2015 - VP Joe Biden meets with Hunter, Devon Archer, and prospective client at VP mansion

Marc Holtzman, former CEO, JSC Kazkommertsbank (Credit: public domain)

Hunter Biden hosted a breakfast meeting between his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, his then-business partner Devon Archer, a prospective international business client — in the vice president’s mansion in Washington, D.C., in 2015, according to a report.

Just the News reported Thursday the prospective business client was international banker Marc Holtzman, who Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were courting for business in Kazakhstan. Holtzman in turn was advocating for former Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov — who is currently imprisoned for treason — to become the next United Nations Secretary General, according to the report.

The meeting was recently disclosed by Archer in congressional testimony, the report said.

Archer’s testimony contradicts President Joe Biden, who has repeatedly denied ever speaking to his son about his business dealings.

Although it is not the first time the then-vice president had met with his son and his son’s business partners, this meeting occurred in the then-vice president’s mansion at the Naval Observatory, and could be of interest to House investigators as they begin their impeachment inquiry that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced on Tuesday.

A view of the security around the Vice President’s residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, Jan. 17, 2021. (Credit: Susan Walsh/AP)

The meeting was reportedly not registered in official entry logs released by the Obama administration.

According to a transcript of Archer’s testimony, Hunter Biden and Archer had hoped that Holtzman, who was then the top official at Kazakhstan’s largest bank, could help deliver an energy deal for their Burisma client in Ukraine with Kazakhstan, which he and Hunter Biden called the “Burisma Eurasia” deal.

“Joe Biden was in a position to influence both,” Just the News reported. (Read more: 9/14/2023)  (Archive)

(Timeline editor’s note: We have given this timeline entry an estimated date in 2015.)

August 11, 2015 - Associated Press “journalist” Eric Tucker coordinates media cover-up with Hillary’s team

Associated Press “journalist” Eric Tucker coordinated a media hoax with Hillary Clinton’s longtime lawyer, David E. Kendall.

Hillary kept her emails on two thumb drives – one with the missing 33,000 emails was never recovered. Another one was turned into the FBI. Eric Tucker was supposed to report on this story, but rather than do aggressive journalism, he was willing to let a Clinton surrogate “steer us away” from the story.

In the email Tucker writes:

Hi David,

We have been told, and we are preparing to report, that the FBI has taken possession of the thumb drive that was once in your possession. This is what we have been informed, and we wanted to see whether there was any sort of comment that could be provided. If you wanted to steer us away and say that we are misinformed, then I would gladly accept that as well. But we have solid reason to believe this. We’d welcome any comment you can offer. Thanks very much.

This latest email confirms what we’ve long known. There is no “free press” in America. The hoaxing media is owned by the DNC and Clinton machine. (Danger and Play, August 11, 2015)  (Archive)

Aug. 31, 2015 - The MI6 spy found dead in a locked duffel bag, had illegally hacked secret data on Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton (l) and Gareth Williams (Credit: public domain)

(…) Gareth Williams, 31, dug out the guestlist for an event the former American president was going to as a favour for a pal.

The codebreaker — who had breached his security clearance — handed the list to the friend, who was also to be a guest.

MI6 bosses raged over the data breach amid growing tensions with US security services over Mr Williams’s transatlantic work.

Today, just over five years since his body was found inside a padlocked bag, his death remains one of Britain’s most mysterious unsolved cases.

The Sun on Sunday can reveal that voicemail messages Mr Williams left for family and pals were deleted in the days after his death. And a rival agent may also have broken into the flat to destroy or remove evidence.

The inquest was barred from discussing Mr Williams’s work in public. But sources say he was helping on the joint monitoring network Echelon, which uses sophisticated programs to eavesdrop on terrorists and criminal gangs, particularly those in Russia.

Echelon is used by Britain, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

A source said: “The Clinton diary hack came at a time when Williams’s work with America was of the most sensitive nature.

