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On Wednesday, January 13, 2021, investigative reporter John Solomon of Just The News appeared on Actionable Intelligence to tell host Eric Greitens that the January 6 siege on the Capitol was ‘pre-planned’:
It appears that President Trump did not have access to intelligence stating that the siege would take place, according to a Just The News article, also published last Wednesday.
‘Rush to judgement? Three crucial questions remain unanswered about Capitol siege’ states that the FBI and New York Police Department knew, but the White House did not (emphases mine below):
A senior intelligence official told Just the News he has found no evidence that the president, the White House or the National Security Council was alerted in formal intelligence briefings to the pre-warnings or suspicions of violence the FBI and NYPD have admitted they had.
Yet, last Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi and the House of Representatives impeached President Trump for a second time — unprecedented in US history — on the basis that he fomented the violence at the Capitol. That was after a six-hour debate with no due process for the US president.
Mitch McConnell says that he will not reconvene the Senate before the Inauguration on January 20 because of time constraints. The Senate would also have to vote whether to impeach or acquit Trump, but only after a trial, which, as we know from Trump’s first impeachment, takes several days. However, can the Senate impeach Trump once he becomes a private citizen again? Or is there something we don’t know about January 20?
It is also vital to know that Trump was still giving his speech to rallygoers at The Ellipse, next to the White House, when the siege of the Capitol was taking place:
… the official timeline of events constructed by the New York Times through videos shows protesters began breaching the perimeter of the Capitol a full 20 minutes before Trump finished his speech.
This new evidence raises the first compelling question that remains unanswered. How could Trump incite an attack that had already been pre-planned and was in motion before his speech ended?
Indeed.
Information began to emerge the weekend after the January 6 siege:
Since the weekend, major bombshell revelations already have substantially revised the initial story of a spontaneous mob overrunning an unsuspecting Capitol police force.
The FBI admitted Tuesday it received information ahead of the Jan. 6 tragedy suggesting some participants were planning a “war” on the Capitol, including killing officers and distributing maps of the complex. It alerted Washington D.C. law enforcement through the joint terrorism task force alert system. It also “disrupted” the travel plans of some of the suspected trouble-makers.
“We developed some intelligence that a number of individuals were planning to travel to the D.C. area with intentions to cause violence,” Assistant Director Steven M. D’Antuono said. “We immediately shared that information, and action was taken.”
The New York Police Department is reported to have given the Capitol Police similar intelligence warnings of impending violence.
The chief federal prosecutor in Washington declared Tuesday he is pursuing conspiracy charges, signaling the attacks on the Capitol involved multiple acts and multiple conspirators working in concert with each other. The prosecutor talked about the planting of carefully constructed IEDs as one such act. In other words, there was pre-planning for some elements of last Wednesday’s chaos.
In the video above, Solomon wonders what the Sergeants at Arms knew. One reports to Nancy Pelosi in the House and the other to Mitch McConnell in the Senate.
Solomon says that the Sergeants at Arms are the top security for both Houses of Congress. The Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader have very close working relationships with them. Did they receive this intelligence? We do not know at this point, but both resigned or were reassigned. The Capitol Police Chief, Steve Sund, also resigned. He said that neither Sergeant at Arms was willing to help Sund with reinforcements. The National Guard did not arrive until 5 p.m. that day.
A Gateway Pundit article summarising the contents of the video states that Solomon and his team have been stymied in their efforts for the release of information under FOIA:
Investigative reporter John Solomon dropped a bombshell on Wednesday night and said the DC police rejected his FOIA request for records pertaining to their investigation of the siege of the U.S. Capitol.
The DC police said release of the records would be ‘personally embarrassing’ and privacy invading to release the documents.
“We’re gonna fight for those documents but something tells me what’s in those documents has some very very big relevance to what happened on The Hill and the question I have is what did Nancy Pelosi know, what did Mitch McConnell know about these threats beforehand,” John Solomon told former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens. “If they didn’t know then, it’s an intelligence failure of the police. If they did know there’s something they didn’t tell us before we went into this impeachment.”
Also worth noting:
The US Attorney is bringing a conspiracy case which is further proof the siege was planned.
To say this situation is galling is the understatement of the month.
As lynnfay said in yesterday’s guest post, Trump had a lot of naysayers who never wanted him in office in the first place.
So far, this has been a deeply sad month in Trump’s life.
He’s the best president the US has had in living memory. It is a crying shame that a whole host of people have allowed or forced him, as the case may be, to end his four years in ignominy.
Last week, I wrote ‘Senate Intelligence Committee: “no direct evidence of conspiracy between Trump campaign and Russia”‘.
On Sunday, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe appeared for a half-hour on CBS’s 60 Minutes in an interview with Scott Pelley.
McCabe is currently doing a book tour to promote The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump.
On March 16, 2018, President Trump tweeted:
Two weeks earlier, Fox News reported that the Department of Justice’s Inspector General (IG), Michael Horowitz, was expected to (emphases mine):
criticize former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for approving a leak of information about the Hillary Clinton investigation to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times reported late Thursday.
According to the Times, which cited four people familiar with the investigation into the department’s handling of the Clinton probe, McCabe will be censured for disclosing the investigation’s existence to the Journal.
The Journal report in question, which was published Oct. 30, 2016, recounts a conversation in which McCabe sparred with a senior Justice Department official over an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The Journal — which cited sources including “one person close to Mr. McCabe” — said McCabe insisted that the FBI should move forward with its investigation, while the Justice Department official expressed concern about its potential effect on the presidential election.
McCabe, a frequent target of President Donald Trump’s ire, left his position as FBI deputy director in January and is scheduled to retire later this month. He had served for several months as acting director following Trump’s firing last May of FBI Director James Comey.
Spokespeople for the Justice Department, the FBI and the inspector general had no immediate comment on the report Thursday evening …
Trump verbally attacked McCabe during the campaign and again as president because McCabe’s wife, during a failed state Senate run, had accepted campaign contributions from the political action committee of then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally.
David J Harris Jr and Real Clear Politics have more detail, dating from January 2018.
On March 14, a Fox producer for DoJ news tweeted:
On March 15, the Washington Examiner reported that McCabe was ‘still holding on to his retirement’:
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is holding onto his pension just days before he is set to officially retire.
McCabe was at the Justice Department to meet with Scott Schools, the most senior career attorney in the department, as well as other officials, for a majority of the afternoon Thursday, to make a case why he should be allowed to retire and not be fired.
Schools reports to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who in turn reports to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The decision to fire McCabe before Sunday, and thus strip McCabe of his full pension and benefits, is in Sessions’ hands.
The_Donald featured a fiery thread in response:
Then, the next day:
CBS News, in reporting McCabe’s meeting the previous Friday pointed out:
If McCabe is fired, it is believed his only avenue of appeal would be to file a lawsuit to try to reclaim his pension.
Twitter exploded.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) was indignant:
So was the former CIA director, directing his ire at President Trump:
Later that day, McCabe issued a lengthy statement (click on image to see it in full, also available at CNN):
His statement elicited this response:
.@JakeBGibson McCabe, you disgraced the oath you swore. You harmed the nation by your deceit. You took 1/2 million dollars for your wife’s campaign from Hillary’s guy, McAuliffe, the #FBI said you should be FIRED. You deserve it. #Cockroach
McCabe’s lawyer also issued a statement. (Apparently, his lawyer — a former Inspector General for the DoJ — supported the current Inspector General’s report until McCabe was implicated by it.)
The DoJ disagreed with McCabe and his lawyer:
I hope that FBI Director Christopher Wray received all of McCabe’s documentation about the 2016 election.
There were also newsy snippets:
On March 17, The Hill, among other media outlets, noted that McCabe’s weekend statement seemed to contradict James Comey’s testimony from May 2017 about relaying sensitive information to the media.
News emerged that McCabe wrote memoranda of his conversations with President Trump and gave those to Robert Mueller. CBS reported that details of James Comey’s firing were included.
Fox News correspondent Adam Housely said that McCabe’s dismissal was a morale boost to FBI agents.
On March 18, TownHall posted an editorial, ‘The Coming Collusion Bloodbath’. Nearly one year on, we could be at that point:
That Comey, McCabe, and others have practiced an obvious double standard in the email case of Hillary Clinton where ample evidence caused 106 of the case agents and attorneys working on the case to believe indictment would occur, and simultaneously going to such extraordinary measures through the assistance of essentially Hillary’s campaign operation to attempt to thwart the outcome of the election is more than enough reason to go after them on a criminal basis alone.
That McCabe reportedly lied to the low key Inspector General, while attempting to send General Michael Flynn to prison for lying to the same FBI is of highest hypocrisy.
Before McCabe was fired, Reddit had censored discussions about his ‘corruption issues’. Now that he was gone, they could be discussed freely once more.
Attention then turned to the McCabe’s connections with Hillary Clinton. A New York radio host tweeted:
The following 2017 video resurfaced. It shows that McCabe had (still has?) a home in Chappaqua, New York, where the Clintons live (start at 5:00 in):
On April 13, Inspector General Horowitz issued his report:
Fox News explained:
The report, handed over to Congress on Friday and obtained by Fox News, looked at a leak to The Wall Street Journal about an FBI probe of the Clinton Foundation.
