousand work-related” messages that were not included in the over 30,000 emails Clinton gave to the government in December 2014. (The Hill, 7/13/2016)
“Days after Carter Page’s high-profile trip to Moscow in July 2016, the Trump campaign adviser had his first encounter with Stefan Halper, a University of Cambridge professor with CIA and MI6 contacts.
…”Page’s relationship with Halper tracks closely with the period when the Trump adviser was under heavy scrutiny from the federal government.
By the time he joined the campaign in March 2016, Page was already known to the FBI, though not because of any criminal activity. FBI agents interviewed him in 2013 as part of an investigation into a Russian spy ring operating in New York. Page said he met with one of the Russians and provided him with academic papers he had written.
The FBI put Page back on its radar at around the time he joined the Trump campaign. In late-spring 2016, top government officials, including then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and then-FBI Director James Comey, discussed whether to alert the Trump campaign to Page’s past interactions with the Russian spy ring. But government officials decided against providing the information.
Page’s visit to Moscow, where he spoke at the New Economic School on July 8, 2016, is said to have piqued the FBI’s interest even further. Page and Halper spoke on the sidelines of an election-themed symposium held at Cambridge days later. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6 and a close colleague of Halper’s, spoke at the event.
Page was invited to the event in June by a University of Cambridge doctoral candidate.
Page would enter the media spotlight in September 2016 after Yahoo! News reported that the FBI was investigating whether he met with two Kremlin insiders during that Moscow trip.
It would later be revealed that the Yahoo! article was based on unverified information from Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the dossier regarding the Trump campaign. Steele’s report, which was funded by Democrats, also claimed Page worked with Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on the collusion conspiracy.” (Read more: Daily Caller, 5/17/2018)
Victoria Nuland, Jonathan Winer and Elizabeth Dibble (Credit: public domain)
(…) “State Department officials obtained and reviewed parts of the infamous Steele dossier by mid-July2016, well before FBI headquarters had access to the document. The U.S. embassy in London was also anearly recipient of information about former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that the FBI would use to justify opening its counterintelligence investigation in late July2016. And in a little-noticed Senate hearing on Wednesday, it was revealed that dossier author Christopher Steele briefed State Department officials at Foggy Bottom in October 2016.”
(…)”Three diplomats — Victoria Nuland, Jonathan Winer and Elizabeth Dibble — appear to be key to the State Department’s role in handling Trump-related Russia information.
The State Department’s involvement in the Russia matter first came to light only in December 2017, nearly a year after the publication of the Steele dossier.
That’s because Winer, a former Senate aide to former Secretary of State John Kerry, disclosed in a little-noticed MSNBC documentary that he met with Steele during the summer of 2016.
Nuland came forward to acknowledge that she received and handled information from Steele in an interview on Feb. 4. Winer then wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post on Feb. 8 asserting that he was being unfairly targeted by Nunes.
Winer and Nuland suggested in their disclosures that they determined Steele’s reports were too hot for the State Department to handle. They have both claimed they referred the information to the FBI, which was better suited to verify Steele’s still-unverified allegations.
But there is plenty of evidence that the State Department did not merely refer Trump-Russia information to the FBI.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr revealed in a hearing on Wednesday that State Department visitor logs showed Steele visited Foggy Bottom just weeks before the 2016 election.” (Read more: Daily Caller, 6/22/2018)
Judge Emmet Sullivan (Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi / National Law Journal
Clinton’s longtime personal lawyer David Kendall appears in court regarding Clinton’s email controversy for the first time since the issue became public in March 2015. He is opposing a request to have Clinton deposed in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit initiated by Judicial Watch.
The judge in the case, Emmet Sullivan, has said publicly that Clinton violated government policy by doing official business on the private server. The State Department’s inspector general, Steve Linick, also concluded the same in a May 2016 report. Kendall nonetheless maintains that Clinton’s behavior “was clearly permitted and allowed” by policy. However, he admits that her server was never specifically approved by anyone at the State Department. He also argues that the reason Clinton set up and used a private email server for all her emails was “a matter of convenience.”
Sullivan doesn’t immediately decide whether Clinton should be deposed or not. However, Judicial Watch has also asked for the depositions of former State Department officials Clarence Finney and John Bentel, and Sullivan does definitively state that at least Bentel “should be deposed.” (Politico, 07/18/2016)
“Former foreign minister Alexander Downer acted without clearance from Australian officials when he contacted United States diplomats four years ago to raise concerns about potential Russian interference in the US presidential election.
Malcolm Turnbull (Credit: BBC)
A new memoir by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull reveals that Mr Downer raised his concerns directly with the US embassy in London in July 2016 but had “no authority from Canberra” to do so.
The move was crucial to the launch of an FBI investigation into the Russian support for the election of US President Donald Trump, who dismissed the inquiry as a “witch-hunt” and ordered an inquiry into the affair.
Mr Downer, the Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom at the time, met Trump aide George Papadopoulos in London in May 2016 and was told the Russians had “damaging” material on Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.
While Mr Downer mentioned this in a cable to the Department of Foreign Affairs, the information was not acted upon until he later chose to raise it with the deputy at the US embassy in London, Elizabeth Dibble.
According to Justice Department lawyers in a new court filing, on July 21, 2016, “the FBI began transferring the retrieved materials to the State Department, and will continue to transfer the retrieved materials to the State Department on a rolling basis.”
In late 2014, Clinton and her lawyers kept about 30,000 emails they deemed work related and deleted another 32,000 they deemed personal. The exact number of deleted emails that the FBI managed to recover or find from other sources has not been specified.
Some emails from Clinton aide Huma Abedin were also found, since one of her email accounts was stored on the same clintonemail.com private server as Clinton’s emails, but the number of recovered Abedin emails is unknown.
Photo captured from video of Jason Leopold’s immediate response to the results of his Clinton Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. (Credit: Vice News)
The lawyers say they can’t estimate how long the transfer process will take. Once the State Department has the emails, those judged by the department to be work related will be made responsive to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Those deemed genuinely personal may never be made public. (Politico, 7/22/2016)
The meeting takes place only one day before WikiLeaks publicly releases almost 20,000 Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails. However, when the Washington Post reports on this meeting a few days later, it will give no indication if US intelligence knew of the leak in advance and thus discussed that in the meeting or not. According to the Post, “Officials from various intelligence and defense agencies, including the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security, attended the White House meeting…” (The Washington Post, 7/24/2016)
“IRS Commissioner John Koskinen referred congressional charges of corrupt Clinton Foundation “pay-to-play” activities to his tax agency’s exempt operations office for investigation, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
The request to investigate the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation on charges of “public corruption” was made in a July 15 letter by 64 House Republicans to the IRS, FBI and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). They charged the foundation is “lawless.”
The initiative is being led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who serves as the vice chairwoman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees FTC. The FTC regulates public charities alongside the IRS.
The lawmakers charged the Clinton Foundation is a “lawless ‘pay-to-play’ enterprise that has been operating under a cloak of philanthropy for years and should be investigated.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 07/26/2016)
As part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by Vice News reporter Jason Leopold, the State Department reveals more information about seven chains of 22 “top secret” emails involving Clinton. (Curiously, FBI Director James Comey mentioned on July 5, 2016 that there actually were eight “top secret” email chains, but the eighth chain is not mentioned by the department.)
The contents of the emails remain totally classified, but previous media reports indicate that most of them discussed approval for covert CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, and some of them may have identified CIA operatives working undercover.
A sample of the Vaughn Index form submitted by the State Department, in response to the Vice News Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. (Credit: public domain)
For the first time, the department reveals which years the emails were sent and who sent and received them. All the emails were from 2011 or 2012 – the State Department began to have a say in approving CIA drone strikes in 2011. Nine of the emails were written by Clinton, and the other thirteen were written by her aide Jake Sullivan. Two were also cc’d by Sullivan to her chief of staff Cheryl Mills and/or Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.
The State Department disclosure comes in the form of a “Vaughn Index,” which is a document used by government departments in FOIA lawsuits to justify the withholding of information under various FOIA exemptions. Vaughn Indexes contain at least some information about the withheld text, to justify keeping it redacted, but this one does not. Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, says that according to government regulations, “State’s document does not fulfill the requirements for a Vaughn index.” (Vice News, 7/22/2016) (The Hill, 7/22/2016)
In HILLARY’S AMERICA, bestselling author and influential filmmaker D’Souza reveals the sordid truth about Hillary and the secret history of the Democratic Party. This important and controversial film releases at a critical time leading up to the 2016 Presidential campaign and challenges the state of American politics.
The New York Times begins a mainstream media effort to paint Trump as a Manchurian Candidate on July 22, 2016. Paul Krugman cutely disguises the slur with “Siberian Candidate” instead.
Krugman writes,
“If elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin’s man in the White House? This should be a ludicrous, outrageous question. After all, he must be a patriot — he even wears hats promising to make America great again.
But we’re talking about a ludicrous, outrageous candidate. And the Trump campaign’s recent behavior has quite a few foreign policy experts wondering just what kind of hold Mr. Putin has over the Republican nominee, and whether that influence will continue if he wins.”
A few weeks later, on August 21, 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, suggested that Donald Trump may be a “puppet” for Russia in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”
Mook told host George Stephanopoulos, “We need Donald Trump to explain to us the extent to which the hand of the Kremlin is at the core of his campaign,” and “There are real questions being raised about whether Donald Trump himself is just a puppet for the Kremlin in this race.”
“Last week, Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, said we should ask “real questions” about whether Donald Trump “is just a puppet for the Kremlin.” By that time, Audible.com was already giving away free audiobooks of “The Manchurian Candidate,” Richard Condon’s 1959 book (transformed into a classic thriller starring Angela Lansbury and Frank Sinatra in 1962 and a worse remake with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep in 2004) about communists controlling an American presidential candidate.”
(Credit: Salon, 8/26/2016)
Precisely a month before Election day, 2016, The Atlantic publishes an article meant to discredit Trump and present him as a “Modern Manchurian candidate serving the interests of the Kremlin.” Former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta suggests Trump represents a threat to national security.
The Atlantic – October 8, 2016
Last but not least, a week to the day before the 2016 Election, Vanity Fair publishes this article on November 1, 2016:
WikiLeaks publicly releases 19,252 emails and 8,034 email attachments recently hacked from the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The emails are from seven DNC officials: Communications Director Luis Miranda (10,770 emails), National Finance Director Jordon Kaplan (3,797 emails), Finance Chief of Staff Scott Comer (3,095 emails), Finance Director Zachary Allen (1,611 emails), Finance Director of Data and Strategic Initiatives Daniel Parrish (1,472 emails), Senior Advisor Andrew Wright (938 emails) and Northern California Finance Director Robert (Erik) Stowe (751 emails). The emails are from January 2015 until May 25, 2016.
The seven DNC officials are left to right Luis Miranda (Credit: public domain), Jordan Kaplan (Credit: Facebook), Scott Comer (Credit: Linked In), Zachary Allen (Credit: Twitter), Daniel Parrish (Credit: Linked In), Andrew Wright (Credit: Linked In), Robert (Erik) Stowe (Credit: Linked In)
In announcing the release, WikiLeaks mentions this is “part one of our new Hillary Leaks series.” (WikiLeaks, 7/22/2016)
Julian Assange, head of WikiLeaks, mentioned in a June 2016 interview that other coming releases will relate to the Clinton Foundation and to Clinton’s emails (although it’s not clear how many there are or where and when they are from). It also was reported in June 2016 that the DNC computer network had been recently hacked, along with other political entities, such as the Clinton campaign. It also was suspected that the Russian government was behind the DNC hack. However, a previously unknown hacker named Guccifer 2.0 emerged and claimed to be behind the hack, and also claimed to have no ties to Russia. He furthermore claimed to have given thousands of documents to WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks has a policy of never revealing the sources of their leaked material, and has maintained that policy for this release.
“A July 22, 2016, email exchange, among Strzok, Page, Moffa and other unidentified FBI and DOJ officials, shows that Beth Wilkinson, an attorney for several top Clinton aides during the server investigation, wanted a conference call with the DOJ/FBI and that she was “haranguing” the FBI/DOJ about the return of laptops in the FBI’s possession:
A Wilkinson Walsh attorney, emails [Redacted] FBI National Security Division Officials: We wanted to follow up on our conversation from a few days ago. We would like to schedule a time to speak with both you and [Redacted] early next week. Is there a time on Monday or Tuesday that could work on your end?
[Redacted] FBI National Security Division official emails: See below. I am flexible on Monday and Tuesday. [Redacted] can chime in with her availability. It is my understanding that Toscas [George Toscas], who helped lead Midyear Exam may have called over to Jim or Trisha [former Principal Deputy General Counsel [Trisha Anderson] regarding some high-level participation for at least the first few such calls. I am happy to discuss further but wanted to send you this so you could raise within the OGC [Office of the General Counsel] and give me a sense of scheduling options. I am around if you want to talk.
[Redacted] FBI National Security Division official writes: In the meantime, I’ll tell Hal that we will certainly schedule a call and will get back to him as to timing. Since he knows Beth [Wilkinson] personally, it could be useful to have Jim on the phone if she is going to be haranguing us re: the laptops.
[Redacted] FBI Office of the General Counsel writes: More…I guess this is [Redacted’s] rationale for why we need to have the GC on the call to discuss the fact that we will be following all of our legal obligations and FBI policies/procedures with regard to the disposition of the materials in this case.
Strzok writes: You are perfectly competent to speak to the legal obligations and FBI policy/procedures. We should NOT be treating opposing counsel this way. We would not in any other case.
Tweet posted by Guccifer 2.0 on July 22, 2016. (Credit: Guccifer 2.0 / Twitter)
Shortly after WikiLeaks publishes almost 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 takes credit. His website is not updated, but he writes at his Twitter account: “@wikileaks published #DNCHack docs I’d given them!!!” (Twitter, 6/22/2016)
He has previously posted many DNC files on his own website, starting on June 15, 2016. And on that same day, he claimed that he had given “thousands of files and mails” to WikiLeaks.
Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook (Credit: Douglas Graham / Congressional Quarterly Roll Call Group)
On July 24, 2016, Mook says, “What’s disturbing about this entire situation is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC [Democratic National Committee], took all those emails, and are now leaking them out through these websites,” such as WikiLeaks. “It’s troubling that some experts are telling us this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping [Republican presidential nominee] Donald Trump.”
Mook also apologizes for the content of some emails, which show the DNC had a bias in favor of Clinton and against Senator Bernie Sanders, despite DNC rules that it should be neutral in the Democratic primaries. (The Hill, 7/24/2016)
Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort calls Mook’s comments “pure obfuscation.” He adds, “What they don’t want to talk about is what’s in those emails.” (The Washington Post, 7/24/2016)
Two days later, Mook makes similar accusations about Russia. He also says, “I think the timing around our convention was not a coincidence.” WikiLeaks released 20,000 DNC emails on June 22, 2016, just three days before the start of the Democratic National Convention. (The Hill, 7/26/2016)
3/18/2022 – Hilary Clinton ok’d it and Robbie Mook began THE BIG RUSSIA LIE at the Democrat convention to take away the attention to the emails Wikileaks had published. The Clinton campaign in coordination with the Media & Democrats and working with the Deep State concocted the RUSSIA LIE and worked together to report the DISINFORMATION (lies) for years.
Wasserman Schultz announces her resignation as chair of the Democratic National Committee on Sunday, July 24, 2016. (Credit: CNN)
Just one day before the Democratic National Convention, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) announces she is resigning from her position as the chair of the DNC. This comes in response to WikiLeaks releasing 20,000 leaked emails from a recent hack of the DNC. The New York Times says that the emails “showed party officials conspiring to sabotage the [presidential] campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.”
Earlier in the day, Sanders called the situation an “outrage” and called for Wasserman Schultz to step down. She announced her resignation after a private meeting with Clinton’s senior aides. The Times comments that even prior to the email leak, “Ms. Wasserman Schultz has faced a flurry of negative stories during her five-year tenure as the committee’s chairwoman… but she had resisted calls for her to quit.”
The Times also reports: “The breach of the Democratic committee’s emails… offered undeniable evidence of what Mr. Sanders’s supporters had complained about for much of the senator’s contentious primary contest with Mrs. Clinton: that the party was effectively an arm of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.”
Donna Brazile, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), replaces Wasserman Schultz as interim chair through the end of the November 2016 election. (The New York Times, 7/24/2016)
QUESTION: Thanks, Jake. James Reinl here from Al Jazeera. A number of Clinton campaign officials have suggested there’s a link between the email leaking and Russian state hackers. In your opinion, how strong is the evidence linking the Russian state to this? And why do you think the Kremlin would prefer a President Trump to a President Clinton?
MR SULLIVAN: We have seen multiple intelligence experts, as well as security firms, describe the attack, the cyberattack on the DNC as carried out or conducted by Russian Government-sponsored entities. You’ve heard that now increasingly from experts who have deep experience in both the cyber domain and in the particular behavior of Russian-backed cyber actors. And I have to say that this is not a new phenomenon that Russia would interfere in the elections of other countries. It is a new watershed if it is borne out to, in fact, be the case. And the FBI has just today said that it is launching an investigation, so we will see as time goes on what gets proven.
But if it is indeed the case that Russia was behind this hack, this would be a new watershed. This would be Russia interfering in the American presidential election, which is deeply alarming and completely unacceptable if it bears out to be true.
In terms of why Russia would want to do this, I’m not going to stand up here and speculate today nor reach any definitive conclusions of any kind, but I will say this: Hillary Clinton’s position on supporting our allies in Europe, Hillary Clinton’s position on energy security for Europe, Hillary Clinton’s position on advancing human rights and democracy around the world may not sit too well with certain actors in the Kremlin. I will leave it to you to look at Donald Trump’s position on these various issues – his position on NATO, his position on Vladimir Putin – and judge for yourself what the answer to your question is.
All I can tell you is a number of very credible, experienced experts have drawn this link, it is consistent with behavior we have seen, and now let’s see what the facts bear out. But all Americans – Democrat, Republican, or Independent – if it turns out to be the case that Russia is doing this, needs to stand together and say we will not tolerate this kind of behavior.
“On April 19th, a judge in New York grudgingly agreed that someone may have tampered with Alba Guerrero’s voter registration. Judge Ira Margulis changed his decision from moments earlier that Guerrero would be denied the right to vote in New York’s Democratic primary, after evidence emerged that Guerrero’s signature had been forged, switching her to Republican without her knowledge or consent. Had she not been willing to take several hours to appear before a judge that day, Alba would not have been able to vote for Senator Bernie Sanders. Video evidence available online confirms the forgery.
Ms. Guerrero states: “It just boggles my mind that it could happen that easily to so many people and without them even knowing that they are being manipulated like that…I never would have thought something like that could happen.” Guerrero was more than willing to have her story included in Democracy Lost. She added, “This is a problem that obviously has gone for too long and with no consequence.”
A forged legal document cannot be attributed to an unfortunate mistake or a clerical error. Someone intentionally tampered with Alba Guerrero’s voter registration.
Another New York resident, Chloe Pecorino, attempted to register as a first-time voter by submitting the relevant paperwork to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Brooklyn more than a week before the March 25th, 2016 deadline. Attempts to verify her registration status online were unsuccessful. On the day of New York’s presidential primary, Chloe still had not been registered as a Democrat, despite persistent efforts, including more than a dozen calls and emails, the evidence of which spans fifteen pages in Exhibit A of Election Justice USA’s initial New York lawsuit. On the day of the primary, Chloe took several hours to appear before a judge in an attempt to vote normally. Despite ample evidence of attempts to register before the deadline in good faith, the judge denied her request. As a consequence, Chloe was forced to cast her vote for Senator Sanders using an affidavit ballot. As can be seen immediately below, Chloe’s affidavit ballot was declared invalid, like so many others.”
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched a probe into the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails, the bureau announced Monday.
“The FBI is investigating a cyber intrusion involving the DNC and are working to determine the nature and scope of the matter,” the agency said in a statement. “A compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously, and the FBI will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace.”
The publication of the approximately 20,000 emails showed a DNC favorable to Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, leading Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to announce her resignation on Sunday, effective at the end of the party’s convention this week.” (Read more: Politico, 7/25/2016)
The 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries and caucuses were a series of electoral contests organized by the Democratic Party to select the 4,051 delegates to the Democratic National Convention held July 25–28 and determine the nominee for President of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The elections took place within all fifty U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories and occurred between February 1 and June 14, 2016. (Wikipedia)
Protesters at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Credit: Michael Nigro / Truthdig)
Highlights of the 2016 Democratic National Convention:
For those following the increasingly curious case against General Mike Flynn, events take another unusual turn today. Congressional investigators have shared a set of unredacted text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok and his cohort DOJ Attorney Lisa Page which reveal a personal friendship between Agent Strzok and Flynn’s initial presiding judge Rudolph Contreras.
On November 30th, 2017, Mike Flynn signed a guilty plea; ostensibly admitting lying to investigators. The plea was accepted by Judge Rudolph Contreras; who is also a FISA court judge. Six days later,December 7th, 2017, Judge Contreras “was recused” from the case without explanation.
The case was reassigned to DC District Judge Emmet Sullivan. The Contreras recusal always seemed sketchy. The key question was: if the conflict existed on December 7th, wouldn’t that same conflict have existed on November 30th, 2017?
Apparently DOJ lawyer Lisa Page was unaware that “Rudy” was a FISA court judge until July 25th, 2016, when she posited a question to her small group co-conspirator FBI agent Peter Strzok.
Today questions about the conflict seem to have been answered. Text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page reveal the FBI agent and Judge Contreras were close personal friends.
Contreras was appointed to the FISA Court court in May 2016. The FISA court approved a Title-1 Surveillance Warrant against Trump campaign aide Carter Page on October 26th, 2016, essentially placing the entire Trump campaign under FBI surveillance. That surveillance was then used against incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
The FBI agent questioning Michael Flynn in January 2017 was Peter Strzok. The judge presiding over the sketchy Flynn plea, an outcome of that interview, was Strzok’s friend Judge Rudolph “Rudy” Contreras. Therein lies the conflict.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 3/16/2018)
Jennifer Palmieri and Hillary Clinton (Credit: The Associated Press)
“At the Democratic convention in Philadelphia last summer, Jake Sullivan and I took to our golf carts one afternoon to make the rounds of the television networks’ tents in the parking lot of the Wells Fargo Center. It is standard for presidential campaign staffers to brief networks on what to expect during that night’s session. But on this day, we were on a mission to get the press to focus on something even we found difficult to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.
(…) “Now that Trump is president, though, the stakes are higher, because the Russian plot succeeded. The lessons we campaign officials learned in trying to turn the Russia story against Trump can help other Democrats (and all Americans) figure out how to treat this interference no longer as a matter of electoral politics but as the threat to the republic that it really is.
(…) “Without anyone knowing about the FBI’s interest, it was difficult to bring appropriate attention to the Russia issue and Trump’s curious pro-Putin bent. The week after the convention, we sought out credible national security voices to sound alarms. I was surprised by the enthusiasm with which some, such as former acting CIA director Michael Morell, jumped into the fray. When I worked in the Obama White House, people in national security positions had been uneasy making broad public arguments, particularly about political matters. Not this time. They were so concerned about the situation that, to me, the language they used to describe the threat they believed Russia and Trump posed was shocking. I remember my jaw dropping as I sat in our Brooklyn campaign headquarters and read the op-ed Morell submitted to the New York Times in early August, in which he shared his view that Russia had probably undertaken an effort to “recruit” Trump and that the Republican nominee had become an “unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”
(…) “We sought moments for Clinton and Tim Kaine, her running mate, to talk about Russia when we knew they would be on live television and couldn’t be edited. The debates offered the best opportunity, and Clinton took advantage, culminating with her famous line calling Trump Putin’s “puppet ” in the third one. It was tough deciding how much of her time to devote to the issue. We were in a Catch-22: We didn’t want her to talk too much about Russia because it wasn’t what voters were telling us they cared about — and, frankly, it sounded kind of wacky. At the same time, we understood the issue would never rise to the front of voters’ minds if we weren’t driving attention to it. It was already pretty clear they weren’t going to hear much about it in the press.
On Oct. 7, I thought the Russia story would finally break through. We were at a debate prep session in Westchester County, N.Y., when the director of national intelligence and the secretary of homeland security put out a joint statement saying that the U.S. intelligence community was “confident” that not only had the Russian government hacked Democrats’ emails, but “Russia’s senior-most officials” were probably directing their release to influence the election. Incredible. Finally, here was the break we had been waiting for. I was on a conference call with my colleagues to discuss our response when someone said: “Hey, Palmieri. There’s an ‘Access Hollywood’ video that just got released.” Literally minutes later, WikiLeaks put out the first batch of John Podesta’s stolen Gmail. And that was that. The rest is history.” (Read more: The Washington Post, 3/24/2017)
The FBI has been investigating the hack of the DNC and related political entities for months. For instance, the FBI warned the Clinton campaign they were the target of hacking attacks in March 2016. However, this is the first public admission of an investigation. An FBI spokesperson says the bureau will “investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace.” This announcement comes three days after WikiLeaks publicly posted almost 20,000 emails from the DNC.
Emblem of the Glavnoje Razvedyvatel’noje Upravlenije (GRU) (Credit: public domain)
The Washington Post reports that according to unnamed ” individuals familiar with the investigation,” the FBI is focusing on the Russian military intelligence agency, known as the Glavnoje Razvedyvatel’noje Upravlenije or GRU, and looking into if it was responsible for giving the emails to WikiLeaks. However, it is believed that the Russian Federal Security Service, known as the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti or FSB, broke into the DNC’s computers as well.
The FBI wants to determine with certainty whether the Russian government passed the emails to WikiLeaks. This is likely to involve other US intelligence agencies, such as the NSA and the CIA, which potentially could intercept communications or gather intelligence overseas.
If it is definitively proven that the Russians are responsible, then the US would have to consider what to do next. The Post comments, ” Responses could range from a diplomatic wrist slap or warning to countermeasures.” In 2014, Sony Pictures was hacked, and there were reports that the government of North Korea was responsible. The US government imposed economic sanctions on North Korea in response. President Obama also signed an executive order enabling US officials to impose economic sanctions in response to significant hacking attacks. (The Washington Post, 7/25/2016)
Former CIA director Michael Hayden (Credit: Luis M. Alvarez / The Associated Press)
Hayden says that if the Russian government is behind the recent leaks of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails by WikiLeaks, this would mean “they’re clearly taking their game to another level. It would be weaponizing information. You don’t want a foreign power affecting your election. We have laws against that.”
Hayden was appointed head of the NSA by President Bill Clinton and then he was later appointed head of the CIA by President George W. Bush. (The Washington Post, 7/25/2016)
Wikileaks cartoon that accompanied the DNC documents release. (Credit: Latoff / Wikileaks)
In an interview with NBC News, Wikileaks leader Julian Assange won’t say who gave WikiLeaks the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails they have recently made public, as the group has a policy to never reveal their sources.
However, Assange discourages the widespread speculation that the emails come from hackers linked to the Russian government. Assange suggests that the DNC’s security was so weak that it could have been hacked by multiple groups. He also insists, “The emails that we have released are different sets of documents to the documents of those [that] people have analyzed.”
A hacker or hacking group going by the name of Guccifer 2.0 claims to have given the emails to WikiLeaks, but WikiLeaks has not confirmed this.
A WikiLeaks representative also comments, “Our publication of leaked DNC emails and the many DNC hacks over the last two years are separate incidents and should not be conflated.” (The Daily Beast, 7/26/2016)
“Leaked emails show the Democratic National Committee scrambled this spring to conceal the details of a joint fundraising arrangement with Hillary Clinton that funneled money through state Democratic parties.
But during the three-month period when the DNC was working to spin the situation, state parties kept less than one half of one percent of the $82 million raised through the arrangement — validating concerns raised by campaign finance watchdogs, state party allies and Bernie Sanders supporters.
The arrangement, called the Hillary Victory Fund, allowed the Clinton campaign to seek contributions of hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend extravagant fundraisers including a dinner at George Clooney’s house and a concert at Radio City Music Hall featuring Katy Perry and Elton John. That’s resulted in criticism for Clinton, who has made opposition to big money in politics a key plank in her campaign platform.
Clinton’s allies have responded publicly by arguing that the fund is raising big money to boost down-ballot Democratic candidates by helping the 40 state parties that are now participating in the fund.
But privately, officials at the DNC and on Clinton’s campaign worked to parry questions raised by reporters, as well as Sanders’ since-aborted campaign, about the distribution of the money, according to a cache of hacked emails made public late last week by WikiLeaks.” (Read more: Politico, July 26, 2016)
Two days after US Intel learns of Clinton’s plan, an ecstatic Hillary celebrates at the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention where she accepted the nomination on Thursday, July 28, 2016. (Credit: Ben Lowy/ Time)
Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, writes a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, with the following declassified information:
CNN’s Matthew Chance interviews Julian Assange over a video link on July 26, 2016. (Credit: CNN, Moscow)
Assange is vague on details about future releases. He is asked by CNN about reports that the Russian government might be behind the recent hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer network. WikiLeaks has a policy of never revealing its sources, and Assange maintains that policy by refusing to confirm or deny anything. He says, “Perhaps one day the source or sources will step forward and that might be an interesting moment. Some people may have egg on their faces. But to exclude certain actors is to make it easier to find out who our sources are.”
He additionally says that Clinton and other Democratic officials are using the specter of Russian involvement to distract from the content of the emails. “It raises questions about the natural instincts of Clinton that when confronted with a serious domestic political scandal, she tries to blame the Russians, blame the Chinese, et cetera. Because if she does that while in government, it could lead to problems.” (CNN, 7/27/2016)
The New York Times claims this is according to unnamed “federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.” But these officials are uncertain if the hack is part of “fairly routine cyberespionage” or part of an effort to manipulate the 2016 US presidential election. The DNC (Democratic National Committee) emails were published by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016, causing political turmoil for Democrats and resulting in the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, from her position as DNC chair.
The federal investigation, involving the FBI and other intelligence agencies began in April 2016, when the hack was first detected. It has concluded that the Russian Federal Security Service (Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti or FSB) entered the DNC’s computer network in the summer of 2015. (This corresponds with previous reports of a hacking by a Russian group known as Cozy Bear or APT 29.) The Rusian Main Intelligence Directorate (Glavnoje Razvedyvatel’noje Upravlenije or GRU) independently penetrated the same network later. (This corresponds with previous reports of a hacking by a Russian group known as Fancy Bear or APT 28.) Investigators believe the GRU has been playing a larger role in publicly releasing the emails.
The Times says the intelligence community’s conclusion puts pressure on President Obama to publicly accuse Russia of orchestrating the hacking, which could negatively impact the diplomatic relationship between the US and Russia in general. (The New York Times, 7/26/2016)
“There were reporters calling me over the summer saying, ‘Hey, we have reports of Carter Page meeting with Russian officials, giving them a wink and a nod, indicating that WikiLeaks should release the documents’ which they did.” — Evelyn Farkas (12/15/16)pic.twitter.com/cinEV69rPa
— Monsieur in the Gulag (@MonsieursGhost) April 13, 2021
His reaction to Paletta is pretty funny:
“Diveykin, huh? Never heard of him. Better call everyone in my rolodex to see if I can figure out who he is.” pic.twitter.com/eYpaZQ2eOL
President Obama is asked if Russia could be behind hacks that led to 20,000 Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails getting released by WikiLeaks. He says the FBI is still investigating but also “experts have attributed this to the Russians.”
Obama (left) is interviewed by Today’s Savannah Guthrie on July 26, 2016. (Credit: NBC)
He adds, “What we do know is is that the Russians hack our systems. Not just government systems, but private systems. But you know, what the motives were in terms of the leaks, all that — I can’t say directly. What I do know is that Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin.”
Asked if he’s suggesting that Russian leader Vladimir Putin could be motivated to help Trump win the November 2016 election, Obama replies, “I am basing this on what Mr. Trump himself has said. And I think that — Trump’s gotten pretty favorable coverage — back in Russia.” (Politico, 7/26/2016)
He stops stopped short of accusing Russia of trying to manipulate the election, but says “anything’s possible.” He also claims that “on a regular basis, [the Russians] try to influence elections in Europe.” (The New York Times, 7/26/2016)
On July 26, 2016, President Obama signed Presidential Policy Directive 41, United States Cyber Incident Coordination, “setting forth principles governing the Federal Government’s response to any cyber incident, whether involving government or private sector entities.” Issued following high-profile attacks such as the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) breach in 2015 and the recent breach of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC’s) email system, the directive addresses a number of cyber-related issues, including defining various types of cyber incidents as well as departmental roles and responsibilities in responding to such events. The directive defines a cyber incident as an event occurring on or conducted through a computer network that actually or imminently jeopardizes the integrity, confidentiality, or availability of computers, information or communications systems or networks, physical or virtual infrastructure controlled by computers or information systems, or information resident thereon. A significant cyber incident is one that is likely to result in demonstrable harm to the national security interests, foreign relations, or economy of the United States or to the public confidence, civil liberties, or public health and safety of the American people. Five operating principles are articulated in the response plan:
shared responsibility among individuals, government, and the private sector in protecting networks from attack,
risk-based response,
respecting affected entities,
unity of effort, and
enabling rapid restoration and recovery.
The directive also proscribes a five-level cyber incident severity schema for assessing the severity of cyberattacks, similar to the Department of Homeland Security’s color-
“On July 26, 2016, after WikiLeaks disseminated the D.N.C. e-mails, Steele filed yet another memo, this time claiming that the Kremlin was “behind” the hacking, which was part of a Russian cyber war against Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Many of the details seemed far-fetched: Steele’s sources claimed that the digital attack involved agents “within the Democratic Party structure itself,” as well as Russian émigrés in the U.S. and “associated offensive cyber operators.”
Neither of these claims has been substantiated, and it’s hard to imagine that they will be. But one of the dossier’s other seemingly outlandish assertions—that the hack involved “state-sponsored cyber operatives working in Russia”—has been buttressed. According to Special Counsel Mueller’s recent indictment of thirteen Russian nationals, Kremlin-backed operatives, hiding behind fake and stolen identities, posed as Americans on Facebook and Twitter, spreading lies and fanning ethnic and religious hatred with the aim of damaging Clinton and helping Trump. The Kremlin apparently spent about a million dollars a month to fund Internet trolls working round-the-clock shifts in a run-down office building in St. Petersburg. Their tactics were similar to those outlined in Steele’s Charlemagne investigation, including spreading falsehoods designed to turn voters toward extremism. The Russian operation also involved political activism inside the U.S., including the organizing of bogus pro-Trump rallies.” (Read more: The New Yorker, 3/12/2018)
Guccifer 2.0 is a hacker who claims he broke into the Democratic National Committtee (DNC) computer network and then gave the emails he found to WikiLeaks. He also claims to be an East European with no connection to Russia.
However, the cybersecurity research group ThreatConnect claims to have new evidence linking Guccifer 2.0 to an Internet server in Russia and to a digital address that has been linked to previous Russian online scams. They conclude that Guccifer 2.0 is actually an “apparition created under a hasty Russian [denial and deception] campaign” to influence political events in the US.
Their report concludes, “Maintaining a ruse of this nature within both the physical and virtual domains requires believable and verifiable events which do not contradict one another. That is not the case here.” For instance, Guccifer 2.0 claims to have broken into the DNC network in the summer of 2015 using a software flaw that didn’t exist until December 2015.
Furthermore, the Guccier 2.0 entity is “a Russia-controlled platform that can act as a censored hacktivist. Moscow determines what Guccifer 2.0 shares and thus can attempt to selectively impact media coverage, and potentially the election, in a way that ultimately benefits their national objectives.” (The Daily Beast, 7/26/2016)
Trump speaks during a news conference at Trump National Doral on July 27, 2016, in Tampa, Florida. (Credit: Evan Vucci / The Associated Press)
In a press conference, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says about Russia and Clinton’s emails, “By the way, if they hacked, they probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do. They probably have her 33,000 emails that she lost and deleted.”
He also addresses the country directly: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you can find the 33,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Trump is then asked by NBC News reporter Katy Tur, “Do you have any qualms about asking a foreign government, Russia, China, anybody, to interfere, to hack into a system of anybody’s in this country?”
He replies, “It’s up to the president. Let the president talk to them. Look, here’s the problem, here’s the problem, Katy. He has no respect-”
Tur interrupts him to say, “You said, ‘I welcome them to find those 30,000 emails-‘”
But Trump then interrupts her to say, “Well, they probably have them. I’d like to have them released.”
Tur asks, “Does that not give you pause?”
He replies, “Nope, gives me no pause. If they have them, they have them.”
Later in the day, Trump posts an additional comment on Twitter: “If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!”
Clinton’s senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan issues a critical statement in response to Trump’s comments: “This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent. This has gone from being a matter of curiosity and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue.” (Talkingpointsmemo.com, 7/27/2016)
Also later in the day, Trump spokesperson Jason Miller says that “clearly saying” Russia should share emails with the FBI. “To be clear, Mr. Trump did not call on, or invite, Russia or anyone else to hack Hillary Clinton’s email today.” (The Hill, 7/27/2016)
The next day, Trump calls the suggestion that Russia is trying to help him by leaking the emails is a “joke.” He also says that when he said he hoped Russian hackers found Clinton’s emails and shared them with the FBI, he was only “being sarcastic.” (The Hill, 7/28/2016)
Donald Trump addresses a news conference in Miami, FL on July 27, 2016. (Credit: CNBC)
“Former CIA Director Leon Panetta blasted Donald Trump Wednesday night from the stage of the Democratic National Convention, calling his recent comment that Russia should “find” Hillary Clinton’s emails “irresponsible” and “inconceivable.”
Panetta’s comments were largely disrupted by the crowd chanting “No more war,” but he continued his remarks.
Earlier Wednesday, Trump urged Russian agents to “find” Clinton’s emails and release them, an unprecedented move by a candidate for president encouraging such a foreign breach.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” the GOP presidential nominee said at a news conference in Miami on Wednesday. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Trump was referring to the ongoing controversy surrounding the private server Clinton used while secretary of state.” (Read more: NPR, 7/27/2016)
The following day, the New York Times reports Trump was encouraging Russia and “essentially urging a foreign adversary to conduct cyberespionage against a former secretary of state.” (Read more: New York Times, 7/28/2016)
The Washington Post reports that “Intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an issue under investigation, said there is little doubt that agents of the Russian government hacked the Democratic National Committee [DNC], and the White House was informed months ago of [Russia’s] culpability.” However, days after WikiLeaks posted almost 20,000 DNC emails, the Post adds, “The intelligence community, the officials said, has not reached a conclusion about who passed the emails to WikiLeaks.”
Former NSA director Keith Alexander, testifying before Congress in 2013. (Credit: The Associated Press)
One unnamed US official says, “We have not drawn any evidentiary connection to any Russian intelligence service and WikiLeaks — none.”
Former NSA Director Keith Alexander says, “Determining with confidence who was behind it — if the Russians were the hackers, seeing them pass that data to WikiLeaks — is probably much more difficult than attributing it to the initial hacker. That’s a tough one — especially because there are different ways of passing that information, not all electronic.”
Furthermore, even if Russia is behind the leaks to WikiLeaks, the motivation is unclear. A key question is if Russia is attempting to influence the November 2016 US presidential election. Michael Hayden, former director of both the NSA and the CIA, states, “Frankly, I don’t think they’re motivated by thinking they can affect the election itself.” He thinks the Russians may be flexing their muscles “to demonstrate that they can — not necessarily to make [Donald] Trump win or Hillary [Clinton] lose.”
Leo Taddeo (Credit: Twitter)
Leo Taddeo, a former FBI agent who worked with cybersecurity operations, says, “This is not [Russian leader Vladimir] Putin trying to help Trump. I think they were messaging Hillary Clinton, telling her that they can get in the way of her election if she doesn’t show some flexibility in her position toward them.”
Representative Adam Schiff (D) believes that if Russia is ultimately responsible, the Obama administration “should make it known publicly and forcefully. Even if they’re not able to lay out the evidence because it would disclose sources and methods, they should make the attribution.” (The Washington Post, 7/27/2016)
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (Credit: public domain)
Clapper says the US government is not “quite ready yet” to “make a public call” about who is responsible for the hacking on the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) computer network that resulted in almost 20,000 emails being released by WikiLeaks. However, he hints that one of “the usual suspects” is likely to blame. He also says, “We don’t know enough [yet] to … ascribe a motivation, regardless of who it may have been.”
Yahoo News reports that there is a vigorous debate inside the Obama administration about whether to publicly blame the Russian government for the hacking. One unnamed senior law enforcement official says the Russians are “most probably” involved, but investigation is ongoing.
Clapper is said to be amongst a faction who is resisting publicly blaming the Russians, since it is the kind of activity that intelligence agencies regularly engage in, including the US at times. Clapper also publicly comments, “[I’m] taken aback a bit by … the hyperventilation over this,” He adds in a sarcastic tone, “I’m shocked somebody did some hacking. That’s never happened before.” (Yahoo News, 7/29/2016)
“Peter Strzok and Lisa Page’s texts shine a highly redacted light on how the Trump-Russia investigation began.
It was July 31, 2016. Just days earlier, the Obama administration had quietly opened an FBI counterintelligence investigation of Russian cyber-espionage — hacking attacks — to disrupt the 2016 election. And not random, general disruption; the operating theory was that the Russians were targeting the Democratic party, for the purpose of helping Donald Trump win the presidency.
FBI special agent Peter Strzok was downright giddy that day.
The Bureau had finally put to bed “Mid Year Exam.” MYE was code for the dreaded investigation of Hillary Clinton’s improper use of a private email system to conduct State Department business, which resulted in the retention and transmission of thousands of classified emails, as well as the destruction of tens of thousands of government business records. Strzok and other FBI vets dreaded the case because it was a go-through-the-motions exercise: Everyone working on it knew that no one was going to be charged with a crime; that Mrs. Clinton was going to be the next president of the United States; and that the FBI’s goal was not to be tarnished in the process of “investigating” her — to demonstrate, without calling attention to the suffocating constraints imposed by the Obama Justice Department, that the Bureau had done a thorough job, and that there was a legal rationale for letting Clinton off the hook that might pass the laugh test.
That mission was accomplished, Strzok and his colleagues believed, with Director James Comey’s press conference on July 5, outlining the evidence and recommending against charges that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring. Now, having run the just-for-show interview of Hillary Clinton on July 2 — long after Comey’s press statement that there would be no charges was in the can — Strzok was on the verge of a big promotion: to deputy assistant director of counterintelligence.
Even better: Now, he was working a real case — the Trump-Russia case. He was about to fly to London to meet with intelligence contacts and conduct secret interviews.
Not so secret, though, that he could contain himself.
As was his wont several times a day, Strzok texted his paramour, Lisa Page, the FBI lawyer in the lofty position of counsel to Deputy Director Andrew McCabe — which made Page one of the relative handful of Bureau officials who were in on the new probe. Late Sunday night, as he readied for his morning flight, Strzok wrote to Page, comparing the investigations of Clinton and Trump.
“And damn this feels momentous. Because this matters. The other one did, too, but that was to ensure that we didn’t F something up. This matters because this MATTERS.
Christopher Steele and Bruce Ohr (Credit: public domain)
“Judicial Watch announced today it received 339 pages of heavily redacted records from the U.S. Department of Justice which reveal that former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr remained in regular contact with former British spy and Fusion GPS contractor Christopher Steele after Steele was terminated by the FBI in November 2016 for revealing to the media his position as an FBI confidential informant.
The records show that Ohr served as a go-between for Steele by passing along information to “his colleagues” on matters relating to Steele’s activities. Ohr also set up meetings with Steele, regularly talked to him on the telephone and provided him assistance in dealing with situations Steele was confronting with the media.
The timeframe for the requested records is January 1, 2015, to December 7, 2017.
The emails between Bruce Ohr and Steele were heavily redacted, including some of the dates they were sent and received.