“It was a diplomatic nightmare for Sir John Sawers, the new director of MI6 at the time.”

Insiders claim Mr Williams, who had been given a second passport with a fresh identity, was also getting fed up with living a secret life. He is said to have loathed his spy training after having his wrist broken during one hardcore session.

One insider said: “Williams’s state of mind in the months before his death was worrying those closest to him.

“He found the training so stressful and his mood blackened even talking about it.

“Typically he’d be asked to learn a new identity then report to a country hotel to meet an interrogation team. There he would be grilled about his new ID for 48 hours without sleep.

“His wrist was broken once after he was handcuffed to a metal bar inside a van that was driven around the country for several hours while he faced a barrage of questions.”

His sister Ceri Subbe also told the inquest he did not enjoy the “flash car competition and post-work drinking culture” of MI6.

He had applied to return to GCHQ, in Cheltenham, but bosses were slow in approving this.

Mr Williams, a keen cyclist originally from Anglesey, North Wales, died shortly after returning from a hacking conference in America.

Gareth Williams was found dead in a duffel bag. (Credit: London Media Press)

He had been to see a drag queen show by himself two days before he was last seen alive, on August 15, 2010.

Eight days later his naked body was found folded into the 32in by 19in bag placed in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, central London.

His mobile phone and sim cards were laid out on a table. The last computer evidence of him being alive showed him looking at a cycling website.

Detectives are still baffled as to how the maths genius and expert cryptographer died.

(…) The nature of Mr Williams’s work remains a secret, but sources claim he dealt with equipment that tracked the flow of cash from Russia to Europe. The technology let MI6 follow money trails from accounts in Russia to criminal gangs.

(…) Coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox, who heard the 2012 inquest into his death, criticised MI6 for failing to report Mr Williams missing for a week. The delay meant a Home Office pathologist was unable to find a cause of death.

Dr Wilcox concluded that Mr Williams’s death was “unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated”. (Read more: The Sun, 8/31/2015 (no longer exists) (Archive)

September 25, 2015 - Professor John J. Mearsheimer: The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis

UnCommon Core: The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science and Co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, assesses the causes of the present Ukraine crisis, the best way to end it, and its consequences for all of the main actors. A key assumption is that in order to come up with the optimum plan for ending the crisis, it is essential to know what caused the crisis. Regarding the all-important question of causes, the key issue is whether Russia or the West bears primary responsibility.

November 2, 2015 - Emails: Burisma adviser tells Hunter Biden his ‘ultimate purpose’ is to ‘close down’ investigations

Mykola Zlochevsky, founder of Burisma Holdings, hired U.S. consultants to help boost his company’s image. (Credit: Pavlo Gonchar/Zuma Press)

“An adviser to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma suggested in an email in 2015 that Hunter Biden was expected to provide “deliverables” for the company, including the “ultimate purpose” of stopping “cases/pursuits into the company’s founder.

The email, contained in a batch published by Ken LaCorte at the Media Action Network, is reportedly from the same laptop that has been the source for a recent series of articles in the New York Post purportedly about Hunter Biden’s business dealings. The authenticity of the emails has not been verified.

The batch includes an email in November 2015 from Burisma adviser Vadim Pozharskyi to Hunter Biden’s business partners (on which Hunter Biden was cc’ed), outlining a set of “deliverables.”

The emails make clear that Biden and his partners were expected to arrange meetings with U.S. and Ukrainian officials with the goal of “improving Nikolay’s case and his situation in Ukraine.”

“Nikolay” appears to refer to Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky, according to the Post.