The report says that McCabe authorized the leak and then misled investigators about it, leaking in a way that did not fall under a “public interest” exception.
“[W]e concluded that McCabe’s decision to confirm the existence of the CF investigation through an anonymously sourced quote, recounting the content of a phone call with a senior department official in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of department leadership, was clearly not within the public interest exception,” the report says …
Sessions said that McCabe “made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor − including under oath − on multiple occasions.”
James Gagliano, a retired FBI supervisory special agent said that, according to the IG’s report, firing McCabe was the right thing to do. He says that whether you are a Marine or a special agent of the FBI, the same rules apply:
In May, FBI agents wanted to be subpoenaed in order to testify against Comey and McCabe:
Questions arose in Congress. The Gateway Pundit reported that Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wanted answers about the FBI’s treatment of General Flynn.
Early in June:
Allegations arose about McCabe’s involvement in the 302s (FBI reports) regarding General Flynn:
On September 6, the Washington Post reported that a grand jury had been investigating McCabe ‘for months’:
… an indication the probe into whether he misled officials exploring his role in a controversial media disclosure has intensified, two people familiar with the matter said.
The grand jury has summoned more than one witness, the people said, and the case is ongoing. The people declined to identify those who had been called to testify.
The presence of the grand jury shows prosecutors are treating the matter seriously, locking in the accounts of witnesses who might later have to testify at a trial. But such panels are sometimes used only as investigative tools, and it remains unclear if McCabe will ultimately be charged.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C., which has been handling the probe, declined to comment.
Michael Bromwich, a lawyer for McCabe, said in a statement after this report was published online that he had been confident McCabe would not be charged, absent “inappropriate pressure from high levels of the Administration.”
“Unfortunately, such pressure has continued, with the President targeting Mr. McCabe in numerous additional tweets,” Bromwich said. The lawyer also raised questions about the timing of the news report on the grand jury.
ZeroHedge had more (emphases in the original):
Specifically, McCabe was fired for lying about authorizing an F.B.I. spokesman and attorney to tell Devlin Barrett of the Wall St. Journal – just days before the 2016 election, that the FBI had not put the brakes on a separate investigation into the Clinton Foundation, at a time in which McCabe was coming under fire for his wife taking a $467,500 campaign contribution from Clinton proxy pal, Terry McAuliffe.
In order to deal with his legal woes, McCabe set up a GoFundMe “legal defense fund” which stopped accepting donations, after support for the fired bureaucrat took in over half a million dollars – roughly $100,000 more than his wife’s campaign took from McAuliffe as McCabe’s office was investigating Clinton and her infamous charities.
On September 17, Trump tweeted about the two FBI employees who were part of the group working against his presidency:
On September 18, the Gateway Pundit reported on the press release for McCabe’s upcoming book, The Threat, mentioned above. The press release quoted McCabe as saying (emphases mine):
I wrote this book because the president’s attacks on me symbolize his destructive effect on the country as a whole. He is undermining America’s safety and security, and eroding public confidence in its institutions. His attacks on the most crucial institutions of government, and on the professionals who serve within them, should make every American stand up and take notice.
On September 21 came the first mention of reports that Rod Rosenstein offered to wear or joked about ‘wearing a wire’ for a meeting with Trump:
A few weeks earlier, President Trump had intended to declassify various unredacted documents. By September 22, he had backtracked. The DoJ advised him that declassification could harm the Mueller probe. In addition, US allies warned against declassification for security reasons. Trump instructed IG Horowitz to review them instead. Had Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein any influence on Trump on this subject? Declassification would have been a huge risk for Rosenstein — and McCabe.
On September 27, the then-House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI) Chairman Devin Nunes (R-California) said that he planned to release testimony from 70 or more witnesses who were interviewed in the HSPCI’s own Trump-Russia probe. The Daily Caller reported:
Nunes said that between 70 and 80 percent of the transcripts do not contain classified information. The remaining transcripts would have to be reviewed by the office of the director of national intelligence. Nunes said that review process “would only take a matter of days.”
Nunes and other House Republicans have also led a push to get President Donald Trump to declassify and release documents related to the FBI and Justice Department’s collusion investigation.
It also transpired that McCabe and Rosenstein were feuding via the media. McCabe represented the faction that wanted to end Trump’s presidency. Rosenstein represented the people currently at the DoJ and FBI.
Rosenstein was using the Washington Post to get his story out. McCabe was using the New York Times.
One example of this was when the Rosenstein-wear-a-wire story appeared in The New York Times:
On October 9, The Hill‘s John Solomon reported that Rosenstein was desperate to downplay the story. However, released testimony from former FBI lawyer James Baker indicated that this was no joke:
Baker’s story lays bare an extraordinary conversation in which at least some senior FBI officials thought it within their purview to try to capture the president on tape and then go to the president’s own Cabinet secretaries, hoping to persuade the senior leaders of the administration to remove the president from power.
Even more extraordinary is the timing of such discussions: They occurred, according to Baker’s account, in the window around the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Could it be that the leaders of a wounded, stunned FBI were seeking retribution for their boss’s firing with a secret recording operation?
I doubt this is the power that Congress intended to be exercised when it created the FBI a century ago, or the circumstances in which the authors of the 25th Amendment imagined a president’s removal could be engineered.
This wasn’t a president who was incapacitated at the time. He was fully exercising his powers — but in a way the FBI leadership did not like.
And that makes the FBI’s involvement in the tape-record-then-dump-Trump conversations overtly political — even if Rosenstein believed the whole idea was farcical.
Also:
Keep in mind, this is the same FBI that, a few months earlier during the 2016 election, had its top counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok talking to Page — his lover and the top lawyer to McCabe — about using their official powers to “stop” Trump in the election and having an “insurance policy” against the GOP nominee. That insurance policy increasingly looks like an unverified dossier created by British intelligence operative Christopher Steele — a Trump hater himself — that was bought and paid for by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign through their mutual law firm.
“You walk away from the Baker interview with little doubt that the FBI leadership in that 2016-17 time frame saw itself as far more than a neutral investigative agency but actually as a force to stop Trump’s election before it happened and then maybe reversing it after the election was over,” said a source directly familiar with the congressional investigation.
The following day, the Washington Post published an article outlining the tension between McCabe and Rosenstein. The FBI higher-ups did not like that Rosenstein had recommended in writing that President Trump fire James Comey. DoJ officials did not like that the FBI, McCabe in particular, opened an investigation on Trump immediately after Comey’s departure. WaPo reported that the two quarrelled shortly after Robert Mueller was appointed — in front of him.
Rosenstein, incidentally, had allegedly already made his ‘wear a wire’ comment.
The subject of the meeting in question was whether Rosenstein or McCabe should recuse themselves from involvement in the Mueller probe:
Rosenstein wanted McCabe out of the Russia probe, and McCabe felt differently, arguing that it was the deputy attorney general, not the head of the FBI, who should step away from the case.
Although neither recused himself:
The McCabe-Rosenstein relationship has only worsened with time …
The Rosenstein-McCabe relationship has come under renewed scrutiny as lawmakers have demanded answers about memos written by McCabe and his then-senior counsel, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, about the discussions on May 16, 2017, in which McCabe wrote that Rosenstein suggested recording the president and discussed the 25th Amendment.
Rosenstein was due to meet that week with The House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees about the DoJ, but the meeting never happened.
On October 11, the Washington Examiner reported that the FBI was delaying publication of McCabe’s book, The Threat. It would not appear until February 2019:
McCabe was fired by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in March, less than 48 hours before his retirement day because of “allegations of misconduct” found by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General. McCabe, has disputed the IG report, and is now the subject of a grand jury inquiry.
According to the FBI’s employment agreement, all disclosure of information must be reviewed and adhere to the FBI’s “Prepublication Review Policy Guide,” made official in 2015.
Although there is more to cover on McCabe, this is a good point at which to bring us to the present day.
On Monday, February 18, 2019, President Trump pulled no punches:
Is this the first time President Trump has tweeted the letters ‘t-r-e-a-s-o-n’?
Here’s ‘treason’ again:
Trump was on fire:
We can only hope that the tables start turning soon.
Perhaps the new attorney general, Bill Barr, will set things in motion.
For weeks now, President Trump has been saying that he might have to get involved in exposing the scandals engulfing the DOJ and the FBI.
This is likely to be done by declassifying documents about the FBI and DOJ.
Reports allege that his White House legal counsel, Don McGahn, has opposed this move. Lee Smith, an investigative journalist writing for Real Clear Investigations, wrote an interesting article, ‘There’s Method in Trump’s Slackness on Opening Files’, excerpted below:
One prominent theory holds that Trump is listening to White House legal counsel Donald McGahn, who is reportedly advising caution. Trump allies are split about the wisdom of such advice. One former administration official described McGahn as “weak,” but another said McGahn’s counsel is wise.
“McGahn is worried about the fallout that declassifying those documents might create,” one former senior White House official told RCI. “He is concerned that Mueller might respond with an obstruction charge.”
Given recent reports that McGahn spent 30 hours speaking with Mueller’s team, he almost certainly has an intimate understanding of its strategy. McGahn could not be reached for comment.
Lee Smith wonders if Trump will declassify now that McGahn is leaving …
… news that Trump announced by tweet on August 29:
Axios, in a scoop, reports that their sources say Trump has no immediate successor in mind.