On Friday, July 29, 2016, Steele emails Bruce Ohr about a meeting that is to include Bruce’s wife Nellie Ohr, who then worked for Fusion GPS, at the Mayflower Hotel:
Steele: Dear Bruce,
Just to let you know I shall be in DC at short notice on business from this PM till Saturday eve, staying at the Mayflower Hotel. If you are in town it would be good to meet up, perhaps for breakfast tomorrow morn? Happy to see Nellie too if she’s up for it. Please let me know. Best, Chris
Ohr: Dear Chris –
Nice to hear from you! Nellie and I would be up for breakfast tomorrow and can come into town. What would be a good time for you? Bruce
Steele: Thanks Bruce.
On me at the Mayflower Hotel, Conn Ave NW at 0900 should work but I’ll confirm the time for definite this eve if I may. Looking forward to seeing you. Chris
Ohr: Sounds good, but we won’t let you pay for breakfast! I’ll wait for your confirmation on time. Bruce
Steele: Let’s do 0900 then. See you in the lobby. Chris
Ohr: Very good. See you at 900.
On Saturday, July 30, 2016, Steele sends his thanks to Bruce Ohr for the meeting, “Great to see you and Nellie this morning:”
Ohr: Great to see you and Nellie this morning Bruce. Let’s keep in touch on the substantive issues/s. Glenn [Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson] is happy to speak to you on this if it would help. Best, Chris
On Friday, September 16, 2016, Steele and Ohr begin planning a meeting in the Capital Hilton:
Steele: Dear Bruce,
I hope you are well. I am probably going to visit Washington again in the next couple of weeks on business of mutual interest. I would like to see you again in person and therefore to coordinate diaries. So when are you planning to be in town please? Thanks and Best, Chris
P.S. I don’t think I have up to date cell or landline phone numbers for you. Grateful if you could send met them.
Ohr: Hi Chris –
It would be great to see you I DC. I’ll be out of town Sept 19-21 but should be here the rest of the time. My numbers are office 202 307 2510 and cell [Redacted] Let me know what works best for you.
Steele: Dear Bruce,
I have now arrived in DC and am staying at the Capital Hilton, 1101 16th Street NW. I don’t know my client-related programme yet but am keen to meet up with you. Might we provisionally say breakfast on Friday morn or even tomorrow morn if necessary? Look forward to hearing back from you. Best, Chris
Ohr: Hi Chris
Would tomorrow for breakfast still work for you? My calendar is pretty good tomorrow morning, not so good on Friday. An early breakfast Friday, say 8 am?, would work too. Should I come to your hotel? Bruce
Steele: Thanks Bruce.
0800 on Friday would still be better for me, at the hotel. More useful to all I think, after my scheduled meetings tomorrow. Thanks, Chris
Ohr: Chris –
Perfect. I’ll see you Friday at your hotel at 8 am. Bruce
(…) “Page contradicts Ohr’s testimony regarding when she first knew about former British spy Christopher Steele’s dossier. She claims in her testimony that she did not know about the dossier in August 2016, however, Ohr’s testimony reveals that he delivered Steele’s information to the bureau shortly after meeting with Steele. In fact, he met with former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and specifically, Page at the bureau to deliver the information.
(Clipped from Lisa Page testimony to the House Oversight Committee on July 13, 2018)
Ohr reveals this during an exchange with then-Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Trey Gowdy, R-SC.
“Why? Why did you meet with them,” asks Gowdy.
“To pass the latest information that I had received,” Ohr responds.
“How did you find out who to meet with? Who did you call to find out,” questions Gowdy.
Ohr explains that prior to that meeting with McCabe and Page he had met with Steele on July 30, 2016.
“After the July 30th meeting with Chris Steele, I wanted to provide the information he had given me to the FBI. I reached out for Andrew McCabe, at that time, Deputy Director of the FBI and somebody who had previously led the organized crime, Russian organized crime squad in New York and who I had worked with in the past, and asked if he could meet with me,” he said. “I went to his office to provide the information, and Lisa Page was there. So I provided the information to them. And some point after that, I think, I was given Peter Strzok, or somehow put in contact with Peter Strzok.”
Gowdy then asks when exactly did Ohr meet Strzok and Page.
“I don’t recall the exact date,” Ohr says. “I’m guessing it would have been in August since I met with Chris Steele at the end of July, and I’m pretty sure I would have reached out to Andrew McCabe soon afterwards.” (Read more: Sarah Carter, 3/13/2019)(Lisa Page transcript)
An independent researcher on Twitter who goes by the pseudonym, UndercoverHuber, went a step further and read Strzok and Page’s text messages on July 30, 2016, just a few hours after Page and McCabe met with Ohr and received the first bit of information from Christopher Steele on the Clinton/DNC/Steele dossier:
(…) Ohr’s testimony: “I went to his [McCabe’s] office to provide the information”
“Lisa Page was there”
“So I provided the information to them”
(After that Ohr is put in touch with Strzok, running the Trump/Russia case.)
The investigation was opened the next day, July 31, 2016.
Or at least it was *marked* July 31. Here’s Strzok texting to Page about exactly what “good faith date” they can put on the “LHM” (Letter Head Memo) for the opening case file for the Trump/Russia case.
Bruce Swartz (l) Andrew Weissmann (c) and Zainab Ahmad (Credit: Flickr/Jeff Mitchell, Reuters/public domain)
“Details about Justice Department official Bruce Ohr’s meetings with the author of the salacious anti-Trump dossier were shared by Ohr with his expansive circle of contacts inside the department — including senior FBI leadership and officials now assigned to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Ohr gave a closed-door transcribed interview last August [2018] sharing details of his 2016 meetings with British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier later used to secure a surveillance warrant for a Trump campaign aide. The interview was part of the Republican-led House Oversight and Judiciary Committee probes.
In a series of questions about his meetings with Steele, including one on July 30, 2016, and who he shared the information with, Fox News has confirmed the Ohr transcript stated: “Andy McCabe, yes and met with him and Lisa Page and provided information to him. I subsequently met with Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, and eventually (an FBI agent). And I also provided this information to people in the criminal division specifically Bruce Swartz, Zainab Ahmad, Andrew Weissmann.” (Read more: Fox News, 1/16/2019)
“Within the massive assembly of documents, emails, text messages, congressional testimony and portions of media reports a clear timeline emerged. Part of that timeline was based on the fact that certain events had to have taken place – at specific times – in order to reconcile the downstream activity.
The key point of the graphic, which ran counter to all MSM reporting, was a trail of circumstantial evidence showing Bruce Ohr had to have been in contact with Christopher Steele much earlier than anyone realized. SEE BELOW:
A new report today from John Solomon backs up this timeline with the first-hand testimony of DOJ Official Bruce Ohr.
(…) “For much of the past year, many in Congress have labored under the notion that Ohr, then the No. 4 Department of Justice (DOJ) official, began assisting the FBI’s probe into Russia election collusion only after Trump won the 2016 election.
Lawmakers’ belief was rooted in reports showing Ohr’s first documented interview with FBI agents occurred in November 2016, and in testimony from Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who mentioned Ohr’s involvement in the probe as starting after Thanksgiving 2016.
But now, based on Ohr’s own account in a closed-door congressional interview and other contemporaneous documents, congressional investigators have learned that Ohr made his first contact with the FBI about Trump-Russia collusion evidence in late July and early August 2016. And his approach was prompted by information he got from his friend, the former British intelligence agent Steele.
Ohr’s account to Congress and his contemporaneous notes show he had multiple contacts with Steele in July 2016. One occurred just before Steele visited the FBI in Rome, another right after Steele made the contact.
A third contact occurred July 30, 2016, exactly one day before the FBI and its counterintelligence official, Peter Strzok, opened the Trump probe officially.
Steele met with Ohr and Ohr’s wife, Nellie, in a Washington hotel restaurant for breakfast. At the time, Nellie Ohr and Steele worked for the same employer, Simpson’s Fusion GPS opposition research firm, and on the same project to uncover Russia dirt on Trump, according to prior testimony to Congress.
(…) “According to my sources, Ohr called then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabethe same day as his Steele breakfast and met with McCabe and FBI lawyer Lisa Page on Aug. 3 to discuss the concerns about Russia-Trump collusion that Steele had relayed.
Ohr disclosed to lawmakers that he made another contact with the FBI on Aug. 15, 2016, talking directly to Strzok.
Within a month of Ohr passing along Steele’s dirt, the FBI scheduled a follow-up meeting with the British intelligence operative — and the path was laid for the Steele dossier to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Just as important, Ohr told Congress he understood Steele’s information to be raw and uncorroborated hearsay, the sort of information that isn’t admissible in court. And he told FBI agents that Steele appeared to be motivated by a “desperate” desire to keep Trump from becoming president.” (Read more:The Hill, 9/6/2018)
This account by congressional sources to Solomon about the testimony of Bruce Ohr matches our prior research. It was the initial chapters of the Steele Dossier, a work product of both Nellie Ohr and Christopher Steele, that were given to Bruce Ohr, who then subsequently relayed that information to the FBI (McCabe, Page and Strzok) without disclosing the conflict within the source material coming from his wife.
♦Here’s how it comes together: Nellie Ohr started working for Glenn Simpson (Fusion GPS) in/around October or November of 2015. Nellie Ohr had “contractor access” to the FISA database (NSA and FBI) as a result of her prior and ongoing clearance relationship with the CIA and open source research group.
It was Nellie’s original 2015 political opposition research that Glenn Simpson was pitching and selling as political opposition research to any interested purchaser.
Several months later, when it became clear that Donald Trump was the likely GOP candidate who would win the primary (March/April 2016), Hillary Clinton signed-on to purchase the opposition research from Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS.
Keep in mind, simultaneous to this moment in March and April 2016, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers intervened to stop contractor access to the FISA-702(16)(17) database. From the time Nellie Ohr began working for Fusion GPS in November 2015, through April 2016 there were thousands of unlawful database queries and extractions; 85% of them were unlawful.
Now, Nellie and Glenn Simpson had a problem. They needed to have a way to launder unlawfully extracted FISA search results. Nellie Ohr was familiar with Christopher Steele from her husband Bruce’s prior working relationship with Steele in the FIFA corruption case.
So Fusion GPS (Glenn Simpson and Nellie Ohr) reached out to Christopher Steele. As a former intelligence officer, and conveniently not in the U.S. (plausible deniability improves), Steele could then receive the Nellie research, wash it with his own research from ongoing relationships with Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska,… here comes the hookers and pee tapes….and begin packaging it as the “dossier”.
When you understand what was going on, some of the irreconcilable issues surrounding the dossier make sense. [Example Here] This is the Big Effen Deal.
The unlawful FISA extracted intelligence/research was laundered through the use of the dossier. The information was then cycled back to Bruce Ohr, thereby using Christopher Steele to remove Nellie’s fingerprints from the origination. That’s why Bruce Ohr never initially told the FBI -the end user of the dossier- about his wife working for Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson.
Bruce Ohr meets with Christopher Steele, receives the laundered intelligence product within the dossier, informs Andrew McCabe and Lisa Page and then passes the intelligence information along to FBI Agent Peter Strzok.
Does this explain now why Glenn Simpson, Chris Steele, Nellie Ohr and Bruce Ohr were having breakfast together on July 30th, 2016?
Through this process, what few recognize is that much of the material inside the Steele Dossier is actually research intelligence material unlawfully extracted from the FBI and NSA database; most likely in majority an assembly by Nellie Ohr.
This explains why Paul Wood said: “I have spoken to one intelligence source who says Mueller is examining ‘electronic records’ that would place Cohen in Prague.” Likely Mueller has Nellie’s database research mistake on Michael Cohen, and he got it from Christopher Steele.
Remember the New York Times article, right before the testimony by Bruce Ohr, where the intelligence community was trying to say that Nellie Ohr had nothing to do with the Dossier? (screen grab below)
Remember that ridiculous attempt to distance Nellie Ohr from the dossier?
Now do you see why the intelligence community needed to try, via their buddies in the New York Times, to cloud the importance of Nellie Ohr?
Kim Strassel – (…) Congressional sources tell me that Mr. Ohr revealed Tuesday that he verbally warned the FBI that its source had a credibility problem … Mr. Ohr said, moreover, that he delivered this information before the FBI’s first application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a warrant against Trump aide Carter Page, in October 2016. (Wall Street Journal, 8/30/2018)
Of course Bruce Ohr delivered it before October 21st, 2016. He gained the foundational material from Chris Steele in June and July 2016, passed it along to Peter Strzok, and his wife was key in providing Steele the source information.
This is also why Bruce Ohr never put his wife’s income source on his annual compliance forms. Nellie Ohr’s income was an outcome of her database access.
“Deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe and his legal counsel Lisa Page were in possession of the key Steele dossier allegations on Sat Jul 30 2016, one day BEFORE the FBI opened an investigation into Trump on Sun Jul 31 2016.
(…) Ohr’s testimony: “I wanted to provide the information he [Steele] had given me to the FBI”
And “I reached out to McCabe”
Page/McCabe/Ohr met on a Saturday at the office at very short notice, with Ohr coming almost straight from the Steele meeting to meet with the Deputy Director of the FBI and his legal counsel.
Sounds…unusual/urgent?
(…) Ohr’s testimony: “I went to his [McCabe’s] office to provide the information”
“Lisa Page was there”
“So I provided the information to them”
(After that Ohr is put in touch with Strzok, running the Trump/Russia case.)
The investigation was opened the next day, July 31, 2016.
Or at least it was *marked* July 31. Here’s Strzok texting to Page about exactly what “good faith date” they can put on the “LHM” (Letter Head Memo) for the opening case file for the Trump/Russia case.
“On July 30, 2016, Bruce and Nellie Ohr met with Steele and an unknown associate of Steele’s. Almost immediately, Ohr would initiate a meeting with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to detail his conversation with Steele. Also present at the meeting was McCabe’s counsel, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who would play a key role in the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.” (The Epoch Times, 1/14/2019)
Clinton holds a press conference on August 5, 2016 and explains how she may have “short-circuited” during her interview with Chris Wallace a few days earlier. (Credit: Fox News)
In a Fox News interview with Chris Wallace, she says, “There were discussions and decisions made to classify retroactively certain emails.” She also claims that FBI Director James “Comey said my answers were truthful and consistent,” with what she said in the past.
She adds, “I was communicating with over 300 people in my emails. They certainly did not believe and had no reason to believe what they were sending was classified.” (The Hill, 7/31/2016)
However, on July 5, 2016, Comey clearly stated, “From the group of 30,000 [Clinton] emails returned to the State Department in 2014, 110 emails in 52 email chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 7/5/2016)
Clinton’s comments are heavily criticized in the media. So five days later, on August 5, 2016, she says she may have “short circuited” and she and Wallace might have been “talking past each other.” (Fox News, 8/5/2016)
“On July 31st, 2016 the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign. They did not inform congress until March 2017. •At the beginning of August (1st-3rd)2016 FBI Agent Peter Strzok traveled to London, England for interviews with UK intelligence officials. •On August 15th, 2016 Peter Strzok sends a text message to DOJ Lawyer Lisa Page describing the “insurance policy“, needed in case Hillary Clinton were to lose the election.
Recently there has been a great deal of interest in the origination OF the 2016 FBI counterintelligence operation, and how the FISA court was later used to gain Title-1 surveillance warrant against U.S. person Carter Page; part of that operation.
Specifically, House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes has asked about a redacted name within the “EC”, which has led to the DOJ and FBI claiming to release the name would compromise the individual.
All of these inquires, and refusals, center around the origination authority for the FBI Counterintelligence operation. The origination led to the FISA warrant. Remember that.
Chairman Nunes sent Main Justice a classified letter asking questions. DOJ responded saying they would not comply with providing information (letter) The Washington Postclaimed Nunes was looking for information on an FBI/DOJ ‘source’: “a U.S. citizen who has provided intelligence to the CIA and FBI.” Additionally, this “source” was later also described by WaPo as a witness for Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said the Nunes inquiry was appropriate. With Ryan’s support, Chairman Nunes threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt of congress for non-compliance with valid congressional oversight. DOJ responded saying they’d like a private meeting. Yesterday that meeting took place. Outcome? Sketchy.
In addition to everyone here, Wall Street Journal Author Kimberly Strassel also smells the familiar aroma of a cover-up deployed by administrative state officials inside the DOJ and FBI. The DOJ is refusing to allow public inquiry into the source John Brennan used to create the “EC”. Additionally, the Deep State media advocates, writ large, are working furiously to attack Chairman Devin Nunes for his inquires.
Obviously the compliant media, Democrats, and second-tier DOJ/FBI officials don’t want anyone to discover the source of the 2016 counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign. Their defensive shield is to claim national security, and ambiguous/undefined threats to ‘sources and methods‘ if CIA Director Brennan’s “source”, was identified.
Well, you know what happens next. Internet researchers smell blood in the Deep State swamp…. People start digging into the details.
Here’s what is already known about the source from leaks: •a “top secret intelligence source” of the FBI and CIA, •who is a U.S. citizen and who was •involved in the Russia collusion probe. Revealing the source “might damage international relationships. This suggests the “source” •may be overseas, •have ties to foreign intelligence, or both.”
“I believe I know the name of the informant, but my intelligence sources did not provide it to me and refuse to confirm it. It would therefore be irresponsible to publish it.”
Consider me irresponsible.
The needle on my give-a-damn-meter broke off around the time the Page/Strzok texts were published. The intelligence apparatus is still actively trying to destroy a constitutionally elected president. The IC and their co-dependents within the FBI and DOJ are the ones hiding information to protect themselves. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Some brilliant research was already assembled by various people who have looked deeply into this story {HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE} the trail is transparent and Brennan’s FBI/CIA source appears is quite obvious. I’m just going to connect their well-researched dots.
Remember the Peter Strzok trip to London? The source of John Brennan’s “EC” is likely FBI and CIA operative Stefan Halper a foreign policy expert and Cambridge professor with connections to the CIA and its British counterpart, MI6.
There are about two dozen check-references to identify who the ‘source’ was in providing the underlying intelligence to CIA Director John Brennan; who then wrote the “EC” for the FBI; which started the 2016 Counterintelligence Operation.
Stefan Halper checks off every single box: √Currently overseas. √Current/Former CIA operative. √Current/Former source for FBI. √Anti-Trump motive. √Formerly put together this exact type of operation. √Connections to UK spies/intel community/politicians. √Connection to Australian spies/intel community. √Connection to Alexander Downer. √Political operative. √Wanted Clinton to win the 2016 election. √Connects to Carter Page. √Connects to George Papadopoulos. √Connects to John Brennan. ETC.
Two months ago Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller took a deep dive on how Stefan Halper interacted with George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. Halper was way too sketchy, and he was trying to initiate contacts with low-level Trump campaign aides. [SEE HERE]
THE DAILY CALLER – Two months before the 2016 election, George Papadopoulos received a strange request for a meeting in London, one of several the young Trump adviser would be offered — and he would accept — during the presidential campaign.
The meeting request, which has not been reported until now, came from Stefan Halper, a foreign policy expert and Cambridge professor with connections to the CIA and its British counterpart, MI6.
Halper’s September 2016 outreach to Papadopoulos wasn’t his only contact with Trump campaign members. The 73-year-old professor, a veteran of three Republican administrations, met with two other campaign advisers, The Daily Caller News Foundation learned. (Please Keep Reading)
Stefan Halper posesses a very specific set of skills from all of his prior work within politics and the intelligence community. Halper was in contact with every official and entity in the set-up; and Halper was in the right places at the times when all of these set-up meetings and issues took place.
So, what did he do?
Simple, his job was to locate then dirty-up anyone he could convince: 1) to meet with him; 2) engage in his requests, and 3) engage contacts he set up. Halper was setting up a classic operation to use unknown “useful idiots” to give the appearance of Russian allies/actors.
Halper provided the underlying imaging, the optics needed for the “EC” referral; which Brennan then used to trigger James Comey; who originated the FBI Counterintelligence Operation.
The fraudulent origin, in combination with the October FISA warrant needed for surveillance gathering, would drive the insurance policy that Peter Strzok described to Lisa Page.
Neither Carter Page nor George Papadopoulos would need to be an active participant in the scheme. They could be simply (UI) useful idiots. Hence:
(…) Papadopoulos questioned Halper’s motivation for contacting him, according to a source familiar with Papadopoulos’ thinking. That’s not just because of the randomness of the initial inquiry but because of questions Halper is said to have asked during their face-to-face meetings in London.
According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Halper asked Papadopoulos: “George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?” (more)
Some people have called Page and/or Papadopoulos “moles”, but that’s really not what it appears they were. The better description is “tools”. Once Stefan Halper dirtied them up, they gave the appearance of being involved in a vast Russian conspiracy.
It was the appearance that mattered in order to generate the foundation for: the counterintelligence operation; and the subsequent FISA surveillance warrant; and the Vast Russian Conspiracy narrative; and ultimately the post-election Special Counsel investigation. In total, this was the Peter Strzok “Insurance Policy“.
As House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes has begun working backward; and with the Inspector General looking at the ‘small group’ operatives and publicizing the motives; the deep state operatives inside the DOJ and FBI obviously don’t want sunlight going all the way back to the individual(s) at the beginning of the operation. There is a risk there. Hence, they try to hide behind ‘National Security compromise’ etc, and an ideological media willing to assist in keeping it all hidden.
Chairman Nunes has requested the documents be unredacted to the HPSCI. The DOJ/FBI are claiming if they unredact the originating documents, they will likely be leaked by congress and compromise the sources therein.
Additionally, Chairman Nunes published the HPSCI Report on Russian Active Measures; and in doing so the DOJ and FBI redacted his report for the public. Nunes objected to the redactions.
In part of the report the HPSCI describes the origin of the FBI 2016 Counterintelligence Operation. The DOJ and FBI redacted the paragraph where Nunes outlined who was targeted at the start.
If my analysis is accurate, there were FOUR initial targets of the FBI counterintelligence operation who were connected to the Trump campaign. Here’s what I think those redactions are hiding:
The DOJ didn’t redact Carter Page because he was already ‘outed’ in the House FISA memo. However, I believe the current DOJ redactions are hiding George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.
Those would be the July 2016 targets outlined by the originating EC (electronic communication) from John Brennan when the FBI Counterintelligence operation began.
Peter Strzok testifies on FBI and Department of Justice actions during the 2016 Presidential election in a House Joint committee hearing on Capitol Hill July 12, 2018. (Credit: Chip Somodavilla/Getty Images)
“Late last week the FBI document that started the Trump-Russia collusion fiasco was publicly released. It hasn’t received a lot of attention but it should, because not too long from now this document likely will be blown up and placed on an easel as Exhibit A in a federal courtroom.
(…) To the untrained eye, the FBI document that launched Crossfire Hurricane can be confusing, and it may be difficult to discern how it might be inadequate. To the trained eye, however, it is a train wreck. There are a number of reasons why it is so bad. Two main ones are offered below (if you would like to follow along, the document is here):
First, the document is oddly constructed. In a normal, legitimate FBI Electronic Communication, or EC, there would be a “To” and a “From” line. The Crossfire Hurricane EC has only a “From” line; it is from a part of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division whose contact is listed as Peter Strzok. The EC was drafted also by Peter Strzok. And, finally, it was approved by Peter Strzok. Essentially, it is a document created by Peter Strzok, approved by Peter Strzok, and sent from Peter Strzok to Peter Strzok.
On that basis alone, the document is an absurdity, violative of all FBI protocols and, therefore, invalid on its face. An agent cannot approve his or her own case; that would make a mockery of the oversight designed to protect Americans. Yet, for this document, Peter Strzok was pitcher, catcher, batter and umpire.
In addition, several names are listed in a “cc” or copy line; all are redacted, save Strzok’s, who, for some reason, felt it necessary to copy himself on a document he sent from himself to himself.
(…) Second, the Crossfire Hurricane case was opened as a Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) investigation. A FARA investigation involves a criminal violation of the law – in this case, a negligent or intentional failure to register with the U.S. government after being engaged by a foreign country to perform services on its behalf – that is punishable by fines and imprisonment. It is rarely investigated.
(…) Ultimately, there was no attempt by Strzok to articulate any factors that address the elements of FARA. He couldn’t, because there are none. Instead, there was a weak attempt to allege some kind of cooperation with Russians by unknown individuals affiliated with the Trump campaign, again, with no supporting facts listed.
What this FBI document clearly establishes is that Crossfire Hurricane was an illicit, made-up investigation lacking a shred of justifying predication, sprung from the mind of someone who despised Donald Trump, and then blessed by inexperienced leadership at the highest levels who harbored their own now well-established biases.” (Read more: The Hill, 5/27/2020)(Archive)
“After news broke that the Democratic National Committee had been hacked, a group of prominent computer scientists went on alert. The group of individuals, led by a Hillary supporter, started snooping around the Trump Tower computers to allegedly see if these servers had also been hacked.
This group was led by Indiana University professor, Jean Camp. Professor Camp, according to Circa, was a staunch Hillary supporter:
“A respected computer scientist who raised concerns about a possible connection between President Trump and a Russian bank is an unabashed Hillary Clinton supporter who made multiple small donations to the Democrat’s presidential campaign around the time she and her colleagues surfaced the allegations.”
Some techies uncovered that the Trump Tower servers began to be bombarded with the same exact invalid look-up requests that use the words “trump” and “alfa” together, which were automatically placed in the servers’ log file by the server. The New York Times reports computer logs showed that two servers at Alfa Bank sent more than 2,700 “look-up” messages to the Trump servers.
At about the same time, the FBI received a complaint from “cyber experts” about a possible Trump-Alfa Bank connection, which led the FBI to investigate a Trump-Alfa Bank connection. According to the New York Times:
“In classified sessions in August and September of 2016, intelligence officials also briefed congressional leaders on the possibility of financial ties between Russians and people connected to Mr. Trump. They focused particular attention on what cyber experts said appeared to be a mysterious computer back channel between the Trump Organization and the Alfa Bank, which is one of Russia’s biggest banks and whose owners have longstanding ties to Mr. Putin.”
At about the same time that the FBI began its investigation, Christopher Steele began pushing the now-debunked claim that Trump was connected to Alfa Bank. In mid-September Steele submitted his memos, and at least one of these included the Trump-Alfa Bank connection. Steele submitted these memos to the press and to the FBI.
We know that the FBI received a copy because at this time the FBI sought and received a FISA warrant related to a Russia-linked bank, using the Steele dossier as evidence. This is the only plausible piece of evidence that the FBI could have used. Before this time, the FBI was turned down by the FISA court but on this occasion, a warrant was granted. (As McCabe said: The FISA warrants would not have been granted without the Steele dossier.)
The FBI had no other evidence on the Trump – Russia bank connection and as time went by they had no additional evidence. The New York Times then reported:
“Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.”
Glenn Simpson (l) Christopher Steele (c) and Bruce Ohr (Credit: Washington Examiner)
“Hundreds of pages of previously unreported emails and memos provide the clearest evidence yet that a research firm, hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to find dirt on and defeat Donald Trump, worked early and often with the FBI, a Department of Justice (DOJ) official and the intelligence community during the 2016 presidential election and the early days of Trump’s presidency.”
(…) “Ohr’s own notes, emails and text messages show he communicated extensively with Steele and with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. Those documents have been turned over in recent weeks to investigative bodies in Congress and the DOJ, but not reviewed outside the investigative ranks until now.
They show Ohr had contact with Steele in the days just before the FBI opened its Trump-Russia probe in summer 2016, and then engaged Steele as a “confidential human source” assisting in that probe.
They also confirm that Ohr later became a critical conduit of continuing information from Steele after the FBI ended the Brit’s role as an informant.
“B, doubtless a sad and crazy day for you re- SY,” Steele texted Ohr on Jan. 31, 2017, referencing President Trump’s firing of Sally Yates for insubordination.
Steele’s FBI relationship had been terminated about three months earlier. The bureau concluded on Nov. 1, 2016, that he leaked information to the news media and was “not suitable for use” as a confidential source, memos show.
The FBI specifically instructed Steele that he could no longer “operate to obtain any intelligence whatsoever on behalf of the FBI,” those memos show.
Yet, Steele asked Ohr in the Jan. 31 text exchange if he could continue to help feed information to the FBI: “Just want to check you are OK, still in the situ and able to help locally as discussed, along with your Bureau colleagues.”
“I’m still here and able to help as discussed,” Ohr texted back. “I’ll let you know if that changes.”
Steele replied, “If you end up out though, I really need another (bureau?) contact point/number who is briefed. We can’t allow our guy to be forced to go back home. It would be disastrous.” Investigators are trying to determine who Steele was referring to.”
This is the only known photo of Joseph Pientka (far left) found in the Washingtonian and dated in 2007. (Credit: Vincent Ricard)
(…) In a report released in December by Horowitz on the FBI’s FISA abuse during its investigation into the Trump campaign, the role of an unidentified FBI supervisory special agent (SSA)—described in Horowitz’s report as “SSA 1”—was featured prominently throughout. The description of events and dates match the public information on Pientka’s actions, and on Dec. 13, Pientka was confirmed by Fox News as being “SSA 1.”
The inspector general report noted that all the participating members of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team were selected by Strzok, Pientka, and “the Intel Section chief,” who is almost certainly intelligence analyst Jonathan Moffa, who, according to July 16, 2018, testimony from Lisa Page, worked on both the Clinton and Trump investigations with Strzok.
On page xviii of the inspector general report, it was disclosed that Pientka was running the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign as its supervisor. Pientka also was the agent who provided defensive briefings to the Trump and Clinton campaigns in August 2016.
“We learned during the course of our review that in August 2016, the supervisor of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, SSA 1 [Pientka], participated on behalf of the FBI in a strategic intelligence briefing given by Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to candidate Trump and his national security advisors, including Michael Flynn, and in a separate strategic intelligence briefing given to candidate Clinton and her national security advisors,” the report states.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), during congressional testimony given by Horowitz, noted that the FBI used this meeting as an opportunity to effectively spy on the Trump campaign and gather further information—a characterization that Horowitz agreed with. Horowitz also said in his testimony he was concerned about this practice:
Sen. Graham: “So when we get defensively briefed tomorrow, would it be okay for FBI agents to open up 302s on what we said?”
Mr. Horowitz: “We have very significant concerns about that.”
Horowitz noted in his report that Pientka was specifically selected to “provide the FBI briefings, in part, because Flynn, who was a subject in the ongoing Crossfire Hurricane investigation, would be attending the Trump campaign briefing.”
Just prior to this defensive briefing, on Aug. 1, 2016, Strzok and Pientka “traveled to the European city to interview the FFG [Friendly Foreign Government] officials who met with Papadopoulos in May 2016.” The IG report noted that “during the interview they learned that Papadopoulos did not say that he had direct contact with the Russians.”
It also appears that Pientka was in charge of selecting the Confidential Human Sources (CHS) that were used against George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, and Flynn:
“In determining how to use CHSs in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, SSA 1 and the case agents told the OIG that they focused their CHS operations on the predicating information and the four named subjects,” the inspector general report states.
The report describes “a consensually recorded meeting in August 2016 between Carter Page and an FBI CHS.” The IG noted that Pientka and “Case Agent 1 told the OIG that this meeting was important for the investigation.” But it appears that important information from this meeting was left out of the Page FISA application.
In footnote 197, the IG noted that “Page’s comment about his lack of a relationship with Manafort was relevant to one of the allegations in the Steele reporting that was relied upon in the Carter Page FISA applications, but information about the August 2016 CHS meeting was not shared with the OI attorneys handling the FISA applications until June 2017.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 12/30/2019)(Archive)
Former Australian Ambassador to the UK, Alexander Downer (Credit: public domain)
“The FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia was originally known as “Crossfire Hurricane” before it was widely known to the public and even the bureau itself, officials told The New York Times.
The case, named after a Rolling Stones lyric, was used by only the small group of agents sent to interview the Australian ambassador to the United Kingdom, who had evidence of possible collusion between Russia and a Trump adviser.
Five agents embarked to London in the summer of 2016 for a rare interview with the diplomat after deliberations between American and Australian officials, where they gathered information that would provide the basis for the Russia probe that is still ongoing.
The Times previously reported that a young foreign policy aide on the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, revealed he knew of hacked Democratic Party emails to Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer over late-night drinks in London.
Downer reportedly notified U.S. intelligence officials of his run-in with Papadopoulos after the emails, which contained damaging information about 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton just as the aide had said, began to leak to the public.
From there, the tight group of FBI agents went forward in interviewing Trump associates, which was kept secret for fear of leaks that could sway the campaign.
The official look into the Trump campaign reportedly began just days after the bureau closed its investigation into Clinton for her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of State.” (Read more: The Hill, 5/16/2018)
“President Barack Obama’s White House kept three key officials in the dark about bombshell Russia intelligence received in early August of 2016 from CIA Director John Brennan until after the presidential election in November.
The three officials held the top roles focusing on Russia, cybersecurity, and intelligence programs at the National Security Council. Their exclusion is likely to raise new questions about the Obama administration’s involvement in the origins of the investigation of the Trump campaign that evolved into the probe by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Michael Daniel (l), Celeste Wallander (c), and Brett Holmgren
The Obama administration coordinated a series of so-called “small group” meetings in response to Brennan’s intelligence, but excluded three officials who would usually be involved in high-profile work on the topics: White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel, Senior Director for Russia and Eurasia Celeste Wallander, and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs Brett Holmgren.
The exclusion of the officials was first documented in the third volume (pdf) of the Russia report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which noted that “several NSC officials who would normally be included in discussions of importance … were neither included in the discussions nor exposed to the sensitive intelligence until after the election.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 5/17/2020)(Archive)
(…) Researchers, including British political analyst Chris Blackburn, have used open sources to show that Mifsud was a well-known figure in Western academic, diplomatic, and intelligence circles. Blackburn, whose research has previously focused on Islamic terrorist groups, has worked with senior leaders within global intelligence agencies. He told RealClearInvestigations that Mifsud’s known contacts suggest he’s not a Russian spy – or he is one of the most successful in history.
“Shortly after the FBI opened its counterintelligence probe based on the Papadopoulos information on July 31, the lead agent on the case, FBI Deputy Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok, went to London to investigate.
Claire Smith (Credit: public domain)
“A counter-intelligence officer would first look at someone’s most frequent contacts,” says Blackburn. “So when Strzok gets to London in early August to look into the Papadopoulos meeting with Mifsud, he would’ve found that one of his most notable contacts is Claire Smith.”
Smith is a prominent British diplomat whose biography describes her as an envoy with 25 years of experience and “expert in managing the complexities of global business practices.” Her postings included Beijing and Islamabad.
She worked with Mifsud at three different institutions—the London Academy of Diplomacy, University of Stirling, and Link Campus University in Rome. Blackburn believes that Smith’s working relationship with Mifsud is an important piece of evidence. “She was on the United Kingdom’s Joint Intelligence Committee,” says Blackburn. “It’s a very significant institution in the UK’s intelligence community, answering directly to the prime minister.”
For eight years, until April 2017, Smith was also a member of Britain’s security vetting appeals panel, which, according to its website, is “an independent avenue of appeal for Civil Service staff and contractors whose security clearance has been refused or withdrawn.”
“Smith was vetting UK government employees,” says Blackburn. “So how could she have missed that her colleague Joseph Mifsud was actually a Russian spy? She continued to work alongside him. She got her picture taken with him.”
If it’s true the professor was working with Russian intelligence, says Blackburn, “he was in place to recruit anyone he was training, in Rome or London. Effectively, Mifsud would have been a talent spotter for Russian intelligence.”
Moreover, explains Blackburn, if Mifsud proved to be a spy, he would’ve compromised a number of high-level European intelligence and diplomatic officials the professor worked with in London and Rome. They include Gianni Pittella, an Italian senator who was previously a member of the European Parliament, where he headed the Socialists and Democrats alliance, one of the Parliament’s most important left-wing blocs.
“Joseph is my dear friend,” Pittella told the Italian press in November after news of Mifsud’s alleged involvement in the Russiagate scandal spread. Pittella was a visiting lecturer when Mifsud was director of the London Academy of Diplomacy and is on the Link Campus Foundation’s board.
Link offers degrees in strategic studies and “diplomatic science.” Blackburn says that among the students who attend Link are police officers from around Europe, especially Italy, Malta, and eastern European countries, as well as a large contingent from Brazil. Link’s president is the former Italian interior minister, Vincenzo Scotti, who is alleged to have told Mifsud to hide. (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 5/26/2018)(Archive)
John Brennan and Barack Obama (Credit: Pete Souza/White House)
“Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides. [The aides names were revealed in a video within linked article. They are: Avril Haines, Denis McDonough and Susan Rice.]A
Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.
But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.”
(…) “The material was so sensitive that CIA Director John O. Brennan kept it out of the President’s Daily Brief, concerned that even that restricted report’s distribution was too broad. The CIA package came with instructions that it be returned immediately after it was read. To guard against leaks, subsequent meetings in the Situation Room followed the same protocols as planning sessions for the Osama bin Laden raid.
It took time for other parts of the intelligence community to endorse the CIA’s view. Only in the administration’s final weeks in office did it tell the public, in a declassified report, what officials had learned from Brennan in August — that Putin was working to elect Trump. (Read more: Washington Post, 6/23/2017)
“Text messages between former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page debating how much information to share with the Justice Department about a London meeting — days after the bureau opened its initial Russia investigation — are drawing fresh scrutiny as alleged surveillance abuse and the probe’s origins are investigated by three separate probes, Fox News has learned.
On Aug. 3, 2016, Strzok wrote, “I think we need to consider the lines of what we disclose to DOJ. For example, the last stipulation notes we will not disclose [the] identifies outside the FBI. I think you might argue the unauthorized disclosure might (reasonably) be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to US national security…”
A clipping of a Strzok /Page text with words written in. “DCM” stands for Deputy Chief of Mission.
In an earlier discussion on Aug. 2, 2016, Strzok reported he had a “good meeting.” Page warned, “Make sure you can lawfully protect what you sign. Just thinking about congress, foia [Freedom of Information Act], etc. I’m sure it’s fine. I just don’t know how protection of intel-type stuff works in that context.”
Fox News has learned some of the words and names that were redacted in the string of Strzok-Page messages; they are included below.
The New York Times was first to report lengthy details about the 2016 meeting in question, when the FBI “dispatched a pair of agents to London on a mission so secretive that all but a handful of officials were kept in the dark.” The report said this assignment included questioning Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer. Downer’s information about then-Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos helped lay the foundation for the FBI’s counterintelligence probe – which later grew into former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
House Republicans, continuing to probe the texts, have considered August 2016 a pivotal month. They have been looking closely at these exchanges, and how long before the August meeting Downer reported the Papadopoulos information.” (Read more: Fox News, 7/03/2019)
Avril Haines appears on MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell in August, 2018, to discuss President Trump’s abuse of power after removing former CIA director Brennan’s security clearance. (Credit: MSNBC screenshot)
“Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.
But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objects — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.” —The Washington Post
As a result of this, Director Brennan created a secret task force at the Central Intelligence Agency’s Headquarters, which was composed of several dozen analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Working Group reported to two different groups.
President Barack Obama and less than 14 senior United States Government officials.
A team of operations specialists at the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Also in early August 2016 — presumably the same week — agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, where they questioned her about a letter they had received in early March 2016 from a foreign source, supposedly written by Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz to Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundations regarding the Midyear Exam investigation.
During this meeting, the agents offered to give Attorney General Lynch a “defensive briefing”. Shortly after this, the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded that the Benardo letter was an unreliable document.
President Obama ordered his aides to determine ways to retaliate or deter against the Russian Government through three steps:
Gain a high-confidence assessment from the United States intelligence agencies on Russia’s role and intent.
Check vulnerabilities in state-run election systems.
Seek bipartisan support from Congressional leaders for a statement condemning Moscow and urging states to accept federal assistance.
Obama meets with Kathryn Ruemmler (l), Lisa Monaco (c), and Susan Rice. (Credit: White House Flickr photo by Pete Souza)
The same week, Rice, Haines and Lisa Monaco convened meetings in the White House Situation Room, which would later be referred to as “Deputies Meetings”. These meetings were initially attended by:
Director John Brennan, Central Intelligence Agency
Director James Clapper, Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Director James Comey, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, United States Department of Justice
As time passed, another Cabinet member joined the Deputies Meetings: Vice President Joe Biden.
The Deputies Meetings needed to defend against any potential leaks, and therefore followed the same protocols taken during the planning stages of the raid of Osama bin Laden.
At a later time, agendas were directly sent to Cabinet secretaries, including Secretary John Kerry and Secretary Ashton Carter. When an agenda was received, their subordinates were ordered never to open the envelopes. Further to this, some agendas were withheld until the participants had arrived in the Situation Room and sat down.
Ordinarily, a video feed from the White House Situation Room is fed into various National Security Council offices to allow senior aides to view the events with zero sound. However, during the Deputies Meetings, the video feeds were switched off.
One of these Deputies Meetings was hosted by Haines, where the attendees of the meetings argued that any deliberative attempt to strike back against Russia would become a tool of propaganda for President Vladimir Putin, while another was concerned about the potential effect any action may have on Election Day 2016.
Haines would later note she was “very concerned” during this time about the potential of Russians gaining influence within the Trump campaign, although she apparently remained unaware of the existence of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 4/29/2019)
John Brennan (Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)
“Brennan first alerts the White House to the Putin intelligence and later briefs Obama in the Oval Office convened a secret task force at CIA headquarters composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI.
The unit functioned as a sealed compartment, its work hidden from the rest of the intelligence community. Those brought in signed new non-disclosure agreements to be granted access to intelligence from all three participating agencies.
They worked exclusively for two groups of “customers,” officials said. The first was Obama and fewer than 14 senior officials in government. The second was a team of operations specialists at the CIA, NSA and FBI who took direction from the task force on where to aim their subsequent efforts to collect more intelligence on Russia.” (Read more: Washington Post, 6/23/2017)
Stone gives a speech to the Southwest Broward Republican Organization on August 8, 2016. (Credit: Nydia B. Stone)
In a public appearance, Republican strategist Roger Stone is asked to predict what “October surprise” Wikileaks leader Julian Assange may reveal about Clinton that could influence the November 2016 presidential election. WikiLeaks released a batch of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in July 2016 and hinted at more releases to come.
Stone replies, “Well, it could be any number of things. I actually have communicated with Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation, but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be.”
Stone was an official consultant to the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump until August 2015, and has remains a prominent surrogate and confidant for Trump. (Talkingpointsmemo.com, 8/7/2016)
However, Stone’s prediction will be proven wrong when WikiLeaks begins posting thousands of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s private emails on October 7, 2016. But Stone will post a Tweet on August 21, 2016 that may have predicted that.
Julian Assange seems to suggest on Dutch television program Nieuwsuur that Seth Rich was the source for the Wikileaks-exposed DNC emails and was murdered.
“National security adviser Susan Rice, deputy national security adviser and former deputy director of the CIA under Brennan, Avril Haines, and White House homeland-security adviser Lisa Monaco convened meetings in the Situation Room to weigh the mounting evidence of Russian interference and generate options for how to respond. At first, only four senior security officials were allowed to attend: Brennan, Clapper, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and FBI Director James B. Comey. Aides ordinarily allowed entry as “plus-ones” were barred.
Gradually, the circle widened to include Vice President Biden and others. Agendas sent to Cabinet secretaries — including John F. Kerry at the State Department and Ashton B. Carter at the Pentagon — arrived in envelopes that subordinates were not supposed to open. Sometimes the agendas were withheld until participants had taken their seats in the Situation Room.”
(…) “They were concerned that any pre-election response could provoke an escalation from Putin. Moscow’s meddling to that point was seen as deeply concerning but unlikely to materially affect the outcome of the election. Far more worrisome to the Obama team was the prospect of a cyber-assault on voting systems before and on Election Day.
They also worried that any action they took would be perceived as political interference in an already volatile campaign. By August, Trump was predicting that the election would be rigged. Obama officials feared providing fuel to such claims, playing into Russia’s efforts to discredit the outcome and potentially contaminating the expected Clinton triumph.