Pozharskyi wrote that the “list of deliverables” included “the ultimate purpose” of stopping “cases/pursuits against Nikolay”:

Timeline editor’s note: When looking for a pic of Eric D. Schwerin who was cc’d in the letter, I found this pic and an interesting Twitter thread with more information about him:

Other emails in the trove show a keen awareness of Hunter Biden’s relationship to his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, who was leading U.S. diplomacy with regard to Ukraine.” (Read more: Breitbart, 10/16/2020)  (Archive)

November 2, 2015 - Burisma exec discusses with Hunter Biden the expectations of ‘high-ranking US officials in Ukraine

Hunter Biden’s associate in his business with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings discussed expectations of “high-ranking US officials in Ukraine” one month before then-Vice President Joe Biden visited Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to demand the firing of a prosecutor investigating the company.

Joe Biden, who bragged in 2018 about the firing of prosecutor Viktor Shokin by Poroshenko, was on an official visit to Ukraine in 2015. During the visit, he met with Poroshenko in Kiev about Ukraine’s corruption. But four months after the meeting, Poroshenko fired Shokin, a prosecutor investigating Burisma, which paid Hunter Biden $83,000 a month to sit on its board.

Vadym Pozharski (l) and Hunter Biden (Credit: public domain)

On November 2, 2015, one month before Joe Biden visited Ukraine, Hunter Biden received an email from Vadym Pozharskyi, a Burisma executive, about his “ultimate purpose” of working with Hunter Biden and his associates, Eric Schwerin and Devon Archer, a fellow Burisma board member.

Pozharskyi wrote the email with the subject line: “Re: Revised Burisma Proposal, Contract and Invoice.” The email outlines the scope of work he expected from Hunter Biden and his associates regarding a new project. It detailed the “ultimate purpose” of an agreement with Blue Star Strategies to shut down “any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine,” referring to Mykola Zlochevsky, who also went by Nikolay.

Blue Star Strategies is a Washington, DC, PR firm that worked for Burisma. Hunter Biden connected the firm to Burisma through Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s wife, according to emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“Dear colleagues, Hope you are well. Thank you for the docs provided. I have analyzed them most carefully and came up with a few of the following observations…” Pozharskyi wrote to Hunter and his associates:

My only concern is for us to be on the same page re our final goals. With this in mind, I would like us to formulate a list of deliverables, including, but not limited to: a concrete course of actions, incl. meetings/communications resulting in high-ranking US officials in Ukraine (US Ambassador) and in US publicly or in private communication/comment expressing their ‘positive opinion’ and support of Nikolay/Burisma to the highest level of decision makers here in Ukraine: President of Ukraine, president Chief of staff, Prosecutor General, etc.

The scope of work should also include organization of a visit of a number of widely recognized and influential current and/or former US policy-makers to Ukraine in November aiming to conduct meetings with and bring positive signal/message and support on Nikolay’s issue to the Ukrainian top officials above with the ultimate purpose to close down for any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine.

Schwerin forwarded Pozharskyi’s message to Hunter Biden and Archer the same day and suggested how

Hunter Biden could placate Pozharskyi’s objections to the pitch as Hunter Biden’s initial pitch to Pozharskyi lacked specific names of officials who would visit the Ukrainian president:

I would tell Vadym that this is definitely done deliberately to be on the safe and cautious side and that Sally and company understand the scope and deliverables. And that we will be having regular (daily, weekly, monthly) opportunities be in through conference calls or memos to be continually refining and updating the scope.

Hunter Biden replied to Pozharskyi’s email, assuring him he could deliver. “You should go ahead and sign,” he wrote on Nov. 5, 2015. “Looking forward to getting started on this,” Hunter Biden added.

One month later, Joe Biden arrived in Ukraine to speak with the president of Ukraine. Soon afterward in March 2016, the president of Ukraine fired the prosecutor who was looking into Burisma. (Read more: Breitbart, 7/16/2023)  (Archive)

December 19, 2015 - A Wikileaks email reveals a Dominion advisor meets with John Podesta offering ‘anything’ that would help defeat Trump

Kamran Bajwa (Credit: Kirkland & Ellis)

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

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

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

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

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

(Wikileaks 12/19/2015)

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

February 17, 2016 - Hunter Biden and partners try to help CCP-linked company purchase Westinghouse and their nuclear reactor technology

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 News reported Hunter Biden helped sell to a Chinese firm tied to the People’s Liberation Army.