Those sources say that McGahn would like:
his successor to be Emmet Flood, a Clinton administration alumnus who joined the White House in May to deal with the Russia probe.
Hmm.
That said, Axios points out that Flood also served in Bush II’s administration.
It would appear that Flood is well respected in the White House and recognises the danger of special investigations (emphases in the original):
A source familiar with Flood’s thinking said: “The reason he can represent both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump is because he thinks these investigators come and basically put a target on their backs, trying to overturn every aspect of their lives searching for a crime.”
- “He feels that is a judicial and constitutional hazard.”
Although Trump has allegedly ‘torn shreds off of McGahn’:
McGahn has told a confidant that he doesn’t expect to leave Trumpworld entirely after he leaves the White House. He privately said he expects to continue to be of assistance to the president through the re-election campaign.
The weeks leading up to mid-term elections could be most interesting.
Previously hidden information could well become available to the public.
It is time for someone to finally throw light on the corrupt DOJ, led by Jeff Sessions, and the equally corrupt FBI, headed by Christopher Wray. In hindsight, both men have turned out to be poor choices.
As the late Justice Brandeis once said, ‘Sunlight is the best disinfectant’.
On Friday, I posted a summary analysis of the DoJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
The report — probably in three versions — came out on Thursday, June 14. On June 13, Q wrote (message 1497) the following (emphases in the original). ‘RR’ is Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general:
Q !CbboFOtcZs ID: 8d9246 No.1739449 📁
Jun 13 2018 22:50:25 (EST)
POTUS in possession of (and reviewing):
1. Original IG unredacted report
2. Modified IG unredacted report [RR version]
3. Modified IG redacted report [RR version]
4. IG summary notes re: obstruction(s) to obtain select info (classified)
[#3 released tomorrow]
[SEC: FBI/DOJ handling of HRC email investigation]
[[RR]]
Who has the sole ability to DECLAS it all?
Did you witness the stage being set today?
Nunes/Grassley/Freedom C. push for docs.
[[RR]] central figure within docs (personally involved).
KNOWN CONFLICT.
Immediate impeachment / resignation / termination / recusal IF EVER BROUGHT TO LIGHT.
Be loud.
Be heard.
Fight for TRUTH.
Q
So, President Trump has all three versions of the IG’s report.
The public has the redacted — edited — version. Some are saying that the public version cannot have been redacted because there are no black bars hiding text.
However, all it takes to edit is to delete and/or massage the text. One example of how this is done is for someone to write an executive summary and conclusions that do not tie in with the body of the report, which appears to have been done in this case.
To make matters worse, the FBI director, Christopher Wray — a Trump appointee — held a press conference. He began with a statement, which defended the FBI top to bottom. From what Wray said, he does not see people in the DC Swamp as criminal. He lauds all the efforts with regard to gang members and child abducters but never once mentions white collar crims in government. He closed with corporate verbiage (emphases mine):
As I’ve been saying since my confirmation hearing, I’m committed to doing this job, in every respect, by the book, and I expect all our employees to do the same. I’ve emphasized at every opportunity I’ve had that I’m a big believer in process—that our brand over 110 years is based less on our many successes than on the way we earned them. Following our rules, following the law, following our guidelines. Staying faithful to our core values and best traditions. Trying to make sure we’re doing the right thing in the right way. Treating everyone with respect. And pursuing the facts independently and objectively, no matter who likes it.
That’s the best way—the only way—to maintain trust and credibility with the people we serve.
The upshot of the report and Wray’s press briefing is that erring FBI agents will have more ‘training’ to overcome their ways.
Seriously?
On the day the report appeared, IG Horowitz’s office tweeted:
Public reaction to the tweet (read the thread) is scathing — and rightly so.
In summary, this is what the body of the report — Horowitz’s work and writing — tells the American public:
Even a former federal prosecutor thinks there is something amiss:
Not only do senior FBI employees loathe Trump …
… they also loathe his supporters — the people the FBI is notionally serving (see Wray’s remark above):
Senior FBI employees also loathe the United States of America:
Here is something interesting:
The conclusion one can only reach is that application of the law is currently a double standard: one rule for the criminal ‘great and the good’ and another for every day criminals.
Right now, Swampers haven’t a care in the world.
Thanks, FBI.
Thanks, Mr Wray, for defending your guys and gals. Americans thought you were supposed to be the clean up man.
This post is part of a series about anticipated news topics in 2018. Readers who have not seen the first five posts from earlier this year might find them of interest, as all relate to today’s news item:
Part 2: Hillary WAS supposed to win (The 16 Year Plan to Destroy America)
Part 4: ‘secret society’ and more on missing FBI texts
Part 5: release of the Nunes FISA memo
Since then, more information has come to light about what surveillance took place on the Trump campaign, who was involved and so on. The Conservative Treehouse — The Last Refuge — has the best posts on the subject.
May 2018 marked the first anniversary of Robert Mueller’s continuing investigation. President Trump estimates it has cost upwards of $20 million thus far.
I would elaborate, but that would be pointless. The Storm, which the original Q promised last autumn, never arrived. The next incarnation of Q says to ‘trust the plan’. Although I haven’t given up, I’m no longer holding my breath.
One thing I will say is: this MUST break well in advance of mid-terms and before early voting begins, where applicable. In other words, the Trump administration — e.g. Jeff Sessions — must do something by August or September.
On Wednesday, May 23, 2018, President Trump coined the word ‘Spygate’:
Since then, he has been tweeting about it a lot (see here and here).
On Tuesday, May 29, Trump once again quoted The Federalist‘s Mollie Hemingway …
… before tweeting:
Trump’s right.
Mueller isn’t looking at people who really have colluded with Russia.
TheLastRefuge — Sundance from The Conservative Treehouse — has condensed his analysis into an easy to understand Twitter thread called ‘Understanding “Spygate”, the Big Picture’. The unrolled thread is here.
Excerpts and a summary follow, emphases mine:
This sort of thing has been going on for years. The difference now is:
6. The current “spygate” debate centers around the modern weaponization of that process using advances in technology for surveillance. See: Edward Snowden (NSA) *whistleblower* and/or even Reality Winner (NSA *contractor*) for a more modern context.
(That is a subject I covered earlier this week.)
Spygate began to unfold in 2015, with the ingenious use of ‘contractors’ working within the intelligence community (IC). Said ‘contractors’ are not subject to government oversight or constraints. They also:
as labeled by the IC and FISA Court, had “deliberate access” to NSA and FBI databases. https://www.scribd.com/document/349542716/Top-Secret-FISA-Court-Order-President-Obama-Spying-on-Political-Enemies …
One of the many contractors involved was Daniel Richman, a friend of James Comey. According to an April 24 Fox News article, Richman — a Columbia law professor — was:
a “special government employee” (SGE) for Comey’s FBI on an unpaid basis …
“I did indeed have SGE status with the Bureau (for no pay),” Richman wrote in an email.
Here I must break from TheLastRefuge to show Professor Richman during a November 2016 interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Cooper, by the way, was a CIA summer intern many moons ago. One wonders what was going through his mind …
You don’t even need the sound, just watch:
The Fox News article says that, even if Richman was unpaid:
Richman emerged last year as the former FBI director’s contact for leaking memos documenting his private discussions with President Trump – memos that are now the subject of an inspector general review over the presence of classified material. Sources familiar with Richman’s status at the FBI told Fox News that he was assigned to “special projects” by Comey, and had a security clearance as well as badge access to the building. Richman’s status was the subject of a Memorandum of Understanding.
While Richman’s portfolio included the use of encrypted communications by terror suspects, the sources said Richman also was sent talking points about the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Those talking points attempted to compare and contrast Clinton’s use of an unsecured personal server exclusively for government business with the case of retired Gen. David Petraeus, who shared classified information with his biographer and mistress Paula Broadwell, as well as the case brought against the late Sandy Berger. The former national security adviser under President Clinton pleaded guilty to the unauthorized removal and retention of classified material from the National Archives.
Back now to TheLastRefuge. Note the sensitive access the various contractors had:
Early in 2016 — several months before the election — Admiral Mike Rogers saw what was happening. Afterwards, the contractors had to change tactics. This is important, especially the graphic:
They were quick to react:
At that point, Donald Trump was one of the few left in the Republican presidential primary race. Jeb Bush had dropped out by then. It was only Trump, Ted Cruz and, in distant third, John Kasich. Trump looked strong, despite what the media were telling the public.
The Democrats mobilised forces. Again, note the contractors involved and the husband and wife duo, the Ohrs:
25. Clinton Campaign hires FusionGPS April 2016. Fusion GPS hires Nellie Ohr wife of DOJ-NSD Bruce Ohr. Bruce Ohr has access to FBI/NSA database. Bruce Ohr is #4 in DOJ Bruce Ohr can hire contractors. Fusion GPS then sub-contracts Christopher Steele.
This is what happened next:
Note that actual intelligence agents and/or spies weren’t even involved:
The man in the middle, Stefan Halper, has dual US/UK nationality. He has been involved in politics on both sides of the aisle from the Nixon through to the Reagan administrations. Currently, he is employed by Cambridge University, where he directs the Department of Politics and International Studies.
He is very well connected.
Until recently, no one outside those in the know had ever heard of him.