Before departing for an August vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, Obama instructed aides to pursue ways to deter Moscow and proceed along three main paths: Get a high-confidence assessment from U.S. intelligence agencies on Russia’s role and intent; shore up any vulnerabilities in state-run election systems; and seek bipartisan support from congressional leaders for a statement condemning Moscow and urging states to accept federal help.” (Read more: Washington Post, 6/23/2017)
“It was the most damaging of all the damaging texts exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. On Aug. [9], 2016, in the second week of the Trump-Russia investigation on which both were working, Page texted Strzok to say, “He’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok responded, “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”
(…) “The Justice Department gave Congress Page’s “not ever going to become president” text months ago, when it produced thousands of texts to Hill investigators. But lawmakers — and the public — did not learn of the explosive second part of the exchange — Strzok’s “We’ll stop it” answer — until last Thursday, when Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Clinton email investigation was that given to Congress.
Why wasn’t that given to Congress?” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., asked on Fox Newsthe day the Horowitz report was released. “Why did I find out about that today at noon?”
(…) “There had been a flaw in the FBI’s collection system, Horowitz said. Searching for the missing texts, Horowitz took possession of Strzok’s and Page’s phones and “undertook a series of steps to seek to exploit, to extract the missing text messages from the phones.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 6/20/2018)
Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff at the State Department, was deposed in May 2016 as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by Judicial Watch. At that time, she refused to answer some questions, citing attorney-client privilege. Judge Emmet Sullivan worked out a compromise to have Mills answer some questions in writing to prevent further litigation, and Mills’ written answers are made public by Judicial Watch on this day.
This written testimony shows that shortly after the hacker known as Guccifer broke into the email account of Clinton confidant Sid Blumenthal and publicy revealed Clinton’s private email address in March 2013, Mills was worried about the potential impact this coud have on Clinton’s private email server. Mills discussed this with Clinton’s computer techician Bryan Pagliano. Clinton’s email address was changed, but it is still unknown if any other security measures were taken. (Politico, 8/10/2016)
Seth Rich (l) and Julian Assange (Credit: public domain)
“A persistent American lawyer has uncovered the undeniable fact that the FBI has been continuously lying, including giving false testimony in court, in response to Freedom of Information requests for its records on Seth Rich. The FBI has previously given affidavits that it has no records regarding Seth Rich.
A Freedom of Information request to the FBI which did not mention Seth Rich, but asked for all email correspondence between FBI Head of Counterterrorism Peter Strzok, who headed the investigation into the DNC leaks and Wikileaks, and FBI attorney Lisa Page, has revealed two pages of emails which do not merely mention Seth Rich but have “Seth Rich” as their heading. The emails were provided in, to say the least, heavily redacted form.
Before I analyse these particular emails, I should make plain that they are not the major point. The major point is that the FBI claimed it had no records mentioning Seth Rich, and these have come to light in response to a different FOIA request that was not about him. What other falsely denied documents does the FBI hold about Rich, that were not fortuitously picked up by a search for correspondence between two named individuals?
To look at the documents themselves, they have to be read from the bottom up, and they consist of a series of emails between members of the Washington Field Office of the FBI (WF in the telegrams) into which Strzok was copied in, and which he ultimately forwarded on to the lawyer Lisa Page.” (Read much more: Craig Murray, 1/28/2020)(Archive)
(…) “As most people outside of solitary confinement know, the whole “Russian collusion” investigation began with the premise that Russia hacked the DNC, but considerable evidence suggests that the DNC emails were downloaded by someone inside the DNC — like Mr. Rich — and then provided to Wikileaks.
Rather than re-invent the wheel, I’ve copied and pasted my letter to U.S. Attorney John Durham, U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue, and Inspector General Michael Horowitz:
Mr. Durham, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Horowitz:
I wish to file a criminal complaint regarding false statements made by FBI Section Chief David M. Hardy in two affidavits [click here and here] filed in the FOIA case identified above [i.e., Ty Clevenger v. U.S. Department of Justice, et al., Civil Action No. 18-CV-01568]. I requested FBI records pertaining to Seth Rich, who allegedly was the source of Democratic National Committee emails published by Wikileaks in 2016 (rather than Russian hackers). In the affidavits (attached to the email version of this letter), Mr. Hardy testified that his office conducted a reasonable search, and it found no responsive records.
New evidence proves otherwise, and it appears that Mr. Hardy has perpetrated a fraud on the court. Judicial Watch recently published documents that it obtained in response to a FOIA request for communications between former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page and I would direct your attention to pages 123-125. In those pages, you will find a heavily-redacted email discussion regarding Mr. Rich. Note that the header on those emails is “Seth Rich.” (Read more: Ty Clevenger/Lawflog, 1/27/2020)(Archive)
“Somma is reported to be an FBI counterintelligence agent referred to as “Case Agent 1” in the IG report.
The report said that “Case Agent 1” was “primarily responsible for some of the most significant errors and omissions” in the FBI’s applications for surveillance orders on Page.
Somma played a role in several key developments in the investigation. He opened the case file on Page, he first proposed surveillance on the Trump aide, and was the FBI handler for Stefan Halper, a longtime confidential human source who was tasked with meeting Page and George Papadopoulos.
Somma also took part in a January 2017 interview with the primary source for Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose dossier was a key aspect of the FISA applications.
The IG reported identified six areas where Somma withheld information from the investigation.
He failed to disclose exculpatory statements that Page and Papadopoulos made to Halper during secretly recorded conversations before the 2016 election. He also received information from the CIA in August 2016 that Page had a longstanding relationship with the spy agency. The IG report says that Somma did not divulge that information to others at the FBI.
Somma also withheld information that Steele’s source divulged in the January 2017 interview that undercut key allegations in the dossier. The FBI relied heavily on the document to obtain spy warrants against Page.
The Steele source said that Steele embellished or misinterpreted information that was in the dossier. He said that he provided Steele with information that was based on “rumor and speculation,” but that Steele passed it along as fact in the dossier.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 6/22/2020)(Archive)
In a CNN interview, Rudy Giuliani criticizes FBI Director James Comey’s July 5, 2016 announcement to not recommend indicting Clinton. “I believe the decision was so wrong, I can’t understand how he came to that conclusion. I don’t believe he did it for bad reasons, because I think he is a good man. But the decision perplexes me. It perplexes [former Assistant FBI Director James] Kallstrom, who worked for him. It perplexes numerous FBI agents who talk to me all the time. And it embarrasses some FBI agents.” (CNN, 8/11/2016)
Giuliani is a former US attorney, former mayor of New York City, and a frequent media surrogate for the Trump campaign. The Daily Beast will note that Giuliani “spent decades of his life as a federal prosecutor and then mayor working closely with the FBI, and especially its New York office. One of Giuliani’s security firms employed a former head of the New York FBI office, and other alumni of it.” Furthermore, his former law firm has long been general counsel to the FBI Agents Association (FBIAA), which represents 13,000 former and current agents. (The Daily Beast, 11/2/2016)
The Daily Beast reports that cybersecurity experts believe the hacker or hackers who stole emails from the DNC (Democratic National Committee) are behind a website known as DCLeaks. The site went public in June 2016 to little media attention. But the site contains emails from hundreds of Republican and Democratic US politicans, including staffers to Republican Senators John McCain and Linsey Graham, plus staffers to former Republican Repesentative Michelle Bachmann. An unnamed “an individual close to the investigation of the Democratic Party hacks” says the evidence is growing that both parties have been targeted. “Everyone is sweating this right now. This isn’t just limited to Democrats.”
Senators John McCain (left) and Linsey Graham (right) (Credit: Kevin Lamarque / Reuters)
The cybersecurity company ThreatConnect has been investigating the recent hacks of US political targets, and they call DCLeaks a “Russian-backed influence outlet.” In particular, they have linked it to Fancy Bear (a.k.a. APT 28), a hacking group also accused of hacking the DNC, an believed by many to be working for the Russian government. “DCLeaks’ registration and hosting information aligns with other Fancy Bear activities and known tactics, techniques, and procedures.” They also claim that the hacker or hacking group known as Guccifer 2.0, who claims to be behind the hacking of the DNC emails that WikiLeaks publicly posted in July 2016, is linked to DCLeaks.
The Daily Beast reports that “researchers, at ThreatConnect and elsewhere, also now believe that Guccifer 2.0 was WikiLeaks’ source and that the group is acting as a front for the Russian government.” (The Daily Beast, 8/12/2016)
In late 2014, Clinton sorted her emails into what she and her lawyers deemed work-related and personal, and then deleted over 31,000 of the “personal” emails. In the FBI investigation into her emails that concluded in July 2016, it was reported that “several thousand” of the personal emails were recovered or found through other people having copies, and many of these actually were work-related.
In a court filing, the State Department reveals that it is planning to release all of the emails it decides are work-related. The emails will be given to Judicial Watch, who have a number of on-going Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits related to Clinton’s emails. However, it is unknown just how many emails were recovered and how many of those are work-related. It also is unknown how soon they will be released. Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Reince Priebus urges the department to release the emails before the November 2016 presidential election. (The Hill, 8/16/2016)
Debbie Wassermann Schultz accidentally tells the truth for the first time about their push to anoint Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
“Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
(…) The papers, known in Ukraine as the “black ledger,” are a chicken-scratch of Cyrillic covering about 400 pages taken from books once kept in a third-floor room in the former Party of Regions headquarters on Lipskaya Street in Kiev. The room held two safes stuffed with $100 bills, said Taras V. Chornovil, a former party leader who was also a recipient of the money at times. He said in an interview that he had once received $10,000 in a “wad of cash” for a trip to Europe.
A page from the “black ledger,” released by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau. This page does not include Mr. Manafort’s name.
“This was our cash,” he said, adding that he had left the party in part over concerns about off-the-books activity. “They had it on the table, stacks of money, and they had lists of who to pay.”The National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which obtained the ledger, said in a statement that Mr. Manafort’s name appeared 22 times in the documents over five years, with payments totaling $12.7 million. The purpose of the payments is not clear. Nor is the outcome, since the handwritten entries cannot be cross-referenced against banking records, and the signatures for receipt have not yet been verified.
“Paul Manafort is among those names on the list of so-called ‘black accounts of the Party of Regions,’ which the detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine are investigating,” the statement said. “We emphasize that the presence of P. Manafort’s name in the list does not mean that he actually got the money, because the signatures that appear in the column of recipients could belong to other people.”
The accounting records surfaced this year, when Serhiy A. Leshchenko, a member of Parliament who said he had received a partial copy from a source he did not identify, published line items covering six months of outlays in 2012 totaling $66 million. In an interview, Mr. Leshchenko said another source had provided the entire multiyear ledger to Viktor M. Trepak, a former deputy director of the domestic intelligence agency of Ukraine, the S.B.U., who passed it to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.” (Read more: New York Times, 8/14/2016) (Archive)
John Brennan (l) and Robert Hannigan. (Credit: Agence France Presse/Getty Images)
(…) “Steele believed that the Russians were engaged in the biggest electoral crime in U.S. history, and wondered why the F.B.I. and the State Department didn’t seem to be taking the threat seriously. Likening it to the attack on Pearl Harbor, he felt that President Obama needed to make a speech to alert the country. He also thought that Obama should privately warn Putin that unless he stopped meddling the U.S. would retaliate with a cyberattack so devastating it would shut Russia down.
Steele wasn’t aware that by August, 2016, a similar debate was taking place inside the Obama White House and the U.S. intelligence agencies. According to an article by the Washington Post, that month the C.I.A. sent what the paper described as “an intelligence bombshell” to President Obama, warning him that Putin was directly involved in a Russian cyber campaign aimed at disrupting the Presidential election—and helping Trump win. Robert Hannigan, then the head of the U.K.’s intelligence service the G.C.H.Q., had recently flown to Washington and briefed the C.I.A.’s director, John Brennan, on a stream of illicit communications between Trump’s team and Moscow that had been intercepted. (The content of these intercepts has not become public.) But, as the Post noted, the C.I.A.’s assessment that the Russians were interfering specifically to boost Trump was not yet accepted by other intelligence agencies, and it wasn’t until days before the Inauguration that major U.S. intelligence agencies had unanimously endorsed this view.”
(…) “In early September, 2016, Obama tried to get congressional leaders to issue a bipartisan statement condemning Russia’s meddling in the election. He reasoned that if both parties signed on the statement couldn’t be attacked as political. The intelligence community had recently informed the Gang of Eight—the leaders of both parties and the ranking representatives on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees—that Russia was acting on behalf of Trump. But one Gang of Eight member, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, expressed skepticism about the Russians’ role, and refused to sign a bipartisan statement condemning Russia. After that, Obama, instead of issuing a statement himself, said nothing.
Steele anxiously asked his American counterparts what else could be done to alert the country. One option was to go to the press. Simpson wasn’t all that worried, though. As he recalled in his subsequent congressional testimony, “We were operating under the assumption at that time that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election, and so there was no urgency to it.” (Read more: The New Yorker, 3/12/2018)
In early July 2016, Republicans formally asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether Clinton committed perjury with some of her comments while speaking before Congress in October 2015.
Representative Bob Goodlatte (Credit: Twitter)
On August 15, 2016, Representatives Bob Goodlatte (R), chair of the Judiciary Committee, and Jason Chaffetz (R), chair of the Oversight Committee, write a letter to Channing Phillips, the US attorney for the District of Columbia. The letter points out four comments Clinton made in her Congressional testimony that they believe contradicts what the FBI learned during their Clinton email investigation.
They write: “The four pieces of sworn testimony by Secretary Clinton described herein are incompatible with the FBI’s findings. We hope this information is helpful to your office’s consideration of our referral.”
In her testimony, Clinton claimed that none of the material she sent or received via her personal email account was marked as classified. But the FBI later determined that at least three emails contained classified markings, although they were apparently done in error.
Clinton claimed her lawyers went through each of her emails individually before deciding to delete them or not. However, the FBI has since claimed this is not so.
She said all of her work-related emails were given back to the State Department in December 2014, but thousands of other work-related emails have since been found.
She claimed she only used one server while secretary of state, but the FBI says the server was replaced more than once.
Earlier in the month, the Justice Department told Goodlatte and Chaffetz that it is reviewing information “and will take appropriate action as necessary.”
The Hill comments that the “letter is a sign that Republicans are committed to pressuring the Justice Department to act against Clinton, even after it notably declined to prosecute her for mishandling classified information,” and that Republicans “also appear to be making a public case for an indictment, perhaps building off widespread unease with the decision not to prosecute…” (The Hill, 8/16/2016)
“Two FBI officials who worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation exchanged text messages last year in which they appear to have discussed ways to prevent Donald Trump from being elected president.
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok wrote in a cryptic text message to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer and his mistress.
“It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” Strzok wrote in the text, dated Aug. 15, 2016.
“Jeh Johnson, the homeland-security secretary, was responsible for finding out whether the government could quickly shore up the security of the nation’s archaic patchwork of voting systems. He floated the idea of designating state mechanisms “critical infrastructure,” a label that would have entitled states to receive priority in federal cybersecurity assistance, putting them on a par with U.S. defense contractors and financial networks.
On Aug. 15, Johnson arranged a conference call with dozens of state officials, hoping to enlist their support. He ran into a wall of resistance.
The reaction “ranged from neutral to negative,” Johnson said in congressional testimony Wednesday.
Brian Kemp, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, used the call to denounce Johnson’s proposal as an assault on state rights. “I think it was a politically calculated move by the previous administration,” Kemp said in a recent interview, adding that he remains unconvinced that Russia waged a campaign to disrupt the 2016 race. “I don’t necessarily believe that,” he said.
Stung by the reaction, the White House turned to Congress for help, hoping that a bipartisan appeal to states would be more effective.” (Read more: Washington Post, 6/23/2017)
David Kendall, (r), sits behind Hillary Clinton during a House hearing of the Select Committee on Benghazi, on October 22, 2015. (Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/The National Law Journal)
“Judicial Watch announced today it received 218 pages of disgraced former FBI officials Peter Strzok-Lisa Page emails which show then-FBI General Counsel James Baker instructing FBI officials to expedite the release of FBI investigative material to Hillary Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall in August 2016. Kendall and the FBI’s top lawyer discussed specifically quickly obtaining the “302” report of the FBI/DOJ interview of Mrs. Clinton.
(…) OnAugust 16, 2016, at 10:02 p.m.Baker emails then-Associate Deputy Director David Bowdich; Michael Steinbach, former executive assistant director for national security; former Acting Assistant Director Jason V. Herring; former FBI lawyer Lisa Page; former Principal Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson; Michael Kortan, FBI assistant director for public affairs, now retired; James Rybicki, former chief of staff to Comey; and others to inform them that he “just spoke” with Clinton’s lawyer Kendall, who requested documents from the FBI. Baker says he told Kendall he would “need to submit a request.” Baker tells them, “I said we would process it expeditiously.”
“I just spoke with David Kendall … I conveyed our view that in order to obtain the documents [FBI investigative material] they are seeking they need to submit a request pursuant to the Privacy Act and FOIA. I said they could submit a letter to me covering both statutes. They will send it in the morning. I said that we would process it expeditiously. David asked us to focus first on the Secretary’s 302 [FBI interview report]. I said OK. [Redacted] We will have to focus on this issue tomorrow and get the 302 out the door as soon as possible and then focus on the rest of the stuff.”
The following day, August 17, 2016, Kendall sent a FOIA/Privacy Act request on “behalf of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton” to the FBI’s top lawyer with a request for “expeditious processing.” Baker passes this request to Bowdich, Steinbach, Herring, Page, Anderson:
In my view, we need to move as quickly as possible on this, but pursuant to David’s oral request last night, we should focus first on Secretary Clinton’s 302…. Is the end of this week out of the question for her 302?
In a follow-up email exchange, the same day, Anderson arranged for Herring, Page, former FBI Assistant Director and head of the Office of Congressional Affairs Gregory Brower, Strzok and others to “coordinate a plan for processing and releasing” Clinton’s 302, though one official reminds others that they should process the request “consistent” with other requests.
Then, in an August 21, 2016, email exchange Baker tells his people that he would “alert” Kendall shortly before Clinton’s 302 was to be posted on the FBI’s FOIA Vault webpage. On September 2, 2016, the FBI announced the release of Clinton’s interview documents.
Finally, on August 24, 2016, the acting FBI FOIA unit chief said he sees “no problem” with giving Hillary’s attorney a heads up before her records were posted to the Vault.” (Read more: Judicial Watch, 6/03/2019)
Included in the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the criminal charges against General Flynn, Exhibit 2 is the official filing and opening of the Crossfire Razor investigation. Of note, the investigation is categorized as a sensitive investigation matter (SIM) because it was during the middle of the 2016 general election campaign.
The documents include the FBI’s summary of the interview of Clinton on July 1, 2016, known as a 302.
The State Department wanted to review the 302 interview summaries first, but the FBI ignored that request. On July 7, 2016, FBI Director James Comey said when it came to documents relating to the FBI’s Clinton investigation, he was committed to delivering to Congress “everything I can possibly give you under the law and to doing it as quickly as possible.”
Representative Adam Schiff (Credit: Michael Buckner / Getty Images)
Representative Adam Schiff (D) criticizes the move. “With the exception of the classified emails that had been found on the private server, I can see little legitimate purpose to which Congress will put these materials. Instead, as the now-discredited Benghazi Committee demonstrated, their contents will simply be leaked for political purposes. This will neither serve the interests of justice nor aid Congress in its responsibilities and will merely set a precedent for the FBI to turn over closed case files whenever one party in Congress does not like a prosecutorial decision. This has been done in the name of transparency, but as this precedent chills the cooperation of other witnesses in the future, I suspect the Department of Justice will later come to refer to it by a different name — mistake.”
The documents can be seen by members of Congress, but they are not allowed to publicly reveal any of it. An FBI spokesperson says, “The material contains classified and other sensitive information and is being provided with the expectation it will not be disseminated or disclosed without FBI concurrence.”
However, Senator Charles Grassley (R), chair of the judiciary committee, says, “On initial review, it seems that much of the material given to the Senate today, other than copies of the large number of emails on Secretary Clinton’s server containing classified information, is marked ‘unclassified/for official use.’ The FBI should make as much of the material available as possible.”
Clinton campaign spokesperson Brian Fallon also wants to see the material publicly release, saying, “This is an extraordinarily rare step that was sought solely by Republicans for the purposes of further second-guessing the career professionals at the FBI. We believe that if these materials are going to be shared outside the Justice Department, they should be released widely so that the public can see them for themselves, rather than allow Republicans to mischaracterize them through selective, partisan leaks.” (Politico, 8/16/2016)
(…) Among the most significant of the newly declassified documents is a memorandum written by FBI agent Joe Pientka III, the case agent on Trump-Russia. It was Pientka who, at the FBI’s New York City headquarters on August 17, 2016, purported to brief Trump and two top campaign surrogates — the aforementioned General Flynn and then–New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who was slated to run the transition if Trump won.
In reality, Pientka and the FBI regarded the occasion not as a briefing for the Republican presidential nominee but as an opportunity to interact with Donald Trump for investigative purposes. Clearly, the Bureau did that because Trump was the main subject of the investigation. The hope was that he’d blurt things out that would help the FBI prove he was an agent of Russia.
The Obama administration and the FBI knew that it was they who were meddling in a presidential campaign — using executive intelligence powers to monitor the president’s political opposition. This, they also knew, would rightly be regarded as a scandalous abuse of power if it ever became public. There was no rational or good-faith evidentiary basis to believe that Trump was in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin or that he’d had any role in Russian intelligence’s suspected hacking of Democratic Party email accounts.
You didn’t have to believe Trump was a savory man to know that. His top advisers were Flynn, a decorated combat veteran; Christie, a former U.S. attorney who vigorously investigated national-security cases; Rudy Giuliani, a legendary former U.S. attorney and New York City mayor who’d rallied the country against anti-American terrorism; and Jeff Sessions, a longtime U.S. senator with a strong national-defense track record. To believe Trump was unfit for the presidency on temperamental or policy grounds was a perfectly reasonable position for Obama officials to take — though an irrelevant one, since it’s up to the voters to decide who is suitable. But to claim to suspect that Trump was in a cyberespionage conspiracy with the Kremlin was inane . . . except as a subterfuge to conduct political spying, which Obama officials well knew was an abuse of power.
So they concealed it. They structured the investigation on the fiction that there was a principled distinction between Trump himself and the Trump campaign. In truth, the animating assumption of the probe was that Trump himself was acting on Russia’s behalf, either willfully or under the duress of blackmail. By purporting to focus on the campaign, investigators had the fig leaf of deniability they needed to monitor the candidate.
Just two weeks before Pientka’s August 17 “briefing” of Trump, the FBI formally opened “Crossfire Hurricane,” the codename for the Trump-Russia investigation. The Bureau also opened four Trump-Russia subfiles, related to Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Flynn.
There was no case file called “Donald Trump” because Trump was “Crossfire Hurricane.” The theory of Crossfire Hurricane was that Russia had blackmail information on Trump, which it could use to extort Trump into doing Putin’s bidding if Trump were elected. It was further alleged that Russia had been cultivating Trump for years and was helping Trump’s election bid in exchange for future considerations. Investigators surmised that Trump had recruited Paul Manafort (who had connections to Russian oligarchs and pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs) as his campaign manager, enabling Manafort to use such emissaries as Page to carry out furtive communications between Trump and the Kremlin. If elected, the theory went, Trump would steer American policy in Russia’s favor, just as the Bureau speculated that Trump was already corruptly steering the Republican party into a more pro-Moscow posture.” (Read more: National Review, 8/01/2020)(Archive)
“Newly declassified internal Federal Bureau of Investigation documents prove the top U.S. law enforcement agency used a so-called defensive briefing of the Trump campaign in 2016 to spy on and collect information about Donald Trump himself. The new documents, which are just the latest in a string of declassifications regarding the FBI operation to spy on the Trump campaign and later the Trump administration, detail the FBI’s attempts to use a briefing ostensibly meant to warn the Trump campaign about foreign intelligence threats to spy on the Trump campaign itself.
(…) In one of the documents declassified and released on Wednesday, FBI supervisory Special Agent Joe Pientka wrote that he deliberately used the briefing to “actively listen for topics or questions” from Trump “regarding the Russian Federation.” Rather than provide the Trump campaign a specific warning that certain campaign principals were being targeted by Russian intelligence, the FBI instead gave a general, non-specific warning that foreign intelligence services might eventually target the campaign.
Pientka’s written summary of the briefing noted that Trump, Michael Flynn, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were the only three Trump campaign members in attendance. Christie’s attendance had not previously been disclosed. The August 17, 2016 meeting came the day after the FBI opened a formal counterintelligence investigation against Flynn and just two days after FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok texted his former lover, FBI attorney Lisa Page, about an “insurance policy” he had designed to keep Trump from becoming president.
(…) Pientka was excoriated in a report from the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Inspector General (OIG) for his behavior during the FBI’s spy operation against the Trump campaign. Pientka told the OIG that he designed the August 17 meeting to “gain assessment and possibly have some level of familiarity with [Flynn].”
According to the OIG report, Pientka “was selected to provide the FBI briefings, in part, because Flynn, who was a subject in the ongoing Crossfire Hurricane investigation, would be attending the Trump campaign briefing.”
Pientka told the OIG that he was selected to attend on behalf of the FBI so he could “record” or “overhear” from Trump, Flynn, or Christie “any kind of admission” that they were colluding with the Russian government to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. Pientka also added that he wanted to get a baseline impression of Flynn’s “overall mannerisms” in case he needed to later use that information against him.” (Read more: The Federalist, 7/23/2020)(Archive)
Reuters reports that the foundation has recently hired the cybersecurity company FireEye to investigte and combat hacking after seeing indications of possible hacking. This is according to two unnamed “sources familiar with the matter.”
No stolen emails or documents from the foundation have been made public so far. However, one of the sources plus two unnamed US security officials say that hackers appear to have used “spear phishing” techniques to gain access to the foundation’s network, in the same way they’ve hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other political targets. (Reuters, 8/18/2016)
Earlier in the day, Reuters reported from several sources that it is likely the Clinton Foundation’s computer network has been recently hacked. But the foundation says, “We have no evidence Clinton Foundation systems were breached and have not been notified by law enforcement of an issue.”
Reuters also reported the foundation recently hired the cybersecurity company FireEye to combat hacking. The foundation has not responded to this. (Politico, 8/18/2016)
An August 18, 2016, email from FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Bill Priestap to Strzok, Moffa and a FBI official (identity redacted), asking if they “happen to know when Clinton will receive the brief? And where will it occur, and which two people has she designated to receive it with her?”
Strzok replies, “She has not designated her people and no date is set. I believe brief will be HVRA [the FBI’s Hudson Valley Resident Agent] or WPRA [FBI’s White Plains Resident Agent].”
Further on in the email exchange, the unidentified FBI official from the Washington field office writes, “There is no additional or new info as of this morning when I checked with the DNI scheduler. There is a policy that briefs will not be provided a week prior to a debate. If the other candidate does not ID people soon, there was talk that they may not be able to do them. That’s all I know at this time.”
Strzok forwards the exchange to Lisa Page and says, “And now we’ve got sources in dni <smiley emoji>.”
Page replies, “Yup, I knew the same. Just hadn’t shared yet.”
Strzok responds, “What?! You holding out? <wink emoji>”
Page replies, “Time, dude. Time.”
Strzok responds, “I know, dudette. Hence, the <wink emoji>. Same realization of shit, haven’t even told you about Trump brief…”
The DOJ’s Inspector General report on “Crossfire Hurricane” describes the FBI’s use of a national security briefing to the Trump campaign in August 2016 to try to further its investigation by planting an agent in the room:
[W]e learned during the course of our review that in August 2016, the supervisor of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, SSA 1, participated on behalf of the FBI in a strategic intelligence briefing given by Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to candidate Trump and his national security advisors, including Michael Flynn, and in a separate strategic intelligence briefing given to candidate Clinton and her national security advisors. The stated purpose of the FBI portion of the briefing was to provide the recipients “a baseline on the presence and threat posed by foreign intelligence services to the National Security of the U.S.” However, we found that SSA 1 was selected to provide the FBI briefings, in part, because Flynn, who was a subject in the ongoing Crossfire Hurricane investigation, would be attending the Trump campaign briefing.
“The Trump campaign announced Manafort was resigning from the campaign, nearly 5 months after he joined.
“I am very appreciative for his great work in helping to get us where we are today, and in particular his work guiding us through the delegate and convention process,” Trump said in a statement. “Paul is a true professional and I wish him the greatest success.”
The Trump campaign provided no reason for Manafort’s resignation. But in the days immediately leading up to the announcement, the New York Times reported investigators were looking into $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments to Manafort from former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, and the Associated Press reported he helped a pro-Russian party in Ukraine funnel money to lobbying firms in Washington, D.C.
“I think my father didn’t want to be distracted by whatever things Paul was dealing with,” Trump’s son Eric told Fox News after the resignation. “Paul was amazing, and, yes, he helped us get through the primary process, he helped us get through the convention. He did a great job with the delegates. But, again, my father didn’t want to have the distraction looming over the campaign.”
Shortly before Manafort’s resignation, Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, now senior advisers to the White House, were brought on as the campaign’s chief executive and campaign manager, and ultimately led Trump to an unexpected victory in November. (Fortune, 3/22/2017)
If the “Ukraine meddled in 2016 is Russian propaganda” claim is right, time to cancel your subscription to the Financial Times and get the FBI on their case. The article is dated August 28, 2016.
(…) “In 2016, Serhiy Leshchenko, a Ukrainian member of parliament and an anti-corruption activist (who got embroiled in his own corruption scandal), coordinated the release of a handwritten ledger. The document purported to show off-the-book payments made to Manafort from the Party of the Regions — the political arm of the Viktor Yanukovich, the Ukrainian President who had been overthrown in a coup-type revolt by a much more western-friendly political faction. The ledger itself was released by NABU, a Ukrainian government anti-corruption organization set up as result of prodding by the Obama Administration and which was run with the backing and financial support of the FBI.
(As an aside: NABU — which also got embroiled into its own political corruption scandal — also happens to be at the heart of an internal Ukrainian political fight that sucked in ex-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. But that’s a different and complicated story. And then there’s the weird angle of the FBI being so closely involved with NABU at a time when this Ukrainian anti-corruption agency decided to involve itself in an American election.)
Anyway, Leshchenko — a foreign politician — made clear that his objective at the time was to kill off Trump’s candidacy. That’s a direct admission of meddling. As Oleksiy Kuzmenko has documented so well, Leshchenko repeated this statement in various ways in both English and Ukrainian over and over again.
Lev Golinkin explained in The Nationa few months ago that the release of that ledger by Leshchenko and NABU was an important event — and a direct intervention in the election. “The story rocked the 2016 election, given Manafort’s position as head of Trump’s campaign. The Hillary Clinton campaign immediately seized on it as proof that Manafort—and therefore Trump—was tied to Yanukovych and the Kremlin,” he wrote. “Manafort was ousted based on handwritten pieces of paper—the story would’ve never gone anywhere without NABU and Leshchenko’s vouching for the ledger’s authenticity. That’s as direct as it gets.”
But three years later, this episode has been wiped from the collective memory of our media and political establishment. What used to be fact is now smeared as either a pro-Trump rightwing conspiracy theory or Russian propaganda — and probably both. But saying that it didn’t happen doesn’t change the historical record.” (Read more: The Grayzone, 11/23/2019) (Archive)
“…Biden and Poroshenko laugh together over the release of information against former Trump campaign advisor Paul Manafort. The famous ‘black ledger’ allegedly showed off-the-books payments to Manafort from former Ukrainian President Yanukovych. The ‘black ledger’ was later found to be fabricated; however, the information was used to begin investigations into Manfort; he was forced to resign from Trump’s team prior to the election.
In the tape below, Biden and Poroshenko can be heard laughing about the incident.
“During a telephone conversation, Poroshenko said one phrase that could cost Biden the entire presidential race, as well as serve as the beginning of an investigation into Ukraine’s interference in the electoral process with the support of the Democratic Party.
According to Poroshenko, taking adviser Yanukovych Manfort to Trump’s team was a bad idea: “And one more thing, just as a joke. We published documents of the former Party of Regions. As I understand it, one of Mr. Trump’s key advisers, Paul Manafort, resigned today … As for me, it was a bad idea to take Advisor Yanukovych to Trump’s team. ”
Poroshenko clearly said: “we published.” This is important, as it can be evidence that it was Poroshenko who led the intervention operation.
We will be back in May 2016. Then the former People’s Deputy Sergei Leshchenko published material on the “black bookkeeping” of the Party of Regions, on the basis of which the total cost of political needs of the Yanukovych clan settled to more than $ 66 million. The materials also turned out to be the name of Paul Manafort.”
Judge Emmet Sullivan, District Court for the District of Columbia, (Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi / The National Law Journal)
Judicial Watch has been seeking to have Clinton deposed as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit involving her emails. However, US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan rules: “Judicial Watch’s argument that a deposition is preferable in this case because of the ability to ask follow-up questions is not persuasive. Given the extensive public record related to the clintonemail.com system, a record which Judicial Watch has acknowledged
Judicial Watch will be able to anticipate many follow-up questions. For those follow-up questions that Judicial Watch is unable to anticipate, it can move this Court for permission to serve additional interrogatories.”
Sullivan notes that due to legal precedents applicable to current and former Cabinet officials, he should only require Clinton to appear at a deposition if “exceptional circumstances” justify it.
Sullivan says he is still intent on finding out why Clinton’s private server was set up and whether there were other reasons beyond Clinton’s public claim of “convenience.” He also says it is important that she at least answer questions in writing about this because depositions of Clinton’s staff had shown that “her closest aides at the State Department do not have personal knowledge of her purpose in using the [server].”
Politico notes, “Technically, it is still possible one of several other judges considering similar cases could issue such an order [for Clinton to be deposed in person], but the clock may run out soon on efforts to force such an appearance in advance of the November [presidential] election.”
Judicial Watch also asked for the depositions of former State Department officials Clarence Finney and John Bentel.
Sullivan rejects the deposition of Finney, despite the fact that Finney’s job was to organize responses to FOIA requests. However, he does order the future deposition of Bentel. It has been reported that Bentel blocked other department employees from raising questions about Clinton’s use of her server. (Politico, 8/19/2016)
Roger Stone writes on Twitter, “Trust me, it will soon be [John] Podesta’s time in the barrel.” (Twitter, 8/21/2016) Stone is a Republican strategist and confidant of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, while Podesta is Clinton’s campaign chair.
On October 7, 2016, Stone’s Tweet will take on new meaning when WikiLeaks begins posting thousands of Podesta’s private emails.
Several days later, Podesta will cite this Tweet and then claim “it’s a reasonable assumption, or at least a reasonable conclusion, that Mr. Stone had advance warning and the Trump campaign had advance warning” about the WikiLeaks release. (The Washington Post, 10/11/2016)
However, Stone will claim that the Tweet was in reference to a separate story he was working on that would accuse Podesta of possible criminal wrongdoing. But he will also say that he has had “back-channel communications” with WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange through a mutual friend. (CBS Miami, 10/12/2016)
“Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager said Sunday there are serious questions about whether Donald Trump is a “puppet” for Russia.
“We now need Donald Trump to explain to us the extent to which the hand of the Kremlin is at the core of his own campaign,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said on ABC’s This Week. “There’s a web of financial interests that have not been disclosed. And there are real questions being raised about whether Donald Trump himself is just a puppet for the Kremlin in this race.”
Mook said that the departure of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort from the campaign last week “doesn’t mean that the Russians have been pushed out of this campaign.”
Manafort resigned Friday amid reports about his business dealings with Ukrainian leaders aligned with Russia. Those reports involved allegations of millions of dollars in cash payments and secret lobbying efforts in the U.S. Manafort has denied the allegations.
“The hand of the Kremlin has been at work in this (Trump’s) campaign for some time,” Mook said. “It’s clear that they are supporting Donald Trump.” (Read more: USA Today, 8/21/2016)
Representative Lamar Smith (Credit: public domain)
Representative Lamar Smith (R), chair of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, issues subpoenas for Platte River Networks, which managed Clinton’s server from May 2013 until August 2015; Datto, Inc., which made back-up copies of the server; and SECNAP, which carried out threat monitoring of the network connected to Clinton’s server. Smith wants documents from the companies by September 9, 2016, after they declined to voluntarily produce them. Congressional committees requested information since August and November 2015, to no avail. The companies had been threatened with subpoenas on July 12, 2016.
Smith comments, “Companies providing services to Secretary Hillary Clinton’s private email account and server are not above the law.” He claims the information he is seeking is “critical to… informing policy changes in how to prevent similar email arrangements in the future.”
Smith is working with Senator Ron Johnson (R), chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. They are looking for information about breaches or potential breaches, and documents that detail the scope of the work of each company. (The Washington Post, 8/22/2016)
Representative Jason Chaffetz (Credit: The Associated Press)
Representative Jason Chaffetz (R), chair of the House Oversight Committee, has started looking over the documents the FBI gave to Congress several days earlier. He complains about the “high level of redactions.”
He says: “Hillary Clinton is out there saying there’s not very much sensitive information in there, that she didn’t trade in sensitive classified information. It’s so sensitive and so classified that even I as the chairman of the Oversight Committee don’t have the high level of clearance to see what’s in those materials. I think the documents are overly classified. We’re going to call on the FBI this week to give us a version where there’s non-classified, the unclassified material, and the classified material redacted so that that could be out there in the public. I think that’s the right thing to do.”
He adds that he is not accusing the FBI of protecting Clinton, but “A lot of this that they claim is classified is just flat-out embarrassing. There’s nothing classified about it, it’s just embarrassing. It’s a lot of immature name-calling, stuff like that.”
Chaffetz also says that when he asked the FBI to provide a second copy of the documents in a classified setting, he was given documents that are “different.” “So we have a second set of documents that’s now different. When you turn them page by page, they’re different. I don’t know why that happened.” He is trying to resolve the issue. (Politico, 8/22/2016)
During the FBI’s Clinton email investigation, the FBI found some of Clinton’s over 31,000 deleted emails from when she was secretary of state. At the conclusion of the investigation in July 2016, FBI Director James Comey said the FBI “discovered several thousand work-related emails,” but is it uncertain exactly how many of these emails were found, either work-related or personal. The FBI has given the State Department a CD containing the found emails, and the department has said it will publicly release all the work-related ones.
US District Judge James Boasberg (Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi / National Law Review)
In a court hearing presided by US District Judge James Boasberg on this day, it is revealed that the CD contains around 14,900 emails. Boasberg orders the State Department to review the emails for public release in response to various Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits by Judicial Watch. However, it is still unclear if any of these are duplicates of the 30,000 Clinton emails already publicly released. Furthermore, it is unknown how many of the found deleted emails are personal and how many are work-related (aside from Comey’s vague “several thousand” emails comment).
In addtion, the FBI has given the State Department seven other CDs: one contains classified documents related to Clinton, another contains emails returned by Clinton, and the other five contain materials from other people that was retrieved by the FBI.
State Department spokesperson Mark Toner says, “We can confirm that the FBI material includes tens of thousands of non-record (meaning personal) and record materials that will have to be carefully appraised at State. State has not yet had the opportunity to complete a review of the documents to determine whether they are agency records or if they are duplicative of documents State has already produced through the Freedom of Information Act.”
Regarding the CD of Clinton emails, Toner says, “We still don’t have a full sense of how many of the 14,900 are new. Granted, that’s a healthy number there, so there’s likely to be quite a few.”
Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Reince Priebus comments, “The process for reviewing these emails needs to be expedited, public disclosure should begin before early voting starts, and the emails in question should be released in full before Election Day.” (Politico, 8/22/2016) (The Washington Post, 8/22/2016)
On September 23, 2016, it will be revealed that 5,600 of the 14,900 recovered emails are deemed work-related.
Cyber attacks on such media organizations have been “detected in recent months,” and are being investigated by the FBI and other US agencies. CNN reports, “Investigators so far believe that Russian intelligence is likely behind the attacks and that Russian hackers are targeting news organizations as part of a broader series of hacks that also have focused on Democratic Party organizations,” according to unnamed US officials.
Little has been publicly revealed about the media attacks except for the attacks on the New York Times. The Times says their email services are outsourced to Google and they have no evidence that their computer networks have been compromised. CNN claims that individual reporters have been targeted, not entire networks, but it is unclear how many were targeted or how many had their email accounts breached.
CNN further reports, “US intelligence officials believe the picture emerging from the series of recent intrusions is that Russian spy agencies are using a wave of cyber attacks, including against think-tanks in Washington, to gather intelligence from a broad array of non-governmental organizations with windows into the US political system. News organizations are considered top targets because they can yield valuable intelligence on reporter contacts in the government, as well as communications and unpublished works with sensitive information…” (CNN, 8/23/2016)
The Associated Press is less definitive about who might be responsible, saying that an unnamed US official claims the FBI is looking into whether Russian intelligence agencies are responsible for the hacking attempts. (The Associated Press, 8/23/2016)
When WikiLeaks head Julian Assange is asked if this information could be a “game-changer” in the election, he replies, “I think it’s significant. You know, it depends on how it catches fire in the public and in the media.”
He also says, “I don’t want to give the game away, but it’s a variety of documents, from different types of institutions that are associated with the election campaign, some quite unexpected angles, some quite interesting, some even entertaining.” (Reuters, 8/24/2016)
Since late 2014, when Clinton and her lawyers deleted over 31,000 of Clinton’s emails from when she was secretary of state, it has been unclear if the emails were simply deleted or “wiped,” meaning deliberate steps were taken to make sure they couldn’t be recovered later.
Trey Gowdy appears with Martha MacCallum on Fox News on August 25, 2016. (Credit: Fox News)
In an interview, Representative Trey Gowdy (R) says that, “[Clinton] and her lawyers [Cheryl Mills, David Kendall, and Heather Samuelson] had those emails deleted. And they didn’t just push the delete button; they had them deleted where even God can’t read them. They were using something called BleachBit. You don’t use BleachBit for yoga emails or bridemaids emails. When you’re using BleachBit, it is something you really do not want the world to see.”
BleachBit Logo (Credit: public domain)
BleachBit is computer software whose website advertises that it can “prevent recovery” of files. Politico notes that if Gowdy is correct, this would be “further proof that Clinton had something to hide in deleting personal emails from the private email system she used during her tenure as secretary of state.” It is not explained how Gowdy might know this, but his comments come only a few days after the FBI gave raw materials about their Clinton email investigation to Congress. (Politico, 8/25/2016)
Gowdy’s claim contradicts what FBI Director James Comey said on July 5, 2016 when he announced that he would not recommend charging Clinton with any crime. At that time, Comey stated, “we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related emails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Our assessment is that, like many email users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted emails or emails were purged from the system when devices were changed.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 7/5/2016)
Within hours of Gowdy’s comments, BleachBit updates their website to say: “Last year when Clinton was asked about wiping her email server, she joked, ‘Like with a cloth or something?’ It turns out now that BleachBit was that cloth, according to remarks by Gowdy.” The website also notes, “As of the time of writing BleachBit has not been served a warrant or subpoena in relation to the investigation. … The cleaning process [of our program] is not reversible.” (BleachBit, 8/25/2016)
On September 2, 2016, the FBI’s final report on their Clinton email investigation will be released, and it will be revealed that BleachBit was used on Clinton’s server in late March 2015. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
“The C.I.A. told senior lawmakers in classified briefings last summer that it had information indicating that Russia was working to help elect Donald J. Trump president, a finding that did not emerge publicly until after Mr. Trump’s victory months later, former government officials say.”
(…) “The former officials said that in late August — 10 weeks before the election — John O. Brennan, then the C.I.A. director, was so concerned about increasing evidence of Russia’s election meddling that he began a series of urgent, individual briefings for eight top members of Congress, some of them on secure phone lines while they were on their summer break.