That transaction was deemed so sensitive – because Heninges produced windshield technology for U.S. fighter jets – it had to get special approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States during the Obama-Biden years.

(…) 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.

You can read the email below:

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)

February 26, 2016 - Podesta emails reveal the Clinton campaign discussing a ‘Trump swift boat project’

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.

Wikileaks – Podesta Emails

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.

The term “swift-boating” has since become synonymous with nasty campaign tactics. (Read more: The New York Post, 10/24/2016) h/t x22report.com

March 2, 2016 - Devon Archer meets with SoS John Kerry shortly after Ukraine prosecutor Shokin resigns

Devon Archer and John Kerry (Credit: Fox News)

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

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

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) August 27, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— James Lynch (@jameslynch32) August 4, 2023

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

From Jonathan Turley’s Fox News link above:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 28, 2016 - National Archives refuses to release Hillary Clinton's draft indictments in response to a Judicial Watch FOIA request

“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)

April-September 2016: Unpacking the other Clinton-linked Russia dossier - A closer look at the Shearer memos/dossier

Cody Shearer (Credit: public domain)

“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. 8 Washington 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 Guardian reported 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, 2018 Journal 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 February Journal 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)

May 4, 2016 - The FBI, CIA and Russia know what the Clinton campaign is doing with its Trump-Russia collusion plan

(Credit: Nick Diggory/Getty Images)

“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)

June 15, 2016 - Guccifer2.0 claims are debunked and discredited - "Russia-tainted metadata" and Warren Flood

“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:

The other document, “2.doc” (mirror) was not mentioned so much, but it too had interesting metadata:

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)

July 30, 2016 - Ohr meets with Steele, and within hours meets with McCabe and Page for the purpose of "passing on Steele's info to them"

“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.

(Read more: Undercover Huber, 3/10/2019)

July 31, 2016 - FBI Strzok's electronic communication memo (EC) confirms the Trump campaign was investigated without justification

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)

July 31, 2016 - August 2019: The FBI agent who interviews Gen. Flynn, Joseph Pientka, plays a critical role in Trump campaign investigation

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)

August 4, 2016 - Judge Napolitano: "Obama used the British GCHQ to spy on the Trump Team"

Greg Rubini@GregRubini – May 8, 2020

— Greg Rubini (@GregRubini) May 9, 2020

— Greg Rubini (@GregRubini) May 9, 2020

— Greg Rubini (@GregRubini) May 9, 2020

Greg Rubini@GregRubini

6. want to hear directly from Judge Napolitano?
there you go:
March 14, 2017 – 10 days after the Trump tweet:
. pic.twitter.com/7DjMNARzsu

— Greg Rubini (@GregRubini) May 9, 2020

August 4, 2016 - A few operational details of the CIA/NSA/FBI/White House counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign

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)

(…) “In the first week of August — directly after the creation of Crossfire Hurricane — Director Brennan contacted Avril Haines via telephone, as he had received intelligence in relation to President Vladimir Putin.

An envelope which contained “eyes only” instructions was sent by courier from the Central Intelligence Agency to the White House. The contents of the envelope were shown to four people: President Barack Obama, and three of his senior aides, most likely Denis McDonough, Susan Rice and Avril Haines.

Within the envelope was a valuable source that Director Brennan had used to ascertain certain information, a source which he intentionally kept away from the Presidential Daily Brief. This was because, by 2013, the Presidential Daily Brief was being received by over 30 recipients.

“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)

August 10, 2016 - FBI's Peter Strozk, Lisa Page, Jonathan Moffa and others, discuss Seth Rich in mostly redacted emails

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)

(Credit: Lawflog.com)

Persistent American lawyer Ty Clevenger writes:

(…) “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)