That, in itself, amazes me. His role in this will continue to unfold in the months to come.
And that is the introduction to Spygate.
My word, who would ever have imagined something of this magnitude taking place in the United States?
In December 2017 and January 2018, I wrote about the FBI/DOJ schemes to undermine Donald Trump’s campaign and subsequent presidency.
The first burst of information emerged early in December:
December 1 and 2: update on the weekend’s news
At that point, Americans discovered that an FBI investigator, Peter Strzok, had been a Hillary supporter in 2016, was part of the group investigating the ‘matter’ of her email server, then went to work as part of Robert Mueller’s investigation before he was removed from Mueller’s team in the summer of 2017. That news had only been revealed in December.
An FBI/DOJ lawyer, Lisa Page, worked for former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe and was also assigned to Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation for a time. She and Strzok developed a close working relationship.
When this became public, it was thought the two were having an extra-marital affair. As time went on, this became less certain. Nevertheless, last year:
Strzok and Page exchanged upwards of 50,000 text messages, many of which have since been recovered. Before that point, however, one of the first sections of texts discovered discussed Strzok’s mention to Page of an ‘insurance policy’:
News in brief — December 12-14, 2017
The ‘insurance policy’ was meant to thwart the Trump presidency:
By January 2018, the DOJ’s inspector general Michael Horowitz had 50,000 of the texts but was missing five months’ more:
Be prepared for 2018 news: part 3 — FBI’s missing texts
I included a message from Q in that post. Q says these missing texts could cast doubt on the FBI and DOJ and put in jeopardy criminal cases from the Obama years:
Then a new batch of texts came to light, which revealed that Strzok and Page discussed an existing ‘secret society’ that would undermine Trump:
Be prepared for 2018 news: part 4 — ‘secret society’ and more on missing FBI texts
After Mueller dismissed Strzok from his team, the latter was assigned to the FBI’s HR department.
Page continued as an FBI lawyer with other, unspecified responsibilities.
On April 11, Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) discovered that, according to FBI director Christopher Wray, both Strzok and Page still had their security clearances. The Conservative Treehouse has a full report with supporting documents. Excerpts follow, emphases mine:
Senator Paul inquired with the FBI Director about whether reassigned FBI Agent Peter Strzok and DOJ/FBI Attorney Lisa Page still retained their Top Secret FBI clearances.
According to Senator Paul, the FBI director would not respond to specific agent inquiry, however, Wray did affirm that all existing FBI officials retain Top Secret clearances.
In essence, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, despite being removed from investigative authority over their role in the political efforts to target President Trump, retain employment within the DOJ/FBI apparatus in an unknown capacity and thereby their clearances.
This information by Rand Paul dovetails into an increasingly obvious storyline where Lisa Page and Peter Strzok remain employed because they are cooperating with the internal investigation by Inspector General Michael Horowitz and parallel federal prosecutor John Huber.
Similarly, former FBI chief legal counsel James Baker retained his:
In addition to Page and Strzok, former FBI chief legal counsel James Baker and former DOJ-NSD Deputy Bruce Ohr have been removed from their roles yet still remain inside the FBI and DOJ respectively. Those four are joined by the FBI Asst. Director in charge of Counterintelligence, Bill Priestap. However, despite Priestap’s centrality to the 2015/2016 corrupt FBI activity -including the Trump operation- Priestap remains untouched.
After FBI Asst Director Andrew McCabe was fired the subsequent information revealed what happened inside the group. McCabe lied to FBI and IG investigators about his coordinating leaks to media. McCabe’s story conflicted with the account of his office attorney, Lisa Page. {Go Deep}
To validate the truthfulness of her position Lisa Page provided FBI investigators with access to her text messages which showed conversations about McCabe directing leaks by Page and FBI communications Director Michael Kortan. After the Page messages confirmed her version of the events; eventually McCabe admitted to misleading investigators.
Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, James Baker and Bruce Ohr have all been removed from responsibilities within the DOJ and FBI yet all still remain inside the organization. FBI Director of Counterintelligence Bill Priestap, who was Peter Strzok’s’ boss throughout the corrupt group activity, remains in his role today.
By April 20, things started to unravel at the FBI. Vox has the whole story, but this tweet summarises the situation, saying that Trump will have the best laugh:
By April 25, it was thought that more Strzok-Page texts had been uncovered, although not made public. Q sent out a message (image courtesy of Reddit’s Q research board, greatawakening):
That day, Republican congressmen Devin Nunes (California) and Mark Meadows (North Carolina) appeared on Hannity calling for the release of the texts. The summary to the video linked here says:
Rep. Devin Nunes accuses the Justice Department of slow-walking the release of documents; he and Rep. Mark Meadows speak out on ‘Hannity.’
The next day:
The Last Refuge — Sundance from The Conservative Treehouse — posted a Twitter thread which discusses the newly released, yet redacted, texts. Only Strzok’s were made public. Excerpts follow:
Sundance also posted about this text release on his site, The Conservative Treehouse. Points of interest include the following (red emphases in the original):
♦[May 17th, 2017] Lisa Page mentions reviewing Benjamin Wittes Lawfare website (James Comey BFF and leak conduit) for “arguments to chronicle” on behalf of Special counsel advocacy.
NOTE: This is interesting because Lawfare Blog also mentions the “Insurance Policy”.
Important – May 17th, 2017 is the date of the Special Counsel Mueller appointment.
♦[May 17th, 2017] Date of Mueller appointment. Discussions of team being assembled. Strzok notes “emailing with Aaron”. Well that’s Aaron Ze[ble]y former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s Chief of Staff who was selected for Special Counsel position. He’s also a partner at WilmerHale, and Strzok mentions to Page that she might find herself working at WilmerHale if she plays her cards right.
The fact that Agent Strzok was emailing with “Aaron” Ze[ble]y prior to the official appointment of the special counsel team should likely raise a few eyebrows. Of course within this time-frame of the messaging released, the redactions increase. Go figure.
Toward the end of the release a more thorough picture emerges of who was selecting Robert Mueller’s team and why. Andrew McCabe was key player along with James Baker …
Page had broken off her texting with Strzok in 2017, long before the American public was aware of either of them. The Conservative Treehouse interprets her last text as follows:
–Page’s final “never write to me again” doesn’t seem like a hostile snub. Seems more like a signal/coded message to a friend: “We’re scr*wed. Every (wo)man for himself. I’m looking out for myself. You should too.”
That day, Q posted the following message (1288). Emphases in the original:
Jim Rybicki, chief of staff and senior counselor – FIRED.
James Baker, general counsel – FIRED.
Andrew McCabe, deputy director – FIRED.
James Comey, director – FIRED.
Bill Priestap, Head of Counterintelligence and Strzok’s boss – Cooperating witness [power removed].
Peter Strzok, Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence – cooperating witness [power removed].
Lisa Page, attorney with the FBI‘s Office of the General Counsel – cooperating witness [power removed].
Conspiracy?
Think about the above.
Only the above.
Get the picture?
Q
By April 29, The Conservative Treehouse stated — wisely — that there was no romantic relationship between Page and Strzok:
There is zero evidence of a romantic relationship between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page; and no, a complete chronological review doesn’t indicate the romantic stuff was withheld. By looking at the messaging chronologically, studying the date and times, there’s nothing to indicate segments of romantic stuff was removed. What does appear obvious in many redactions, and likely some removals of messages, is an intentional effort to remove content that would be of an embarrassing professional nature to Ms. Lisa Page.
It is more than likely the “affair narrative” was likely created by investigators as part of an agreement on content control to explain withholding some information and message redactions. Investigators would not want those being investigated to know the scale of the evidence trail. Regardless, except for the useful story, the romantic angle is irrelevant.
In looking at the ensuing congressional report, Sundance offered this analysis (excerpted, emphasis in the original):
[Congressional Report – Page 18, Item #3, second paragraph] “The DOJ OIG obtained the initial batch of text messages on July 20, 2017.” It is clear that Ms. Page underwent a period of (no less than) three solid days of extensive initial questioning by FBI (INSD) and DOJ (OIG) officials. [Which ended on/around July 20th, 2017.]
♦July 20th, 2017 is a key date. A critical point-of-reference to move forward and review action. It is absolutely clear [BEYOND CERTAIN], that INSD (Inspection Division) and OIG (Inspector General) knew of every single participant in the Page-Strzok engagement team by the end of July 2017.
Along with Page and Strzok, James Baker was also involved in the leaks (emphases mine):
The officials outlined in media leaks, direct or indirect, included: Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, James Baker (FBI Chief Legal Counsel), Andrew McCabe (Deputy Director), and Michael Kortan (FBI Office of Public Affairs). There are also discussions of other people leaking.
Indeed, one of the more stunning aspects of a full review was the scale of groups’ leaks to the media and how those leaks were used to frame the continued narrative about their ongoing efforts.
The messages show media leaks from 2015 all the way past the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Their discussions with the media were so frequent that Page and Strzok referred to media publications as “that’s your story”, or “that’s your article”, and enjoyed talking about the internal and external effect of the published accounts therein.
As for James Baker:
It does not appear accidental that FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker was allowed, by INSD and OIG investigators, to remain in place, *until* Baker was notified of being called to testify to congress (December 21, 2017)… then INSD yanked him back; and FBI Director Christopher Wray removed Baker from responsibility.