It is unclear what new intelligence might have prompted the classified briefings. But with concerns growing both internally and publicly at the time about a significant Russian breach of the Democratic National Committee, the C.I.A. began seeing signs of possible connections to the Trump campaign, the officials said. By the campaign’s final weeks, Congress and the intelligence agencies were racing to understand the scope of the Russia threat.
In an Aug. 25 briefing for Harry Reid, then the top Democrat in the Senate, Mr. Brennan indicated that Russia’s hackings appeared aimed at helping Mr. Trump win the November election, according to two former officials with knowledge of the briefing.
The officials said Mr. Brennan also indicated that unnamed advisers to Mr. Trump might be working with the Russians to interfere in the election. The F.B.I. and two congressional committees are now investigating that claim, focusing on possible communications and financial dealings between Russian affiliates and a handful of former advisers to Mr. Trump. So far, no proof of collusion has emerged publicly.” (Read more: New York Times, 4/06/2017)
“A few months after Joe Biden forced the firing of Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, his son’s company Burisma Holdings courted the replacement with a promise to bring him to Washington to meet with Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the final weeks of the 2016 election, newly released State Department memos reveal.
Burisma’s effort to woo — through its Democrat-tied U.S. lobbying firm — newly installed Ukraine Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko raised concerns at the highest levels of the U.S. embassy in Kiev, where officials tried to talk the prosecutor out of the trip given the fact he was overseeing a probe of the gas company.
“Lutsenko now likely not to go to DC with Blue Star,” senior State official George Kent wrote then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in September 2016 after talking with Lutsenko about the bad optics of the trip.
“He got the drift,” Kent added. “Not ideal timing, little receptive audience and wrong facilitator. He said he’d figure out a better time when there would be more traction/better audience.” (Read more: Just the News, 11/01/2020)(Archive)
Clinton does a call-in interview with Mika Brzezinski on August 26, 2016. (Credit: MSNBC)
Clinton is asked by MSNBC journalist Mika Brzezinski, “Are you certain that there are no emails or foundation ties to foreign entities that will be revealed that could perhaps permanently impact your presidential prospects?”
Clinton replies, “Mika, I am sure, and I am sure because I have a very strong foundation of understanding about the foundation—not to have a play on words—that the kind of work the foundation has done which attracted donors from around the world is work that went right into providing services to people.” (Politico, 8/26/2016)
“Judicial Watch announced today it received 191 pages of emails between former FBI official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page which include an August 26, 2016, email in which Strzok says that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her interview with the FBI about her email controversy apologized for “the work and effort” it caused the bureau and said she chose to use it “out of convenience” and that “it proved to be anything but.”
Strzok said Clinton’s apology and the “convenience” discussion were “not in” the FBI 302 report which summarized the interview.
(…) The new records include an August 26, 2016, email from CNN’s Even Perez to Michael Kortan, the FBI’s assistant director for public affairs, saying: “Do you know if Gowdy is right that the FBI didn’t ask Clinton about her intent? And is that weird?”
Kortan forwards the email to Strzok, saying, “The question of the day …”
Strzok replies to Kortan, “I know, I was getting increasingly irritated at Gowdy last night. I don’t know the basis for him saying that. We certainly asked her. She said she did it for convenience because she wanted one system for email. We also asked those close to her – Abedin and Mills specifically – who said the same thing.
“[Redacted] but we can find the references in the 302 which discuss it.
“Though not in the 302, at the end of the interview she apologized for the work and effort it created for the FBI. She said words to the effect of, I’m sorry this has caused so much work and expenditure of resources by the FBI. I chose to use my own server out of convenience; it proved to be anything but.”
Strzok forwarded the exchange to Page, saying, “Need to nip this in the bud.”
On August 27, 2016, Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, responds to Brennan’s recent briefing by writing a letter to FBI director, James Comey, expressing concerns that Trump is an “unwitting agent” of the Kremlin and that Russia is attempting to influence the presidential election. He then requests that the F.B.I. open an investigation.
Just one month earlier, former Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested that Clinton had shot herself in the foot by not apologizing immediately and by dragging out her email controversy.
A sample of Colin Powell’s leaked emails published by DCLinks.com. (Credit: public domain)
The Intercept later highlights an email Powell writes on August 28, 2016 which states, “HRC could have killed this two years ago by merely telling everyone honestly what she had done and not tie me to it.”
Powell says he tried to put an end to the matter by meeting with Cheryl Mills earlier that month. Instead, he writes, “I told her staff three times not to try that gambit. I had to throw a mini tantrum at a Hampton’s [sic] party to get their attention. She keeps tripping into these ‘character’ minefields.”
The emails reveal Powell isn’t shy about sharing his frustrations over the Clinton campaign’s attempt to “blur the lines between Clinton’s private email server and Powell’s AOL account,” according to the Intercept. He suggests to dozens of reporters and producers who emailed him to read his book, “It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership,” in which he devoted an entire chapter to his efforts to revamp the State Department’s IT system.”
Powell also argues, when he arrived at the State Department, the information technology system was extremely outdated. The Intercept will conclude, “[U]nlike Clinton, Powell never set up a private server. Instead, he used his personal AOL [AmericaOnline] account, on a server maintained by AOL, and used a government computer for classified communications.” (The Intercept, 09/13/16)
The hacker website DCLeaks.com will publish Colin Powell’s hacked emails on September 13, 2016.
Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin at home with their son in 2013. (Credit: Elinor Carucci / NY Magazine)
Huma Abedin, a top aide to Clinton, announces that she is separating from her husband Anthony Weiner, and is pursuing a divorce from him. This will later have an important impact on the FBI’s Clinton email investigation. Weiner was a Democratic Congressperson until 2011 when he resigned due to a sexting scandal – sending sexual texts to other women that were made public. Another sexting scandal involving him ended his 2013 campaign to be mayor of New York City. Abedin’s announcement comes one day after yet more new sexting by Weiner is made public, this time allegedly to a 15-year-old girl. (The New York Times, 8/29/2016)
On October 28, 2016, FBI Director James Comey will announce that the FBI’s Clinton email investigation will be at least partially reopened due to thousands of Abedin’s emails found on a computer used by both Weiner and Abedin that was seized by the FBI as part of their unrelated investigation into Weiner’s sexting with the underaged girl.
“In a letter to the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey Jr., Mr. Reid wrote that the threat of Russian interference “is more extensive than is widely known and may include the intent to falsify official election results.” Recent classified briefings from senior intelligence officials, Mr. Reid said in an interview, have left him fearful that President Vladimir V. Putin’s “goal is tampering with this election.”
(…) “Mr. Reid’s accusation that Russia is seeking not only to influence the election with propaganda but also to tamper with the vote counting goes significantly beyond anything the Obama administration has said in public.
While intelligence agencies have told the White House that they have “high confidence” that Russian intelligence services were behind the hacking of the Democratic committee, the administration has not leveled any accusations against Mr. Putin’s government. Asked about that in the interview, Mr. Reid said he was free to say things the president was not.
But Mr. Reid argued that the connections between some of Donald J. Trump’s former and current advisers and the Russian leadership should, by itself, prompt an investigation. He referred indirectly in his letter to a speech given in Russia by one Trump adviser, Carter Page, a consultant and investor in the energy giant Gazprom, who criticized American sanctions policy toward Russia.
“Trump and his people keep saying the election is rigged,” Mr. Reid said. “Why is he saying that? Because people are telling him the election can be messed with.” Mr. Trump’s advisers say they are concerned that unnamed elites could rig the election for his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Reid argued that if Russia concentrated on “less than six” swing states, it could alter results and undermine confidence in the electoral system. That would pose challenges, given that most states have paper backups, but he noted that hackers could keep people from voting by tampering with the rolls of eligible voters.” (Read more: New York Times, 8/29/2016)
“In early October 2016, news broke that a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) had been arrested over the possible theft of state secrets. Since then, little media attention has been given to what the U.S. government has called the largest theft of classified information in U.S. history, or the man allegedly behind it.
Initially arrested in August 2016 — after terabytes upon terabytes of classified information were discovered at his home, information that was taken over a period of two decades — Harold T. Martin III has been held in pre-trial detention ever since. Martin, who worked for the same government contractor as NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, has yet to enter into a plea agreement for the 20 felony counts he faces, as government prosecutors have struggled to build a strong case against him. Yet, unlike in the cases of Snowden and other alleged leakers awaiting trial like Reality Winner, the press coverage of Martin’s case has been scarce.
The lack of coverage stems in part from the fact that the government has struggled to build its case against Martin, who was initially nicknamed the “second Snowden,” as it remains unclear what Martin did with the estimated 50 terabytes of data – a cache nearly 20 times greater than the Panama Papers.
(…) According to court documents, Martin’s case is just as complex as the man himself, making it difficult to ascribe his intent. For one thing, Martin’s habit of taking government documents home remained undetected for over 20 years – even after tightening of security following the Snowden leaks – and he extensively used “sophisticated encryption, anonymization, and virtual machine technologies” to hide his actions online.
He also possessed “remote data storage accounts” as well as “encrypted communication and cloud storage apps installed on his mobile device.” Federal prosecutors have also asserted that Martin “was in possession of a sophisticated software tool which runs without being installed on a computer and provided anonymous internet access, leaving no digital footprint.” And they have asserted that Martin “communicated online with others in languages other than English, including Russian” via an encrypted connection.
In addition, Martin’s cache of documents, stored at his home and in his car, were accompanied by “handwritten notes [that] also include descriptions of the most basic concepts associated with classified operations, as if the notes were intended for an audience outside of the Intelligence Community unfamiliar with the details of its operations.”
Martin was also heavily armed, a fact that was apparently unknown to his wife, who was shocked when the FBI removed 10 firearms from his residence, including an AR-style tactical rifle and a shotgun with a flash suppressor. Only two of the weapons were registered.
He also initially lied to authorities about the thefts of the documents, only admitting his unauthorized removal of the documents when confronted with examples of the classified information found in his possession.
There is also evidence suggesting that Martin may not be as “apolitical” as his defense has sought to portray him. Court documents reveal that he often complained about the NSA’s incompetence, claiming in one letter that his co-workers were “missing most of the basics in security practice.” In addition, Martin — who served in Operation Desert Storm — was deeply affected by his experiences in the military and, according to a former mentor, showed an “intense personal and professional interest in the post-traumatic stress disorder.”
However, the most compelling evidence that there is more to this case is how Martin’s theft of classified documents was discovered. According to The New York Times, federal investigators stumbled upon Martin’s trove of documents, investigating him only after uncovering a comment Martin had posted online – the contents of which are still unknown – made him a prime suspect in the “Shadow Brokers” leak.” (Read more: Whitney Webb, 3/20/2018)
US District Judge Amit Mehta (Credit: public domain)
US District Court Judge Amit Mehta is presiding over a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit initiated by Judicial Watch regarding the public release of information relating to the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. The FBI recently gave the State Department almost 15,000 previously unknown Clinton emails, so Mehta wants to know if any of them relate to Benghazi.
State Department spokesperson John Kirby says, “Using broad search terms, we have identified approximately 30 documents potentially responsive to a Benghazi-related request. At this time, we have not confirmed that the documents are, in fact, responsive, or whether they are duplicates of materials already provided to the department by former Secretary Clinton in December 2014.” The department says it will need until the end of September 2016 to review the 30 or so emails and redact any classified information in them.
However, Mehta doesn’t understand why it would take the department so long to process so few emails. He orders the department to return in a week to try to justify the processing time.
Starting in mid-2014, Clinton was specifically asked for all her emails related to Benghazi, months before she was asked for all her work-related emails in general. The Benghazi-related emails were the first of her emails to be released, in early 2015.
Jason Miller, senior communications adviser for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, says, “Clinton swore before a federal court and told the American people she handed over all of her work-related emails. If Clinton did not consider emails about something as important as Benghazi to be work-related, one has to wonder what is contained in the other emails she attempted to wipe from her server.” (The Hill, 8/30/2016)
On August 30, 2016, former FBI Director James Comey emails then-Assistant Director Andrew McCabe, copying Page, James Baker, Priestap and James Trainor with the subject line “WH” and said “Both meetings went well and I was well prepared.… I will need an update briefing on [redacted] next week. As you might imagine, there was great interest in what each of us is doing on that front and in understanding what more we can do and the obstacles we see.” Page forwards the email to Strzok, who replied, “Thanks. Bill asked me as I was leaving if I thought it should be in CD [Counterintelligence Division]. Guessing this prompted it. I said yes then described and endorsed Allies reorganization idea.” (Judicial Watch, 2/21/2020)(Archive)
“On 31 August 2016, the hacker (or hackers) operating under the name Guccifer 2.0 (previously associated with a number of breaches of Democratic National Committee material) released a controversial document that purportedly outlined recommended practices for Democratic candidates’ engaging with the Black Lives Matter movement in 2015.
A number of documents supposedly accessed from the computer of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were posted to Guccifer 2.0’s blog, among them a 19 November 2015 memo to Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) workers from staffer Troy Perry:
Presidential candidates have struggled to respond to tactics of the Black Lives Matter movement. While there has been little engagement with House candidates, candidates and campaign staff should be prepared. This document should not be emailed or handed to anyone outside of the building. Please only give campaign staff these best practices in meetings or over the phone.
In a sub-section of that document, DCCC staffers were advised to offer limited invitations for meetings with Black Lives Matter activists and not to “offer support for concrete policy positions” about the movement:
Tactics
Meet with Local Activists
° If approached by BLM activists, campaign staff should offer to meet with local activists. Invited BLM attendees should be limited. Please aim for personal or small group meetings.
° Listen to their concerns
° Don’t offer support for concrete policy positions
° Frontline district staff should meet with activists
Provide a Point Person
Always provide a campaign contact person for BLM activists. It is important to let activists know the campaign wants to engage in an open dialogue.
In response to the leaked documents, DCCC national press secretary Meredith Kelly said in a statement that:
The DCCC highly respects and values the leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement. In less than two years, BLM has evolved from three words into a political force that is changing and waking our nation. At the DCCC, we highly encourage our candidates to not only embrace the importance of this movement, but to meet with and listen to community activists to partner social change.
We will not allow this hacking to distract from our common goals nor disparage the BLM movement. We continue to welcome further engagement with activists and BLM leaders nationwide.
The Black Lives Matter movement expressed disappointment with the contents of the revealed material in a statement posted to Facebook and Twitter:
We are disappointed at the DCCC’s placating response to our demand to value all Black life. Black communities deserve to be heard, not handled. People are dying.
Whether Republican, Democrat or otherwise, our elected officials have an ethical and democratic responsibility to make legislation that reflects the needs of their constituents. That includes Black people facing life-threatening challenges because of racist, failed policies.
We demand, and are fighting every day for, a radical transformation of American democracy where all Black lives are valued.
Prominent Black Lives Matter activist Deray Mckesson published a tweet questioning whether the DNCC’s stance had changed since November 2015:
The DNCC memo re: the movement highlights a serious lack of attention to issues related to black people. Has their view changed since 2015?
Fellow activist Shaun King also tweeted a criticism:
In the leaked memo, the Democratic Party instructs politicians how to be polite with #BlackLivesMatter activists without actually helping. — Shaun King (@ShaunKing) August 31, 2016
The DCCC acknowledged Guccifer 2.0’s Black Lives Matter document leak, but the DCCC has not yet issued any official comment on the content of the leak (or any dispute of its authenticity), and Nancy Pelosi has so far declined to comment.
On August 31, 2016, a redacted FBI General Counsel official asks Strzok and Page if they should respond to a Washington Times article that asserts that the FBI found “hundreds, and likely thousands, of violations of the Federal Records Act” by Clinton in her non-government email server use. Strzok’s immediate reply is redacted. Strzok ends up asking for the article to be sent to him. (Judicial Watch, 2/21/2020)(Archive)
“In late summer, the professor met with Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis for coffee in Northern Virginia, offering to provide foreign-policy expertise to the Trump effort. In September, he reached out to George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign-policy adviser for the campaign, inviting him to London to work on a research paper.”
(…) “In late August 2016, the professor reached out to Clovis, asking if they could meet somewhere in the Washington area, according to Clovis’s attorney, Victoria Toensing.
“He said he wanted to be helpful to the campaign” and lend the Trump team his foreign-policy experience, Toensing said.
Clovis, an Iowa political figure and former Air Force officer, met the source and chatted briefly with him over coffee, on either Aug. 31 or Sept. 1, at a hotel cafe in Crystal City, she said. Most of the discussion involved him asking Clovis his views on China.
“It was two academics discussing China,” Toensing said. “Russia never came up.”
The professor asked Clovis if they could meet again, but Clovis was too busy with the campaign. After the election, the professor sent him a note of congratulations, Toensing said.
Clovis did not view the interactions as suspicious at the time, Toensing said, but now is unsettled that the professor never mentioned his contacts with other Trump aides.” (Read more: Washington Post, 5/18/2018)
Although the FBI’s Clinton email investigation was closed in July 2016, the FBI’s Clinton Foundation investigation continues, though it never has had grand jury backing and thus no subpoena power.
Clinton speaks at the 10th Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) annual meeting in September, 2014. (Credit: Mark Lennihan / The Associated Press)
The email investigation uncovered many thousands of emails on non-government computers belonging to Clinton and some of her aides, and many of these same people had obvious roles with the Clinton Foundation. As a result, sometime in September 2016, Clinton Foundation investigators ask to have access to the emails found in the Clinton email investigation.
But that request is rejected by prosecutors at the Eastern District of New York. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Those emails were given to the FBI based on grants of partial immunity and limited-use agreements, meaning agents could only use them for the purpose of investigating possible mishandling of classified information. Some FBI agents were dissatisfied with that answer, and asked for permission to make a similar request to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, according to people familiar with the matter.”
However, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe allegedly tells them no and says they can’t “go prosecutor shopping.”
In early October 2016, a different FBI investigation will find emails belonging to Clinton aide Huma Abedin on a previously unknown computer, leading to a different legal issue about sharing information between various FBI investigations.
It appears the FBI’s Clinton Foundation investigation still has not been given access to the possibly relevant emails found by the Clinton email investigation. (The Wall Street Journal, 10/30/2016)
Russian President Vladimir Putin says in an interview about accusations of Russian government in the hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails: “Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data? The important thing is the content that was given to the public …. There’s no need to distract the public’s attention from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it. … But I want to tell you again, I don’t know anything about it, and on a state level Russia has never done this.”
However, an internal probe conducted by CrowdStrike Inc. traced the source of the hack to two Russian hacking groups connected with Russian intelligence, “Cozy Bear” and “Fancy Bear.”
James Lewis (Credit: public domain)
James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, claims that Russia has engaged in state hacking in the past and that Putin’s denials are “not credible.”
Putin continues: “You know how many hackers there are today? They act so delicately and precisely that they can leave their mark — or even the mark of others — at the necessary time and place, camouflaging their activities as that of other hackers from other territories or countries. It’s an extremely difficult thing to check, if it’s even possible to check. At any rate, we definitely don’t do this at a state level.” (Bloomberg News, 9/1/2016)
Guccifer, whose real name is Marcel-Lehel Lazar, pled guilty in a US court to two charges earlier in the year, eliminating the need for a trial. He admitted to targeting over 100 Americans over a 14-month period. When he broke into the email account of Clinton confidant Sid Blumenthal in March 2013, he publicly exposed Clinton’s private email address for the first time.
Guccifer has been cooperating with US officials, but federal prosecutors sought a maximum penalty of four and a half years anyway. US District Judge James Cacheris imposes sentence only three months short of that, saying a tough penalty is needed to deter future hacking. Furthermore, while Guccifer confessed, he showed no remorse.
He had already been sentenced to a seven year prison term for hacking in Romania, and was extradited to the US to face charges there. The Romanian government has asked that he be immediately returned to Romania to finish serving his time there. Then, in 2018, he would be sent back to the US to serve his US prison sentence. (The Washington Post, 9/1/2016)
Lisa Monaco (Credit: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/The Associated Press)
“In early September, Johnson, Comey and Monaco arrived on Capitol Hill in a caravan of black SUVs for a meeting with 12 key members of Congress, including the leadership of both parties.
The meeting devolved into a partisan squabble.
“The Dems were, ‘Hey, we have to tell the public,’” recalled one participant. But Republicans resisted, arguing that to warn the public that the election was under attack would further Russia’s aim of sapping confidence in the system.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) went further, officials said, voicing skepticism that the underlying intelligence truly supported the White House’s claims. Through a spokeswoman, McConnell declined to comment, citing the secrecy of that meeting.
Key Democrats were stunned by the GOP response and exasperated that the White House seemed willing to let Republican opposition block any pre-election move.
On Sept. 22, two California Democrats — Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam B. Schiff — did what they couldn’t get the White House to do. They issued a statement making clear that they had learned from intelligence briefings that Russia was directing a campaign to undermine the election, but they stopped short of saying to what end.
A week later, McConnell and other congressional leaders issued a cautious statement that encouraged state election officials to ensure their networks were “secure from attack.” The release made no mention of Russia and emphasized that the lawmakers “would oppose any effort by the federal government” to encroach on the states’ authorities.” (Read more: Washington Post, 6/23/2017)
(…) “In essence, Christopher Steele was interested in getting Oleg Deripaska a new VISA to enter the U.S. Steele was very persistent on this endeavor and was soliciting Bruce Ohr for any assistance. This also sets up a quid-pro-quo probability where the DOJ/FBI agrees to remove travel restrictions on Deripaska in exchange for cooperation on ‘other matters.’
Now we skip ahead a little bit to where Deripaska gained an entry visa, and one of Oleg Deripaska’s lawyers and lobbyists Adam Waldman was representing his interests in the U.S. to politicians and officials. In May of 2018, John Solomon was contacted by Adam Waldman with a story about how the FBI contacted Deripaska for help in their Trump Russia investigation in September of 2016.
(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)
Keep in mind, this is Waldman contacting Solomon with a story.
Waldman told Solomon a story about how his client Oleg Deripaska was approached by the FBI in September of 2016 and asked for help with information about Paul Manafort and by extension Donald Trump. Within the backstory for the FBI and Deripaska was a prior connection between Robert Mueller and Deripaska in 2009.
Again, as you read the recap, remember this is Waldman contacting Solomon. Article Link Here – and my summary below:
♦In 2009 the FBI, then headed by Robert Mueller, requested the assistance of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska in an operation to retrieve former FBI officer and CIA resource Robert Levinson who was captured in Iran two years earlier. The agent assigned to engage Deripaska was Andrew McCabe; the primary FBI need was financing and operational support. Deripaska spent around $25 million and would have succeeded except the U.S. State Department, then headed by Hillary Clinton, backed out.
♦In September of 2016 Andrew McCabe is now Deputy Director of the FBI, when two FBI agents approached Deripaska in New York – again asking for his help. This time the FBI request was for Deripaska to outline Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort as a tool of the Kremlin. Deripaska once hired Manafort as a political adviser and invested money with him in a business venture that went bad. Deripaska sued Manafort, alleging he stole money. However, according to the article, despite Deripaska’s disposition toward Manafort he viewed the request as absurd. He laughed the FBI away, telling them: “You are trying to create something out of nothing.”
This story, as told from the perspective of Adam Waldman, Deripaska’s lawyer/lobbyist, is important because it highlights a connection between Robert Mueller and Oleg Deripaska; a connection Mueller and the DOJ/FBI never revealed on their own.
I wrote about the ramifications of the Solomon story HERE. Again, hopefully most will review; because there’s a larger story now visible with the new communication between Christopher Steele and Bruce Ohr.
It is likely that Oleg’s 2016 entry into the U.S. was facilitated as part of a quid-pro-quo; either agreed in advance, or, more likely, planned by the DOJ/FBI for later use in their 2016 Trump operation; as evidenced in the September 2016 FBI request. Regardless of the planning aspect, billionaire Deripaska is connected to Chris Steele, a source for Chris Steele, and likely even the employer of Chris Steele.
The FBI used Oleg Deripaska (source), and Oleg Deripaska used the FBI (visa).
Here’s where it gets interesting….
In that Mayarticle John Solomon reports that Deripaska wanted to testify to congress last year (2017), without any immunity request, but was rebuked. Who blocked his testimony?
(…) “Now, think about this…. Yes, with Oleg Deripaska in the picture there was indeed Russian meddling in the 2016 election; only, it wasn’t the type of meddling currently being sold. The FBI/DOJ were using Russian Deripaska to frame their Russian conspiracy narrative. It is almost a certainty that Deripaska was one of Chris Steeles sources for the dossier.
Now, put yourself in Deripaska’s shoes and think about what happens AFTER candidate Donald Trump surprisingly wins the election.
All of a sudden Deripaska the asset becomes a risk to the corrupt Scheme Team (DOJ/FBI et al); especially as the DOJ/FBI then execute the “insurance policy” effort against Donald Trump and eventually enlist Robert Mueller.
It is entirely possible for a Russian to be blackmailing someone, but it ain’t Trump vulnerable to blackmail; it’s the conspiracy crew within the DOJ and FBI. Deripaska now has blackmail material on Comey, McCabe and crew.
After the 2017 (first year) failure of the “insurance policy” it now seems more likely President Trump will outlive the soft coup. In May 2018, Oleg tells Waldman to call John Solomon and tell him the story from a perspective favorable to Deripaska.
As the story is told, in 2017, Oleg [Deripaska] was more than willing to testify to congress…likely laughing the entire time. But the corrupt participants within congress damned sure couldn’t let Deripaska testify. Enter corrupt (SSCI) Vice-Chairman, Mark Warner:
Senator Mark Warner (l) and Senator Richard Burr confer at a Senate Intelligence Committee meeting. (Credit: public domain)
The Russians (Deripaska) really do have leverage and blackmail…but it ain’t over Trump. Oleg has blackmail on Comey, McCabe and conspiracy crew. Oleg Deripaska must be kept away from congress and away from exposing the scheme.
Guess who else must be controlled and/or kept away from congress?
Julian Assange.
Assange has evidence the Russians didn’t hack the DNC.
Between Deripaska’s first-hand knowledge of the DOJ/FBI work on both the Dossier and the DOJ/FBI intention for his use as a witness; and Julian Assange’s first-hand knowledge of who actually took the DNC email communication…well, the entire Russian narrative could explode in their faces.
You can almost hear the corrupt U.S. intelligence officials calling their U.K. GCHQ partners in Britain and yelling at them to do something, anything, and for the love of God, shut down Assange’s access to the internet STAT. Yeah, funny that.
Now, who moves into position to control Julian Assange?
BREAKING: US Senate Intelligence Committee calls editor @JulianAssange to testify. Letter delivered via US embassy in London. WikiLeaks’ legal team say they are “considering the offer but the conditions must conform to a high ethical standard”. Also: https://t.co/pPf0GTjTlppic.twitter.com/gQIUstbGbq
Apparently the SSCI wants to interview WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, in a closed session. Signed by none-other than our corrupt-o-crats Richard Burr and Mark Warner. Yeah, funny that.
Lest anyone need a reminder, the most corrupt part of congress is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). The SSCI is the center of the deepest part of the Deep State swamp. The SSCI never, ever, E.V.E.R…does anything that does not protect and advance the self-interest of the corrupt Washington DC professional political class.” (Read much more: Conservative Treehouse, 8/10/2018)
The FBI’s 47-page final report on its Clinton email investigation and the FBI’s 11-page summary of its July 2016 interview with Clinton are publicly released. However, both are heavily redacted. The last third of the final report is entirely redacted.
A Secret Service agent stands guard while two other agents close a gate after a Secret Service vehicle arrived at the home of Clinton in Washington, DC, July 2, 2016. (Credit: Cliff Owen / The Associated Press)
The Washington Post notes, “Ordinarily internal documents from FBI investigations are not made public. However, [FBI Director James] Comey has said the unusually high profile case warranted more robust public disclosures than is standard.”
It is believed both reports were finished just prior to when Comey gave a public speech on July 5, 2016, stating that he wouldn’t recommend any indictments in this case. Clinton’s interview occurred only three days prior to this.
The New York Times, the Washington Post, and many other newspapers make the release of the two documents the main headline.
The Post comments, “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her staffers employed an informal and sometimes haphazard system for exchanging and storing sensitive information and were at times either unaware or unconcerned with State Department policy…” (The Washington Post, 9/2/2016)
The Times comments: “The documents provided a number of new details about Mrs. Clinton’s private server, including what appeared to be a frantic effort by a computer specialist to delete an archive of her emails even after a congressional committee had requested that they be preserved.”
This is a reference to the revelation that Platte River Networks (PRN) employee Paul Combetta confessed to deleting and then wiping all of Clinton’s emails off her server in late March 2015, despite him being aware of a Congressional order to preserve them. This had been entirely unknown prior to the publication of the report. (The New York Times, 9/2/2016)
The following are other key findings in the FBI documents, as pointed out by the Times or the Post:
A snippet from the FBI report released on September 2, 2016. (Credit: public domain) The opening paragraph of the FBI’s summary on Clinton’s interview, released on September 2, 2016. (Credit: public domain)
Clinton defended her handling of the private server by repeatedly saying that she deferred to the judgment of her aides.
She regarded emails containing classified discussions about planned drone strikes as “routine.” (In fact, such discussions make up most of her “top secret” emails.)
She said she did not recall receiving any emails “she thought should not be on an unclassified system.” Furthermore, she “could not recall anyone raising concerns with her regarding the sensitivity of the information she received at her email address.” (In fact, she sent or received over 2,000 emails later deemed classified, including at least 22 at the “top secret” level.)
She emailed Colin Powell a day after she was sworn into office to ask him about his use of a personal email account when he was secretary of state. Powell warned her to “be very careful” because if she used her BlackBerry for official business, those emails could become “official record[s] and subject to the law.”
Some of her closest aides were aware she used a private email address but didn’t know she had set up a private server. (However, this is actually contradicted by other evidence.)
The front page of the FBI’s final report, released on July 2, 2016. (Credit: public domain)
She regularly brought her BlackBerry into a secure area near her office where it was prohibited, according to three of her aides. However, one aide said it was only stored there, not used.
She used 13 BlackBerrys to send emails. The FBI was unable to recover any of them. Two aides said “the whereabouts of Clinton’s devices would frequently become unknown once she transitioned to a new device.”
The FBI wrote that “investigative limitations, including the FBI’s inability to obtain all mobile devices and various computer components associated with Clinton’s personal email systems, prevented the FBI from conclusively determining” whether her emails had been successfully hacked.
Shortly after she left office, a laptop was made to contain back-up copies of all her emails. However, it got lost in transit.
According to the Post, Clinton claimed she “did not know much about how the government classified information. For instance, she said she did not pay attention to the difference between levels of classification, like ‘top secret’ and ‘secret,’ indicating she took ‘all classified information seriously.'” And when she was shown an email with the (C) marking, which is commonly used by the department to indicate classified information, she didn’t recognize the marking.
The Post also notes, “she repeatedly told agents she could not recall important details or specific emails she was questioned about.” (The Washington Post, 9/2/2016)
In the FBI’s report on the Clinton email investigation, which is released on this day, it is revealed: “To date, the FBI has recovered from additional data sources and reviewed approximately 17,448 unique work-related and personal emails from Clinton’s tenure [as secretary of state] containing Clinton’s hdr22@clintonemail.com email address that were not provided by [Clinton’s law firm] Williams & Connolly as part of Clinton’s production to the FBI, including emails from January 23, 2009 through March 18, 2009.”
The report also mentions that at least some of the emails going back to the time from before March 2009, when Clinton’s first server was replaced by another one, were recovered from the first back-up of all the data on Clinton’s third server, made on June 29, 2013. That was shortly after this new server was turned on and all the data from the previous server was transferred to it.
Clinton has claimed that she kept 30,068 emails from when she was secretary of state, and deleted the other 31,830 as personal. The FBI claims they had trouble recovering all the deleted ones, because an employee of Platte River Networks, the company that managed Clinton’s servers from June 2013 onwards, used a computer program to wipe the server clean in March 2015. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
It isn’t clear how many of the 17,448 recovered emails come from the June 29, 2013 back-up and how many come from other sources, such as the inboxes of people who sent and received emails from Clinton, or FBI efforts to recover the wiped emails. The FBI also doesn’t mention how many of the recovered emails are work-related. It was reported on July 21, 2016 that the FBI gave about 14,900 of Clinton’s recovered emails to the State Department, and the department has promised to make all the work-related ones public. But it isn’t clear why the 17,448 and 14,900 numbers differ by about 2,500 emails.
Hours after the FBI’s summary of Clinton’s July 2016 FBI interview is released, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says: “Hillary Clinton’s answers to the FBI about her private email server defy belief. I was absolutely shocked to see that her answers to the FBI stood in direct contradiction to what she told the American people. After reading these documents, I really don’t understand how she was able to get away from prosecution.” (The Washington Post, 9/2/2016)
The FBI Clinton email investigation’s final report, released on this day, states, “FBI investigation and forensic analysis did not find evidence confirming that Clinton’s email server systems were compromised by cyber means.” (Elsewhere in the report, it is mentioned that one email account on the server appears to have been broken into by hackers.)
A generic sample of what an attempted hack would look like in the log data. (Credit: public domain)
But the report goes on to state, “The FBI’s inability to recover all server equipment and the lack of complete server log data for the relevant time period limited the FBI’s forensic analysis of the server systems. As a result, FBI cyber analysis relied, in large part, on witness statements, email correspondence, and related forensic content found on other devices to understand the setup, maintenance, administration, and security of the server systems.”
Elsewhere in the report, it is noted that the FBI was unable to recover any of 13 the BlackBerry mobile devices Clinton used while or shortly after her tenure as secretary of state, a laptop containing a back-up of her emails was lost, the server most recently containing her emails was wiped with BleachBit software, the server used for her first two months in office was also lost, hard drive back-ups made were also lost, and so on. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
At the conclusion of the FBI’s investigation on July 5, 2016, FBI Director James Comey said there was no “direct evidence” Clinton’s email account had been successfully hacked. But the next day, the New York Times reported, “both private experts and federal investigators immediately understood his meaning: It very likely had been breached, but the intruders were far too skilled to leave evidence of their work.”
After the FBI releases the FBI’s Clinton email investigation final report and the summary of Clinton’s FBI interview, there are different political reactions.
Brian Fallon (left) Reince Priebus (right) (Credits: (CNN and NBC News)
Clinton doesn’t immediately comment after the reports are released. However, the Clinton campaign claims she is pleased the documents have been made public.Her spokesperson Brian Fallon says, “While her use of a single email account was clearly a mistake and she has taken responsibility for it, these materials make clear why the Justice Department believed there was no basis to move forward with this case.” (The Washington Post, 9/2/2016)
By contrast, Reince Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), calls the documents “a devastating indictment of her judgment, honesty and basic competency.” He adds that her responses in her FBI interview “either show she is completely incompetent or blatantly lied to the FBI or the public. Either way it’s clear that, through her own actions, she has disqualified herself from the presidency.” (The New York Times, 9/2/2016)
The FBI Clinton email investigation’s final report, released on this day, details how many of Clinton’s emails were deemed classified, and when, and at what level. This data is according to FBI and Intelligence Community (IC) classification reviews, which is different from a State Department review mentioned below:
81 email chains containing approximately 193 individual emails were classified at the “confidential,” “secret,” and “top secret” levels at the time the emails were drafted on unclassified systems and sent to or from Clinton’s personal server.
Of the 81 email chains classified at the time they were sent, 68 remain classified.
Twelve of these email chains, classified at the “confidential” or “secret” levels, were not included in the over 30,000 emails turned over by Clinton in December 2014. Apparently, no “top secret” emails were in this category.
Thirty-six of the 81 email chains were classified at the “confidential” level.
Thirty-seven of the chains were at the “secret” level.
Eight of the chains were at the “top secret” level.
Out of the eight “top secret” chains, seven chains contained information associated with a Special Access Program (SAP), and three email chains contained Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI). One “top secret”/SCI email was later downgraded to a current classification of “secret.”
Thirty-six of the 81 classified email chains were determined to be Not-Releasable to Foreign Governments (NOFORN) and 2 were considered releasable only to Five Allied partners (FVEY) – the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Sixteen of the email chains, classified at the time the emails were sent, were downgraded in current classification by Intelligence Community (IC) agencies.
By contrast, the State Department’s FOIA process identified 2,028 emails currently at the “confidential” level and 65 currently at the “secret” level, for a total of 2093 emails.
The FBI report further notes: “Of these emails, FBI investigation identified approximately 100 emails that overlapped with the 193 emails (80 email chains) determined through the FBI classification review to be classified at the time sent. All except one of the remaining 2,093 emails were determined by the State FOIA process to be ‘confidential’, with one email determined to be ‘secret’ at the time of the FOIA review. State did not provide a determination as to whether the 2,093 emails were classified at the time they were sent.”
It is unclear why the FBI and IC numbers are so different from the State Department numbers when it comes to “confidential” level emails. The FBI and IC identified 36 of the 81 email chains were classified at the “confidential” level, while the State Department identified 2,028 emails at the “confidential” level. And while one cannot compare email chains to emails, all 81 classified emails chains only contained 193 individual emails, so the 36 “confidential” chains must contain fewer emails than that.
Furthermore, the FBI found an additional 17,000 emails to the over 30,000 work-related emails Clinton gave to the State Department, and it appears these largely haven’t been analyzed. It hasn’t even been reported how many of them are work-related. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
The FBI’s Clinton email investigation final report, released on this day, mentions: “Clinton’s immediate aides, to include [Cheryl] Mills, [Huma] Abedin, [Jake] Sullivan, and [redacted] told the FBI they were unaware of the existence of the private server until after Clinton’s tenure at [the State Department] or when it became public knowledge. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
Huma Abedin (left) (Credit: Melissa Golden / Redux) Cheryl Mills (right) (Credit: Stephen Crowley / New York Times)
However, emails from when Clinton was secretary of state indicate otherwise, at least for Mills and Abedin:
Abedin had an email account on Clinton’s server that she often used. On February 27, 2010, she sent an email to Justin Cooper, a Bill Clinton aide helping to manage the server, “HRC [Clinton] email coming back—is server okay?” Cooper replied, “UR [You are] funny. We are on the same server.” These emails were sent to Mills as well.
On January 9, 2011, Cooper sent Abedin an email mentioning that he “had to shut down the server” due to a hacking attack.. He sent her another email later in the day, saying he had to shut it down again.
On August 30, 2011, State Department Executive Secretary Stephen Mull emailed Mills, Abedin, and two others, informing them that he was trying to give Clinton a State Department-issued Blackberry “to replace her personal unit which is malfunctioning… possibly because of [sic] her personal email server is down.” Abedin sent an email in reply, and a discussion in person apparently followed.
The FBI’s final report also indicates that Abedin was instrumental in the creation of the server. “At the recommendation of Huma Abedin… in or around fall 2008, [Cooper] contacted Bryan Pagliano… to build the new server system and to assist Cooper with the administration of the new server system.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
A FBI report released on this day will mention: “The FBI investigation determined Clinton contributed to discussions in four email chains classified as ‘confidential’, three email chains classified as ‘secret’/NOFORN, and four email chains classified as ‘top secret’/ SAP.” (“SAP” stands for “Special Access Programs.”)
However, FBI classification is wildly different from State Department classification when it comes to “confidential” emails, with the FBI deeming 36 email chains of around 100 emails or less classified at that level, compared to the State Department deeming 2,028 individual emails classified at that level.
Furthermore, the FBI puts emails where Clinton asked aides to print out emails as different from replies that added to discussions. The FBI identified 67 times where Clinton forwarded emails for printing at either the “confidential” or “secret” levels. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
A snippet from a graphic created by the Washington Post, indicating the number of emails written by Clinton that were deemed classified. (Credit: Washington Post)
By contrast, a March 2016Washington Post analysis concluded that 104 of all the emails deemed classified were written by Clinton. Presumably, they used the State Department definition of which ones were classified (since it was the only one publicly available at the time), and they were measuring individual emails instead of email chains. Furthermore, the Post noted that at least some of Clinton’s comments were deemed classified in three-fourths of these 104 emails, so presumably these were not emails where she just asked fo print-outs. (The Washington Post, 3/5/2016)
In the FBI Clinton email investigation’s final report, released on this day, more is revealed about the three Clinton email chains containing at least one paragraph with the “(C)” marking. This indicates the presence of information classified at the “confidential” level.
The report adds that there actually were eight emails in the three email chains. “The emails contained no additional markings, such as a header or footer, indicating that they were classified.”
Kofi Annan (Credit: Jean-Marc Ferré / United Nations
At least one email from two of the email chains have been publicly released. One was sent to Clinton by her aide Monica Hanley on April 8, 2012, regarding a phone call between Clinton and Malawi president Joyce Banda. The second email was sent to Clinton by Hanley on August 2, 2012, regarding a phone call between Clinton and United Nations/Arab League Joint Special Envoy for Syria Kofi Annan. The FBI report indicates both email chains are currently unclassified.
The third email chain is more mysterious. The FBI report doesn’t mention when it was sent, or by whom, of what its contents are. However, the State Department “confirmed through the FOIA review process that [this chain] contains information which is currently classified at the ‘confidential ‘level.” This email has not been found in the over 30,000 work-related emails Clinton gave to the State Department, even though the “confidential” classification clearly indicates it is work-related.
Finally, the State Department hasn’t provided a determination if any of the three emails were classified at the time they were sent. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
In the FBI’s Clinton email investigation final report released on this day, the FBI discusses the at least 179 “intelligence memos” Clinton confidant Sid Blumenthal emailed to Clinton. Media reports indicate that some memos were accurate and some were totally inaccurate, but none of them were vetted by any US government official, because Blumenthal was and is a private citizen with no security clearance sending the emails directly to Clinton.
An email in which Clinton wanted Sullivan to send a Blumenthal email to Obama, without mentioning who it was from. (Credit: public domain)
According to the FBI report, “Clinton often forwarded the memos to [her aide Jake] Sullivan, asking him to remove information identifying Blumenthal as the originator and to pass the information to other State employees to solicit their input. According to emails between Clinton and Sullivan, Clinton discussed passing the information to the White House, other [US government] agencies, and foreign governments.”
However, the report also mentions that the FBI was unable to determine if any of the memos were actually sent to such recipients, because the State Department didn’t give the FBI any of Sullivan’s emails sent to anyone other than Clinton. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016) (Department of State, 2/29/16)
(…) “The new records also include a September 2, 2016, email that Comey forwards containing a press release issued that day by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), in which Grassley criticized the FBI for not publicly releasing many unclassified records related to the Clinton email-server investigation, as demanded by Congress. In his cover note responding to Grassley’s charge, Comey tells his top aides, “To be great is to be misunderstood.” (Judicial Watch, 2/11/2019)
“Halper first contacted Papadopoulos by email. In a Sept. 2, 2016, message sent to Papadopoulos’s personal email account, he offered the Trump aide $3,000 to write a policy paper on issues related to Turkey, Cyprus, Israel and the Leviathan natural gas field. Halper also offered to pay for Papadopoulos’s flight and a three-night stay in London.
Papadopoulos accepted the proposal, flew to England, and met with Halper and one of his assistants. He delivered the paper electronically Oct. 2 and received payment days later, according to documents TheDCNF reviewed.”
(…) “Papadopoulos questioned Halper’s motivation for contacting him, according to a source familiar with Papadopoulos’ thinking. That’s not just because of the randomness of the initial inquiry but because of questions Halper is said to have asked during their face-to-face meetings in London.
According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Halper asked Papadopoulos: “George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?”
Papadopoulos told Halper he didn’t know anything about emails or Russian hacking, the source said and spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. The professor did not follow up on the line of inquiry.
(…) “Halper’s activities are all the more eye-catching because Papadopoulos and Page are central figures in the Russia investigation. Papadopoulos, 30, pleaded guilty in October 2017 to lying to the FBI about contacts he had during the campaign with Russian nationals and a London-based professor with links to the Russian government.