James Baker remains inside the FBI today; in some unknown capacity. James Baker is also in the text messages as “JB”, “Jim”, “GC” (General Counsel), and “James”. He was also an interoffice mentor/role-model of sorts for DOJ assigned Special Counsel Lisa Page. Both Page and Strzok had a great deal of respect and admiration for Baker.
From the messages we can clearly see that James Baker is a key figure amid everything that was happening. Likely Baker’s cooperation with investigators is the biggest risk to James Comey and Andrew McCabe due to Baker’s knowledge of situations, decisions, non-decisions and events.
Ultimately (emphasis in the original):
Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, Bruce Ohr and James Baker have all been clearly identified by investigative releases as participating in gross misconduct at the DOJ and FBI. All four of them have been removed from their responsibilities, yet each of them remains employed within the FBI or DOJ.
It is highly likely all four of them are cooperating with INSD and OIG investigators.
Sundance surmises that those in the know who are not co-operating are as follows:
FBI Communications Director Mike Kortan (quit), DOJ-NSD Deputy Asst. Attorney General David Laufman (quit), AG Loretta Lynch (replaced), AAG Sally Yates (fired), DOJ-NSD Asst Attorney General Mary McCord (quit), FBI Director James Comey (fired), Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe (fired), FBI Chief-of-staff James Rybicki (quit).
Big news emerged on Friday, May 4. The New York Times reported (emphases mine):
WASHINGTON — Two top F.B.I. aides who worked alongside the former director James B. Comey as he navigated one of the most politically tumultuous periods in the bureau’s history resigned on Friday.
One of them, James A. Baker, was one of Mr. Comey’s closest confidants. He served as the F.B.I.’s top lawyer until December when he was reassigned as the new director, Christopher A. Wray, began installing his own advisers. Mr. Baker had been investigated by the Justice Department on suspicion of sharing classified information with reporters. He has not been charged.
The other aide, Lisa Page, advised Mr. Comey while serving directly under his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe. She was assailed by conservatives after texts that she had exchanged with the agent overseeing the investigation into links between President Trump’s campaign and Russia were made public. In the messages, they expressed anti-Trump views but took aim at Hillary Clinton and other political figures as well.
The decisions by Mr. Baker and Ms. Page to leave the bureau were unrelated. Mr. Baker said in a telephone interview that he would be joining the Brookings Institution to write for Lawfare, its blog focused on national security law.
Sundance at the Conservative Treehouse had mentioned Lawfare, as cited above. Lawfare was helpful to those in the FBI and DOJ in giving them narrative points and discussing the ‘insurance policy’.
The Daily Caller had more on the story:
The FBI attorney who exchanged anti-Trump text messages with another bureau official resigned on Friday, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
The FBI confirmed that the lawyer, Lisa Page, tendered her resignation.
Page has faced months of scrutiny over the text messages, which she exchanged with Peter Strzok, the former deputy chief of the FBI’s counterintelligence division.
The exchanges show a deep hostility to President Donald Trump at a time when the two officials were working on the FBI’s investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with the Russian government. Some of the texts show Strzok and Page cryptically discussing how to proceed with the investigation, which was opened on July 31, 2016 …
Both Strzok and Page also served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, which began on May 17, 2017.
Page worked for several weeks on the Mueller team before returning to her position as one of McCabe’s counselors. Strzok worked on the Mueller investigation until July 28, 2017, when Michael Horowitz, the DOJ’s inspector general, notified Mueller of the scandalous text messages.
Page is also a central player in Horowitz’s investigation of McCabe. She is the FBI official who McCabe instructed to speak to The Wall Street Journal regarding an October 2016 article about the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation. McCabe authorized Page to leak to The Journal “in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of Department leadership,” Horowitz determined.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe on March 16:
based upon a recommendation from the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).
Horowitz released his report about McCabe on April 13:
that alleged McCabe gave inaccurate and incomplete statements about his authorization of the media leaks. The report, which dinged McCabe for a “lack of candor,” said he initially denied to both the OPR and the inspector general that he authorized Page to speak with The Journal.
The Daily Caller reported that Horowitz’s next findings would focus more closely on Strzok and Page.
That day, Q posted an update to the aforementioned message (1288) in a new one (1316). Emphases in the original:
[Updated]
James Baker – FIRED [reported today – resigned [false]] / removed Jan/FIRED 4.21
Lisa Page – FIRED [reported today – resigned [false]]
Testimony received.
Tracking_y.
[Added]
Mike Kortan, FBI Assistant Director for Public Affairs – FIRED [cooperating under ‘resigned’ title]
Josh Campbell, Special Assistant to James Comey – FIRED
[DOJ]
David Laufman, Chief of the Justice Department’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section [NAT SEC – HRC email invest] – FIRED/FORCE
John Carlin, Assistant Attorney General – Head of DOJ’s National Security Division – FIRED/FORCE
Sally Yates, Deputy Attorney General & Acting Attorney General – FIRED
Mary McCord, Acting Assistant Attorney General – Acting Head of DOJ’s National Security Division – FIRED/FORCE
Bruce Ohr, Associate Deputy Attorney General – Demoted 2x – cooperating witness [power removed]
Rachel Brand, Associate Attorney General – No. 3 official behind Deputy AG Rosenstein – FIRED/FORCE
Cross against House/Senate resignations/final term announcements + CEO departures.
CONSPIRACY?
FAKE NEWS?
THE SWAMP IS BEING DRAINED.
TRUST THE PLAN.
JUSTICE.
Q
From that, it is interesting to see that, for public consumption, Page and Baker ‘resigned’, yet, both, according to Q, were actually ‘FIRED’. Q also notes: ‘Testimony received’.
Hmm.
Two of the other people — namely Mike Kortan and Rachel Brand — had reportedly ‘resigned’, too. Q’s take is that both were similarly FIRED.
The important point in Q’s message going forward are the last five lines before sign-off. What concerned Americans suspected wasn’t a conspiracy theory but actual conspiracy. Action has been taken, and the Swamp draining has begun.
Much more to follow once the next inspector general report is published.
Until then, trust the plan as the Trump administration enters the phase where it metes justice.
In the first half of 2017, Trump supporters — myself included — were enthusiastic about Jefferson Beauregard Sessions as attorney general.
On February 10, I wrote about child molesters and traffickers:
Can Jeff Sessions make pizza great again?
Although perverts and traffickers are always being arrested, under Sessions’s watch, the number began to increase exponentially. Great news!
Another big problem was MS-13. On April 10, I posted:
Attorney General Sessions sends message to MS-13: ‘We will find you’
From those two targets, we see that Sessions’s DOJ was making a move on people all of us can agree fall into the category of criminal.
However, there is another type of criminal: Washington DC politicians who work against the interests of the United States and, within that group, the subset which has been trying to bring down President Donald Trump since November 9, 2016, the day after the election. George True’s guest post of April 15, 2018 explains how serious this is:
Guest post: a reader’s perspective on the Deep State and Mueller investigation
That Jeff Sessions does not consider the DC Swamp rats to be criminals is problematic.
My other 2018 posts about him have reflected this:
Trump tweets frustration with slow investigation (February 24 – 28, 2018)
Increasing outcry for Sleepy Sessions to go (April 19)
Guest post: a reader’s perspective on Jeff Sessions’s priorities (George True, April 20 and Rosenstein’s presidential cufflinks)
Jeff Sessions began recusing himself from Swamp rat investigations early in 2017.
As a result, he has made life extremely difficult for President Trump and his associates. The coup continues apace.
January 10, 2017 — first hint of recusal
As early as January 2017, Sessions said he would recuse himself from any campaign issues involving Hillary Clinton.
On January 10, the Los Angeles Times reported (emphases mine):
Sen. Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s pick to be the next attorney general, testified before Congress on Tuesday that he would recuse himself from any investigations and prosecutions involving Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Sessions and Trump called during the fall campaign for Clinton to be investigated and prosecuted for her use of a private email server, despite determinations by the FBI and Justice Department that her actions did not warrant charges. Since his election, Trump has said he did not support such an investigation or prosecution.
Sessions said he had made comments during the “contentious” campaign about Clinton’s use of the email server and her family’s charitable foundation that could place his objectivity in question.
“I believe the proper thing for me to do would be to recuse myself from any questions involving those kind of investigations that involve Secretary Hillary Clinton,” the Alabama Republican told senators on the Judiciary Committee.
March 2, 2017 – first recusal statement
After Sessions was appointed attorney general, he formally recused himself from campaign investigations.
On March 2, he gave a statement, excerpted below:
During the course of the confirmation proceedings on my nomination to be Attorney General, I advised the Senate Judiciary Committee that ‘[i]f a specific matter arose where I believed my impartiality might reasonably be questioned, I would consult with Department ethics officials regarding the most appropriate way to proceed.’
During the course of the last several weeks, I have met with the relevant senior career Department officials to discuss whether I should recuse myself from any matters arising from the campaigns for President of the United States.
Having concluded those meetings today, I have decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States.
Quartz provided the background:
US attorney general Jeff Sessions, responding to mounting pressure from Democrats and from his own party, announced that he is recusing himself from any current or future investigations into the 2016 US presidential campaigns. The decision followed reports that he had spoken twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the US. Russia, of course, is widely believed by US intelligence agencies to have meddled in the election.
Sessions, a former Republican senator and an advisor to US president Donald Trump during the race, had testified during his Senate confirmation hearing in January that he had not had communications with the Russians during the campaign. At his press conference today (March 2), Sessions spoke about one of the meetings, recalling that it ending in a tense confrontation about Ukraine.
Business Insider provided more detail:
The attorney general recused himself on March 2 after reports emerged that Sessions had twice met with the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, during the course of the election, contradicting statements he made during his Senate confirmation hearing, in which he said under oath that he did not have contacts with Russians during the campaign.
Following the bombshell report, Democrats swiftly demanded Sessions’ resignation, while a growing group of Republicans called on the attorney general to recuse himself from campaign-related investigations.
During questioning by Sen. Ron Wyden later in the hearing, Sessions said that there were no classified reasons for his recusal, as former FBI Director James Comey suggested in his Senate testimony last week. Sessions also claimed that he had informally recused himself since he was confirmed to lead the Justice Department.
“I basically recused myself the first day I got into the office because I never accessed files, I never learned the names of investigators, I never met with them, I never asked for any documentation,” Sessions told Wyden. “The documentation — what little I received — was mostly already in the media.”
Months later, the Los Angeles Times noted:
In March, Sessions announced he was recusing himself from any investigation into charges that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election and potential collusion between Russians and Trump’s campaign. Following his announcement, reports surfaced that Trump was irate that Sessions had recused himself from any investigation.
Fake news or a grain of truth in that last sentence?
I’m writing up what happened to HR McMaster, which I will post here in due course, and found that these rumours and reports turned out to be true.
June 13, 2017 – second recusal statement
On June 13, 2017, the Los Angeles Times reported Sessions’s second formal recusal, this time into Russian collusion:
Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions insists his recusal from any investigation into Russian collusion in last year’s election was simple: It’s the law.
In an opening statement before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Sessions cited a Department of Justice regulation that he said mandated him stepping aside …
“I recused myself not because of any asserted wrongdoing on my part during the campaign,” Sessions said. “But because a Department of Justice regulation, 28 CFR 45.2, required it.”
“That regulation states, in effect, that department employees should not participate in investigations of a campaign if they have served as a campaign advisor,” said Sessions.
Throughout much of the 2016 election, Sessions served as a senior advisor to Trump’s campaign.
July 2017 — a vexed Trump unloads
On July 19, three New York Times reporters — Peter Baker, Michael S Schmidt and Maggie Haberman — published an interview (and transcript) with President Trump at the White House.
Trump did not mince words. The article led with this:
WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Wednesday that he never would have appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions had he known Mr. Sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation that has dogged his presidency, calling the decision “very unfair to the president.”
In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that should not have happened. “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Mr. Trump said.
However, the topic did not come up until later in the interview. On this and other subjects, this has to be one of the best interviews ever. On Robert Mueller, Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein, Trump had this to say:
SCHMIDT: What do you understand to be the four corners of what Mueller [Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia investigation] can look at, if he steps—— [crosstalk]
TRUMP: I don’t know. Nobody has contacted me about anything.
_________
TRUMP: Because I have done nothing wrong. A special counsel should never have been appointed in this case.
BAKER: Can we put that on the record?
TRUMP: Because so far, the only — yeah, you can put it down.
SCHMIDT: Was that [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions’s mistake or [Deputy Attorney General Rod J.] Rosenstein’s mistake?
________
TRUMP: Look, Sessions gets the job. Right after he gets the job, he recuses himself.
BAKER: Was that a mistake?
TRUMP: Well, Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.
HABERMAN: He gave you no heads up at all, in any sense?
TRUMP: Zero. So Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself. I then have — which, frankly, I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, “Thanks, Jeff, but I can’t, you know, I’m not going to take you.” It’s extremely unfair, and that’s a mild word, to the president. So he recuses himself. I then end up with a second man, who’s a deputy.
HABERMAN: Rosenstein.
TRUMP: Who is he? And Jeff hardly knew. He’s from Baltimore.
________
TRUMP: Yeah, what Jeff Sessions did was he recused himself right after, right after he became attorney general. And I said, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I would have — then I said, “Who’s your deputy?” So his deputy he hardly knew, and that’s Rosenstein, Rod Rosenstein, who is from Baltimore. There are very few Republicans in Baltimore, if any. So, he’s from Baltimore. Now, he, we went through a lot of things. We were interviewing replacements at the F.B.I. Did you know Mueller was one of the people that was being interviewed?
HABERMAN: I did, actually.
TRUMP: He was sitting in that chair. We had a wonderful meeting.
HABERMAN: Day before, right?
SCHMIDT: Did he want the job?
TRUMP: The day before! Of course, he was up here, and he wanted the job.
HABERMAN: And he made that clear to you? He would have——
________
TRUMP: So, now what happens is, he leaves the office. Rosenstein leaves the office. The next day, he is appointed special counsel. I said, what the hell is this all about? Talk about conflicts? But he was interviewing for the job. There were many other conflicts that I haven’t said, but I will at some point. So Jeff Sessions, Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers.
HABERMAN: You mean at the hearing?
TRUMP: Yeah, he gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren’t. He then becomes attorney general, and he then announces he’s going to recuse himself. Why wouldn’t he have told me that before?
HABERMAN: Why do you think it was? What do you think it was?
TRUMP: I don’t know.
BAKER: What would cause you — what would be the line beyond which if Mueller went, you would say, “That’s too far, we would need to dismiss him”?
TRUMP: Look, there are so many conflicts that everybody has. Then Rosenstein becomes extremely angry because of Comey’s Wednesday press conference, where he said that he would do the same thing he did a year ago with Hillary Clinton, and Rosenstein became extremely angry at that because, as a prosecutor, he knows that Comey did the wrong thing. Totally wrong thing. And he gives me a letter, O.K., he gives me a letter about Comey. And by the way, that was a tough letter, O.K. Now, perhaps I would have fired Comey anyway, and it certainly didn’t hurt to have the letter, O.K. But he gives me a very strong letter, and now he’s involved in the case. Well, that’s a conflict of interest. Do you know how many conflicts of interests there are? But then, then Comey also says that he did something in order to get the special prose— special counsel. He leaked. The reason he leaked. So, he illegally leaked.
Trump took to Twitter to express his vexation with Sessions, who was on an MS-13 mission in El Salvador at the time (see his priorities!):
So why aren’t the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?
On July 27, Sessions told Tucker Carlson (Fox News) how ‘hurtful’ the President’s tweets were. Note that he defended his recusals:
He never should have taken the job!
Mueller conflicts of interest
To go into all the conflicts of interest in this investigation would take ages. Uranium One is the biggest, and it involves Russia, Mueller and Rosenstein.
That said, the public were angry at the way Big Media — especially CNN — were reporting the Mueller investigation.
On July 24, a contributor to The_Donald posted a testy thread, the title of which is:
FAKE NEWS CNN defending Sessions’ recusal while DEAD SILENT about Mueller needing to recuse for the same reasons. MUELLER IS MORE CONFLICTED THAN SESSIONS! REPORT THE TRUTH!
By way of reply, someone posted a link to a Crime and Consequences article, ‘My View: Mueller is Conflicted Out‘. The premise of the article is that Robert Mueller cannot continue to serve as Special Counsel under 28 USC Section 528 and 28 CFR Section 45.2. You can read the article for the detail.
The author provides an excellent summary of Mueller, James Comey and more. The following continues to be discussed today, particularly in light of Comey’s recent book launch and associated interviews:
Jim Comey and Bob Mueller have been friends for about 15 years …
Comey now finds himself smack-dab at the center of the Russian investigation over which Mueller presides. Questions swirl around Comey — about whether the President wanted/hinted/hoped/asked/directed/or something else the investigation of National Security Adviser Gen. Flynn to be stopped/abandoned/slowed/soft-peddled/something else. This is probably the central element of the obstruction of justice case Mr. Trump’s opponents would like to see made against him.
Questions also swirl about Comey’s notes about this conversation, why he gave them to a private individual (Prof. Dan Richman of Columbia Law) to convey to the press. Additional questions have arisen about whether this curious and seemingly devious means of putting contents of the notes in the public domain (leaking, in other words) was designed specifically to bring about the appointment of a Special Counsel outside the President’s direct reach — and, indeed, whether Comey wanted, expected or intended his friend Mueller to get the job.
There is much to be said of all this, none of it very happy-making. But one thing that can be said with considerable clarity if not comfort is that, under the governing rules (set forth above), Mueller has a long-term relationship with Comey that “may result in a personal…conflict of interest, or the appearance thereof.”
He is therefore disqualified. I hope and believe that Mueller, whom I believe to be an honest man and a partisan of the rule of law, will see this for himself. If he doesn’t, I hope Rod Rosenstein will.
As I’ve said in many other contexts, I like rule-orientation and fear self-justification, a ubiquitous flaw in even the best of men. There is no way Comey is not a central witness in this investigation (if not a subject). Even less is there a way Mueller can be expected to evaluate Comey’s credibility with the fresh neutrality, arm’s-length curiosity, and objective sharp eye his job demands.