That professor, Joseph Mifsud, told Papadopoulos in April 2016 he learned the Russians had possession of “thousands” of Clinton-related emails. That conversation would later spark the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the presidential campaign. It is not known whether Papadopoulos told anyone on the Trump campaign about Mifsud’s remarks.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 3/25/2018)
“The conversation at a London bar in September 2016 took a strange turn when the woman sitting across from George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, asked a direct question: Was the Trump campaign working with Russia?
The woman had set up the meeting to discuss foreign policy issues. But she was actually a government investigator posing as a research assistant, according to people familiar with the operation. The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.
The American government’s affiliation with the woman, who said her name was Azra Turk, is one previously unreported detail of an operation that has become a political flash point in the face of accusations by President Trump and his allies that American law enforcement and intelligence officials spied on his campaign to undermine his electoral chances. Last year, he called it “Spygate.”
Ms. Turk went to London to help oversee the politically sensitive operation, working alongside a longtime informant, the Cambridge professor Stefan A. Halper. The move was a sign that the bureau wanted in place a trained investigator for a layer of oversight, as well as someone who could gather information for or serve as a credible witness in any potential prosecution that emerged from the case.
A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment, as did a lawyer for Mr. Halper, Robert D. Luskin. Last year, Bill Priestap, then the bureau’s top counterintelligence agent who was deeply involved in the Russia inquiry, told Congress during a closed-door hearing that there was no F.B.I. conspiracy against Mr. Trump or his campaign.
The London operation yielded no fruitful information, but F.B.I. officials have called the bureau’s activities in the months before the election both legal and carefully considered under extraordinary circumstances. They are now under scrutiny as part of an investigation by Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general. He could make the results public in May or June, Attorney General William P. Barr has said. Some of the findings are likely to be classified.” (Read more: The New York Times, 5/02/2019)
George Papadopoulos describes in his House testimony, how undercover CIA asset/FBI informant Stefan Halper introduces him to ‘Azra Turk.’ He also suggests she may be from Turkey.
On the same day the NYT article is published, George Papadopoulos appears on the Tucker Carlson Show to respond:
https://youtu.be/ewA34BJAKmI?t=512
(…) “Email traffic reviewed by TheDCNF shows that Papadopoulos exchanged emails with Turk, Halper and Halper’s wife.
Papadopoulos has described Turk as a “honeypot,” a spy term used to describe a situation where sex is used to lure targets of intelligence operations. Papadopoulos told TheDCNF that Turk, an attractive blonde, flirted heavily with him and attempted to make contact after the London meeting back in the States.
“I’m stunned by the come-hither tone of Azra Turk and her classic honeypot act,” Papadopoulos wrote in his tell-all, “Deep State Target.”
According to Papadopoulos, both Halper and Turk asked him whether he knew about Russian hacks of Democrats. Papadopoulos says he had knowledge of Russian hacking operations, and conveyed that to the two covert agents.
Papadopoulos says that he did not meet again with Turk, in part because he suspected she was working with foreign intelligence agencies. He has recently said he believes that Turk, who spoke little English during the London meetings, has links to the CIA and Turkish intelligence.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 5/3/2019)
“An FBI lawyer texted a bureau agent that then-President Obama “wants to know everything we’re doing” — a message that a Senate committee suggested could refer to the federal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails.
The messages shared between attorney Lisa Page and her lover and bureau colleague Peter Strzok were released Wednesday by the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which provides oversight of the bureau, and is chaired by GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
In one exchange, Page wrote to Strzok in September, 2016 about prepping FBI Director James Comey on talking points for an update he was planning to give Obama that said: “potus wants to know everything we’re doing.”
“We received 38 pages of records from the State Department revealing that Ukraine Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko was offered “high-level” access to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by the same lobbying firm that represented Burisma Holdings.
This came to light in an email from George Kent, then-U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission to Ukraine and current Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. The email was to then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
The offer was made by Karen Tramontano, who was an assistant to President Clinton and deputy White House Chief of Staff. She is the CEO of Blue Star Strategies, a Democrat lobbying firm that was hired by Burisma Holdings to combat corruption allegations.
In the same 2016 email, Kent stated that he responded to Lutsenko by recommending that he not take the offer due to corruption concerns with Burisma and the Clinton Foundation.
(…) The records include a September 3, 2016, email from Kent to Yovanovitch and other colleagues which details that Lutsenko informed him that he was pitched high-level access to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by Blue Star Strategies. The email’s subject line is “Lutsenko now likely not to go to DC with Blue Star, other Ukr issue comments.” The email says:
[Lutsenko] confirmed he had been pitched by Blue Star, not sought them out. He said he honestly didn’t know how Blue Star was to get paid – he didn’t have funds – and that some BPP MP [Petro Poroshenko’s Solidarity Party member of Parliament] that we probably didn’t know “and that’s good” ([redacted]??) had introduced them to him. Blue Star CEO Tramontano’s pitch was that she could gain him access to high levels of the Clinton campaign (GPK note: she was Podesta’s deputy as deputy COS the last year of Bill Clinton’s tenure), and that was appealing – to meet the possible next Presidential Chief of Staff.
Later in the same email, Kent added that he suggested that Lutsenko not take that offer because Blue Star represented Burisma. Kent also mentioned corruption concerns related to the Clinton Foundation and Podesta:
In connection to Blue Star, I noted their representation of Burisma/Zlochevsky, mentioned the various money flows from Ukraine to lobbyists that had been prominently int he news this past month, whether Manafort/Klueyev via Brussels to Podesta Group and Weber/Mercury, Yanu’s Justice Minister Lavrynovych to Skaden/arps-and Greg Craig – and Pinchuk to Clinton Foundation, and the media attention being paid at present to the Kyiv/Washington gravy train….
…and he got the drift. Not ideal timing, little receptive audience, and wrong facilitator. He said he’d figure out a better time when there would be more traction/better audience.
This email is inconsistent with Yovanovitch’s October 2019testimony under oath before the U.S. House of Representatives in the Trump impeachment inquiry that she knew very little about Burisma Holdings and the long-running corruption investigation against it stating, “it just wasn’t a big issue.”
This smoking gun email ties Hunter Biden’s Burisma’s lobbying operation to an influence-peddling operation involving the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election. This further confirms the Obama-Biden-Deep State targeting of President Trump was to cover-up and distract from their own corruption. (Read more: Judicial Watch, 12/17/2020)(Archive)
US President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet at the G-20 summit in China.
Obama and Putin have a pull-aside meeting at the G20 Summit in China on September 5, 2016. (Credit: Hamari Web)
When Obama is questioned by reporters about accusations that Russia has been behind the hacking of US political entities, he answers: “I will tell you’ve had problems with cyber intrusions from Russia in the past and from other countries in the past.”
He adds, “the goal is not to duplicate in the cyber area the cycle of escalation,” and his intent is “instituting some norms so that everybody’s acting responsibly.” (The Hill, 9/5/2016)
Clinton holds an in-flight press conference on September 5, 2016. (Credit: Andrew Harnik / The Associated Press))
Clinton comments about allegations of Russian hacking of US political entities: “I’m really concerned about the credible reports about Russian government interference in our elections … The fact that our intelligence professionals are now studying this, and taking it seriously… raises some grave questions about potential Russian interference with our electoral process.”
Clinton voices suspicions that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s could be colluding with Russia: “We’ve never had the nominee of one of our major parties urging the Russians to hack more… I think it’s quite intriguing that this activity has happened around the time Trump became the nominee… I often quote a great saying that I learned from living in Arkansas for many years: If you find a turtle on a fence post, it didn’t get there by itself.” (Politico, 9/5/2016)
Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House, complains how the report was released on the Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend. “It’s like the most buried time you could ever put out a story. I’m surprised. I can’t believe that they would do what is such a patently political move. It makes them look like political operators versus law enforcement officers.” (CNN, 9/6/2016)
One day later, FBI Director James Comey responds with a statement defending the timing of the release.
Documents obtained by this website suggest that the Directors of the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Foundation HIV/Aids Initiative Inc may have falsified a merger agreement and backdated documents by more than 12 months to deceive the IRS, donors and others about the Foundation’s HIV activities.
In 2005 ,the William J. Clinton Foundation (31-1580204) and the Clinton Foundation HIV Aids Initiative Inc (20-0921629) (CHAI) were separate legal entities and thus required to lodge individual IRS returns. Each operated as a 501(c)(3) charitable tax exempt foundation.
The CHAI was incorporated as a non-profit in Arkansas on 24 March 2004. It applied on that same day for a licence to operate in the State of Massachusetts from its head office at 225 Water Street Quincy. It was registered as a corporation licensed to operate in Massachusetts on 4 May 2004.
CHAI was granted 501(c)(3) tax exempt status and its 2004 and 2005 IRS Form 990 annual returns quoted the exempt purpose
THE ORGANIZATION IS A SUPPORTING ORGANIZATION OF THE WILLIAM J. CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL FOUNDATION, AND WILL CARRY OUT ONE OF THE FOUNDATION’S PROGRAMS TO BRING HIGH QUALITY MEDICAL CARE AND TREATMENT TO PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS AND TO IMPROVE HEALTH SYSTEMS IN RESOURCE POOR AREAS AND COUNTRIES .
To bring care and treatment and improve systems.
The distribution of pharmaceuticals was not an approved tax exempt purpose, there is a stated specific prohibition against a grant of tax exemption for pharmaceutical distribution published at the IRS website here:
IRC 501(c)(3) requires an organization to be both “organized” and “operated” exclusively for one or more IRC 501(c)(3) purposes. If the organization fails either the organizational test or the operational test, it is not exempt. Reg. 1.501(c)(3)–1(a)(1).
The organizational test concerns the organization’s articles of organization or comparable governing document. The operational test concerns the organization’s activities. A deficiency in an organization’s governing document cannot be cured by the organization’s actual operations. Likewise, an organization whose activities are not within the statute will not qualify for exemption by virtue of a well written charter. Reg. 1.501(c)(3)–1(b)(1)(iv).
In Federation Pharmacy Services, Inc. v. Commissioner, 625 F.2d 804 (8th Cir. 1980), aff’g 72 T.C. 687 (1979), the appellate court held that a nonprofit pharmaceutical service was not exempt as a charitable organization because it was operated for the substantial commercial purpose of providing pharmacy services to the general public. Although it provided special discount rates for handicapped and senior citizens in its area, it was not committed to providing any drugs below cost or free to indigent persons. Therefore, although its services did improve health in the area, it was primarily a commercial venture operated in competition with other area pharmacies.
The Clinton Foundation, if it admits to the CHAI Inc at all, purports to have merged the 1st CHAI entity into the Clinton Foundation effective at 31 December 2005.
If it had done so, the CHAI Inc would have ceased on that day to exist. As the non-surviving entity in a merger it would have been dissolved and prohibited from further trading.
On 22 February 2006 Bill Clinton signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Australian Government as signatory for the Clinton Foundation HIV Aids Initiative Inc.
On 9 June 2006 Auditors BKD LLP wrote to the directors of the Clinton Foundation:
On the same date it wrote a further letter to include within its audit any and all available supplementary information.
The Clinton Foundation lodged its IRS 990 return electronically shortly after the Audit Report.
Nowhere did it mention any intention to merge, nor were any articles or agreements to effect a merger at 31 December referred to.
It noted that the Clinton HIV/Aids Initiative Inc was related to the Foundation, as it had done in the previous year, it also told the IRS there had been no dissolutions or terminations etc during the 2005 year.
Worryingly for the CHAI, the Foundation provided commentary about CHAI operations that should have immediately triggered a tax audit and recision of tax exemption.
THE CLINTON FOUNDATION HIV/AIDS INITIATIVE (CHAI) EXPANDED ITS PROCUREMENT CONSORTIUM, WHICH OBTAINS LIFE-SAVING AIDS MEDICINES FOR OVER 50 DEVELOPING NATIONS AT A SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCED PRICE.
There are no CHAI Inc’s 2004 or 2005 year returns filed at the Clinton Foundation. There is no merger agreement exhibited. Until today, I am not aware of any public commentary or publication of the agreement or the 990 CHAI return. The files had been successfully disappeared.
I now have a copy of all of that material from the filing at the time.
Around the time the Clinton Foundation audit report and 990 filing were completed, the CHAI Inc asked for an extension of time to lodge its IRS 990 return – to 15 August 2006. That extension is automatically approved as a right.
On 31 July 2006 the CHAI Inc was still operating as a separate legal entity. It held itself out as a legal contracting entity to the Australian Government which entered into these contracts with it on the following dates.
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade – Australian Aid Program
Category:
Health administration services
Contract Period:
14-Aug-2006 to 31-Dec-2010
Contract Value (AUD):
$15,127,586.10
Supplier Name:
CLINTON FOUNDATION HIV/AIDS INITIATIVE
Supplier Details
Name:
CLINTON FOUNDATION HIV/AIDS INITIATIVE
Postal Address:
225 WATER STREET
On 8 July 2006 the CHAI asked for its second extension of time to get its financial house in order for the IRS, this time seeking an extension out to 15 November 2006.
The Clinton Foundation HIV/Aids Initiative Inc was active in Papua New Guinea immediately after the contract with the Australian Government was executed.
The PNG Clinton operations sought the incorporation of a legal entity in Papua New Guinea styled after the CHAI Inc in the US.
Almost 9 months after the Clinton Foundation now tries to have us believe the CHAI Inc was merged out of existence, here it is incorporating a new corporate entity in Papua New Guinea.
If that entity had in fact ceased to operate upon the effective date the Clinton Foundation gives for the merger, 31 December 2005, almost 9 months previous, why wouldn’t the Clinton Foundation name alone be the only logical choice for the corporate person in PNG.
On 23 August 2006 this advertisement appeared in the PNG newspaper.
On 24 August 2006 the Clinton Foundation HIV/Aids Initiative – PNG Inc was incorporated.
Meanwhile, plans were apparently being made for the time machine that would take the directors of the Clinton Foundation and the CHAI back to the last recorded board meetings in 2005 where their due diligence and other conditions precedent to the merger were given the due consideration.
Notwithstanding the absence of any corresponding material in the Clinton Foundation’s 2005 filing which had already been locked in after the 9 June 2006 Audit Report, the CHAI filed its 2005 IRS 990 on 13 November 2006 and it wasn’t quite in sync with the 2005 merger-free head Foundation. That uncomfortable fact for the crooks might help explain the disappearance of these papers until now.
Here’s the date stamp for the avoidance of doubt and establishment of provenance.
Ira and the boys had some sort of problem in 2006 that apparently made it desirable for the CHAI Inc and its 501(c)(3) details to disappear.
But to do that effective 31 December 2005, Ira would have to find the agreements they signed at the time. Or someone would have to forge them. And if they did that, they should also go to jail, go directly to jail, not pass go and not collect several hundred million drug dollars.
I know that our expert readers will pore over these papers. Our readers amaze me with the details they pick up and pass on.
It’s the little things like any subscript writing in the bottom left hand corner leaving a tell tale trace from the word processor that might just establish the exact time the paper met the printer.
Here’s the freshly emerged Merger Agreement purportedly signed pre the merger date during 2005.
The Australians were still dealing with the entity they’d contracted with, the CHAI Inc. With that being the case, it’d make sense for Bill and Ira not to make waves. Not to do the right thing as required under the law and dissolve the non-surviving entity, the CHAI Inc.
Cause that’s what happened. Ira and Bill’s slush funds never die, they just fade away.
The CHAI Inc had this bank account in Massachusetts, along with its head office.
And the CHAI in its headquarter state of Massachusetts didn’t have the good manners to advise its headquarters regulator about the merger.
Because eventually Secretary Galvin and the crew got sick and tired of no returns, no information and no word about the fading jaded CHAI In and its problems.
When I was in the Mergers and Acquisitions caper it was a truism that there are no mergers, there’s only acquisitions – ie there’s a surviving party and the non-surviving party is consumed into it.
When a corporate entity is being merged it’s like being pregnant. A corporation can’t be a little bit merged, that would be an asset sale or an asset contribution from the balance sheet of a surviving entity.
That’s what Clinton and the boys did. Stripped the CHAI Inc bare, disadvantaged its creditors and any contracting party like the Australian Government that looked to it for performance and left it to wallow dead in the water.
In 2008 Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative Inc was dissolved by regulators for failure to comply with financial reporting legislation
The entity’s license to operate was revoked by authorities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by an order published on 31 March 2008, taking operative effect from 31 December 2007.
Here is a copy of the extract:
I wrote to the Massachusetts authorities in February, 2016
I am an Australian Journalist reporting on our government’s contributions to certain charitable entities in the United States.
I am interested in the revocation of the certificate of incorporation issued to Clinton Foundation HIV/Aids Initiative Incorporated.
ENDS
Later that day an officer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Mr Howard Cutter replied, stating:
The entity was dissolved by our office for failure to file annual reports in consecutive years.
While memories of the CHAI lingered it was useful to get some value out of that brand.
Apparently the Clinton Foundation doesn’t care about passing off or misleading or deceptive conduct, because it now tells all and sundry that the CHAI, the Clinton Health Access Initiative was the real deal all along.
Its history goes back to 2002. Even though in its 2009 incorporation it was presented to the authorities as a cleanskin, avoiding all the messy shit that a successor organisation in a Magaziner/Clinton transmission of business see popping up like ticking bombs left to surprise the unwary.
You can see what they were up to in this MOU executed in PNG.
Bill Clinton and Australian officials in CHAI multi-million $$$ fraud and coverup
CHAI is the acronym used by the Clinton Foundation and its supporters in the Australian Government to describe the Clinton Health Access Initiative.
Bill Clinton and the Australian Government don’t like to be reminded about the CHAI’s predecessor, also known as the CHAI. That’s because CHAI #1 flouted the law to such an egregious extent that it was deregistered by US authorities.
Clinton’s criminal conduct in CHAI #1 didn’t stop the Australian Government from sending him money. Individuals within the Australian Government even rewrote publications and changed records to help Clinton during his coverup.
Here’s what the Clinton Foundation says about the CHAI on its website today – note the first line “The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc”.
The Clinton Health Access Initiative Inc was not founded in 2002. That claim is false and misleading in a material sense in that it conceals the existence of a predecessor organisation which Clinton called the CHAI.
Here are the CHAI’s biggest donors. Note the “Cumulative Donations by Donor” and “Donor’s Name”. Let there be no mistake, our government is donating our money into a slush fund operated by Bill and Hillary.
Here is a screen shot from the Clinton Foundation’s 2009 website about the CHAI
This wasn’t just a name, the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative Inc was a US incorporated entity with employees and trading operations and some very illegal conduct awaiting explanation.
I’ll come back to the Clinton HIV/Aids Initiative Inc and the cover up later.
In 2006 the Australian Government’s Foreign Minister Alexander Downer signed an MOU with Clinton as detailed in this screen grab from a 2007 DFAT website.
By the latter half of 2010 someone in the Gillard Government saw fit to change the record as detailed in this screen grab from the AUSAID website from 2010/11. Where the original wording recorded a partnership with the William J Clinton Foundation, the revised 2010 version restated it as a partnership with the Clinton Health Access Initiative.
This matters because beyond the direct contracts we were buying drugs from Clinton’s operating company. Those drug dealings involved illegal activities. The new Clinton Health Access Initiative Inc had no involvement in the dealings that brought Clinton, Ranbaxy and their criminal cohort unstuck. Australia is reported to have purchased in excess of $100M in pharmaceuticals under the partnership with the William J. Clinton Foundation. Someone has gone to some length to clean out the records of those transactions but we will find them, it’s just a matter of when.
(note my request to DFAT re the $100M in pharmaceutical purchases under the agreement, I have been told I’ll have a response by COB Thursday)
Here is the signature block for Clinton’s signature on the 2006 MOU
He signed only for the HIV/Aids Initiative and as you’ll see in the next part of this report it was a separate entity and there have been considerable efforts to conceal its existence – some of those cover-up attempts will no doubt expose certain individuals to criminal prosecutions.
Here are the DFAT reported contracts with the Clinton Foundation HIV/Aids Initiative Inc.
2008/2009 contracts
2009/10 contracts
2010-2011
Note that by 2011 the Clinton Health Access Initiative was recorded as the contracting party for the Indonesian contract. (Michael Smith News, 9/06/2016)(Archive) h/t @seacaptim
Clinton is accompanied by traveling press secretary Nick Merrill (l) and director of communications Jennifer Palmieri (r), and listens to a question from a member of the media, Sept. 6, 2016. (Credit: The Associated Press)
“When a reporter aboard Clinton’s campaign plane asked if Putin is using cyberwarfare to help elect Trump, Clinton said “I’m not going to jump to conclusions.” She then proceeded to jump away.
She said recent events aren’t mere coincidence. “I often quote a great saying that I learned from living in Arkansas for many years: ‘If you find a turtle on a fence post, it didn’t get there by itself.’ ” She then added, in case anyone didn’t get her point, that “I think it’s quite intriguing that this activity has happened around the time Trump became the nominee.”
She said that Trump “has generally parroted what is a Putin/Kremlin line.” Etc., etc.
(…) But a casual glance at the timeline shows how fanciful such speculation is. Russians reportedly breached the DNC’s servers back in June 2015. [The DNC lawsuit and Crowdstrike report the servers were breached in July, 2016.] That was long before anyone took Trump’s campaign seriously.
Also, the fact that the DNC had been hacked was publicly announced in June 2016 — more than a month before Trump had said anything about Russia and Hillary’s emails. And the first item released from that hack was the DNC’s opposition research file on Trump.
At the time, nobody claimed Russia was trying to elect Trump, since the first release wasn’t exactly flattering to him. In fact, the Washington Postreported that the DNC hack was part of a broader effort by Russians to target both political parties.
“The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some Republican political action committees, U.S. officials said,” the Post article stated.
The request comes in the form of a letter from Representative Jason Chaffetz (R), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to Channing Phillips, the US attorney for the District of Columbia. It asks the Justice Department to “investigate and determine whether Secretary Clinton or her employees and contractors violated statutes that prohibit destruction of records, obstruction of congressional inquiries, and concealment or cover up of evidence material to a congressional investigation.”
Although the FBI ended its Clinton email investigation in July 2016 without recommending an indictment of Clinton or anyone else, newly revealed evidence indicates Platte River Networks (PRN) employee Paul Combetta deleted and wiped all of Clinton’s emails in March 2015. He had communications with Clinton’s lawyers just days before and after the deletions, but the FBI was unable to determine what was said in those communications, possibly due to an assertion of attorney-client privilege. (Salon, 9/6/2016)
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is introduced during a campaign stop Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, in Rochester, N.H. ((Credit: /Matt Rourke/The Associated Press))
(…) “Hillary compromised classified materials representing the full range of American espionage: human intelligence or HUMINT from CIA, signals intelligence or SIGINT from NSA, and imagery intelligence or IMINT from NGA.
Of those 81 classified email chains, the FBI assessed that 37 of them included Secret information while eight included Top Secret information. Worse, seven email chains included Special Access Program or SAP information, which is tightly protected by the Intelligence Community and shared on a restricted, need-to-know basis only.
Three more email chains contained Sensitive Compartmented Information or SCI, which was almost certainly SIGINT from NSA. SCI always requires special protection and handling. In fact, you’re only allowed to access it inside a specially-built Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, a SCIF (pronounced “skiff”) in spy-speak. Any exposure of SCI brings severe penalties—at least if you’re not named Clinton.
It’s nice to see the FBI finally confirm just how much highly classified information got exposed here, but I reported this many months ago from Intelligence Community sources, including that Hillary’s “unclassified” emails included Top Secret SAP information from CIA and Top Secret SCI information from NSA.
Which leads to a troubling matter: What the FBI did not mention in its big data dump on EmailGate.
As I told you in this column back in January, Hillary emails included very highly classified intelligence from NSA. In early June 2011, the secretary of state received a long email from her longtime friend and factotum Sid Blumenthal regarding Sudan. This was an astonishingly detailed assessment of high-level political and military machinations in that country, specifically inside information about coup plotting.
This explosive information was timely and deep in the weeds on Sudanese happenings. It’s difficult to see how Blumenthal—a lawyer and Washington fixer, no sort of Africa hand or James Bond—got his hands on such juicy intelligence. As I’ve noted, “Blumenthal’s information came from a top-ranking source with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials, and recounted a high-level meeting that had taken place only 24 hours before.” How did Sid obtain this amazing scoop for Hillary?
If Hillary Clinton becomes our next president, we can be certain that her trusty sidekick Sid Blumenthal will have an important role in her White House.
Not to mention that, in terms of verbiage and format, Blumenthal’s email read exactly like classified NSA reporting, as anybody acquainted with our SIGINT would immediately recognize. As one veteran agency official told me back in January, Blumenthal’s email was NSA information with “at least 90 percent confidence.”
Which was no coincidence, since an NSA investigation subsequently determined that Blumenthal’s Sudan assessment was derived from their reporting—in some cases, verbatim. As I reported in March, NSA concluded that Blumenthal’s Sudan report came from four different agency SIGINT reports, all classified Top Secret/SCI. Then it got worse:
At least one of those reports was issued under the GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was). GAMMA is properly viewed as a SIGINT Special Access Program, or SAP, several of which Clinton compromised in another series of her “unclassified” emails.
NSA had no doubt that Blumenthal somehow got his hands on some of their “crown jewels” information. “It’s word-for-word, verbatim copying,” an agency official of them explained. “In one case, an entire paragraph was lifted from an NSA report” that was classified Top Secret/SCI. To add to the mystery, Sid emailed Hillary his “personal” assessment on Sudan only hours after some of those classified NSA reports were issued.
Somehow Sid Blumenthal—who in 2011 was not working for the U.S. government in any capacity and had not held security clearances in a decade—was reading above-top-secret NSA reports just hours after they appeared in tightly restricted GAMMA channels.” (Read more: The Observer, 9/06/16)
Representative Jason Chaffetz (R), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, writes a letter to Platte River Networks (PRN), the computer company that managed Clinton’s private server since June 2013. Chaffetz warns that one PRN employee, Paul Combetta, could face federal charges for deleting and wiping Clinton’s emails from her server in March 2015. That’s because the House Benghazi Committee had issued a formal order to preserve such records earlier in the month, and Combetta confessed in a later FBI interview that he knew about the order before he made the deletions.
In the letter, Chaffetz says a recent FBI report about the deletions “raises questions to whether [Combetta] violated federal statutes that prohibit destruction of evidence and obstruction of a Congressional investigation.”
Additionally, Combetta took part in conference calls with Clinton’s lawyers just days before and after the deletions, but the FBI was unable to determine what was said in those communications, possibly due to an assertion of attorney-client privilege. In the letter, Chaffetz wants an explanation from PRN how Combetta could refuse to talk to the FBI about the conference calls if the only lawyers involved were Clinton’s. (Salon, 9/6/2016)
The letter is released to CNN on the same day, and publicly published in full. Addressing his decision not to recommend the indictment of Clinton, Comey writes, “At the end of the day, the case itself was not a cliff-hanger; despite all the chest-beating by people no longer in government, there really wasn’t a prosecutable case.”
CNN also reports that over the past several weeks, “Comey has met with groups of former FBI agents as part of his routine visits to field offices around the country. In at least one recent such meeting, according to people familiar with the meeting, former agents were sharply critical of the FBI’s handling of the Clinton probe and particularly the decision to not recommend charges against Clinton. Comey gave the meeting participants a similar answer about the case not being a cliff-hanger.” (CNN, 9/7/2016)
A later CNN article will identify the particularly contentious meeting as taking place in Kansas City. (CNN, 11/2/2016)
In the letter, Comey also defends his decision to release the FBI’s final report on the investigation (with significant redactions). That was a highly unusual move, because that usually only happens after an indictment or conviction. He makes a particular point to defend the timing of the report’s release, as it came out on a Friday afternoon just before the three-day Labor Day weekend.
He concludes the letter: “Those suggesting that we are ‘political’ or part of some ‘fix’ either don’t know us, or they are full of baloney (and maybe some of both).” (CNN, 9/7/2016) (CNN, 9/7/2016)
On September 6, 2016, House Speaker Paul Ryan complains how the report was release on the Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend.
The next day, FBI Director James Comey writes a letter to FBI staff that is immediately published in full by CNN. In it, he asserts that the review process allowing the report’s public release was finished on a Friday morning, September 2, 2016, so he published it later that same day.
He goes on to say, “I almost ordered the material held until [the next] Tuesday because I knew we would take all kinds of grief for releasing it before a holiday weekend, but my judgment was that we had promised transparency and it would be game-playing to withhold it from the public just to avoid folks saying stuff about us. We don’t play games. So we released it Friday. We are continuing to process more material and will release batches of documents as they are ready, no matter the day of the week.” (CNN, 9/7/2016) (CNN, 9/7/2016)
A former newspaper editor and publisher. He has written for USA Today, The Saturday Evening Post, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, OMNI magazine, and has also produced the syndicated radio program, Health News. He has written 22 books and two documentary videos.
According to Still, during last year’s presidential campaign at the Commander-In-Chief Forum on September 7, 2016, moderator Matt Lauer went “off script” and asked Hillary about her using an illegal, private email-server when she was secretary of state. (See “Hillary Clinton wore an ear phone at Commander-in-Chief Forum”)
According to Bill Still’s source — an unnamed “NBC associate producer of the forum” — Hillary was so enraged that, after the forum, she went into a ballistic melt-down, screaming at her staff, including a racist rant at Donna Brazile, calling Brazile a “buffalo” and “janitor”. Brazile recently turned against Hillary — now we know why.
This is the NBC associate producer’s account of what happened:
“Hillary proceeded to pick up a full glass of water and throw it at the face of the assistant, and the screaming started.
She was in a full meltdown and no one on her staff dared speak with her — she went kind of manic and did not have any control over herself at that point. How these people work with this woman is amazing to me. She really didn’t seem to care who heard any of it.
You really had to see this to believe it. She came apart — literally unglued. She is the most foul-mouthed woman I’ve ever heard. And that voice at screech level — awful!
She screamed she’d get that fucking Lauer fired for this. Referring to Donald Trump, Clinton said, ‘If that fucking bastard wins, we all hang from nooses!Lauer’s finished, and if I lose, it’s all on your heads for screwing this up.’
Her dozen or more aides were visibly disturbed and tried to calm her down when she started shaking uncontrollably as she screamed to get an executive at Comcast, the parent company of NBC Universal, on the phone. Then two rather large aides grabbed her and helped her walk to her car.”
Bill Still said:
“Matt Lauer was massively criticized for the rest of the week on air by the Clinton campaign and the rest of the MSM as having conducted ‘an unfair and partisan attack on Clinton’. Calls were made to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Huffington Post and Twitterexecutives, with orders to crush Matt Lauer. One staffer on the Clinton campaign told the NBC staff that they all fear Clinton’s wrath and uncontrollable outbursts, and one described Hillary as ‘an egotistical psychopath’.
Since Hillary does not allow any staff to have cell phones when she is in their presence, no footage is available.
Interim DNC chairman Donna Brazile, the first black woman to hold the position, was singled out by Hillary during the rant. She screamed at Donna, ‘I’m so sick of your face! You stare at the wall like a brain-dead buffalo, while letting that fucking Lauer get away with this! What are you good for, really? Get the fuck to work janitoring this mess, do I make myself clear?’
A female NBC executive said Donna Brazile looked at Mrs. Clinton and never flinched, which seemed to enrage Hillary all the more. The executive continued: ‘It was the most awful and terrible and racist display. Such a profane meltdown I have ever witnessed from anyone, and I will never forget it. That woman should never see the inside of the Oval Office, I can tell you that. She was unhinged and just continued to verbally abuse everyone. She was out of control.’”
Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, writes a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, with the following declassified information:
DNI releases a copy of the intelligence referral to Comey and Strzok on October 6, 2020:
(…) The declassification comes after Ratcliffe, last week, shared newly-declassified information with the Senate Judiciary Committee which revealed that in September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral on Hillary Clinton purportedly approving “a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections” in order to distract the public from her email scandal.
That referral was sent to Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok.
“The following information is provided for the exclusive use of your bureau for background investigative action or lead purposes as appropriate,” the CIA memo to Comey and Strzok stated.
“This memorandum contains sensitive information that could be source revealing. It should be handled with particular attention to compartmentation and need-to-know. To avoid the possible compromise of the source, any investigative action taken in response to the information below should be coordinated in advance with Chief Counterintelligence Mission Center, Legal,” the memo, which was sent to Comey and Strzok, read. “It may not be used in any legal proceeding—including FISA applications—without prior approval…”
“Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date,” the memo continued. ““An exchange [REDACTED] discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”
James Comey (Credit: Cliff Owen/The Associated Press)
(…) Ratcliffe also declassified on Tuesday portions of a formal CIA investigative referral sent on Sept. 7, 2016, to fired former FBI Director James Comey and fired former counterintelligence official Peter Strzok asking them to investigate the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump collusion smear operation in light of Russia’s knowledge of the plan and the likelihood it could be tainted by deliberate Russian disinformation. Rather than act on the CIA investigative referral in the same manner they had launched a full-blown counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, Strzok and Comey refused to initiate an investigation.
“Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date,” the memo states. “An exchange [REDACTED] discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of private e-mail server.”
The cover note of the memorandum stated that the information within was provided to the FBI “for the exclusive use of your Bureau for background, investigative action, or lead purposes, as appropriate.”
There is no evidence the FBI ever took any action to ensure that Russian knowledge of Clinton’s plans did not lead to infiltration of that campaign’s operation by Russian intelligence agents. The CIA referral, specifically its reference to a “CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell,” suggests that the Obama administration’s anti-Trump investigation may not have been limited to the FBI, but may have included the use of CIA assets and surveillance capabilities, raising troubling questions about whether the nation’s top spy service was weaponized against a U.S. political campaign.
The CIA referral declassified and released by Ratcliffe shows that it was personally addressed to both Comey and Strzok. Because the CIA does not have legal authority to police domestic matters, it informed the FBI of the agency’s concerns about potential Russian knowledge of Clinton campaign’s plan to smear Trump as a Russian asset, especially given the FBI’s ongoing counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign. Not only did the FBI refuse to investigate whether the Russians were using the Clinton campaign to interfere in the 2016 national election, but Comey also claimed last week that he knew nothing whatsoever about the CIA investigative referral.” (Read more: The Federalist, 10/06/2020)(Archive)
The New York Times reveals that the Platte River Networks (PRN) employee mentioned in a recently released FBI report who deleted and then wiped Clinton’s emails from her private server in March 2015 is named Paul Combetta. Furthermore, at some unknown point during the investigation, the FBI gave him an immunity deal. This is “according to a law enforcement official and others briefed on the investigation.”
It was reported in March 2016 that Clinton computer technician Bryan Pagliano got an immunity deal, but Combetta’s deal stayed secret. Even the FBI’s Clinton email investigation final report, released on September 2, 2016, makes no mention of it. The report also redacted every mention of Combetta’s name, but the Times says “the law enforcement official and others familiar with the case identified the employee as Mr. Combetta.”
Clinton spokesperson Brian Fallon says the deletions by Combetta have already been “thoroughly examined by the FBI prior to its decision to close out this case.”
However, many questions remain, including why Combetta got immunity and when. He was interviewed by the FBI twice, and his answers in his second interview sometimes directly contradict his answers in his first interview, meaning he had to have lied to the FBI at least once, which is a felony. In his second interview also admitted to deleting Clinton’s emails despite being aware of a Congressional order to preserve her emails, which would suggest an admission of additional crimes.
Fallon also comments, “As the FBI’s report notes, neither Hillary Clinton nor her attorneys had knowledge of the Platte River Network employee’s actions. It appears he acted on his own and against guidance given by both Clinton’s and Platte River’s attorneys to retain all data in compliance with a congressional preservation request.”
The House Oversight Committee has asked PRN employees, including Combetta, to appear at a committee hearing on September 13, 2016, about how the email deletions and other matters. (The New York Times, 9/8/2016)
The Denver Post’s editorial board publishes an editorial on September 8, 2016, entitled “A fishy story in Platte River Networks’ purge of Clinton e-mails.” It focuses on Platte River Networks (PRN) employee Paul Combetta’s FBI interview and his deletion and wiping of Clinton’s emails with a program “wonderfully named BleachBit.”
The editorial mentions Combetta’s “sudden remembrance” to delete the emails, and a subsequent conference call between PRN officials and a “longtime Clinton aide and personal lawyer.” When the FBI eventually attempted to investigate the conference call, they were met with Combetta’s claim of attorney-client privilege. The editorial states, “That just looks awful. So [it’s] little wonder the Republican chairman of the House committee investigating Clinton’s e-mail arrangement — Utah’s Jason Chaffetz — has asked federal prosecutors to investigate whether she or others were involved in the decision to destroy those emails following the preservation order.”
The Post argues “the information from the [FBI’s] summary of its investigation doesn’t sit well. It’s reasonable to ask why the FBI didn’t look deeper. It’s reasonable to ask why [Combetta] would act if, as the logic of the cover story must argue, the emails were simply personal notes about yoga appointments and being a grandmother.”
The editorial agrees with Chaffetz’s call for the Justice Department “to investigate and determine whether Secretary Clinton or her employees and contractors violated statutes that prohibit destruction of records, obstruction of congressional inquiries and concealment of cover-up of evidence material to a congressional committee.” It closes by saying, “something about this story feels whitewashed — or maybe bleached out is the better term for it now.” (The Denver Post, 9/8/2016)
FBI acting legislative affairs officer Jason Herring testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
He is asked by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R), chair of the committee, to promise to hand over all of the FBI interview summaries, known as 302s, in unredacted form.
Herring says he can’t do that, and suggests that Chaffetz should file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, just like any private citizen can.
Committee member Representative Trey Gowdy (R) later complains, “Since when did Congress have to go through FOIA to obtain 302s?”
Chaffetz serves the FBI a subpoena during a House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee hearing on September 9, 2016. (Credit: ABC News)
Chaffetz replies to Henning, “You don’t get to decide what I get to see. I get to see it all.” Then he brings out a subpoena. He sends it to the witness table where Henning is sitting, and says, “I’ve signed this subpoena. We want all the 302s… and you are hereby served.”
In fact, Chaffetz’s committee has some of the 302s already, but all “personally identifiable information” has been redacted from them. The committee wants to know more about the role of Paul Combetta in deleting and the wiping all of Clinton’s emails from her personal server, but since Combetta is a Platte River Networks (PRN) employee and not a government employee, much information about what he did has been redacted.
Representative Carolyn Maloney (Credit: Andrew Burton / Getty Images)
Representative Carolyn Maloney (D), a member of the committee, claims the obstacle to Chaffetz seeing the redactions actually is the House Intelligence Committee, not the FBI. Chaffetz has asked House Intelligence chair Representative Devin Nunes (R) for access to the unredacted versions, but no vote on that request has been taken or scheduled yet.
However, Senator Charles Grassley (R), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also complains about how the FBI is not letting his committee see unredacted documents from the investigation. “The FBI is trying to have it both ways. At the same time it talks about unprecedented transparency, it’s placing unprecedented hurdles in the way of Congressional oversight of unclassified law enforcement matters. It turned over documents, but with strings attached. … The Senate should not allow its controls on classified material to be manipulated to hide embarrassing material from public scrutiny, even when that material is unclassified.” (Politico, 9/12/2016)
Two other Congressional committees formally asked the Justice Department on September 9, 2016 for the full FBI interviews of Combetta and other PRN employees. (US Congress, 9/9/2016)
The editorial states: “Ms. Clinton’s emails have endured much more scrutiny than an ordinary person’s would have, and the criminal case against her was so thin that charging her would have been to treat her very differently. … Anyone who claims that Ms. Clinton should be in prison accuses, without evidence, the FBI of corruption or flagrant incompetence.”
The editorial concludes: “Ms. Clinton is hardly blameless. She treated the public’s interest in sound record-keeping cavalierly. A small amount of classified material also moved across her private server. But it was not obviously marked as such, and there is still no evidence that national security was harmed. … There is no equivalence between Ms. Clinton’s wrongs and Mr. Trump’s manifest unfitness for office.” (The Washington Post, 9/8/2016)
Representative Jason Chaffetz (R), the chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, orders two Platte River Networks (PRN) employees and three others to testify before a Congressional hearing, on September 13, 2016. PRN is the company that managed Clinton’s private server. The following people are ordered to appear:
Those subpoenaed to appear before the House Oversight committee are from left to right: Paul Combetta, Bryan Pagliano, Justin Cooper and Alex McChord and Bill Thornton. (Credits: public domain)
Paul Combetta. He is a PRN employee. On September 8, 2016, the New York Times revealed that Combetta deleted and wiped Clinton’s emails from her private server, and he also got an immunity deal from the Justice Department as part of the FBI’s Clinton email investigation. Congressional committees issued subpoenas for PRN interviews on August 22, 2016, after asking without coersion since September 2015.
Bill Thornton. He also is a PRN employee. The FBI’s final report indicated two PRN employees worked on Clinton’s server, so it seems probable he is the other one.
Bryan Pagliano. He managed Clinton’s server until PRN took over. He was previously subpoenaed by the House Committee on Benghazi, but he pleaded the Fifth. However, he cooperated with the FBI after also getting an immunity deal.
Justin Cooper. He is a member of Bill Clinton’s staff and helped Pagliano manage the server.
On September 09, 2016, Trey Gowdy appears on Fox News with Martha MacCallum to discuss the immunity deal given to Paul Combetta. (Credit: Fox News)
Representative Trey Gowdy (R) comments about a New York Times article from the day before that revealed Platte River Networks employee Paul Combetta was not only the person who deleted and wiped Clinton’s emails, but was the person who got an immunity deal from the FBI.
Gowdy says there are two types of immunity Combetta could have received: use and transactional. “If the FBI and the Department of Justice gave this witness transactional immunity, it is tantamount to giving the triggerman immunity in a robbery case.”
Gowdy, who is a former federal prosecutor, says that Combetta “destroyed official public records” despite a subpoena and preservation order from lawmakers for the documents. He adds that he is “stunned” because “It looks like they gave immunity to the very person you would most want to prosecute.” (Fox News, 9/9/2016)
Cheryl Mills was Clinton’s chief of staff while Clinton was secretary of state, then she was hired to be one of Clinton’s lawyers in 2013, setting up a potential conflict of interest between her different roles. In April 2016, she was interviewed by the FBI, but refused to answer certain questions, claiming attorney-client privilege.
Ronald J. Sievert (Credit: public domain)
Ronald J. Sievert, a former assistant director at the Justice Department and member of the department’s National Security Working Group, said the FBI easily could have gone to court to challenge Mills’ privilege claim. But that didn’t happen.
Mills also was allowed to attend Clinton’s July 2016 FBI interview as one of Clinton’s lawyers, even though she directly participated in many of the matters being discussed by Clinton when Mills was in her chief of staff role.
Sievert comments, “There seems universal agreement among those of us who know the law that no regular US government employee could get away with this.” (The New York Post, 9/9/2016)
This is according to an interview with WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange. “We have tens of thousands, possibly as many as a hundred thousand, pages of documents of different types, related to the operations that Hillary Clinton is associated with.”
This WikiLeaks cartoon has been prominently featured on the WikiLeaks website. (Credit: Latuff / WikiLeaks)
WikiLeaks released almost 20,000 Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails just before the July Democratic presidential convention. He says regarding new releases, “There are some, several … in response to the DNC publications, a lot of people have been inspired by the impact, and so they have stepped forward with additional material.”
He adds, “It’s quite a complex business to sort things, to index them, make sure they’re presentable, to see what the top initial angles are that come out. We’re a small shop. We’re here around the clock. We understand quite much the time pressures that people have, and how significant it is to try and get that out. We worked like hell to get the DNC publication out before the DNC, the day before the DNC.”
“I am very confident we’re going to get this material out before, long before, the day of the [November 2016 presidential] election.” (The Washington Examiner, 9/8/2016)
Clinton presidential running mate Tim Kaine, associates Trump and Russia with the DNC hack during a CBS This Morning interview on September 9, 2016.
Yet, according to the New York Times and details provided in the DNC’s lawsuit against Russia and the Trump campaign, Russia’s alleged cyberattack on the DNC began just weeks after Trump announced his candidacy for president in June 2015.
Senator Charles Grassley (R), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, speaks in the Senate about difficulties he is having with the FBI’s selective release of information regarding the FBI’s Clinton email investigation.
Senator Charles Grassley takes to the Senate floor on September 12, 2016. (Credit: Public domain)
He points out that the FBI has taken the unusual step of releasing the FBI’s final report and Clinton interview summary. “However, its summary is misleading or inaccurate in some key details and leaves out other important facts altogether.”
He says there are dozens of completely unclassified witness reports, but even some Congressional staffers can’t see them “because the FBI improperly bundled [them] with a small amount of classified information, and told the Senate to treat it all as if it were classified.”
He says the normal procedure is for documents to have the classified portions marked. Then the unclassified portions can be released. But in defiance of regulations and a clear executive order on how such material should be handled, “the FBI has ‘instructed’ the Senate office that handles classified information not to separate the unclassified information.”
He points in particular to recently revealed news that Paul Combetta, an employee of the company (Platte River Networks) that managed Clinton’s private server from June 2013 onwards, deleted and wiped all of Clinton’s emails from the server in March 2015. Grassley claims “there is key information related to that issue that is still being kept secret, even though it is unclassified. If I honor the FBI’s ‘instruction’ not to disclose the unclassified information it provided to Congress, I cannot explain why.”
He also says, “Inaccuracies are spreading because of the FBI’s selective release. For example, the FBI’s recently released summary memo may be contradicted by other unclassified interview summaries that are being kept locked away from the public.”
He says he has been fighting the FBI on this, but without success so far, as the FBI isn’t even replying to his letters. (US Senate, 9/13/2016) (YouTube, 9/13/2016)
Lawyers for Bryan Pagliano, the State Department employee who managed Clinton’s server when she was secretary of state, indicate he will plead the Fifth Amendment yet again. He was given a subpoena to speak before a Congressional hearing the next day, on September 13, 2016.
Pagliano refused to speak before a Congressional inquiry in September 2015, refused to take questions for a State Department inspector general’s report published in May 2016, pled the Fifth when he was deposed in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in June 2016, and only took part in the FBI’s Clinton investigation after agreeing to an immunity deal.
Mark MacDougall (Credit: Akin Gump)
Pagliano’s five lawyer team, led by Mark MacDougall, claim: “Any effort to require Mr. Pagliano to publicly appear this week and again assert his Fifth Amendment rights before a committee of the same Congress, inquiring about the same matter as the Benghazi Committee, furthers no legislative purpose and is a transparent effort to publicly harass and humiliate our client for unvarnished political purposes.”
Justin Cooper, a Bill Clinton aide who helped Pagliano manage the server, reportedly has indicated that he will answer questions in the hearing. (The Washington Post, 9/12/2016)
The next day, Pagliano will fail to appear before the Congressional hearing at all.
In comments during a Congressional hearing relating to Clinton’s use of a private server, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R) comments about Clinton’s server manager Bryan Pagliano, “[I]t’s our understanding [that] Mr. Pagliano worked in the I.T. department at the State Department nearly four years yet virtually every single email Mr. Pagliano had has suddenly disappeared. There’s something like less than 20 emails…”
Bryan Pagliano’s empty chair at the hearing. (Credit: CSpan)
Chaffetz also says, “Mr. Pagliano is important because he was receiving a paycheck from the Clintons but failed to disclose that on his financial forms. We’d like to give him an opportunity to answer that question. We also believe he entered into an immunity agreement. You’d think somebody would sing like a songbird if you got immunity from the FBI. What are you afraid of?”
Pagliano cannot answer the question because he fails to attend the hearing, despite a Congressional subpoena to do so. (US Congress, 9/13/2016)
It has been reported that the .pst file containing all of Pagliano’s State Department emails has been lost.
The FBI Clinton email investigation’s final report failed to mention the issue of Pagliano’s lost emails or how many of his emails the FBI had or found. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
On September 12, 2016, a deadline to respond to a subpoena issued by a Congressional committee passed. Three companies involved in the management of Clinton’s private server had been given the subpoena, and one – Datto, Inc. – responded in time with documents, while the other two – Platte River Networks (PRN) and SECNAP, Inc. – did not.
The next day, Representative Lamar Smith (R) comments in a related Congressional hearing, “just this morning… SECNAP’s [legal] counsel confirmed to my staff that the Clinton’s private LLC [Clinton Executive Service Corp.] is actively engaged in directing their obstructionist responses to Congressional subpoenas.” (US Congress, 9/13/2016)
Clinton’s lawyer will later confirm that he is prohibiting SECNAP from fully complying with a subpoena.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee holds a public hearing related to the management of Clinton’s private server. Four people associated with the management of Clinton’s private server had been served by Congressional subpoenas on September 8, 2016 to force them to testimony:
Paul Combetta (left) Bill Thornton (center) Justin Cooper (right) (Credit: CSpan)
Bryan Pagliano, a former State Department employee who managed Clinton’s server while she was secretary of state. He defies the subpoena by failing to appear at all.
Justin Cooper, a former Bill Clinton aide who helped Pagliano manage the server. He does answer questions for nearly two hours at the hearing.
Paul Combetta, a Platte River Networks (PRN) employee, which managed the server from June 2013 until at least late 2015. He deleted and then wiped all of Clinton’s emails from her server. He fails to answer any questions and pleads the Fifth instead.
Bill Thornton, another PRN employee who managed the server with Combetta. He also to answer any questions and pleads the Fifth instead.
Pagliano’s lawyers have complained the hearing is politically biased and he will continue to refuse to participate. He has also failed to cooperate with another Congressional committee in 2015, a State Department inspector general’s investigation, and a deposition in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.
Representative Jason Chaffetz (R) says of Pagliano’s refusal to appear: “He made the decision not to be here and there are consequences for that. … We’ll look at the full range of options. If anybody is under any illusion I’m going to let go of this and let it sail off into the sunset they are very ill-advised.” However, he doesn’t specify what the penalties might be. (The Associated Press, 9/13/2016) (US Congress, 9/13/2016)
Austin McChord, the CEO of Datto, Inc., was also scheduled to appear, but there is no mention of him. Presumably, he is rescheduled for another hearing.
Justin Cooper appears before the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee on September 13, 2016. (Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images)
Justin Cooper worked with Bryan Pagliano to manage Clinton’s private server while she was secretary of state. But while Pagliano was a State Department employee, Cooper was an aide to former President Bill Clinton as well as a Clinton Foundation employee. When Cooper testifies before a Congressional committee on this day, he is asked by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R) if he had a security clearance while he was helping to manage the server.
He replies, “No, I did not have a security clearance.”
He mentions that he worked in the White House from 2000 to 2001, but he is not asked if he had a security clearance in those years. However, he mentions that he wasn’t involved in handling classified information at that time.
Chaffetz also asks him, “You had access to the server the entire time you were working for the Clintons?”
He answers, “Yes I had access to the server.”
He also mentions that both he and Pagliano had remote access, which means they could have accessed Clinton’s emails over the Internet at any time. (US Congress, 9/13/2016)
Curiously, the FBI Clinton email investigation’s final report, released earlier inSeptember 2016, doesn’t mention Cooper’s lack of a security clearance. Nor is it mentioned in the summary of Clinton’s July 2016 FBI interview, which is made public in early September 2016 as well, if Clinton knew Cooper had no security clearance when she hired him and continued to pay him for managing the server. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/2/2016)
Cooper shakes hands with Representative Chaffetz after the hearing. (Credit: CSpan)
Justin Cooper worked with Bryan Pagliano to manage Clinton’s private server while she was secretary of state. When Cooper testifies before a Congressional committee on this day, he is asked by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R), “[H]ow many people had access to the server?”
He replies, “There were two people who had some administrative rights, myself and Mr. Pagliano. I can’t off the top of my head tell you exactly how many users there were over the lifetime of the server, but it was less than 20 people.”
He also mentions, “The only remote access login to the server was for myself and Mr. Pagliano.”
At other points in his testimony, he says that most of the users were members of former President Bill Clinton’s staff and/or Clinton Foundation employees. Cooper doesn’t have a security clearance and its probable that most of the others with access to the server don’t have security clearances either. (US Congress, 9/13/2016)
In July 2016, FBI Director James Comey claimed that Clinton gave between three and nine people without a security clearance access to the server, but he may be defining “access” in a different manner than Cooper.
On September 13, 2016, hacked emails belonging to former Secretary of State Colin Powell appear on a website known as DCLeaks.com. It is unclear who owns the DCLeaks website, which only appeared on the Internet a few months earlier. They are known for previously publishing hacked emails belonging to prominent Democrats and Republicans, including General Philip M. Breedlove, the former commander of NATO forces in Europe, and George Soros, a wealthy backer of liberal causes. It is also reported to have ties to Guccifer 2.0, who in turn has been accused of having links to the Russian government.
Colin Powell (Credit: Paul Morigi / Getty Images)
Powell’s aide Peggy Cifrino states, “We are confirming that General Powell has been hacked and that they are his emails. We have no further comment at this time.” The dates of Powell’s hacked emails range from June 24, 2014 to as recently as August 29, 2016.
Some of the emails are first reported by BuzzFeed and the Intercept, followed by many other prominent mainstream news sources.
The New York Times reports, “A hack of Mr. Powell’s email this week has ripped away the diplomatic jargon and political niceties to reveal his unvarnished disdain of Donald J. Trump as a ‘national disgrace,’ his personal peeves with Hillary Clinton and his lingering, but still very raw, anger with the Republican colleagues with whom he so often clashed a decade ago.” (New York Times, 09/14/16)
“Two months before the 2016 election, George Papadopoulos received a strange request for a meeting in London, one of several the young Trump adviser would be offered — and he would accept — during the presidential campaign.
The meeting request, which has not been reported until now, came from Stefan Halper, a foreign policy expert and Cambridge professor with connections to the CIA and its British counterpart, MI6.
(…) According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Halper asked Papadopoulos: “George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?”
Papadopoulos told Halper he didn’t know anything about emails or Russian hacking, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. The professor did not follow up on the line of inquiry.
Halper first contacted Papadopoulos by email. In a Sept. 2, 2016, message sent to Papadopoulos’s personal email account, he offered the Trump aide $3,000 to write a policy paper on issues related to Turkey, Cyprus, Israel and the Leviathan natural gas field. Halper also offered to pay for Papadopoulos’s flight and a three-night stay in London.
The Connaught Hotell (Credit: public domain)
Papadopoulos accepted the proposal, flew to England, and met with Halper and one of his assistants. He delivered the paper electronically Oct. 2 and received payment days later, according to documents TheDCNF reviewed.
(…) Papadopoulos and Halper met several times during the London trip, including at the Connaught Hotel and the Travellers Club — a classic 19th century club foreign diplomats and politicians frequent. Halper’s research assistant — a Turkish woman named Azra Turk — also met with Papadopoulos. The Connaught Hotel meeting was scheduled for Sept. 13, 2016, and the Travellers Club conclave was two days later.
While discussing the policy paper Papadopoulos was to write, Halper made an out-of-left-field reference to Russians and hacked emails, according to a source with direct knowledge of Papadopoulos’s version of events.
Joel Melstad, spokesperson for the of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), says, “ODNI is not leading an [intelligence community]-wide damage assessment and is not aware of any individual IC element conducting such formal assessments.”
Most of the above “top secret” emails sent or received on Clinton’s server related to the US drone program in Pakistan. According to the Washington Free Beacon, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper “agreed with security officials who argued against the need to carry out the damage assessment. Intelligence officials argued in internal discussions that since many details of the drone missile program targeting terrorists were disclosed in earlier leaks unrelated to Clinton’s use of a personal email server, gauging the damage done by her conduct would be difficult, and possibly unnecessary.”
However, “Other officials said Clapper’s decision appeared based on political considerations and was an effort to avoid embroiling American intelligence agencies in charges they were attempting to influence the outcome of Clinton’s bid for the White House.”
Representative Mike Pompeo (Credit: Politico)
A June 2014 counterintelligence directive, ICD-732, states that “damage assessments shall be conducted when there is an actual or suspected unauthorized disclosure or compromise of classified national intelligence that may cause damage to US national security.”
Representative Mike Pompeo (R) says, “FBI Director [James] Comey has made clear that there was highly classified and sensitive information on Secretary Clinton’s personal server. It is imperative that [a damage assessment] be conducted to determine what harm to American national security may have occurred and, just as importantly, to prevent the massive mishandling of sensitive materials from ever happening again.”
Angelo Codevilla (Credit: public domain)
Angelo Codevilla, a former US intelligence officer, says, “Common sense, the intelligence community’s standard practice, as well as a 2014 directive, require assessing the damage done by any such compromise.” She also asserts that Comey’s “vague and evasive” comments regarding Clinton’s handling of classified information confirm that a significant number of secrets were compromised.
Michelle Van Cleave (Credit: public domain)
Michelle Van Cleave, a former national counterintelligence executive, similarly asserts, “Whenever there is a significant compromise of national security information, as the FBI’s report confirms happened here, it is essential to conduct an assessment of the damage in order to protect plans, programs, or lives that may be at risk.” There have been reports that Clinton’s emails revealed the names of some undercover CIA officers as well.
Kenneth deGraffenreid (Credit: The Institute of World Politics)
Kenneth deGraffenreid, a former deputy national counterintelligence executive, says, “Intelligence agencies hate conducting damage assessments that could show people that somebody did something wrong, or improper, or did it poorly. They never want that known. It’s a bureaucracy that does one thing: protects itself.”
He says Congress should force the intelligence community to conduct the damage assessment, since it will find no political advantage in doing it voluntarily.
However, the Free Beacon reports, “Congressional sources said the House and Senate intelligence oversight committee are reluctant to require the damage assessment since it would codify in writing the false claim that no damage was caused to the drone program by the compromise of secrets by Clinton and her aides.” (The Washington Free Beacon, 9/14/2016)
Hillary Clinton (L) is applauded by Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott before she delivers remarks about the Obama administration’s national security strategy at the Brookings Institution May 27, 2010 in Washington, DC. (Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous anti-Trump dossier, disclosed information from his Trump-Russia investigation to a longtime Clinton crony because of his position on a State Department advisory board, according to court documents filed on Tuesday.
According to the court filing, Steele told a court in the United Kingdom on Aug. 1 that he provided Strobe Talbott, the Clinton insider, with anti-Trump research because of his position on the Foreign Affairs Policy Board, an independent advisory board set up in 2011 by then-Sec. of State Hillary Clinton.
(…) The Steele document was revealed on Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by three Russian bankers who have sued Steele in the U.K. and U.S. over the dossier. A Sept. 14, 2016 memo in the dossier alleges links between the founders of the bank, Alfa Bank, and the Kremlin. They have sued Steele and Fusion GPS for defamation.
Steele disclosed the link to Talbott in response to a series of questions posed in the U.K. ligation.
(…) Talbott also has a familial link to another dossier that was handled by Steele and Winer. Talbott’s brother-in-law is Cody Shearer, a longtime Clinton fixer who conducted a private investigation of his own into Trump during the campaign.
Shearer’s dossier contains some allegations similar to Steele’s report, including that Russians had blackmail material on Trump. Shearer passed his report to Winer through Sidney Blumenthal, another longtime Clinton insider. Winer then shared the Shearer memos with Steele, who provided them to the FBI.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 12/11/2018)
Below is a list of the first 12 of the Dossier reports that have become available to the public.
1) Report 80, dated June 20, 2016
2) Report 86, dated July 26, 2015 (twenty-fifteen)
3) Report 94, dated July 19, 2016
4) Report 95, undated, but apparently written in late July 2016
5) Report 97, dated July 30, 2016
6) Report 100, dated August 5, 2016
7) Report 101, dated August 10, 2016
8) Report 102, dated August 10, 2016
9) Report 105, dated August 22, 2016
10) Report 111, dated September 14, 2016
11) Report 112, dated September 14, 2016
12) Report 113, dated September 14, 2016
According to the Horowitz report, the first time when FBI Headquarters received any of those Dossier reports was on September 19, 2016. That delivery comprised just six Dossier reports — 80, 94, 95, 100, 101, and 102 (Horowitz page 100). On that date, therefore, the series included a particular four-report gap — Reports 96, 97, 98 and 99. On some later, unknown date, Report 97 too was delivered to FBI Headquarters.
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In this blog, I have speculated that all these 12 reports (except Reports 80 and 86) were delivered unofficially to the FBI Counterintelligence Chief promptly after their publication dates. For example, Report 94 was delivered to that Chief within a few days of its publication date — July 19 — but its delivery was not recorded according to FBI procedures. Report 94 was delivered officially — recorded according to FBI procedures — on September 19. On that official delivery date, however, the Counterintelligence Chief already had possessed the report unofficially since mid-July.
The reason for the abnormal delivery of Dossier reports was to enable the FBI to deny its knowledge of some of the reports.
For example, Steele finished writing Report 94 (and assigned that number to the report) on July 19. Within a few days, that report was delivered to the Counterintelligence Chief, but that delivery was not recorded according to FBI procedures.
By a different delivery method, Report 94 was delivered on July 28 to the Chief Division Counsel FBI New York Field Office (NYFO) — not to FBI Headquarters. This delivery to the NYFO was recorded according to FBI procedures. On July 28, therefore, the FBI could no longer deny that the FBI — in particular, the FBI NYFO — had received Report 94, but it still could deny that FBI Headquarters had received it. (When the NYFO received any Dossier reports, the NYFO simply hid them in a safe until further instructions were received from from FBI Headquarters.)
Later, in mid-September, someone decided that the current situation allowed Report 94 to be delivered officially to FBI Headquarters. This belated delivery was recorded in accordance with FBI procedures on September 19. From this latter date forward, FBI headquarters would have to acknowledge that it had been informed about Report 94.
======
The delivery of Report 97 was different. Like Report 94, it was delivered to the Counter-intelligence Chief promptly and unofficially. However, Report 97 was not delivered to the NYFO. Therefore, the FBI created no record at all that Report 97 had been delivered to any FBI office at all. Officially, Report 97 was delivered to the FBI the first time on September 19. Until that latter date, the FBI avoided creating any record indicating any FBI knowledge of the existence of Report 97.
I speculated in a previous blog article that the FBI might be more embarrassed by Report 97 (than, for example, by Report 94), because Report 97 indicated that Christopher Steele was obtaining information from sources with inside knowledge about Trump’s election-campaign staff. In particular, Report 97 claimed to be based partially on reports from “a Russian émigré figure close to the Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign team”. That phrase — which eventually might cause the public to suspect that the FBI was collecting information from inside Trump’s campaign staff — might have caused the decision in July 2016 to not send Report 97 to the NYFO.
By mid-September, however, the situation had changed. Now the FBI Headquarters was trying to overcome objections to its application for a FISA warrant in order to collect information about Trump’s supporters. Therefore, FBI Headquarters now had to receive officially some Dossier reports. In particular, Reports 97 now seemed to FBI Headquarters to be more useful than problematical. After all, the Russian émigré reported the following (emphasis added):
Speaking in confidence to a trusted associate in late July 2016, a Russian émigré figure close to the Republican US presidential candidate Donald TRUMP’s campaign team commented on the fallout from publicity surrounding the Democratic National Committee (DNC) e-mail hacking scandal. The émigré said there was a high level of anxiety within the TRUMP team as a result of various accusations levelled [sic] against them and indications from the Kremlin that President PUTIN and others in the leadership thought things had gone too far now and risked spiralling [sic]out of control.
Continuing on this theme, the émigré associate of TRUMP opined that the Kremlin wanted the situation to calm but for ‘plausible deniability’ to be maintained concerning its (extensive) pro-TRUMP and anti-CLINTON operations. S/he therefore judged that it was unlikely these would be ratcheted up, at least for the time being.
However, in terms of established operational liaison between the TRUMP team and the Kremlin, the émigré confirmed that an intelligence exchange had been running between them for at least 8 years. Within this context PUTIN’s priority requirement had been for intelligence on the activities, business and otherwise, in the US of leading Russian oligarchs and their families. TRUMP and his associates duly had obtained and supplied the Kremlin with this information.
Finally, the émigré said s/he understood the Kremlin had more intelligence on CLINTON and her campaign but he did not know the details or when or if it would be released. As far as ‘kompromat’ (compromising information) on TRUMP were concerned, although there was plenty of this, he understood the Kremlin had given its word that it would not be deployed against the Republican presidential candidate given how helpful and co-operative his team had been over several years, and particularly of late.
In mid-September, FBI Headquarters foresaw a need to use this information in order to obtain a FISA warrant. Therefore, FBI Headquarters belatedly arranged for Report 97 to be received in accordance with FBI procedures. Keep in mind, though, that the Counterintelligence Chief actually had received Report 97 already in July.” (Read more: Mike Sylvester, 10/10/2021)(Archive)(Copy of dossier saved to this website)
A new John Solomon article today, based on an interview with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, is essentially confirming a May 2018article where it was presumed that Oleg had hired Christopher Steele at the same time Steele was working with Nellie Ohr and Fusion GPS to write the Trump dossier. Here’s the interview:
The report on the FBI contacting Oleg Deripaska in September 2016 for help to structure a narrative of Russian involvement in the Trump Campaign via Paul Manafort has some ramifications.
♦In 2009 the FBI, then headed by Robert Mueller, requested the assistance of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska in an operation to retrieve former FBI officer and CIA resource Robert Levinson who was captured in Iran two years earlier. The agent assigned to engage Deripaska was Andrew McCabe; the primary FBI need was financing and operational support. Deripaska spent around $25 million and would have succeeded except the U.S. State Department, then headed by Hillary Clinton, backed out.
♦In September of 2016 Andrew McCabe is now Deputy Director of the FBI, when two FBI agents approached Deripaska in New York – again asking for his help. This time the FBI request was for Deripaska to outline Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort as a tool of the Kremlin. Deripaska once hired Manafort as a political adviser and invested money with him in a business venture that went bad. Deripaska sued Manafort, alleging he stole money. However, according to the 2018article, despite Deripaska’s disposition toward Manafort he viewed the request as absurd. He laughed the FBI away, telling them: “You are trying to create something out of nothing.”
Was the DOJ/FBI trying to use Deripaska to frame candidate Donald Trump? Was this part of their 2016 insurance policy?
John Solomon reports that Deripaska wanted to testify to congress in 2017, without any immunity request, but was rebuked. Who blocked his testimony?
(…) Did Robert Mueller omit any mention of Oleg Deripaska from his 2017 Manafort indictment purposefully? Was Deripaska’s denial of any information about Manafort actually Brady material that Mueller and Weissmann intentionally kept from Manafort’s defense team? And/or was Robert Mueller hoping to hide his prior professional work relationship with Deripaska?” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 7/02/2019)
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (Credit: public domain)
While Clinton was secretary of state, she exchanged 18 emails with President Obama from her private email account. All information about these emails has remained classified. But some details are finally released due to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by Vice News.
All of the emails were exchanged between May 18, 2012 and January 31, 2013. Obama sent eight emails to Clinton, and the other ten were from Clinton to Obama. None of the emails appear to contain highly sensitive or classified information, but instead are thank you notes, holiday greetings, and the like.
All of the emails were withheld under presidential privilege and privacy act and deliberative process exemptions to the FOIA. The new details are formally submitted in what is called a Vaughn Index, a document prepared for FOIA lawsuits in which government departments justify the withholding of information. (Vice News, 09/15/16) (Vicc News, 09/15/16)
In February 2016, it was reported there were 19 emails between Clinton and Obama, not 18. It is unclear if the Vaughn Index is missing one or if the report of 19 emails was off by one.
A Wall Street Journal editorial entitled “The FBI’s Blind Clinton Trust” elicits a September 15, 2016 letter to the editor response from Richard W. Beckler, former Chief of the Criminal Fraud Section of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Richard Beckler (Credit: Bracewell Law)
Beckler writes, “Decisions to prosecute are made by the Justice Department. It is absolutely not the job of the FBI to make prosecutorial decisions. FBI Director James Comey didn’t bother to attend Hillary Clinton’s interview, though he was acting as the ostensible decision maker in the case. One would think he would want to test the witness’s credibility in person. This was clearly no ordinary case and demanded his close attention.”
Furthermore, despite what Comey says, “the FBI doesn’t need to get a referral from Congress to investigate [Clinton’s] false statements to Congress.” He claims, “the FBI’s 302 reports (handwritten notes by FBI agents during investigations) recorded by the FBI should have been turned over to Congress immediately and in their entirety.”
Beckler continues, “Contrary to the [Justice Department]’s normal policy of announcing names of the prosecution team, Mr. Comey hasn’t told anyone who the ‘career’ [Justice Department] attorneys were who supervised the FBI investigation. They have never been named.”
He concludes, “After this long drawn-out FBI inquiry, why did Mr. Comey rush to make his determination and recommendation barely three days after the actual interview took place?” (Wall Street Journal, 09/15/16)
On September 16, 2016, Twitter user Katica@GOPpollanalyst sends a message to Jeffrey Marty via his Twitter page which is a parody account for a fictitious congressional member named Rep. Steven Smith@RepStevenSmith. Katica had recently discovered posts to the Internet forum Reddit by someone using the name “stonetear,” and had deduced through various clues that this person actually is Paul Combetta, the Platte River Networks (PRN) employee who has managed Clinton’s private server since June 2013.
Katica then sends Marty a copy of stonetear’s Reddit post that was written on July 24, 2014, and includes a request for advice about “stripping out” the email address of a “VERY VIP” email account.
A photo of stonetear’s request for help on July 24, 2016, found by Katica and later archived by Redditors. (Credit: Katica / Twitter)
Marty replies, “NO WAY!!!!! That’s HUGE.”
Jeffrey Marty (Credit: Daily Caller)
Marty will later explain in a news article, “After a lot of discussion about the potential fallout of this decision, Katica and I decided the ‘stonetear’ information had to be released. Late Sunday night [September 18, 2016], we tweeted the (then-live) short link to the Reddit ‘VERY VIP’ post and four screenshots to Katica’s 2,000 followers, followed by an immediate re-tweet of her post to my 16,000 followers.”
Many interested people then begin finding and archiving all of Combetta’s Reddit posts, as well as other traces he’d left on the Internet using the “stonetear” alias. In the process, more evidence is found that “stonetear” and Paul Combetta are one and the same.
Within hours after the story breaking in various media outlets, including US News and World Report, “stonetear” is caught deleting all of his Reddit posts. The deletions are captured on video as they happen and are posted to YouTube. By September 20, 2016, a Congressional committee demands Combetta submit to recorded interviews by September 23, 2016 to explain these Reddit posts, as well as the deletions, or he will face another subpoena. (Daily Caller, 09/22/16)
Victoria Nuland and Jonathan Winer (Credit: public domain)
“Judicial Watch and The Daily Caller News Foundation today released 84 pages of documents, including a September 2016 email exchange between then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer, a close associate of dossier author Christopher Steele, discussing a “face-to-face” meeting on a “Russian matter.”
(In June 2016 Nuland permitted a meeting between Steele and the FBI’s legal attaché in Rome. Nuland told CBS News that the State Department knew about the Steele dossier by July 2016.)
According to an op-ed Winer wrote for The Washington Post in 2018, also in September 2016, “Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the “dossier… I prepared a two-page summary and shared it with Nuland, who indicated that, like me, she felt that the secretary of state needed to be made aware of this material.”
A September 17, 2016, email exchange between Nuland and Winer – that was classified in the interest of national defense or foreign policy – discusses the political situation in Libya, but also brings up a “Russian matter:”
From: Nuland, Victoria J Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2016 1:31 PM To: Winer, Jonathan Subject: Re. Libya Update
In ny face to face?
From: Winer, Jonathan Sent: September 17, 2016 at 1:56:05 PM EDT To: Nuland, Victoria J Subject: Re: Libya Update
Yes that was [sic] be good.
From: Nuland, Victoria J Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2016 1:58 PM To: Winer, Jonathan Subject: Re. Libya Update
Good. I’ll reach out when im there Sunday. [Redacted]
Other emails show senior State Department personnel using unsecure BlackBerrys to transmit classified information even after the Clinton email scandal became public.” (Read more: Judicial Watch 7/18/2019)
Michael Sussmann (l) and James Baker (Credit: Perkins Coie/public domain)
“On September 19, 2016, DNC/Clinton Campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann met with FBI General Counsel James Baker, where Baker was provided with data and “white paper” purporting to show covert communications (since proven to be bogus) between Russian Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.
Special Counsel John Durham has just provided evidence that the night before – on September 18, 2016 – Sussmann sent Baker this text:
As it turns out, Sussmann was billing the Clinton Campaign for his work on the Alfa Bank hoax. This text from Sussmann to Baker is damning for Sussmann’s case, proving Sussmann’s efforts at deceiving a top official at the FBI about his clients, and demonstrating how Sussmann tried to convince Baker he was there to supposedly do the right thing. (Read more: Techno Fog/Substack, 4/05/2022) (Archive)
A photo captured of Combetta deleting his posts on Reddit, as it was happening. (Credit: updatedblubber)
YouTube member “updatedblubber” posts a video claiming it is a live recording of Platte River Networks (PRN) employee Paul Combetta deleting ‘stonetear’s posts on Reddit. The deletion occurs in the morning of September 19, 2016, within hours after news that the Reddit posts of “stonetear” really belong to Combetta break into the mainstream.
Later on the same day, Representative Lamar Smith (R), chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, writes a letter to PRN attorney Ken Eichner, expressing his concern about the deletion of the Reddit posts. Smith adds, “Given these concerns, the committee requests that you provide dates for the prioritized interview requests, as well as dates for the remaining Platte River Networks employees, by noon on Friday, September 23, 2016. If you fail to provide dates certain for each of the transcribed interviews, the committee will consider issuing subpoenas for depositions.” (YouTube, 09/19/16) (Representative Lamar Smith, 09/19/16)
In the hours following the discovery of the “stonetear” Reddit account, internet sleuths discover the following reasons “stonetear” is an online alias for PRN employee Paul Combetta:
1. On July 24, 2014 ‘stonetear’ posted a request for help on Reddit, asking for help stripping the email address from a VIP’s (VERY VIP) client’s archived emails. The day before, Clinton’s lawyers sent some of Clinton’s emails so they could begin sorting them.
2. On December 10, 2014, ‘stonetear’ asked for advice from Reddit users on how to implement a 60-day email “purge” policy. It is also reportedly near the same time that Clinton told her lawyer Cheryl Mills she didn’t need her “personal” emails, resulting in Mills telling those managing Clinton’s server to delete them.
Another sample captured of Combetta as ‘stonetear’ asking Reddit users for help. (Credit: Reddit)
3. The inactive website combetta.com is registered to the email address stonetear@gmail.com in a search of domain registration information using the service whois.com.
4. This Facebook photo is captioned by a friend of Combetta and refers to him as “Stone Tear.”
Paul Combetta is referred to as “Stonetear” by a friend in this FB photo. (Credit: Facebook)
5. An account for a person named Paul Combetta on the web bazaar Etsy also has the username ‘stonetear.’
6. Platte River Networks (PRN) has stated Combetta is their only employee who lives in Rhode Island. ‘Stonetear’ claims to live in Rhode Island in his posts on Reddit.
7. A website publicizing a help file for the video game Betrayal at Krondor thanks Combetta and shows his email address is stonetear@gmail.com
A photo capture from the website Krondor, thanking Combetta for his help with an internet game and includes stonetear@gmail.com as his email address. (Credit: public domain)
8. Moreover, Stonetear@gmail.com has a Google Account profile picture that looks like Combetta.
A captured shot of Combetta’s ‘stonetear’ Gmail account with photo included. (Credit: public domain)
FBI Director James Comey will later confirm that Paul Combetta is “stonetear” in his testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on September 28, 2016. (CSpan 01:27:39, 09/28/2016)
US District Court Judge Richard Leon criticizes the State Department over what he calls “foot-dragging” regarding Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests relating to Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
US DC District Court Judge Richard Leon (Credit: public domain)
Leon warns Justice Department lawyers, “You have a client that, to say the least, is not impressing the judges on this court, myself included. … It is in your client’s interest to start being more obviously cooperative. The State Department is at risk of being perceived as obstreperous. [They] need to get with the program.”
The hearing is due to a FOIA lawsuit trying to force the release of documents on whether Clinton and her aides were trained to handle classified information. The State Department propose a deadline of October 17, 2016 to produce about 450 unclassified documents relating to the issue sought by the Daily Caller.
However, Leon orders the department to process and release of the records by October 10, 2016. (Politico, 09/19/16)
Representative Mark Meadows (Credit: public domain)
Representative Mark Meadows (R) of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is reviewing a Reddit post that suggests an IT (Internet technology) specialist who worked on Hillary Clinton’s private server asked for advice on how to alter the contents of “VERY VIP” emails. Meadows is the chairman of the panel’s Government Operations subcommittee.
Reddit users uncovered a two-year-old post from an account they believe belongs to Paul Combetta, a Platte River Networks employee who helped manage Clinton’s private server. Meadows says, “the Reddit post issue and its connection to Paul Combetta is currently being reviewed by [my] staff and evaluations are being made as to the authenticity of the post. If it is determined that the request to change email addresses was made by someone so closely aligned with the Secretary’s IT operation as Mr. Combetta, then it will certainly prompt additional inquiry.”
Representative Jason Chaffetz (R), chair of the same House committee, has issued a criminal referral to the US attorney for the District of Columbia. The referral asks that the Justice Department investigate whether Clinton or her aides were involved in the decision to delete the emails while they were under subpoena and a request for preservation of records. (The Hill, 09/19/16)
“Former FBI General Counsel James Baker met with the Democratic party’s top lawyer, Michael Sussmann, to discuss the ongoing investigation by the bureau into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties with Russia. This meeting happened prior to the FBI’s initial warrant to spy on short-term campaign volunteer Carter Page, sources close to the investigation have told SaraACarter.com. Moreover, information provided by Baker, who gave extensive testimony Wednesday to lawmakers behind closed doors, coincides with the House Intelligence Committee’s final Russia report that suggests Sussmann was also leaking unverified information on the Trump campaign to journalists around the same time he met with Baker, according to the report and sources close the investigation.
These sources say this new information from Baker exposes the bureau’s failure to inform the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that the evidence used to spy on Page was partisan and unverified. It further reveals the extensive role and close connection Sussmann, a cybersecurity and national security lawyer with Perkins Coie, had with the now-embattled research firm, Fusion GPS. The Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton Campaign retained Fusion GPS through Perkins Coie during the 2016 election to investigate alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Fusion GPS then hired former British spy, Christopher Steele, who compiled the unverified dossier during the summer and fall of 2016. In 2017, this reporter first published that Baker was purportedly under a Department of Justice criminal investigation for allegedly leaking classified national security information to the media. At the time, the bureau would not comment on Baker and would not confirm or deny any investigation. Baker, who resigned from the bureau in May, was the FBI’s top counsel and a close advisor to former Director James Comey.
James Baker (Credit: CSpan2)
In 2016, the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid $9.1 million to the law firm, according to reports. Sussmann, however, is also connected to CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is the private cybersecurity that was retained by Perkins Coie for the DNC to investigate the breach of its server after it was discovered that it had been hacked in April 2016. Although the FBI has conducted its own investigation into the breach of the server the Democratic National Committee never gave the FBI permission to access the server itself.
“These parallels between the law firm and CrowdStrike also need to be investigated,” said a former FBI official familiar with the security firm. “All of these connections aren’t coincidences and it smells to high heaven.”
According to lawmakers, he explained in detail how the Russia probe was handled by bureau officials in an “abnormal way” and detailed his meeting with Sussmann. Fox Newsfirst reported Baker’s testimony quoting Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) who said, “some of the things that were shared were explosive in nature.” Meadows, who attended the deposition of Baker, told SaraACarter.com he would not elaborate on the specifics of the interview, but said, “Mr. Baker’s testimony provided a number of new facts that needed further exploration.” Meadows expects more information in the future and follow-up interviews.
Baker was forthcoming about what he knew and what took place during the investigation, multiple sources said. The information regarding the meeting between Baker and Sussmann would indicate that the FBI was more than likely aware that the law firm was hired by the DNC to investigate alleged connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, but withheld that information from the secret FISC when it sought the warrant to spy on short-term campaign volunteer Page in October.” (Read more: Sara Carter, 10/03/2018)
Jeff Carlson of themarketswork.com pinpoints the possible date of Sussman and Baker’s meeting in the footnotes of a House Intelligence Committee report, to September 2016.
“In the House Intelligence Committee’s final Report on Russian Active Measures, mention is made of a meeting between James Baker and an unknown party in footnote 43, on page 57. This is a particularly heavily redacted portion but the following details are available:
“In September 2016 [redacted] shared similar information in a one-on-one meeting with FBI General Counsel James Baker. HPSCI, Executive Session of [redacted], Dec. 18, 2017. Around the same time as his meeting with FBI, [redacted] shared the information with journalists, [redacted] of Slate, who published an article at the end of October. HPSCI, Executive Session of [redacted] Dec. 18, 2017; [redacted] “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?,” Slate, Oct. 31, 2016. Candidate Clinton promoted the [redacted] article to her social media followers the same day it was published.” (Intelligence.house (pdf)
“On Sept. 19, FBI General Counsel James Baker met with Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann, who had sought out the meeting. Baker told Congressional lawmakers in an Oct. 3, 2018, testimony—a transcript of which was reviewed for this article—that Sussmann presented him with “a stack of material I don’t know maybe a quarter inch half inch thick something like that clipped together, and then I believe there was some type of electronic media, as well, a disk or something.”
The information that Sussmann gave to Baker was related to what Baker described as “a surreptitious channel of communications” between the Trump Organization and “a Russian organization associated with the Russian Government.”
Baker was describing alleged communications between Alfa Bank and a server in the Trump Tower. These allegations, which were investigated by the FBI and proven to be false, were widely covered in the media.
Baker’s testimony also shows that Sussmann was speaking with the media at the same time he had approached Baker, who noted that Sussmann had also provided the info to the media and had told him that “the New York Times was aware of this.”
Baker testified that the FBI approached The New York Times and convinced them to hold off on their reporting while the FBI investigated Sussmann’s information.” (Read more: Epoch Times, 1/24/2019)
“One of the co-founders of the opposition research firm that commissioned the Steele dossier was in contact with a State Department official in the days before a news article was published laying out allegations contained in the salacious anti-Trump report.
Emails obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation show that Glenn Simpson, an executive at Fusion GPS, contacted Jonathan Winer, who then served as State’s special envoy for Libya, on Sept. 19 and Sept. 22, 2016. That was days ahead of the publication of a Yahoo! Newsarticle that was the first story to cite information gathered by Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the dossier.
Winer, a longtime aide to former Secretary of State John Kerry, was a source for that article, which laid out Steele’s allegations about Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser who would become the target of FBI surveillance.
The emails, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed on TheDCNF’s behalf by Judicial Watch, show for the first time that Simpson had direct contact with a State Department official.
The emails do not mention the dossier or Steele, but they do show that Simpson was desperate to speak with Winer, a Democratic attorney who also served in the State Department during the Clinton administration.
Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, sent an email on Sept. 19, 2016 asking Winer if he was in town.
Former assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland speaks during a news conference in Kiev, Ukraine, April 27, 2016. (Credit: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)
(…) Congressional investigators have looked into Winer and the State Department’s role in handling the Steele information and other intelligence used in the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign. Republicans have long been puzzled over information that flowed through Foggy Bottom prior to making its way to FBI investigators.
Victoria Nuland, who served as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, approved a July 5, 2016, meeting between FBI Agent Michael Gaeta and Steele in Rome. Fusion GPS had hired Steele just weeks earlier to investigate President Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia. The ex-MI6 officer wrote his first of 17 dossier memos on June 20, 2016. That document alleged that the Kremlin had blackmail material on Trump. (Read more: The Daily Caller, 3/04/2019)
Representative Lamar Smith (R), chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, issues a subpoena to FBI Director James Comey for documents and information related to the security of former Clinton’s private email account and server. The committee requested these documents in a September 9, 2016 letter. Comey has yet to turn over any of the requested documents. The subpoena orders him to provide the documents by September 26, 2016.
Smith’s committee has jurisdiction to evaluate the “way in which Executive Branch departments and agencies and private entities can improve their cybersecurity.” (US Congress, 9/20/2016)
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee holds a classified hearing with Peter Kadzik, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, to discuss document requests. Although the hearing is held behind closed doors, Politico will report on what takes place several days later.
Peter Kadzik (Credit: Molly Riley / The Associated Press)
Republicans believe the hearing is necessary because their request for a completely unredacted copy of the FBI’s Clinton investigation report has gone unanswered. They also have questions about the immunity deals the department handed out during the Clinton email investigation, and want to know who else besides Bryan Pagliano and Paul Combetta (both managers of Clinton’s private servers) received legal protection, who agreed to the immunity deals, and whether the deals require recipients to cooperate with other investigative bodies.
Politico writes, “Kadzik wouldn’t say. A Democratic source said he could not answer the questions because Republicans had only asked for the information a few hours earlier in a letter to the Justice Department, and the answers weren’t fully researched.”
Kadzik’s refusal to answer their questions doesn’t go over well with Republicans, and according to one Republican source, “the meeting deteriorate[s] from there.” Another Republican threatens a public hearing where Kadzik would have to testify if he fails to provide the information requested, and in effect dares him to say that “Congress [isn’t] entitled to it.”
The Justice Department will deliver the unredacted copies of the immunity agreements for Pagliano and Combetta on September 22, 2016, and the immunity agreements for former State Department officials Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson, and John Bentel will be provided the following day. (Politico, 09/23/2016)
Imran Awan (Credit: Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post)
“The Department of Justice found “no evidence” that former Democratic IT aide Imran Awan violated cybersecurity laws, prosecutors said Thursday, but the House of Representatives’ internal watchdog reported that the Pakistani native made “unauthorized access” to congressional servers.
Prosecutors said police interviewed approximately 40 witnesses, reviewed relevant communications and examined a number of related devices, but couldn’t find anything they could charge Imran with regarding cybersecurity. Details of the investigation were included in a plea deal with Imran surrounding unrelated bank fraud.
But a pair of presentations by House Inspector General Theresa Grafenstine detail a number of rules Imran and his family allegedly broke surrounding cybersecurity rules. The watchdog is a past chair of ISACA, an international IT association.
Grafenstine found that Imran made “unauthorized access” to congressional servers in a way that suggested he was trying to “conceal” his activity and that his unusual activity suggested a server could be used for “nefarious purposes.”
A source allowed The Daily Caller News Foundation to review and transcribe the IG’s PowerPoint presentation, but was not given a copy for fear that metadata could reveal the source’s identity.
Bryan Pagliano, who managed Clinton’s server when she was secretary of state, recently was served a subpoena to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. But instead of pleading the Fifth, as two others did, he failed to appear altogether. The committee holds another hearing on this day, and he fails to appear again. As a result, the committee immediately votes on party lines, 19 to 15, to recommend that the House of Representatives hold him in contempt of Congress.
Representative Jason Chaffetz (R), chair of the committee, says, “Subpoenas are not optional. Mr. Pagliano is a crucial fact witness in this committee’s investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server to conduct government business.”
After a required two day wait time, the resolution can be voted on by the entire House to be adopted.
Democrats on the committee argue repeatedly that the move is a politically motivated abuse of power meant to influence the November 2016 presidential election.
A letter by Pagliano’s lawyer Mark McDougall to the committee similarly claims that efforts to force Pagliano to testify show a “naked political agenda” with “no valid legislative aim.” McDougall says Pagliano is ready to appear behind closed doors, but will not appear in public. (The Hill, 9/22/2016) (Politico, 9/22/2016)
Researcher, @MonsieursGhost, raises some very interesting points about when Peter Strzok and Lisa Page could clearly see Alfa Bank, Carter Page, and the dossier unfold into a Steele “influence” operation that was coordinating with the Clinton campaign.