Whether Mueller’s departure would work out well or badly for Mr. Trump is not knowable (it is also decidedly not the subject of this post). My point is about the application of stated rules to the facts at hand. Let the chips fall where they may, the application is clear: Mueller cannot remain as Special Counsel.
That article was from June 2017. Nearly one year later, nothing has changed. Mueller’s still in situ.
On September 20, Law & Crime‘s Rachel Stockman asked why Rosenstein wasn’t recusing himself from the Mueller probe. Because Sessions recused himself, Rosenstein is the DOJ’s link to Mueller (emphases in the original, those in purple mine):
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein is overseeing Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s Russia investigation after Jeff Sessions recused himself. However, there are some concerns about his ability to adequately supervise an investigation that he has now become a part of. On Tuesday night, The Wall Street Journal broke the story that over the summer, Mueller’s investigators interviewed Rosentein about President Donald Trump‘s firing of former FBI Director James Comey.
The Journal claims the FBI’s handling of the interview “could be a sign that Mr. Mueller’s team doesn’t view Mr. Rosenstein as a central witness in its probe, as the deputy attorney general hasn’t withdrawn himself from overseeing it since that interview.” That could very well be the case, but the optics don’t look good. A spokesperson for Rosenstein said “if there comes a time when he needs to recuse, he will. However, nothing has changed.” Well, now might be the time …
Rosenstein, as a federal lawyer and a DOJ employee, is guided by both local D.C. ethics rules and Justice Department guidelines. Both would prohibit him from overseeing an investigation if he is a person of interest or a target …
However, legal experts emphasize that we don’t know yet whether Rosenstein is a target of the investigation for his role in writing that infamous memo giving Trump “justification” for firing Comey. Did Rosenstein cooperate in a lie to the public? 18 USC 1512(c)(2) says that obstruction happens when a person “corruptly… impedes [an] official proceeding or attempts to do so.”
“Creating a false narrative for firing Comey could be such an attempt. The definition of ‘official proceeding; includes “a proceeding before a Federal Government agency which is authorized by law.’ That language is broad enough to encompass the FBI and the Comey investigation,” Gillers said.
Now, the hope is that if the investigation starts honing in on Rosenstein, Mueller would advise him that he needed to recuse himself. BUT there is this added wrinkle: Mueller may have an incentive in wanting to keep Rosentein as his supervisor. Trump’s team has hinted more than once that he might fire Mueller. Federal law says that technically Trump can’t do the firing. Instead, the U.S. Attorney General (or in this case Rosenstein since Sessions recused himself) would have to do it. From all indications, Rosenstein would probably not demure to such a demand from Trump …
In the end, we must rely on Mueller’s integrity, and pray that if Rosenstein was in legal jeopardy, Mueller would do the right thing and ask him to take himself off the investigation. In the wake of James Comey’s breach in DOJ policy, asking us to trust our public officials seems like a scary thought. With so much at stake, so many unknowns, and the world watching, Mr. Rosenstein needs to think long and hard about recusing himself.
Well, Rosey’s still managing the Mueller investigation.
September 2017 – calls for unrecusal
By September, there were calls for Sessions to unrecuse himself. Here’s Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch:
By December, there was doubt as to whether Sessions should have recused at all:
On December 18, Alan Dershowitz offered the clearest rationale for an unrecusal. Emphases mine below.
He told Fox & Friends (video at the link):
Sessions could un-recuse himself, because the law allows anyone who’s recused themselves to un-recuse if there are new developments or circumstances.
And Dershowitz said the reason Sessions can do this, is because Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should recuse himself.
Rosenstein is a “key witness” after writing the memo justifying Jim Comey’s firing.
November 2017 – question over possible Uranium One recusal
On November 2, Breitbart reported that Rep. Mark Gaetz (R – Florida) told them that Sessions would recuse over Uranium One (H/T: Conservative Treehouse). Bold emphasis in the original, those in purple mine:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a small group of lawmakers in late September he was recused from appointing a special counsel to look into potential corruption surrounding the Uranium One deal and Fusion GPS’s work on the Trump dossier, according to one of the lawmakers present.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told Breitbart News on Wednesday that he and other House Judiciary Committee Republicans had met with Sessions at the Justice Department on September 28 in advance of an upcoming committee hearing with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein later this month.
Gaetz said that when he asked Sessions to appoint a special counsel to investigate the 2010 Uranium One deal and Fusion GPS, the attorney general stood up, said he could not discuss the matter because he had recused himself, and walked out of the room, leaving them with a group of Rosenstein staffers “who showed no interest.”
“He said that anything that had to do with 2016 election, or Russia, or the candidates in the 2016 election, fell under the scope of his recusal, and he left the room,” Gaetz said.
“It was Sessions’ position that his recusal on the Russia matter divorced him from any oversight on Uranium One and Fusion GPS. That’s troubling. Sessions’ recusal is a function of his involvement in the Trump campaign. In no world does that impact his judgment as it relates to Fusion GPS and Uranium One. But he views the recusal more broadly. That’s troubling because that puts Rosenstein in charge,” he said.
Gaetz said Rosenstein’s staffers provided “no answers” and “no timeline for answers.”
This is why many of us have been saying that Sessions must resign or, as such time as the Senate will approve a replacement, be fired.
Yet, investigative journalist Sara Carter told Fox’s Sean Hannity that the report was not true:
I hope Sara Carter is correct.
November 2017 – Sessions critics told they are disloyal
Sleepy’s critics are constantly being told by his supporters that by being critical of him they are being critical of Trump! False!
As much as I liked Imperator_Rex — currently Vachel Lindsay — on Twitter, the logic that he and others employ with this stance is wrong. Here’s a taster from a rather long thread of his from November 3:
Who knows what’s happening with The Storm? All the people we want to see brought to justice have been going on book tours (Hillary, Comey), giving speeches overseas (Obama) and leading a normal life (e.g. John Podesta).
Re 36, no, it’s not because Trump ‘wants’ Sessions there, it’s because the only way Trump can get a replacement for him is if he (Sessions) resigns (vacancy rules apply).
The Senate told Trump in 2017 that they will not approve any new cabinet members, making it impossible for Trump to fire Sessions. Nor will the Senate allow Trump to appoint someone new when the Senate is not in session. Consequently, the Senate has not been declaring any formal recess.
Trump’s hands are tied, unless Sessions resigns.
Even then, Trump has to have a replacement in mind.
It certainly won’t be Rosenstein.
Re 37, saying that Sessions critics are disloyal to Trump is egregious. We care deeply about President Trump. That’s why we want Sessions out of the way, so that Swamp rats can be dealt with the way the Founding Fathers intended.
Again, we have only Sara Carter’s word for that.
December 2017 – Former FBI director Kallstrom says Mueller should recuse
On December 4, former FBI director James Kallstrom told Breitbart that Robert Mueller should recuse himself:
“Bob Mueller should have never been offered nor accepted the job as special counsel as he has a huge conflict of interest,” Jim Kallstrom tells Breitbart News …
Not only do observers describe Mueller and the man he recommended to replace him as FBI director, James Comey, as close or even best friends, but the special counsel pursues an investigation heavily involving the bureau he once led. How one maintains detachment in leading a team that includes numerous anti-Trump partisans in a probe involving one’s close friend and the former bureau for which Mueller served as director goes unexplained.
Other problems Kallstrom sees include the means by which investigators obtained information and what constituted probable cause to obtain it.
“The Obama administration apparently, had the advantage of using electronic surveillance, collecting information on the Trump campaign,” Kallstrom explains. “That collection, in my view, may be found to be unlawful.”
…
If the surveillance and investigatory methods prove unlawful, Kallstrom notes that this puts Mueller in an awkward position of looking into his close friend and perhaps the bureau that both men once led.
“If they used the phony dossier as the predicate for the FISA order they obtained, that could be a huge problem,” Kallstrom tells Breitbart News. “If they knew the information was phony, that is a felony. If they did not know it was phony, they were incompetent.”
January 2018 – White House tried to talk Sessions out of recusal
On January 5, 2018, Fox News reported that White House officials tried to talk Sessions out of recusing himself in 2017 (emphases mine):
President Trump instructed three senior White House officials to talk Attorney General Jeff Sessions out of recusing himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and members of the Trump campaign, multiple sources told Fox News on Friday.
Trump called on White House counsel Don McGahn, former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former Press Secretary Sean Spicer to stop Sessions from recusing himself.
Spicer has denied the allegation.
The push to convince Sessions allegedly took place over the course of a number of telephone calls that covered a variety of other topics, the well-placed sources told Fox.
On Thursday, The New York Times first reported that Trump had directed McGahn to contact Sessions this past March. According to The Associated Press, two anonymous sources confirmed that McGahn unsuccessfully lobbied Sessions to continue to oversee the Russia investigation.
Sessions supporters will have trouble with ‘multiple sources’ and ‘anonymous sources’, but every single presidential administration has had them.
My upcoming McMaster chronicle shows that, nearly every time one of these sources spoke to the media, they were telling the truth.
March – Sessions took recusal advice from Obama lawyers
Just when the Sessions situation couldn’t seem more intolerable, the Gateway Pundit reported on March 14 that the attorney general took recusal advice from Obama adminstration lawyers (emphases in the original):
On Wednesday night FOX News contributor and legal expert Gregg Jarrett told Sean Hannity that Sessions used the WRONG LAW when announcing his recusal. He took advice from OBAMA OFFICIALS and they misled him.