Something has always bothered me about FBI’s treatment of Alfa-Fraud. Here is a short thread (developing) on irregularities and weirdness:
1) Horowitz reports FBI receives Alfa-related memo 112 on 11/6. Where does he get this date? FBI internal memo says it received 10/26… pic.twitter.com/0JJyBDEVKG
On same day Strzok learns Sussman AlfaBank info is
dodgy, @Isikoff story about @carterwpage breaks.
Small Team *knows* source is Steele, causing @petestrzok to admit that Dossier is an “influence” operation (!!) …”as well as” something that might have information value .😬 pic.twitter.com/QTftOJLAwV
“The FBI, Justice Department and a federal surveillance court were all apparently unaware that the Sept. 23, 2016article, written by Michael Isikoff, was based on the infamous and unverified Steele dossier. Numerous reporters, pundits and even a former CIA Moscow station chief have also been fooled into thinking that Isikoff’s article corroborated parts of the dossier.
The confusion is due in part to Isikoff’s report, which was published at Yahoo! News.
A veteran reporter who has worked inside the Beltway for decades, Isikoff used vague sourcing in his Carter Page article. He also failed to disclose that his information was the fruit of an anti-Trump opposition research campaign funded by Democrats.
He also did not acknowledge that his source — former British spy Christopher Steele — had already given the FBI the information he used in the article.”
(…) “Isikoff met Steele in September 2016 at a Washington, D.C. hotel. The pair were introduced by Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS and an “old friend” of Isikoff. The opposition research firm had been hired by the Clinton campaign and DNC to investigate Donald Trump. Fusion hired Steele to look into Trump’s ties to Russia.”
(…) “He did not disclose that Steele, his source, had provided information about Page to the FBI, sparking the very same investigation that Isikoff would confirm in his reporting. Steele began sharing information with the Bureau in July 2016. He provided updates on his findings through the summer and into Fall 2016.
And instead of referring to Steele as a private investigator, which he was, Isikoff described Steele as the more official sounding “well-placed Western intelligence source.”
Isikoff also withheld Steele and Simpson’s political affiliations even though he acknowledged on Friday that he was aware that the pair were working for Democrats. Isikoff did say that he was unaware that Simpson was working for the Clinton campaign and DNC.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 2/05/2018)
Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall sends a letter to House Science, Space and Technology Committee chair Representative Lamar Smith (R), complaining about a recent Congressional subpoena to the computer company SECNAP, Inc., which assisted with the security of Clinton’s private server from 2013 onwards.
David Kendall (Credit: Williams & Connolly)
Kendall writes, “The subpoena … is overbroad. We have no objection to the production of documents related to the SECNAP security device used in connection with the server that … hosted Secretary Clinton’s emails from her tenure as secretary …. We do object, however, to the production of SECNAP documents and security information regarding security equipment that was used by CESC [Clinton Executive Security Corp.] after the prior server was provided to the FBI, and thus, never hosted Secretary Clinton’s work-related emails.”
Kendall continues, “Documents regarding this equipment are likely to contain sensitive information related to security of the current network and/or server. Because these documents are unrelated to the Committee’s investigation and contain sensitive security information, I respectfully object to the portion of the subpoena seeking their production.”
Because SECNAP was hired by CESC, a Clinton family company, they want approval from Clinton’s lawyers regarding cooperation with government authorities. (Politico, 09/23/16)
“U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials — including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president, according to multiple sources who have been briefed on the issue.
The activities of Trump adviser Carter Page, who has extensive business interests in Russia, have been discussed with senior members of Congress during recent briefings about suspected efforts by Moscow to influence the presidential election, the sources said. After one of those briefings, Senate minority leader Harry Reid wrote FBI Director James Comey, citing reports of meetings between a Trump adviser (a reference to Page) and “high ranking sanctioned individuals” in Moscow over the summer as evidence of “significant and disturbing ties” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin that needed to be investigated by the bureau.
Some of those briefed were “taken aback” when they learned about Page’s contacts in Moscow, viewing them as a possible back channel to the Russians that could undercut U.S. foreign policy, said a congressional source familiar with the briefings but who asked for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. The source added that U.S. officials in the briefings indicated that intelligence reports about the adviser’s talks with senior Russian officials close to President Vladimir Putin were being “actively monitored and investigated.”
A senior U.S. law enforcement official did not dispute that characterization when asked for comment by Yahoo News. “It’s on our radar screen,” said the official about Page’s contacts with Russian officials. “It’s being looked at.” (Read more: Yahoo News, 9/23/2016)
US District Judge James Boasberg (Credit: public domain)
US District Judge James Boasberg orders the State Department to finish publicly releasing about 1,000 pages of Clinton’s emails recovered by the FBI by November 4, 2016, just four days before the US presidential election. When Clinton turned over 55,000 pages of emails in December 2014, that totaled 30,000 emails, so if the same ratio holds, that would mean between 500 and 600 emails. Due to an on-going Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by Judicial Watch, the State Department will release 350 pages of emails by October 7, 350 pages by October 21, and another 350 by November 4. After that, it will produce 500 pages a month.
In late July 2016, the FBI gave the State Department 15,000 emails that had been recovered by the FBI out of Clinton’s 31,000 deleted. For the first time, it is revealed that about 9,400 of these have been deemed purely personal by the department, which means they will not ever be publicly released. That means there are about 5,600 work-related emails to be reviewed and released. But roughly half of those may be largely duplicates of emails that have already been released. For instance, Clinton was often send emails to aides she wanted printed out for later reading, and would merely comment “Please print,” or she would forward an email to an aide without comment.
It is estimated only about 10 percent of the Clinton work-related emails recovered by the FBI will be made public before the election. Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, complains, “The public deserves to know what is in those emails, well before November 8, and the State Department should not continue dragging its feet on producing them.” (The New York Times, 9/23/2016)
Representative Jason Chaffetz (R), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, claims the Justice Department was “handing out immunity deals like candy” in the Clinton email investigation. Chaffetz claims the Justice Department “exempted key physical evidence from any potential criminal case against the aides.”
According to Chaffetz, three former Clinton aides – Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson, and John Bentel – were granted immunity deals in exchange for their cooperation. Mills was Clinton’s chief of staff and then has been one of her lawyers Samuelson was a State Department aide and then also has been a Clinton lawyer. Bentel was director of the department’s Office of Information Resources Management (IRM).
The Justice Department provided copies of the immunity agreements to the House Oversight Committee this week, under seal. The information was then leaked to the Associated Press.
Mills “gave federal investigators access to her laptop on the condition that what they found couldn’t be used against her.” It is believed the same happened to Samuelson. Bentel apparently refused to be interviewed by the FBI until he got an immunity deal.
This brings the total number of people who were granted immunity as part of the FBI’s investigation to at least five. It has previously been reported that Bryan Pagliano and Paul Combetta were given immunity for their cooperation with the FBI. (The Associated Press, 09/23/16)
“Less than a week after Stefan Halper was outed as the FBI informant who infiltrated the Trump campaign, public records reveal that the 73-year-old Oxford University professor and former U.S. government official was paid handsomely by the Obama administration starting in 2012 for various research projects.
A longtime CIA and FBI asset who once reportedly ran a spy-operation on the Jimmy Carter administration, Halper was enlisted by the FBI to spy on several Trump campaign aides during the 2016 U.S. election. Meanwhile, a search of public records reveals that between 2012 and 2018, Halper received a total of $1,058,161 from the Department of Defense.
Halper’s contracts were funded through four annual awards paid directly out of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA). Established as the DoD’s “internal think tank” in 1973 by Richard Nixon (whose administration Halper worked for), the ONA was run by foreign policy strategist Andrew Marshall from its inception until his 2015 retirement at the age of 93, after which he was succeeded by current director James H. Baker.
Halper’s most recent award was noted recently by Trump supporter Jacob Wohl, which piqued the interest of internet researchers who continued the analysis.
According to the Website USASPENDING.gov, the payments to Halper are for “RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES (2012),” “RESEARCH AND STUDIES – THE YEAR 2030, (2014)”, “RUSSIA-CHINA RELATIONSHIP STUDY. (2015),” and “INDIA AND CHINA ECON STUDY (2016).”
The most recent award to Halper for $411,575 was made in two payments, and had a start date of September 26, 2016 – three days after a September 23Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff about Trump aide Carter Page, which used information fed to Isikoff by “pissgate” dossier creator Christopher Steele. The FBI would use the Yahoo! article along with the unverified “pissgate” dossier as supporting evidence in a FISA warrant application for Page.” (Read more: Zero Hedge, 5/21/2019)
“A Trump-supporting Pentagon analyst was stripped of his security clearance by Obama-appointed officials after he complained of questionable government contracts to Stefan Halper, the FBI informant who spied on the Trump presidential campaign.
Adam Lovinger, a 12-year strategist in the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, complained to his bosses about Halper contracts in the fall of 2016, his attorney, Sean M. Bigley, told The Washington Times.”
“Daniel Silverberg, then-House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer’s national security adviser, coordinated “work on Russia dossier materials provided by Christopher Steele” with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Envoy for Libya Jonathan Winer, according to newly released documents made public June 12 by Judicial Watch.
A series of emails between Sept. 26, 2016, and Dec. 10, 2016, demonstrate that Winer shared “Russia-related information” he obtained from Steele—whom he described as his “old O friend”—with Nuland, who then shared it with Silverberg.
Winer delayed a previously scheduled meeting with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) in order to share the information with Nuland, according to Judicial Watch.
Multiple references in the emails to additional telephone calls and other contacts with unnamed or redacted parties, as well as discussion of “a possible working group meeting,” suggest an active response by Silverberg to the Steele dossier information he was provided by Nuland and Winer.”
John Carlin (Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/The National Law Journal)
John Carlin was an Assistant Attorney General – and Head of the Department of Justice’s National Security Division (NSD).
On September 27, 2016, Carlin announced his resignation. He formally left the NSD on October 15, 2016. Carlin had been named Acting Assistant Attorney General in March 2013 and was confirmed in the spring of 2014.
Carlin had previously served as chief of staff to then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller.
Carlin was replaced with Mary McCord – who would later accompany Acting Attorney General Sally Yates to see White House Counsel Don McGahn regarding General Michael Flynn.
Carlin announced his resignation exactly one day after he filed the Government’s proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications. His signature can be found on page 31.
This filing would be subject to intense criticism from the FISA Court following disclosures made by NSA Director Rogers. Significant changes to the handling of raw FISA data would result.
Section 702 is part of the broader FISA Act and permits the government to target for surveillance foreign persons located outside the United States for the purpose of acquiring foreign intelligence information.
Instead of issuing individual court orders, Section 702 requires the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to provide the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) with annual certifications that specify categories of foreign intelligence information the government is authorized to acquire pursuant to Section 702.
The Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence must also certify that Intelligence Community elements will follow targeting procedures and minimization procedures that are approved by the FISC as part of the annual certification.
The National Security Division and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) are jointly required to routinely review all Intelligence Agency U.S. person queries of content to ensure the Section 702 queries satisfy the legal standard.
The NSD – with notice to the ODNI – is required to report any incidents of Agency noncompliance or misconduct to the FISA Court.
Again, John Carlin was Head of the NSD.
At the time Carlin’s sudden resignation went mostly unnoticed.
But there was more to the story.
Here is the official explanation as provided by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:
After submitting its 2016 Certifications in September 2016, the Department of Justice and ODNI learned, in October 2016, about additional information related to previously reported compliance incidents and reported that additional information to the FISC. The NSA also self-reported the information to oversight bodies, as required by law. These compliance incidents related to the NSA’s inadvertent use of U.S. person identifiers to query NSA’s “upstream” Internet collection acquired pursuant to Section 702.
On October 24, 2016, the government orally apprised the Court of significant non-compliance with the NSA’s minimization procedures involving queries of data acquired under Section 702 using U.S. person identifiers. The full scope of non-compliant querying practices had not been previously disclosed to the Court. Two days later, on the day the Court otherwise would have had to complete its review of the certifications and procedures, the government made a written submission regarding those compliance problems…and the Court held a hearing to address them.
A federal search warrant was obtained on September 26, 2016, for Weiner’s iPhone, iPad, and laptop computer. The FBI obtained these devices the same day. The search warrant authorized the government to search for evidence relating to the following crimes: transmitting obscene material to a minor, sexual exploitation of children, and activities related to child pornography.
On page 303 of this report, the case agent, being the only one that had the authority to release the laptop, stated his concerns over no one contacting him:
“The crickets I was hearing was really making me uncomfortable because something was going to come crashing down….And my understanding, which is uninformed because…I didn’t work the Hillary Clinton matter. My understanding at the time was I am telling you people I have private Hillary Clinton emails, number one, and BlackBerry messages, number two. I’m telling you that we have potentially 10 times the volume that Director Comey said we had on the record. Why isn’t anybody here? Like, if I’m the supervisor of any CI squad in Seattle and I hear about this, I’m getting on with headquarters and saying, hey, some agent working child porn here may have [Hillary Clinton] emails. Get your ass on the phone, call [the case agent], and get a copy of that drive, because that’s how you should be. And that nobody reached out to me within, like, that night, I still to this day, I don’t understand what the hell went wrong.”
Anthony Weiner was released from prison on February 17, 2019 and sent to a halfway house in Brooklyn, New York. Huma Abedin still works side-by-side with Hillary Clinton on her illegally-run ‘Onward Together’ 501(c)(4) political organization. Til this day, what is on that laptop, remains a mystery. (Read more: CoreysDigs, 4/11/2019)(Archive)
(Timeline editor’s note: We have also never seen any of Hillary or Huma’s Blackberry messages.)
The cyber division of the FBI. (Credit: public domain)
(…) “Only a few hours after the New York office of the FBI took possession of the Weinerlaptop, on September 26, 2016, the FBI computer expert discovered it contained more than 140,000 emails involving Hillary Clinton. They were from multiple domain names: State.gov, Clintonemail.com, ClintonFoundation.org, HillaryClinton.com and Blackberry devices. The agent had what he told the inspector general was an “oh shit moment” — recognizing that he had found evidence important to the most important investigation — and he immediately reported it up the chain.
According to the inspector general’s report of June 14, specifically Chapters IX-XI, the treasure “trove” of emails covered Mrs. Clinton’s entiretenure as Secretary of State.
(…) “Indeed, according to the inspector general, 39 high-ranking FBI agents knew of it, along with the New York office and people in the New York U.S. Attorney’s office. The New York FBI informed them all during a secure video-conference on September 28 — chaired by Andrew McCabe.
One agent said the announcement of finding hundreds of thousands of Clinton emails on Weiner’s laptop was “like dropping a bomb in the middle of the meeting.”
The New York agent Sweeney followed up with two calls to McCabe later that evening — after McCabe did not call him as promised.
So . . . what did McCabe, Comey and Strzok do? They sat on it until police officers in New York and FBI agents in New York threatened to expose them. (Read more: The Daily Caller, 6/20/2018)
The DOJ’s NSD maintains oversight of the intelligence agencies’ use of Section 702 authority. The NSD and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) jointly conduct reviews of the intelligence agencies’ Section 702 activities every 60 days. The NSD—with notice to the ODNI—is required to report any incidents of agency noncompliance or misconduct to the FISA court.
Instead of issuing individual court orders, Section 702 requires the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to provide the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) with annual certifications that specify categories of foreign intelligence information the government is authorized to acquire, pursuant to Section 702.
John Carlin (Credit: PBS)
The Attorney General and the DNI must also certify that Intelligence Community agencies will follow targeting procedures and minimization procedures that are approved by the FISC as part of the certification.
On Sept. 26, 2016, NSD head John Carlin filed the government’s proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications. Carlin knew the general status of Rogers’s compliance review. The NSD was part of the review.
In his filing, Carlin failed to disclose a Jan. 7, 2016, inspector general report that was highly critical of agency controls for monitoring query compliance. Carlin also failed to disclose the FBI’s use of private contractors and Rogers’s ongoing compliance review.
On Sept. 27, 2016, the day after he filed the annual certifications, Carlin announced his resignation, which would become effective on Oct. 15, 2016.
On Oct. 4, 2016, a standard follow-up court hearing was held (Page 19), with Carlin present. Again, he made no disclosure of FISA abuse or other related issues. This lack of disclosure would be noted by the court later in the April 2017 ruling:
“The government’s failure to disclose those IG and OCO reviews at the October 4, 2016 hearing [was ascribed] to an institutional “lack of candor.”
When FBI Director James Comey answers questions before a House Judiciary Committee public hearing, two of the committee members ask him key questions about Paul Combetta, the Platte River Networks (PRN) employee who helped manage Clinton’s private server.
Darrell Issa (Credit: Jeff Malet)
Representative Darrell Issa (R) asks: “Director, I have a lot of concerns but one of them refers to Reddit. At the time that the Department of Justice at your behest, or your involvement, gave Paul Combetta immunity, did you do so knowing about all of the posts he had on Reddit…?”
Comey replies: “I am not sure sitting here. My recollection is and I’ll check this and fix it if I am wrong, that we had some awareness of the Reddit posts, I don’t know whether our folks had read them all or not. We had a pretty good understanding of what we thought he had done, but that is my best recollection.”
Issa then asks: “OK, in the last week, [Combetta] has been deleting [his] Reddit posts. Is that consistent with preserving evidence? … You know, I guess my question to you is, is he destroying evidence relevant to Congressional inquiries? And I will answer it for you: yes he is. And what are you going to do about it?”
Comey answers, “That’s not something I can comment on.”
Bob Goodlatte (Credit: Jacquelyn Martin / The Associated Press)
Later in the same hearing, committee chair Representative Bob Goodlatte (R), similarly asks: “Paul Combetta, with PRN, posted to Reddit, asking how to strip out a VIP’s, very VIP email address from a bunch of archived email. … This clearly demonstrates actions taken to destroy evidence by those operating Sec Clinton’s private server and by her staff. … [W]as the FBI aware of this Reddit post prior to offering Mr. Combetta immunity on May 3, 2016?”
Comey responds, “I am not sure. I know that our team looked at it. I don’t know whether they knew about it before then or not.” (House Judiciary Committee, 09/28/2016)
In a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Comey comments on a July 2014 Reddit post by Paul Combetta, a Platte River Networks employee who helped manage Clinton’s private server.
Comey says, “Our team concluded that what he was trying to do was when they produced emails not have the actual address but have some name or placeholder instead of the actual dot-com address in the ‘From:’ line.” As a result, the FBI believes Combetta was not engaged in a secret cover-up when he used his “stonetear” alias on the Reddit website to ask for a tool that could delete Clinton’s email address throughout a large file.
However, Republican lawmakers believe Combetta’s Reddit post reveals an effort to hide Clinton’s emails from investigators. For example, committee chair Bob Goodlatte (R) says he believes it was “obviously part of a cover-up. … This clearly demonstrates an action to destroy evidence by people operating Clinton’s private server and her staff.” (Politico, 09/28/2016)
Appearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Tom Marino (R) asks FBI Director James Comey why he made immunity deals with key figures in the Clinton email investigation instead of using subpoena power. In particular, he wants to know why deals were made to get access to the laptops of Clinton’s lawyers Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson.
Comey replies, “Anytime you’re talking about the prospect of subpoenaing a computer from a lawyer, it involves the lawyer’s practice of law, you know you’re getting into a big Megillah.”
Marino, who was a district attorney and US attorney before being elected to Congress, then asks, “I understand that, clearly. Why did you not decide to go to an investigative grand jury? It would have been cleaner, it would have been much simpler, and you would have had more authority to make these witnesses testify. Not the target, but the witnesses testify. That seems the way to go, Director. We’ve done it thousands of times. This was just too convoluted.”
Comey replies, “Again, I need to steer clear of talking about grand jury use in a particular matter. In general, in my experience, you can often do things faster with informal agreements, especially when you’re interacting with lawyers. In this particular investigation, the investigative team really wanted to get access to the laptops that were used to sort these emails. Those are lawyers’ laptops. That is a very complicated thing. I think they were able to navigate it pretty well to get us access.”
Later in the hearing, Comey adds that the investigation “couldn’t be concluded professionally without doing our best to figure out what was on those laptops. So, getting the laptops was very important to me and to the investigative team.” (Politico, 11/1/2016) (C-SPAN, 9/28/2016)
In contradiction to his answer on this day, in April 2016, he said of the investigation, “The urgency is to do it well and promptly. And ‘well’ comes first.” And in May 2016, he said “I don’t tether to any external deadline” to finish the investigation, such as the Democratic convention in July 2016.
In a surprising moment during FBI Director James Comey’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, he defends the character and integrity of the FBI officials who took part in the FBI’s Clinton investigation.
FBI Director Comey defends his agents before the House Oversight Committee. (Credit: CSpan)
Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (D) asks, “The foot soldiers, your agents on the ground, you take issue with whether or not they were compromised or they were adhering to somebody elses message. Is that what you’re saying?”
Comey answers, “You can call us wrong, but don’t call us weasels. We are not weasels. We are honest people and … whether or not you agree with the result, this was done the way you want it to be done.”
Politico describes the impassioned moment, “The normally stoic FBI chief grew emotional and emphatic as he rejected claims from Republican lawmakers that the FBI was essentially in the tank for Clinton when it recommended that neither she nor any of her aides be prosecuted in connection with the presence of classified information on Clinton’s private email server. He acknowledged he has ‘no patience’ for such allegations.”(Politico, 09/28/2016)
FBI Director James Comey testifies to House Oversight Committee about the FBI’s handling of the investigation of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of private email servers while serving as secretary of state.
Representative Lamar Smith (Credit: public domain)
During an appearance before a Congressional committee, FBI Director James Comey is questioned by Representative Lamar Smith (R): “[W]ould you reopen the Clinton [email] investigation if you discovered new information that was both relevant and substantial?”
Comey replies, “It is hard for me to answer in the abstract. We would certainly look at any new and substantial information.”
Smith then asks, “In general – and let’s personalize it – in general, if you discover new information that was substantial and relevant, you would reopen an investigation, would you not?”
Comey replies, “Again, even in general I don’t think we can answer that in the abstract. What we can say is that any investigation if people have new and substantial information we would like to see it so we can make an evaluation.” (US Congress, 9/28/2016)
Exactly one month later, on October 28, 2016, Comey will announce that he is at least partially reopening the investigation, due to newly discovered emails.
(…) “Mr. Comey is questioned about the announcement of re-opening of the Hillary Clinton email investigation on October 28th, 2016. In his response to why there was a delay between the FBI being notified by New York on September 28th, and waiting until October 28th, James Comey revealed a very important nugget.
The New York U.S. Attorney (SDNY) called Main Justice in DC to ask about why they were not receiving authority for a search warrant. We knew that call took place on October 21st, 2016. Now we know “why” and who New York called at DOJ HQ.
Baier: “Did you know that Andrew McCabe, your deputy, had sat on that revelation about the emails”?
Comey: “Yeah, I don’t know that, I don’t know that to be the case. I do know that New York and FBI headquarters became aware that there may be some connection between Weiner’s laptop and the Clinton investigation, weeks before it was brought to me for decision – and as I write in the book I don’t know whether they could have moved faster and why the delay”
Baier: “Was it the threat that New York Agents were going to leak that it existed really what drove you to the ‘not conceal’ part?
Comey: “I don’t think so. I think what actually drove it was the prosecutors in New York who were working the criminal case against Weiner called down to headquarters and said ‘are we getting a search warrant or not for this’? That caused, I’m sorry, Justice Department Headquarters, to then call across the street to the FBI and poke the organization; and they start to move much more quickly. I don’t know why there was, if there was slow activity, why it was slow for those first couple of weeks.”
(…) “In his Bret Baier interview FBI Director James Comey says this call is about a search warrant. There is no indication the call is actually about a search warrant.
However, that phone call kicks off an internal debate about the previously closed Clinton email investigation; and Andrew McCabe sitting on the notification from New York for over three weeks – kicks off an internal FBI discussion about McCabe needing to recuse himself.
Now it’s October 27th, 2016, James Comey chief-of-staff Jim Rybicki wants McCabe to recuse himself. But Rybicki is alone on an island. Lisa Page is furious at such a suggestion, partly because she is McCabe’s legal counsel and if McCabe is recused so too is she.
At the same time as they are debating how to handle the Huma Abedin/Hillary Clinton emails, they are leaking to the media to frame a specific narrative.
Important to note here, that at no time is there any conversation -or hint of a conversation- that anyone is reviewing the content of the emails. The discussions don’t mention a single word about content… every scintilla of conversation is about how to handle the issues of the emails themselves. Actually, there’s not a single person mentioned in thousands of text messages that applies to an actual person who is looking at any content.
Quite simply: there is a glaringly transparent lack of an “investigation”.
(…) “It’s still October 27th, 2016, the day before James Comey announces his FBI decision to re-open the Clinton investigation. Jim Rybicki still saying McCabe should be recused from input; everyone else, including FBI Legal Counsel James Baker, is disagreeing with Rybicki and siding with Lisa Page.
Meanwhile the conversation has shifted slightly to “PC”, probable cause. Read:
(…) “The team is now saying if there was no probable cause when Comey closed the original email investigation in July 2016 (remember the very tight boundaries of review), then there’s no probable cause in October 2016 to reopen the investigation regardless of what the email content might be.
This appears to be how the “small group” or “tight team” justify doing nothing with the content received from New York. They received the emails September 28th and it’s now October 27th, and they haven’t even looked at it. Heck, they are debating if there’s even a need to look at it.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 4/28/2018)
On November 6, 2016, Comey clears Clinton for having her State Department emails on the Abedin/Weiner laptop, two days before the election. (CNN, 11/7/2016)
On page 279 of the DOJ IG Horowitz report, a meeting occurs between Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Bill Priestap after Clinton’s emails were discovered on Weiner’s laptop. When Strzok is questioned by the IG team about Clinton’s emails found on Weiner’s laptop, his notes on the event appear to be more helpful than his memory.
Representative Steve King (Credit: Charlie Neibergall / The Associated Press)
FBI Director James Comey says he thinks Paul Combetta, the Platte River Networks employee who helped manage Clinton’s private server, is the Reddit user “stonetear.” In a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee public hearing, Comey is asked by Representative Steve King (R), “Listening in the exchange between yourself and [Representative Darrell] Issa, I would just like to confirm that you were confirming that Mr. Combetta made the Reddit posts?”
Comey replies, “I’m not confirming it. I think he did, it is my understanding. That’s my understanding, I think he did. I haven’t dug into it myself. I’ve been focused on other things as we’ve been talking about, but I think that’s right.” (CSpan 01:27:39, 09/28/2016)
Judicial Watch announced today it received 180 pages of records of communications between former FBI official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page that include Strzok’s “weiner timeline,” which shows a time gap of almost a month between the discovery of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails on the laptop of disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner and the obtaining of a search warrant.
On November 3, 2016, Strzok sends an emailto Page with a “weiner timeline.” The document shows that on September 28, 2016, the Assistant Director in Charge (ADIC) of the New York Office of the FBI reported “potential MYE-related material,” referring to the Midyear Exam, which was the code name of the FBI’s Clinton email investigation. The timeline shows that not until October 30, almost a month after the discovery was a search warrant for the emails obtained.
(…) A partial Strzok timeline was included in the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s June 2018report on the Clinton email investigation. Also, the report suggested a possible bias by Strzok: “[W]e did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias.”
(…) The new records uncovered by Judicial Watch also include an email chain that concludes on November 5, 2016 — the day before Comey notified Congress that the FBI had not changed its July conclusion – with the subject line “Drafting” in which Strzok indicates that he is working on the “initial review” of “the data” for an upcoming statement.
In an additional version of the November 2016 “Drafting” email thread, Strzok concludes that he found “no new potentially classified email on the media [laptop] …”
In a November 6, 2016, email with the subject line “Request for conference call bridge” Strzok tells senior FBI officials: “[Redacted], Jon and I completed our review of all of the potential HRC work emails on the laptop. We found no previously unknown, potentially classified emails on the media [laptop].”
Reportedly, only 3,077 of the more than 300,000 emails found on the Weiner laptop “were directly reviewed for classified or incriminating information. Three FBI officials completed that work in a single 12-hour spurt the day before Comey again cleared Clinton of criminal charges.”
The emails also include an October 30, 2016, email titled “MYE data update,” in which Strzok tells other top FBI officials: “The discussion of the classified email remains accurate.”
In an October 31, 2016, email thread discussing a New York Times article about the FBI conducting a review of Huma Abedin’s emails found on Weiner’s laptop that Strzok circulated to then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Jonathan Moffa, then-Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Bill Priestap, and redacted persons, Moffa says: “I think [redacted],” to which Strzok replies, “Yes. Yes we did. Makes you wonder who dialed in …” Moffa responds, “Sure does. First reference I’m ever aware of to our review network too.”
On November 1, 2016, a redacted official in the Director’s Office emails Strzok, Page and other redacted persons with a “Media question,” asking, “Politico asks why all of Huma’s electronic devices she may have used were not subpoenaed early on. Could you please provide any guidance on how I should respond? [Redacted]. Thank you.” Strzok replies, “Hi [redacted].”
On October 31, 2016, Strzok forwarded to Page a Mother Jones article titled “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump,” concerning the allegations by a “former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence” that the Russian government “has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump.”
On October 31, 2016, Strzok forwarded to Priestap, Moffa, Page and unidentified persons an NBC News article titled, “FBI Making Inquiry into Ex-Trump Campaign Manager’s Foreign Ties,” about an FBI investigation of Paul Manafort, with Strzok saying, “Wow, busy news night. Talked with [redacted] earlier, he said [Washington Post reporter] Ellen Nakashima had mentioned below to him.” An unidentified General Counsel office official then responds, “FYI – Slate has an article on the Trump server.”
(The Slatearticle that alleged that Trump’s campaign set up a covert communication system with Russia during the 2016 election using a computer server in the United States and another owned by a Russian bank has been widely debunked.)
On November 14, 2016, New York Times reporter Matt Apuzzo emailed an unidentified FBI official asking, “We got this in the mail today. Any truth to it?” Attached was an “Affidavit for a Criminal Arrest Warrant and Search Warrants,” purporting to have been sworn out by an FBI agent and allegedly “charging DONALD JOHN TRUMP with conspiracy to commit espionage …” The FBI official forwarded it to Strzok and other redacted officials, saying, “For your awareness. The NYT provided the attached document to us today in order to verify its authenticity. It is supposedly an affidavit in support of espionage charges against Donald John Trump. They received it in the mail today. They doubt it is an authentic document noting there are numerous inaccuracies. Wanted to provide it for your awareness.” Strzok forwards it to Page, saying, “Told them it was not authentic. [Redacted].”
(…) “These new records show how Hillary Clinton was protected from the investigation over the Weiner laptop by the FBI for a full month during the presidential campaign,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And the documents further confirm that Strzok pushed Russia smears of Trump laundered through the media within the FBI. No wonder the FBI is slow-rolling the release of these documents.” (Read more: Judicial Watch, 3/26/2020)(Archive)
A lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch has unearthed an email [full pdf] from Clinton Lawyer David Kendall to FBI chief legal counsel James Baker on the day the FBI was forced to re-open the Clinton email investigation due to the Weiner laptop.
With the passage of time the inherent issues have become somewhat clouded, and most people have forgotten many of the inherent issues that showcased how the FBI and DOJ had decided in advance not to prosecute Hillary Clinton. However, the key takeaway from this latest FOIA finding is that Clinton lawyers directly contacted the FBI team that was investigating the Weiner laptop. (Note: read email chain bottom to top)
The Weiner laptop emails were originally discovered by New York investigators and reported to the FBI office in Washington DC on September 28th, 2016. However, the FBI never took action to review the emails until a month later on October 28th.
It was DOJ officials within SDNY (Southern District of New York) who called Main Justice (DOJ in DC) and asked about a needed search warrant a month later that kicked off the review.
Let’s look at the Page/Strzok messages and remind ourselves of what was going on.
Here are the messages from Lisa Page and Peter Strzok surrounding the original date that New York officials notified Washington DC FBI. It’s important to note the two different entities: DOJ -vs- FBI.
According to the September 28, 2016, messages from FBI Agent Peter Strzok it was the SDNY in New York telling Andrew McCabe in DC about the issue. Pay close attention to the convo:
Notice: “hundreds of thousands of emails turned over by Weiner’s attorney to SDNY”. This is not an outcome of a New York Police Dept. raid on Anthony Weiner. This is Weiner’s attorney going to the U.S. attorney and voluntarily turning over the laptop and by extension the emails. The emails were not turned over to the FBI in New York, the actual emails were turned over to the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District, Preet Bahara.
The SDNY then called the FBI Mid-Year-Exam team in Washington DC, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was notified, and then nothing happened for over three weeks.
On October 21, 2016, a phone call kicks off additional inquiry. This is the call referenced by James Comey in the Bret Baier interview.
Someone from New York called “Main Justice” (the DOJ National Security Division in DC) and notified DOJ-NSD Deputy Asst. Attorney General George Toscas of the Huma Abedin/Hillary Clinton emails via the “Weiner investigation.”
George Toscas “wanted to ensure information got to Andy“, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe…. so he called FBI Agent Peter Strzok…. who told George Toscas “we know”.
Peter Strzok then tells Bill Priestap. Of course, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe already knew about the emails since, more than three weeks earlier.
That phone call kicks off an internal debate about the previously closed Clinton email investigation. And Andrew McCabe sitting on the notification from New York for over three weeks kicks off a second internal FBI discussion about McCabe needing to recuse himself because of the optics of his doing nothing.
It’s October 27th, 2016, James Comey chief-of-staff Jim Rybicki wants McCabe to recuse himself. But Rybicki is alone on an island. Lisa Page is furious at such a suggestion, partly because she is McCabe’s legal counsel and if McCabe is recused so too is she.
At the same time as they are debating how to handle the Huma Abedin/Hillary Clinton emails, the FBI begin leaking to the media to frame a specific narrative. The issue of them sitting on the laptop for three weeks and doing nothing is a potentially damning detail.
Important to note here: at no time is there any conversation -or hint of a conversation- that anyone is reviewing the content of the laptop emails. The discussions don’t mention a single word about content… every scintilla of conversation is about how to handle the issues of the emails themselves. Actually, there’s not a single person mentioned in thousands of text messages that applies to an actual person who is looking at any content.
Quite simply: there is a glaringly transparent lack of an “investigation”.
Within this “tight group” at FBI, as Comey puts it, there is not a single mention of a person who is sitting somewhere looking through the reported “600,000” Clinton emails that was widely reported by media. There’s absolutely ZERO evidence of anyone looking at emails or scouring through laptop data…. and FBI Agent Peter Strzok has no staff under him who he discusses assigned to such a task…. and Strzok damned sure ain’t doing it.
It’s still October 27th, 2016, the day before James Comey announces his FBI decision to re-open the Clinton investigation. Jim Rybicki is still saying McCabe should be recused from input; everyone else, including FBI Legal Counsel James Baker, is disagreeing with Rybicki and siding with Lisa Page. Meanwhile the conversation has shifted slightly to “PC”, probable cause. Read:
While Lisa Page is leaking stories to Devlin Barrett (Wall Street Journal), the internal discussion amid the “small group” is about probable cause.
The team is now saying if there was no probable cause when Comey closed the original email investigation in July 2016 (remember the very tight boundaries of review), then there’s no probable cause in October 2016 to reopen the investigation regardless of what the email content might be. The inspector general report from June 2018 explains why:
The DOJ’s legal interpretation of “intent”, as a prerequisite for criminal charges based on transmission of classified data, virtually assured Clinton would not be prosecuted.
This appears to be how the FBI “small group” or “tight team” justify doing nothing with the content and notification received from New York (SDNY). They received notification of the emails on September 28th and it’s now October 27th, and they haven’t even looked at them. Heck, they are debating if there’s even a need to look at it.
Then on October 28th, 2016, the FBI and Main Justice officials have a conference call about the entire Huma Abedin/Hillary Clinton email issue. Here’s where it gets interesting.
George Toscas and David Laufman from DOJ-NSD articulate a position that something needs to happen because Main Justice is now concerned about the issue of FBI (McCabe) sitting on the emails for over three weeks without any feedback to SDNY (New York).
Comey later admitted in his memoir “A Higher Loyalty,” that political calculations shaped his decisions during this period. But, he wrote, they were calibrated to help Clinton:
“Assuming, as nearly everyone did, that Hillary Clinton would be elected president of the United States in less than two weeks, what would happen to the FBI, the Justice Department or her own presidency if it later was revealed, after the fact, that she still was the subject of an FBI investigation?”
Thanks to the political decision of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Main Justice in DC, specifically DOJ National Security Division, now looks like they are facilitating a cover-up operation being conducted by the FBI “small group”. [which is actually true, but they can’t let that be so glaringly obvious]. FBI Director James Comey is worried that if anyone found out they had sat on this laptop discovery a “President Clinton” would then come under investigation….. how would the FBI explain themselves?
As a result of the Top-Tier officials conference call, FBI Agent Strzok is grumpy because his opinion appears to be insignificant; the discussion is above his pay grade.
The decision is now reached to announce the re-opening of the investigation. This sends Lisa Page bananas…
…In rapid response mode Lisa Page reaches out to journalist Devlin Barrett, again to quickly shape the media coverage. Now that the world is going to be aware of the need for a Clinton email investigation 2.0 the internal conversation returns to McCabe’s recusal.
Please note that at no time in the FBI is anyone directing an actual investigation of the content of the Clinton emails. Every single second of every effort is devoted to shaping the public perception of the need for the investigation. According to Peter Strzok and Lisa Page every media outlet is being watched; every article is being read; and the entire apparatus of the small group (James Baker, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Mike Kortan et al) is shaping coverage therein by contacting their leak outlets.
The laptop emails Anthony Weiner’s lawyer brought to Preet Bharara (SDNY) might have been Anthony Weiner’s leverage to try and escape NY prosecution. Eric Prince outlined the content of that laptop as carrying much more than just Clinton emails:
“Because of Weinergate and the sexting scandal, the NYPD started investigating it. Through a subpoena, through a warrant, they searched his laptop, and sure enough, found those 650,000 emails. They found way more stuff than just more information pertaining to the inappropriate sexting the guy was doing,” Prince claimed.
“They found State Department emails. They found a lot of other really damning criminal information, including money laundering, including the fact that Hillary went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton went there more than 20 times. Hillary Clinton went there at least six times,” he said.
“The amount of garbage that they found in these emails, of criminal activity by Hillary, by her immediate circle, and even by other Democratic members of Congress was so disgusting they gave it to the FBI, and they said, ‘We’re going to go public with this if you don’t reopen the investigation and you don’t do the right thing with timely indictments,’” Prince explained.
“I believe – I know, and this is from a very well-placed source of mine at 1PP, One Police Plaza in New York – the NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making in this investigation, and they’ve gotten huge pushback, to the point of coercion, from the Justice Department, with the Justice Department threatening to charge someone that had been unrelated in the accidental heart attack death of Eric Garner almost two years ago. That’s the level of pushback the Obama Justice Department is doing against actually seeking justice in the email and other related criminal matters,” Prince said. (Link)
There’s never been any investigation that would disprove the laptop content was not what Eric Prince’s sources outlined. However, the SDNY, responding to upper level leadership from Main Justice and FBI in DC, turned over all material and essentially the laptop was buried.
In DC the FBI (Comey and McCabe) created the appearance of a re-opening of the Clinton investigation on October 28th, 2016, to keep control and ensure the investigative outcomes remained in their hands; as Comey said: “they had no choice.”
However, once the FBI opened the investigation October 28th, they did exactly the same thing they had done from September 28th to October 28th… they did nothing. A few days later [November 6, 2018] they declared the second investigation closed, and that was that.
Again, they never expected her to lose.
When she did lose, panic ensued.
Now does Mueller make more sense?
The widely held view of the process is/was that Rod Rosenstein selected Robert Mueller as special counsel, and following that selection Mueller created his team. The perspective from CTH research is slightly different.
CTH believes that following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, the FBI Chief Legal Counsel, Jim Baker and FBI Deputy Director, Andrew McCabe; together with the corrupt small group that was involved in the prior year’s counterintelligence investigation; reacted to Comey’s firing by pressuring Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint their preferred person, Robert Mueller.
Within this internal debate (May 2017); at the time this construct was being argued; is when the famous comment from Rosenstein originates: “what do you want me to do, wear a wire?” The corrupt FBI investigative crew; having initiated and continued “Crossfire Hurricane”; including people from the DOJ-NSD side (Ohr, Weissmann, etc) were pressuring Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel….. but not just any special counsel.. Baker and McCabe had the person pre-selected. That person was Robert Mueller.
They needed Robert Mueller because they needed a person who held a similar level of risk from prior activity exposure as themselves. Mueller, directly or indirectly, was at the center of multiple Obama and Clinton abuses of power.
Obviously we can see the reason for this FBI/DOJ crew to need a special counsel. As career corruptocrats they were operating from a mindset of mitigating risk to themselves and continuing to advance on the objective to attack the executive office through their investigative schemes.
The key point here is subtle but very significant. Robert Mueller didn’t select his team, the corrupt team, the “small group”, selected him.
There is a great deal of inconsistent application of law surrounding the DOJ/FBI investigative authority during 2015 and 2016. There is also a great deal of fatigue surrounding discussion of those inconsistent applications. Contradictions, inconsistency and obtuse justifications are as rampant in our midst as the political narratives shaping them. Perhaps that’s by design. WATCH:
This “Flash” memo was published three days after Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, offered Illinois state officials assistance in securing election systems. (Credit: Yahoo News)
(…) “On Sept. 29, 2016, a few weeks after the hacking of election-related websites in Illinois and Arizona, ABC News carried a sensational headline: “Russian Hackers Targeted Nearly Half of States’ Voter Registration Systems, Successfully Infiltrated 4.” The story itself reported that “more than 20 state election systems” had been hacked, and four states had been “breached” by hackers suspected of working for the Russian government. The story cited only sources “knowledgeable” about the matter, indicating that those who were pushing the story were eager to hide the institutional origins of the information.
Behind that sensational story was a federal agency seeking to establish its leadership within the national security state apparatus on cybersecurity, despite its limited resources for such responsibility. In late summer and fall 2016, the Department of Homeland Security was maneuvering politically to designate state and local voter registration databases and voting systems as “critical infrastructure.” Such a designation would make voter-related networks and websites under the protection a “priority sub-sector” in the DHS “National Infrastructure Protection Plan, which already included 16 such sub-sectors.
DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and other senior DHS officials consulted with many state election officials in the hope of getting their approval for such a designation. Meanwhile, the DHS was finishing an intelligence report that would both highlight the Russian threat to U.S. election infrastructure and the role DHS could play in protecting it, thus creating political impetus to the designation. But several secretaries of state—the officials in charge of the election infrastructure in their state—strongly opposed the designation that Johnson wanted.
On Jan. 6, 2017—the same day three intelligence agencies released a joint “assessment” on Russian interference in the election—Johnson announced the designation anyway.
Media stories continued to reflect the official assumption that cyber attacks on state election websites were Russian-sponsored. Stunningly, The Wall Street Journalreported in December 2016 that DHS was itself behind hacking attempts of Georgia’s election database.” (Read more: Consortium News, 8/28/2018)
It's precisely this kind of bullshit that led IG Horowitz to testify that given the breadth and depth of such *errors* it is "fair for people.. to wonder how it could be purely incompetence."pic.twitter.com/Bl8eq5GUl8
National Security Division Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart Evans in Washington on Sept. 14, 2016. (Credit: Zach Gibson/AFP/Getty Images)
“Stuart Evans, deputy assistant attorney general for the National Security Division’s Office of Intelligence.
Evans is one of the few government officials discussed in the IG report who raised concerns about the effort to surveil Page and the decision to rely on Steele to obtain FISAs.
Emails cited in the report show that Evans asked FBI agents to provide additional evidence to back up claims in the report.
“According to Evans, he raised on multiple occasions with the FBI, including with Strzok, Lisa Page, and later McCabe, whether seeking FISA authority targeting Carter Page was a good idea, even if the legal standard was met,” the IG report says.
Carter Page speaks to the media after testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on November 2, 2017. (Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Evans said that he did not believe there was a compelling benefit to obtaining the warrant because Page was unlikely to put any incriminating information on email or in a telephone call.
Evans was not informed of several other red flags related to the dossier.
According to the IG report, Steele told FBI agents on Oct. 3, 2016 that he believed that a key sub-source for his dossier was a “boaster” and “egotist.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 6/22/2020) (Archive)
“In late September, I spoke with an old friend, Sidney Blumenthal, whom I met 30 years ago when I was investigating the Iran-contra affair for then-Sen. Kerry and Blumenthal was a reporter at The Post. At the time, Russian hacking was at the front and center in the 2016 presidential campaign. The emails of Blumenthal, who had a long association with Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been hacked in 2013 through a Russian server.
While talking about that hacking, Blumenthal and I discussed Steele’s reports. He showed me notes gathered by a journalist I did not know, Cody Shearer, that alleged the Russians had compromising information on Trump of a sexual and financial nature.
What struck me was how some of the material echoed Steele’s but appeared to involve different sources.
On my own, I shared a copy of these notes with Steele, to ask for his professional reaction. He told me it was potentially “collateral” information. I asked him what that meant. He said that it was similar but separate from the information he had gathered from his sources. I agreed to let him keep a copy of the Shearer notes.
Given that I had not worked with Shearer and knew that he was not a professional intelligence officer, I did not mention or share his notes with anyone at the State Department. I did not expect them to be shared with anyone in the U.S. government.” (Read more: Washington Post, 02/08/2018)
Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer are long-time Clinton confidants and colleagues. (Credit: public domain)
“A copy of the little-publicized second dossier in the Trump-Russia affair, acquired by RealClearInvestigations, raises new questions about the origins of the Trump investigation, particularly about the role of Clinton partisans and the extent to which the two dossiers may have been coordinated or complementary operations.
The second dossier — two reports compiled by Cody Shearer, an ex-journalist and longtime Clinton operative — echoes many of the lurid and still unsubstantiated claims made in the Steele dossier, and is receiving new scrutiny. On Sunday, Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a TV interview that his panel is shifting its investigative focus concerning the origins of the Russia investigation from the FBI to the State Department. This probe will include the Shearer dossier.
Jonathan Winer (Credit: U.S. State Department)
In late September 2016, Sidney Blumenthal, a close Clinton confidant and colleague of Shearer’s, passed Shearer’s dossier on to State Department official Jonathan M. Winer, a longtime aide to John Kerry on Capitol Hill and at Foggy Bottom.
According to Winer’s account in a Feb. 8, 2018 Washington Post op-ed, he shared the contents of the Shearer dossier with the author of the first dossier, ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who submitted part of it to the FBI to further substantiate his own investigation into the Trump campaign. Steele was a subcontractor working for the Washington, D.C.-based communications firm Fusion GPS, which was hired by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee to compile opposition research on her Republican opponent.” (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 4/26/2018)
W. Neil Eggleston (Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/The National Law Journal)
“Recent revelations reveal that Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s team was out to “get Trump”:
“An FBI agent who played a lead role investigating Michael Flynn told the Justice Department there was never evidence of wrongdoing by the retired general or Russian collusion by President Trump, but the probe was kept open by Special Counsel Robert Mueller because his team had a “get Trump” goal, according to an explosive interview released Friday.”
The ACLJ has been exposing Deep State subversion in the Obama-Biden FBI for years now. We’ve done this largely through our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) practice. In one of our FOIA lawsuits against the FBI, which you can read about here, we have obtained a significant set of documents that we are releasing to the public today. That FOIA demanded all records, including emails, memorandums, briefs, electronic messages, etc., pertaining to FBI agents then-Director Comey reportedly placed in the White House to spy and report back to him, including Anthony Ferrante, Jordan Rae Kelly, and Tashina Gauhar. Specifically, we requested records and emails between or about Comey and the purported spies and others.
(…) We also received additional documents we believe the American people need to see – FBI records directly tying the Obama-Biden White House to the scheme to take down President Trump. These records also tie former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former Deputy (and later) Acting Attorney General Sally Yates to the “get Trump” scheme as well. Here is what we obtained:
On September 30, 2016, Obama White House Counsel Neil Eggleston emailed James Comey and Andrew McCabe, and copied Lisa Page and Natalie H. Quillian (note: Quillian was an advisor to Obama Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, and she is now Deputy Campaign Manager for none other than presidential candidate Joe Biden), a “TOP SECRET” email with no subject line, saying:
“Jim and Andy (cc’ing Tash [Tashina Gauhar] to print for Loretta and Sally, both traveling) – This responds to recent outreach from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) regarding the FBI’s proposal to conduct a full-content review of [redacted – marked B7D, which regards disclosure of confidential source]. We have had the opportunity to review a memorandum from Deputy Director McCabe to Deputy Attorney General Yates, shared by your staff with mine, which sets out the scope and justification for the proposed review.”
The next paragraph is marked TS for Top Secret, and redacted. And the next paragraph is redacted as well.
The Obama White House’s email then reads:
“Notwithstanding this concern, we stand ready to work with the FBI and DOJ, as we have previously, to discuss possible ways forward. To that end, we are available to meet with DOJ and FBI leadership to discuss next steps.”
That night, on September 30, 2016, at 8:22 PM, McCabe forwards the email to Comey, Baker, and James Rybicki (Comey’s Chief of Staff), marked “TOP SECRET//NOFORN” and says:
“Interesting response from Neil. I was not aware that we had shared our request to the DAG with the WH… We should discuss where/how we should reach back to set up a meeting.”
(Note, the “we” was underlined in McCabe’s original email.)
Then, a few days later, on October 3, McCabe responds to Eggleston in an email marked “TOP SECRET//NOFORN,” copying Comey, Lisa Page, and Quillian, and says:
Neil, I understand your concerns with our request and am happy to come over with a small team to discuss with you the specifics at your earliest convenience. Please let me know a POC my staff can contact to set up a meeting.”
What was the FBI “full-content review” it proposed to the Obama-Biden White House? (We know the FBI used codenames like this for high profile cases; for example, referring to the Clinton investigation as the “Midyear Exam”.)
Why did the Obama-Biden White House express a “concern” but then offer to proceed and cooperate with the FBI anyway?
Why did McCabe tell Comey he wasn’t sure they had shared their “request to the DAG [Sally Yates]” with the White House?
So many questions. But also an answer: Obama’s White House Counsel was colluding with Comey and McCabe’s FBI. What were they up to?” (Read more: ACLJ, 9/26/2020)(Archive)
Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Ranking Member Rep. Devin Nunes listen to Gordon Sondland, the U.S ambassador to the European Union, testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill November 20, 2019. (Credit: Doug Mills/Getty Images)
“The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, Adam Schiff (Calif.), said Sunday it was “deeply disturbing” that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) received classified information about Hillary Clinton’s emails from FBI field agents in 2016.
“This is the first that we’ve heard about it, and it is deeply disturbing because if this was shared by New York field agents with Devin Nunes, was it also shared with Rudy Giuliani? Or did Devin Nunes do something, which we have seen subsequently, which is coordinated with the Trump team?” Schiff said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“Was this information shared by the committee with Rudy Giuliani or shared directly with them? We don’t know the answer but we hope the inspector general will find out,” Schiff added.
Nunes said last week that FBI agents gave him information about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails, which were contained on former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D) laptop, in late September 2016.
“We had whistleblowers that came to us in late September of 2016 who talked to us about this laptop sitting up in New York that had additional emails on it. The House Intelligence Committee, we had that, but we couldn’t do anything with it,” Nunes told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Thursday.
In light of IG’s failure to look at leaking/anti-Clinton bias among agents in NYC field office, this seems quite relevant. Nunes says “good FBI agents” told him about Weiner laptop in late September 2016. pic.twitter.com/BU6ysY7Xwn
Nunes said that, because the information was classified, he could not say anything about it until the Justice Department’s (DOJ) internal watchdog released its report… (Read more: The Hill, 6/17/2018)(Archive)
Late September: In London court filings, Christopher Steele is identified as Second Defendant and testifies to following instructions from Fusion GPS, and briefing reporters at several news outlets about the dossier. Steele briefed The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The New Yorker and Yahoo! News.
Screenshot from Christopher Steele’s testimony to a London court.
“Just before Thanksgiving, House Republicans amended the list of documents they’d like President Trump to declassify in the Russia investigation. With little fanfare or explanation, the lawmakers, led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), added a string of emails between the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to their wish list.
Sources tell me the targeted documents may provide the most damning evidence to date of potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), evidence that has been kept from the majority of members of Congress for more than two years.<
The email exchanges included then-FBI Director James Comey, key FBI investigators in the Russia probe and lawyers in the DOJ’s national security division, and they occurred in early to mid-October, before the FBI successfully secured a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The email exchanges show the FBI was aware — before it secured the now-infamous warrant — that there were intelligence community concerns about the reliability of the main evidence used to support it: the Christopher Steele dossier.
The exchanges also indicate FBI officials were aware that Steele, the former MI6 British intelligence operative then working as a confidential human source for the bureau, had contacts with news media reporters before the FISA warrant was secured.” (Read more: The Hill, 12/05/2018)
(…) According to the OIG Horowitz Report, around the same time of Steele’s interview, in early October of 2016, the FBI opened up a counterintelligence investigation on Sergei Millian. h164
Additionally, the FBI also investigated whether there were cyber links between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, and had concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links. h119
But what investigative steps were taken between the initiation of allegations and their resolution in February? And was the investigation into Millian the same investigation into Alfa Bank? And was the Dragon FISA that was being discussed in the same time frame, a part of the investigation into Sergei Millian or Alfa Bank, or neither, or both?
By the time of the early October interview with Steele, the FBI was in possession of information that made Sergei Millian a FISA target that was arguably three times stronger than that of Carter Page.
1) Millian was concurrently being alleged by both Steele and Simpson as an Alfa bank connection working in tandem with Michael Cohen as “replacements” for recently fired Carter Page and Paul Manafort. h282 The need to investigate Sergei was more immediate and had allegedly superseded Page.
2) Millian was known by the FBI to be in “sustained contact” with George Papadopoulos, the Crossfire Hurricane’s investigative “Predicate”, since August 2016. h132 In fact, in those same contacts, Sergei was making financial overtures much more direct and documented than anything Carter was “known” to have received. m95
3) Millian as the purported Source D/E of Steele Dossier was responsible for “the most descriptive information in the FISA application of alleged coordination between Page and Russia” h163 spanning 4 separate memos over the course of 3 months. h243
For reasons 1 & 2, FBI already had arguably more reason to FISA Sergei Millian than Carter Page, and the corroboration of the Dossier is just extra incentive. (Monsieur America, 3/09/2020)(Archive)
“FBI Assistant Director Peter Strzok testified Thursday that former FBI Director James Comey directed him to focus his time and resources on the Russian election interference investigation over Hillary Clinton’s use of classified information.
In a fiery joint Judiciary and Oversight Committee hearing, Strzok was asked by Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler why he thought it was important to “prioritize” the Russia investigation in October 2016 over the recent reopening of the Clinton case due to the discovery of emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.
“The first reason I did it is because the director told me to,” Strzok said, referring to Comey, “The director said it was our top priority.
Strzok continued, “When you look at an allocation of resources based on the threat to national security, the Russia influence investigations were of much greater impact than a mishandling of classified information investigation.”
Nadler clarified, “The first reason was the director told you to?”
Christopher Steele (Credit: Victoria Jones/The Associated Press)
“In the fall of 2016, a little more than a month before Donald Trump was elected president, Christopher Steele had theundivided attention of the FBI.
For months, the British former spy had been working to alert the Americans to what he believed were disturbing ties Trump had to Russia. He had grown so worried about what he had learned from his Russia network about the Kremlin’s plans that he told colleagues it was like “sitting on a nuclear weapon.”
He was now being summoned to Rome, where he spent hours in a discreet location telling four American officials — some of whom had flown in from the United States — about his findings.
The Russians had damaging information about Trump’s personal behavior and finances that could be used to pressure the GOP nominee. What’s more, the Kremlin was now carrying out an operation with the Trump campaign’s help to tilt the U.S. election — a plot Steele had been told was ordered by President Vladimir Putin.
The FBI investigators treated Steele as a peer, a Russia expert so well-trusted that he had assisted the Justice Department on past cases and provided briefingmaterial for British prime ministers and at least one U.S. president. During intense questioning that day in Rome, they alluded to some of their own findings of ties between Russia and the Trump campaign and raised the prospect of paying Steele to continue gathering intelligence after Election Day, according to people familiar with the discussion.” (Read more: Washington Post, 2/06/2018)
Anthony Weiner takes a selfie from his image in a mirror. (Credit: Daily Mail)
Huma Abedin, a top aide to Clinton and her former deputy chief of staff, is married to Anthony Weiner, a former Congressperson who has been beset by two “sexting” scandals, in which it was publicly revealed he sent sexual text messages to other women. On August 28, 2016, the New York Post reported that Weiner had been caught in his third sexting scandal. The next day, Abedin announced she is separating from him and divorcing him. (The New York Post, 8/28/2016)
On September 21, 2016, the Daily Mail further revealed that the still unnamed woman he’d been sexting with in recent months in fact was only 15 years old. (The Daily Mail, 9/21/2016)
This raised the possibility that Weiner could face serious federal criminal charges, especially if the girl lives in a different state, which it turns out she does. (Rolling Stone, 9/22/2016)
As a result, after the Daily Mail article, top federal prosecutors in New York (where Weiner lives) and North Carolina (where the unnamed girl lives) fought over who would get to prosecute the case. The Justice Department gave the case to Preet Bharara, a US attorney in New York.
The New York Times will later report that also in late September 2016, “agents in the FBI’s New York field office understood that the Weiner investigation could possibly turn up additional emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s private server, according to a senior federal law enforcement official.”
On the same day Anthony Weiner’s electronic devices are seized, the Clinton campaign team are on their way to a rally in Akron, OH on October 3, 2016. (Credit: Agence France Presse / Getty Images)
Then, on October 3, 2016, the FBI seizes several electronic devices owned by Weiner, including a computer laptop, his iPhone, and his iPad. Several days later, FBI agents also confiscate a Wi-Fi router that could identify any other devices that he had used. This is also according to an unnamed US law enforcement official.
When FBI agents search the seized devices, they find thousands of emails sent to or from Abedin on the laptop, because apparently it was used by both Abedin and Weiner before they separated. According to unnamed “senior law enforcement officials,” some of the emails are sent between Abedin and other Clinton aides. However, only FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors directly involved in the Weiner investigation can look at the evidence, and those who took part in the Clinton email investigation, closed in July 2016, do not have the legal authority, at least not yet.
FBI Director James Comey will learn about the emails in mid-October 2016. He will be brief October 27, 2016, and he will write a letter to Congress the next day announcing that he is reopening the Clinton email investigation at least long enough to determine the possible relevance of the emails to the Clinton case. (The New York Times, 10/29/2016)
“An FBI offer to pay former British spy Christopher Steele to collect intelligence on Michael Flynn in the weeks before the 2016 election has been one of the more overlooked revelations in a Justice Department inspector general’s report released in December.
The reference to the FBI proposal, which was made in an Oct. 3, 2016, meeting in an unidentified European city, has received virtually no press attention. But it might have new significance following the recent release of government documents that show that Steele peddled an unfounded rumor that Flynn had an extramarital affair with a Russian woman in the United Kingdom.
The inspector general’s report, released on Dec. 9, 2019, said that FBI agents offered to pay Steele “significantly” to collect intelligence from three separate “buckets” that the bureau was pursuing as part of Crossfire Hurricane, its counterintelligence probe of four Trump campaign associates.
(…) But two documents released in recent weeks raise the question of whether the FBI’s request of Steele has any link to the rumors that Flynn had an affair with a Russian woman.
One of the documents is a transcript of longtime John McCain associate David Kramer’s interview with the House Intelligence Committee. Kramer testified on Dec. 17, 2017, that Steele told him in December 2016 that he suspected that Flynn had an extramarital affair with a Russian woman.
“There was one thing he mentioned to me that is not included here, and that is he believed that Mr. Flynn had an extramarital affair with a Russian woman in the U.K.,” Kramer told lawmakers.
Kramer said that Steele conveyed that Flynn’s alleged mistress was a “Russian woman” who “may have been a dual citizen.”
Stefan Halper (l), Lokhova (c) and Lt. General Michael Flynn (Credit: public domain)
An FBI memo dated Jan. 4, 2017, contained another allegation regarding Flynn and a mysterious Russian woman.
The memo, which was provided to Flynn’s lawyers on April 30, said that an FBI confidential human source (CHS) told the bureau that they were present at an event that Flynn attended while he was still working in the U.S. intelligence community.
The CHS said that after dinner and drinks, Flynn “surprised” everyone by leaving in a cab with a person that the FBI source suspected had ties to Russians.
Svetlana Lokhova, a Russian-British academic who studied at the University of Cambridge, said she is the woman at the center of the FBI memo and Kramer testimony.
Lokhova became the target of a whisper campaign in early 2017 regarding Flynn’s visit to Cambridge three years earlier, when he served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian reported in March 2017 that Flynn had a suspicious encounter with Lokhova that drew the attention of American and British intelligence officials.
Lokhova has vehemently denied allegations of wrongdoing. She has said that she met Flynn just once, at the Cambridge event.
Lokhova’s husband has told the Daily Caller News Foundation that he picked Lokhova up after the Cambridge dinner and that she did not leave with Flynn. A DIA official who attended the Cambridge event with Flynn also told the WSJ in March 2017 that Flynn did not engage in any improper behavior.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 5/20/2020)(Archive)
“An FBI offer to pay former British spy Christopher Steele to collect intelligence on Michael Flynn in the weeks before the 2016 election has been one of the more overlooked revelations in a Justice Department inspector general’s report released in December.
The reference to the FBI proposal, which was made in an Oct. 3, 2016 meeting in an unidentified European city, has received virtually no press attention. But it might have new significance following the recent release of government documents that show that Steele peddled an unfounded rumor that Flynn had an extramarital affair with a Russian woman in the United Kingdom.
It is not clear how and when Steele came across the rumor, or if it was the result of the FBI asking him to look into Flynn.
The inspector general’s report, released on Dec. 9, 2019, said that FBI agents offered to pay Steele “significantly” to collect intelligence from three separate “buckets” that the bureau was pursuing as part of Crossfire Hurricane, its counterintelligence probe of four Trump campaign associates.
One bucket was “Additional intelligence/reporting on specific, named individuals (such as [Carter Page] or [Flynn]) involved in facilitating the Trump campaign-Russian relationship,” the IG report stated.
FBI agents also sought contact with “any individuals or sub-sources” who Steele could provide to “serve as cooperating witnesses to assist in identifying persons involved in the Trump campaign-Russian relationship.”
Steele at the time had provided the FBI with reports he compiled alleging that members of the Trump campaign had conspired with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election.
An FBI agent provided Steele with a “general overview” of the ongoing Crossfire Hurricane probe, according to the IG report. The agent told Steele about the actions of George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign aide, and said the FBI had undertaken a “small analytical effort” that centered on Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Flynn.
Some FBI agents who attended the meeting questioned whether the lead agent had disclosed too much to Steele about Crossfire Hurricane, according to the IG report.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 5/20/2020)(Archive)
On page 283, the DOJ OIG reports Randall Coleman, Executive Asst Director of FBI HQ’s Criminal, Cyber, Response & Services Branch receives a call from Assistant Director (AD), Bill Sweeney with updates on the Weiner laptop. By this time, September 28, 2016, they discovered 347,000 emails that were Clinton/Abedin related and considered “connected with the Mid Year investigation.” When the laptop was transferred to FBI Headquarters, Randy Coleman was in charge of reviewing the computer.
This is where things get weird…Mr. Coleman’s “memorandum for record” clearly states he was not to read the Clinton/Abedin emails found on Weiner’s laptop. From the memorandum:
Our question is, who did examine the hundreds of thousands of additional Clinton emails that were identified by NYO and confirmed by Coleman? Where are they now? Have they been officially archived? Were there classified documents included? The official word has been they are duplicates of the emails we already know about, but there apparently are hundreds of thousands more emails that are still unaccounted for.
There is also a discrepancy with the date of Coleman’s “memorandum for record” mentioned in the DOJ OIG report that says it is dated November 7, 2016. The FBI recently released the memorandum and it is dated October 3, 2016. We have chosen to date this timeline entry using the date on the original memorandum.
“The IG report says that a supervisory intelligence analyst played a key role in several aspects of Crossfire Hurricane. The analyst took part in the Oct. 3, 2016 interview with Steele, and the January 2017 interview with Steele’s primary source of information for the dossier.
Both of those interviews yielded information that called the dossier’s credibility into question, but none of the interview participants disclosed the information in FISA applications.
The IG report does not identify Auten by name as the FBI analyst, but the Senate Judiciary Committee included him on its list of potential witnesses. The DCNF reached out to Auten for comment, and the FBI responded to decline comment on his behalf.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 6/22/2020)(Archive)
Julian Assange speaks via video link at a news conference marking the 10th anniversary of Wikileaks, on October 4, 2016. (Credit: Wikileaks)
Speaking via a video link to mark a decade since the founding of WikiLeaks, Assange says, “We hope to be publishing every week for the next ten weeks. We have on schedule, and it’s a very hard schedule, all the US election-related documents to come out before [the US presidential election on] November 8. … Our upcoming series includes significant material on war, arms, oil, Google, the US elections, and myself.”
He also dismisses speculation that releases related to US election would contain information intended to damage the presidential candidacy of Clinton. The idea that “we intend to harm Hillary Clinton, or I intend to harm Hillary Clinton, or I don’t like Hillary Clinton, all those are false.”
Assange’s comments are seen as a disappointment by many of WikiLeaks supporters who are hoping for the immediate release of more politically important material. (The New York Times, 10/4/2016) However, just three days later, WikiLeaks begins releasing emails belonging to John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign manager.
On page 294 of the DOJ OIG report, the IG team reviews an unusual entry in EAD Randy Coleman’s notes that understandably raises eyebrows and leaves room for speculation. What does “Crime Against Children” mean in the context of Coleman’s notes? One would normally presume it would be related to Weiner sexting with the 15 year old girl. A researcher suggested they could be counting Anthony Weiner’s son as a victim and that is a possibility as well. But the plural use of the word “children” written directly below the notation of Hillary Clinton and the Foundation also implies it could mean something else. The IG team appears, somewhat, to have tried getting to the bottom of it, but Comey had a convenient case of amnesia and the other FBI officials questioned, also gave similar responses.
Clinton walks with Obama to the Rose Garden Sept. 12, 2012, where he spoke about the death of U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens. (Credit: Evan Vucci/The Associated Press)
“The Obama administration is moving to dismiss charges against an arms dealer it had accused of selling weapons that were destined for Libyan rebels.
Lawyers for the Justice Department on Monday filed a motion in federal court in Phoenix to drop the case against the arms dealer, an American named Marc Turi, whose lawyers also signed the motion.
The deal averts a trial that threatened to cast additional scrutiny on Hillary Clinton’s private emails as Secretary of State and to expose reported Central Intelligence Agency attempts to arm rebels fighting Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi.
Government lawyers were facing a Wednesday deadline to produce documents to Turi’s legal team, and the trial was officially set to begin on Election Day, although it likely would have been delayed by protracted disputes about classified information in the case.
A Turi associate asserted that the government dropped the case because the proceedings could have embarrassed Clinton and President Barack Obama by calling attention to the reported role of their administration in supplying weapons that fell into the hands of Islamic extremist militants.
“They don’t want this stuff to come out because it will look really bad for Obama and Clinton just before the election,” said the associate.
In the dismissal motion, prosecutors say “discovery rulings” from U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell contributed to the decision to drop the case. The joint motion asks the judge to accept a confidential agreement to resolve the case through a civil settlement between the State Department and the arms broker.
“Our position from the outset has been that this case never should have been brought and we’re glad it’s over,” said Jean-Jacques Cabou, a Perkins Coie partner serving as court-appointed defense counsel in the case. “Mr Turi didn’t break the law….We’re very glad the charges are being dismissed.”
Under the deal, Turi admits no guilt in the transactions he participated in, but he agreed to refrain from U.S.-regulated arms dealing for four years. A $200,000 civil penalty will be waived if Turi abides by the agreement.” (Read more: Politico, 10/05/2016)
The chairs of several House and Senate committees write a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, with questions about the limitations the Justice Department placed on the investigation of Clinton’s private server. The signatories of this letter are: House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz (R), Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R), House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte (R), and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes (R).
According to the letter, recently released documents suggest the department, “agreed to substantial and inappropriate limitations on the scope of [the FBI’s Clinton email] investigation.” The restrictions were discovered in the course of the committees’ review of the immunity agreements for former Clinton staffers Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson.
Here are some key excerpts from the letter:
“We write to express our concerns about the process by which Congress was allowed to view the [Beth] Wilkinson letters, that the letters inappropriately restrict the scope of the FBI’s investigation, and that the FBI inexplicably agreed to destroy the laptops knowing that the contents were the subject of Congressional subpoenas and preservation letters.” (Wilkinson is the lawyer to both Mills and Samuelson.)
“These limitations would necessarily have excluded, for example, any emails from Cheryl Mills to [Platte River Networks employee] Paul Combetta in late 2014 or early 2015 directing the destruction or concealment of federal records. Similarly, these limitations would have excluded any email sent or received by Secretary Clinton if it was not sent or received by one of the four email addresses listed, or the email address was altered.”
“Further, the Wilkinson letters memorialized the FBI’s agreement to destroy the laptops. This is simply astonishing given the likelihood that evidence on the laptops would be of interest to congressional investigators.”
“The Wilkinson letters raise serious questions about why [the Justice Department] would consent to such substantial limitations on the scope of its investigation, and how Director Comey’s statements on the scope of the investigation comport with the reality of what the FBI was permitted to investigate.”
In closing, so that the committee chairs can better understand the DOJ’s basis for agreeing to these restrictions, the letter includes eleven questions for Loretta Lynch, and answers must be submitted no later than October 19, 2016. (US Congress, 10/05/2016)
A New York Post article claims that “[v]eteran FBI agents say FBI Director James Comey has permanently damaged the bureau’s reputation for uncompromising investigations with his ‘cowardly’ whitewash of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information using an unauthorized private email server.”
Dennis Hughes, a retired head of the FBI’s computer investigations unit, is critical that the FBI agreed to certain ground rules in some key interviews. For instance, certain topics were deemed off limits when Cheryl Mills was interviewed. Hughes says, “In my 25 years with the bureau, I never had any ground rules in my interviews.” He also comments about the investigation in general, “The FBI has politicized itself, and its reputation will suffer for a long time. I hold Director Comey responsible.”
Retired FBI agent Michael Biasello says, “Comey has single-handedly ruined the reputation of the organization.” He also says the special treatment given Clinton and her aides was “unprecedented, which is another way of saying this outcome was by design.” He calls Comey’s decision not to recommend any indictment “cowardly.”
Biasello further comments, “Each month for 27 years, I received oral and computer admonishments concerning the proper protocol for handling top secret and other classified material, and was informed of the harsh penalties, to include prosecution and incarceration,” for mishandling such material. “Had myself or my colleagues engaged in behavior of the magnitude of Hillary Clinton, as described by Comey, we would be serving time in Leavenworth.”
I.C. Smith (Credit: public domain)
I. C. Smith worked at FBI headquarters as a section head in the National Security Division, then was head of the FBI office in Little Rock, Arkansas. He says, “FBI agents upset with Comey’s decision have every reason to feel that way. Clearly, there was a different standard applied to Clinton.”
He adds, “I have no doubt resourceful prosecutors and FBI agents could have come up with some charge that she would have been subject to prosecution. What she did is absolutely abhorrent for anyone who has access to classified information.” He suggests that Congress should subpoena agents to testify about the directions given by Comey and their supervisors. “It would be interesting to see what the results would be if those involved with the investigation were questioned under oath.”
The 25 or so agents who worked on the case cannot make any public comments, even anonymously, because they were forced to sign nondisclosure agreements and take lie detector tests. But other active agents are critical. For instance, an unnamed FBI agent still working in the Washington field office says, “The director is giving the bureau a bad rap with all the gaps in the investigation. There’s a perception that the FBI has been politicized and let down the country.” (The New York Post, 10/6/2016)
“A failed state, a terrorist haven, four dead Americans – this is the Hillary Clinton record in Libya we know about.
But new evidence — and a review of the public record — reveals that Hillary Clinton’s actions in Libya were not just disastrous policy, but a violation of U.S. anti-terrorism law.
A recent report to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British House of Commons concluded that Western intervention in Libya was based on “inaccurate intelligence” and “erroneous assumptions.” Advocates failed to recognize that “the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element,” and the failure to plan for a post-Qaddafi Libya led to the “growth of ISIL” in North Africa.
However, “inaccurate intelligence” doesn’t fully describe the whole story. A closer examination of the run-up to the Libya debacle on September 11, 2012, leads to the irrefutable conclusion that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knowingly armed radical Islamist terrorists in Libya.
False pretenses
The American public was told that the intervention in Libya was necessary to prevent a humanitarian crisis. But just as Hillary Clinton would describe the attack on our Benghazi diplomats as a spontaneous protest over a video, the military intervention that led inexorably to the debacle in Benghazi was sold on false pretenses: to prevent an imminent massacre of civilians engaged in a pro-democracy uprising.
Clinton with Libyan rebels upon her departure from Tripoli in Libya on October 18, 2011. (Credit: Reuters)
Hillary Clinton described the 2011 Arab Spring rebellion in eastern Libya as a spontaneous pro-democracy uprising, but the Libyan connection to radical Islamic extremist groups was well known long before 2011.
The region where the rebellion began was a fervid recruiting ground for jihadis who killed American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The leaders of the “civilian uprising” that Hillary Clinton supported were members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who had pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda. They refused to take orders from non-Islamist commanders and assassinated the then leader of the rebel army, Abdel Fattah Younes.
The LIFG had been jailed under Qaddafi until hundreds of their members were released through a de-radicalization program. That program was spearheaded by an exiled Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Libyan cleric based in Qatar named Ali al-Sallabi. The jihadis pledged they would never use violence against Gaddafi again.
But nearly as soon as the LIFG was released they took up arms against the Qaddafi regime.
Libyan doctors told United Nations investigators that, of the more than 200 corpses in Tripoli’s morgues following fighting in late February 2011, only two were female. This indicates Qaddafi’s forces targeted male combatants and did not indiscriminately attack civilians. Nor had Qaddafi forces attacked civilians after retaking towns from the rebels in early February 2011.
While Muammar Qaddafi had a 40-year record of appalling human rights violations, his abuses did not include large-scale attacks on Libyan civilians. We restored full diplomatic relations with Qaddafi in 2007 and he was a key partner in counter-terrorism efforts.
LIFG and affiliated jihadis received at least 18 shipments of arms from Qatar with the blessing of the U.S., the Wall Street Journalreports. The arms shipments were funneled through none other than Ali al-Sallabi, the Qatar cleric who brokered their release from prison.
The Islamists were able to pay for the weapons because Clinton had convinced Obama to grant full diplomatic recognition to the rebels, against the advice of State Department lawyers and the Secretary of Defense.
As the Washington Postreported, this move “allowed the Libyans access to billions of dollars from Qaddafi’s frozen accounts.”
These arms shipments are significant for several reasons. It led to the indictment of American arms dealer Marc Turi who was charged with selling weapons to Islamist militants in Libya through Qatar. The charges were dropped this week after Turi threatened to reveal emails showing Clinton had approved the sales.
Here’s where it gets very sticky for Secretary Clinton. The rebel leaders were on the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list. It is a direct violation of the law to provide material support for terrorist organizations under 18 U.S. Code 2339A & 2339B. Penalties for providing or attempting to provide material support to terrorism include imprisonment from 15 years to life.
Nor is the Qatar connection insignificant. Qatar has donated anywhere from $1 to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, and emails reveal members of the Qatari royal family were privileged with back channel meetings with Secretary Clinton at the State Department. While whipping up support for the Libya military campaign, Clinton told Arab leaders, “it’s important to me personally,” the Washington Postreported.
Hillary Clinton’s prosecution of foreign policy in Libya crossed several lines: she showed extremely bad judgment by ignoring military and intelligence officials, she let personal interests conflict with U.S. foreign policy, and, most importantly, she may have broken the law — again.
Any one of these transgressions should disqualify her from holding any kind of leadership role in our government, let alone president of the United States. The last one qualifies Hillary Clinton for government housing, though not in the White House.” (Fox News, 10/06/2021)(Archive)
(Timeline editor’s note: General Flynn’s OpEd was published just a month before the 2016 election and perfectly describes the war between white hats in the military and the corrupt political establishment. It is no surprise Obama asked Trump not to hire General Flynn.)
WikiLeaks publishes 2,060 emails it claims belong to John Podesta. Podesta is chair of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, as well as being chair of the left-wing think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), and was once chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, as well as a top advisor to President Obama. WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange says the emails focus on Podesta’s “communications relating to nuclear energy, and media handling over donations to the Clinton Foundation from mining and nuclear interests.” (WikiLeaks, 10/7/2016) (The Hill, 10/7/2016)
Tony Carrk (Credit: CSpan)
However, one email, sent by Clinton’s campaign research director Tony Carrk to Podesta and other Clinton aides on January 25, 2016, contains excerpts from dozens of Clinton’s private speeches, and draws most of the media attention. (Politico, 10/7/2016)
WikiLeaks labels the release as “Part I of the Podesta emails.” The emails date from 2007 to late March 2016. The next day, a WikiLeaks Tweet claims, “We have published 1% of the #PodestaEmails so far. Additional publications will proceed throughout the election period.” (WikiLeaks, 10/8/2016) (WikiLeaks, 10/7/2016) Another Tweet claims therre are “well over 50,000” Podesta emails to be released. (WikiLeaks, 10/7/2016)
WikiLeaks refuses to say where it got its material from, which is its usual policy. However, earlier in the day, the US intelligence community formally accused the Russian government of being behind the hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails, which were publicly posted by WikiLeaks as well.
Clinton’s campaign doesn’t confirm the authenticity of the emails, but doesn’t explicitly deny it either. However, Podesta comments that he is “not happy about being hacked by the Russians,” which indicates the emails are his. (Politico, 10/7/2016) (Politico, 10/7/2016)
WikiLeaks soon begins posting more of Podesta’s emails on a daily basis.
President Barack Obama speaks alongside Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson (R) following the Presidential Daily Briefing in the Oval Office on October 7, 2016. (Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
“President Barack Obama approved a statement by the U.S. intelligence community in October 2016 accusing Russia of stealing emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), despite the U.S. government not having obtained the DNC server images crucial to ascertaining whether Moscow was involved in the theft.
FBI emails recently made public during the trial against now-acquitted DNC attorney Michael Sussmann show the bureau was still in the process of requesting images of the DNC servers on Oct. 13, 2016. The server images, which are equivalent to a virtual copy of the alleged crime scene, were taken by private cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
On Oct. 7, six days before CrowdStrike agreed to mail the server images to the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a statement accusing Russia of hacking U.S. political organizations and disseminating emails allegedly stolen through the hack. The statement was approved and encouraged by Obama, according to then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson.
“The president approved the statement. I know he wanted us to make the statement. So that was very definitely a statement by the United States government, not just Jim Clapper and me,” Johnson told the House Intelligence Committee in June 2017, referring to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 6/07/2022)(Archive)
James Clapper (Credit: Mark Wilson / Getty Images)
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper releases a statement in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security claiming that leaked emails that have appeared on a variety of websites “are intended to interfere with the US election process. … We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
The New York Times comments that the statement does “not name President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but that appear[s] to be the intention.”
Many thousands of emails and other documents have been posted in recent months on the WikiLeaks website, but WikiLeaks won’t say where their leaks come from. Two newly created websites attributed to DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 have also posted leaks. Both groups claim to have no ties to the Russian government, but the US government claims otherwise.
The statement adds that US intelligence agencies are less certain who is responsible for “scanning and probing” online voter registration lists in various US states in recent months. Those “in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company,” but the statement doesn’t assert that the Russian government is responsible.
Kerry (left) and Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov meet in Geneva to discuss the Syrian crisis on September 9, 2016. (Credit: Agence France Presse)
The Times notes that the “announcement [comes] only hours after Secretary of State John Kerry called for the Russian and Syrian governments to face a formal war-crimes investigation over attacks on civilians in Aleppo and other parts of Syria. Taken together, the developments mark a sharp escalation of Washington’s many confrontations with [Russia] this year.”
US officials had debated for months whether or not to formally accuse Russia, and if so, when. An unnamed “senior administration official” says that with only about a month to go before the November presidential election, President Obama was “under pressure to act now,” in part because the closer the declaration would be to election day, the more political it would seem.
It is unclear what action the US will take in an attempt to punish Russia, if any. A range of options are being considered, including economic sanctions and covert cyber attacks against Russian targets. (The New York Times, 10/7/2016)
Politico calls Malcolm Nance a “former US intelligence analyst who has spoken frequently in defense of the Democratic nominee” Hillary Clinton. Within hours of WikiLeaks posting the first 2,000 hacked emails from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, Nance writes in a tweet: “Warning: #PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally.” (Twitter,10/7/2016)
However, no such evidence of any forgeries emerges. Five days later, on October 12, 2016, Nance reverses his claim of “obvious forgeries,” saying, “We have no way of knowing whether [the WikiLeaks emails are] real or not unless Hillary Clinton goes through everything they’ve said and comes out and says it cross-correlates and this is true.”
Politico also notes that cybersecurity experts have examined the Podesta emails released so far, and have found no evidence any of them were faked. (Politico, 10/12/2016)
Just two days after Wikileaks releases their first batch of hacked emails from Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta, there is a presidential debate in St. Louis, Missouri, and it includes a contentious exchange between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server while she is secretary of state.
Clinton and Trump spar at a presidential debate in St. Louis, Missouri on October 9, 2016. (Credit: John Locher / The Associated Press)
He says, “I think the one that you should really be apologizing for and the thing that you should be apologizing for are the 33,000 emails that you deleted, and that you acid washed, and then the two boxes of emails and other things last week that were taken from an office and are now missing. And I’ll tell you what. I didn’t think I’d say this, but I’m going to say it, and I hate to say it. But if I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there has never been so many lies, so much deception. There has never been anything like it, and we’re going to have a special prosecutor.”
He continues, “When I speak, I go out and speak, the people of this country are furious. In my opinion, the people that have been long-term workers at the FBI are furious. There has never been anything like this, where emails… and you get a subpoena, you get a subpoena, and after getting the subpoena, you delete 33,000 emails, and then you acid wash them or bleach them, as you would say, very expensive process. So we’re going to get a special prosecutor, and we’re going to look into it, because you know what? People have been… their lives have been destroyed for doing one-fifth of what you’ve done. And it’s a disgrace. And honestly, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Clinton responds, “Everything he just said is absolutely false, but I’m not surprised.”
Trump asks, “Oh really?”
Clinton gives a long response which ends with the comment, “It’s good that somebody with the temperament of Donald Trump is not running this country.”
Trump immediately shoots back: “Because you’d be in jail.”
Anderson Cooper (left) and Martha Raddatz are the presidential debate moderators at Washington University in St. Louis, on October 9, 2016. (Credit: Washington University)
Martha Raddatz follows up with a question for Clinton, “And Secretary Clinton, I do want to follow-up on e-mails. You’ve said your handling of your e-mails was a mistake, you’ve disagreed with the FBI Director James Comey calling your handling of classified information “extremely careless”. The FBI said there were 110 classified e-mails which were exchanged, eight of which were top secret and it was possible hostile actors did gain access to those e-mails. You don’t call that extremely careless?”
Clinton responds,… “I take classified materials very seriously and always have. When I was on the Senate Armed Services Committee, I was privy to a lot of classified material. Obviously, as secretary of state I had some of the most important secrets that we possess, such as going after Bin Laden. So, I am very committed to taking classified information seriously and as I said, there is no evidence that any classified information ended up in the wrong hands.”
Trump answers, again with the suggestion that Hillary would be in jail if she were anyone else, … “If you did that in the private sector, you’d be put in jail, let alone after getting a subpoena from the United States Congress.” (The Hill, 10/9/2016) (The New York Times, 10/9/2016)
Trump’s comments draw many reactions. His vice presidential candidate Mike Pence approves. However, many others, including Republicans, react negatively. That includes 23 former Republican Justicee Department officials, who write a letter condemning the comments.
Donald Trump creates a firestorm of responses after the second general election presidential debate in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 9, 2016, due to his threat to Clinton that “If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation,” and that she should “be in jail.”Trump’s remarks draw widespread and bipartisan condemnation for being un-American, as well as praise coming from some supporters.
Praise for Trump’s remarks is rare, except perhaps among his ordinary supporters:
Frank Luntz’s focus group at the presidential debate in St. Louis, Missouri. (Credit: Fox News)
Republican pollster Frank Luntz hosts a group of 30 undecided voters at the debate. According to the results of the poll, Trump’s highest moment during the first half of the debate is when he vows to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton if he is elected president, as well as telling her she should be “ashamed of herself” for misleading the American public on the email issue. By the end of the debate, 21 participants tell Luntz that Trump’s performance had a positive impact on their voting choice going forward, while nine are impressed by Clinton’s performance. (The Washington Examiner, 10/09/2016)
Kellyanne Conway talks with reporters following the presidential debate on October 9, 2016, in St Louis, Missouri.
Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway says, “That was a quip.” And regarding Trump’s threat to appoint a special prosecutor, Conway says only that he was “channeling the frustration” of voters.
Republican vice presidential nominee and Indiana Governor Mike Pence says this comment by his running mate Trump “was one of the better moments of the debate.” (Huffington Post, 10/10/2016)
The overwhelming majority of responses by legal experts and other politicians are critical of Trump. For instance:
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who served under President Obama, writes on Twitter, “In the USA we do not threaten to jail political opponents. [Donald Trump] said he would. He is promising to abuse the power of the office.”
Jose Borrayo – Acting Section Chief, Office of Special Measures, U.S. Department of the Treasury, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
“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.
“Former Vice President Joe Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has locked into a specific story about the controversy in Ukraine.
(…) In a Facebook post from June 24, 2017, that Tablet has seen in screenshots, Jacoby claimed that her husband deserves the lion’s share of credit for Russiagate. (She has not replied to repeated requests for comment.) “It’s come to my attention that some people still don’t realize what Glenn’s role was in exposing Putin’s control of Donald Trump,” Jacoby wrote. “Let’s be clear. Glenn conducted the investigation. Glenn hired Chris Steele. Chris Steele worked for Glenn.”
“FBI official Peter Strzok testified Thursday that he can’t recall using his work computer to soften the wording of a statement exonerating Hillary Clinton of mishandling classified information.
The Guardian newspaper, the Financial Times and US newspapers claim the dossier has been circulating “for months and acquired a kind of legendary status among journalists, lawmakers, and intelligence officials who have seen them”, 
“A former FBI chief told the New York Post that such a requirement is “very, very unusual.”
QUESTION: Thanks, Jake. James Reinl here from Al Jazeera. A number of Clinton campaign officials have suggested there’s a link between the email leaking and Russian state hackers. In your opinion, how strong is the evidence linking the Russian state to this? And why do you think the Kremlin would prefer a President Trump to a President Clinton?
On July 26, 2016, President Obama signed 
By Andrew C. McCarthy
Stefan Halper checks off every single box: √Currently overseas. √Current/Former CIA operative. √Current/Former source for FBI. √Anti-Trump motive. √Formerly put together 
(…) Among the most significant of the newly declassified documents is a 
“We received 