Gregg Jarrett: He betrayed the president. He knew when he was sworn in that he was going to recuse himself and the very next day he put the recusal in motion. He never told the president about that. And by the way he cited the regulation in his recusal… He cited the wrong law. It didn’t apply.
Sara Carter: I think he was being advised badly at the time.
Gregg Jarrett: Yeah, by Obama’s holdovers. Who in the world would believe them?
Good grief! He cited the wrong law!
The DOJ regulation Sessions cited — 28 CFR 45.2— says “no DOJ employee may participate in a criminal investigation or prosecution if he has a personal or political relationship with any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution, or who would be directly affected by the outcome.”
As Andrew McCarthy at National Review reported, “The regulation he cited applies to a different type of investigation.”
Once again the question must be asked: Who did deep state catch Jeff Sessions in bed with?
My thoughts exactly.
April 2018 – Congress asks Sessions to investigate Swamp
On April 18, members of Congress wrote to Sessions, FBI Director Christopher Wray and United States Attorney John Huber requesting that they issue a criminal referral for a long list of Swamp dwellers, including FBI Director James Comey, Hillary Clinton and others – including FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, for a laundry list of potential crimes surrounding the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
You can read the letter in full at Scribd.
ZeroHedge has more (emphases in the original):
Recall that Sessions paired special prosecutor John Huber with DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz – falling short of a second Special Counsel, but empowering Horowitz to fully investigate allegations of FBI FISA abuse with subpoena power and other methods he was formerly unable to utilize.
The GOP letter’s primary focus appears to be James Comey, while the charges for all include obstruction, perjury, corruption, unauthorized removal of classified documents, contributions and donations by foreign nationals and other allegations.
The letter also demands that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “be recused from any examination of FISA abuse,” and recommends that “neither U.S. Attorney John Huber nor a special counsel (if appointed) should report to Rosenstein.”
April 2018 – possible partial recusal in Cohen investigation
Early in April, the home, office and hotel room of President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen were ransacked.
It’s possible that Sessions could recuse himself from this, too — at least partially.
On April 24, Gateway Pundit carried a news story, ‘WTH? AG Sessions Will Not Recuse Himself From Cohen Investigation — Only on Certain Issues‘ (emphases in the original):
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has decided not to recuse himself from the investigation into Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
Don’t get too excited because Sessions will consider stepping back on specific matters tied into the Cohen probe …
On Tuesday, GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin sent a letter to AG Sessions demanding to know his involvement in the FBI raid of Cohen.
“We would like to know if you approved, were consulted, or had any involvement in this decision by the Department of Justice,” Zeldin asked in a letter to AG Sessions about the FBI raid of Cohen on April 9th.
Gateway Pundit cited a Reuters article which says that Sessions discussed the matter at a Senate appropriations subcommittee meeting about the proposed 2019 budget for the Justice Department. Please read it, because it’s got all the classic Sessions recusal statements.
Conclusion
To date, Sessions’s recusals look increasingly like refusals to do the AG job in its entirety.
Jeff Sessions is up for the chop. It’s just a matter of time and circumstance. After the Cohen raid, Trump is even unhappier with the AG and the DOJ than he was a year ago at this time.
A tricky court case came to a close on Good Friday.
The Orlando Sentinel reported that Noor Salman, the widow of the Pulse nightclub shooter, was acquitted:
Jurors listened to eight days of testimony and found Salman, 31, not guilty of aiding and abetting Mateen’s providing of material support to a foreign terror organization and of obstruction of justice. The court has kept the names of jurors secret, and went as far as having them meet at a separate location away from the courthouse every day of the trial so U.S. marshals could drive them to the courthouse. The foreman asked to remain anonymous.
The Sentinel‘s report carries the jury foreman’s statement in full. This is the last paragraph (emphases mine):
I want to make several things very clear. A verdict of not guilty did NOT mean that we thought Noor Salman was unaware of what Omar Mateen was planning to do. On the contrary we were convinced she did know. She may not have known what day, or what location, but she knew. However, we were not tasked with deciding if she was aware of a potential attack. The charges were aiding and abetting and obstruction of justice. I felt the both the prosecution and the defense did an excellent job presenting their case. I wish that the FBI had recorded their interviews with Ms. Salman as there were several significant inconsistencies with the written summaries of her statements. The bottom line is that, based on the letter of the law, and the detailed instructions provided by the court, we were presented with no option but to return a verdict of not guilty.
Independent investigative Laura Loomer was not happy:
So were The_Donald’s contributors.
After the shooting, Noor Salman left Orlando and was arrested months later — January 2017 — in California. Her attorney said Salman was the victim of domestic abuse. She denied that Salman knew about plans for the mass shooting of 49 people. (Incidentally, the Daily Mail published an article about Salman shortly after the shooting which explains more about her upbringing and two marriages.)
For people who are upset about Noor Salman’s acquittal, here’s a reminder about the Boston bombing:
There is more to the Orlando case than meets the eye.
Here’s an interesting bit of news from Monday, March 26:
Although I respect Mike Cernovich’s journalism, I did not listen to his Periscope for lack of time.
However, Gateway Pundit‘s Lucian Wintrich did a stellar job in citing the various news reports about the allegation that the Orlando Pulse night club shooter’s father was working for the FBI.
The shooting took place on June 12, 2016. Who was in charge of the FBI at the time? None other than James Comey.
If the allegation is true and Seddique Mateen had been working for the FBI between 2005 and 2016, then Robert Mueller would likely have known about it as he was the director of the agency between 2001 and 2013.
Of the Periscope, Wintrich tells us:
Independent journalist Mike Cernovich has taken to Periscope to damn the FBI’s seeming complicity in the attacks, in line with their refusal to act on a series of domestic acts of terrorism such as the shooting in Parkland, Florida. The prosecution is seemingly shielding terrorist-tied Seddique Mateen, who was already under watch by the FBI, to prosecute Noor Salman; did the FBI have advanced knowledge of these attacks, and did Omar’s father Seddique Mateen encourage his son’s attack?
Let’s look at the articles Lucian Wintrich cites.
On March 26, 2018, when Salman’s defence team began presenting their case in court, CNN reported:
A judge has denied a motion for dismissal by lawyers for the widow of the Pulse gunman after they said new details from prosecutors reveal the shooter’s father was an FBI informant who is currently under a criminal investigation.
The judge said the fact that Omar Mateen’s father worked as an FBI informant was not relevant to the case against Noor Salman.
According to a motion filed by the defense, Assistant US Attorney Sara Sweeney sent an email to the defense on Saturday — in the middle of Salman’s trial — that stated Seddique Mateen was a confidential FBI source at various points in time between January 2005 through June 2016.
The email also stated that Seddique Mateen is being investigated for money transfers to Turkey and Afghanistan after documents were found in his home on June 12, 2016, the day of the Pulse attack. The dates of the money transfers were between March 16, 2016, and June 5, 2016, according to the email.
Salman’s lawyers argued that a failure to disclose this information violates her due process rights. They had no prior knowledge of this information.
Salman was charged with:
providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and obstruction of justice, as prosecutors say she knew about the coming massacre. She has pleaded not guilty, and her defense team has cast her as a victim rather than an accomplice.
The defense began its case Monday.
CBS also carried a report that day:
Salman’s lawyers allege the new revelation prevented them from investigating whether or not Seddique Mateen knew of his son’s plans to attack the nightclub.
According to the motion, defense lawyers allege that the decision not to give Noor Salman a polygraph was possibly “based on the FBI’s desire to implicate Noor Salman, rather than Seddique Mateen in order to avoid scrutiny of its own ineptitude with the latter.”
“Mateen’s father played a significant role in the FBI’s decision not to seek an indictment from the Justice Department for false statements to the FBI or obstruction of justice against Omar Mateen” during its 2013 investigation into his alleged threats, the motion stated.
Meanwhile, attorneys in federal court Monday will try to convince jurors that Salman didn’t help her husband as he prepared for the attack on the gay nightclub.
The New York Post reported:
Her lawyers’ federal court motion filed Monday says prosecutors contacted them Saturday night and told them about Seddique Mateen’s relationship with the feds, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
“It is apparent from the Government’s belated disclosure that Ms. Salman has been defending a case without a complete set of facts and evidence that the Government was required to disclose,” attorney Fritz Scheller said in the court filing.
The motion was filed just hours before Salman’s lawyers were slated to begin presenting their case. The prosecution rested its case Thursday.
Seddique Mateen, who was on the government’s witness list, was never called to testify — though his wife, Shahla Mateen, did testify.
Also:
Had Salman’s defense attorneys known about those transfers, Scheller argued, they would have “investigated whether a tie existed between Seddique Mateen and his son, specifically whether Mateen’s father was involved in or had foreknowledge of the Pulse attack.”
That would be relevant to Salman’s defense, Scheller argued, because the government has claimed she helped her husband invent a cover story to tell his parents about where he was going the night prior to the mass shooting.
If Seddique Mateen had “some level of foreknowledge” about his son’s plot, a cover story “would have been completely unnecessary,” according to the motion.
Mike Cernovich has been discussing this case for some time. After Salman’s not-guilty verdict, he reiterated the information about the case (start at 6:23):
Cernovich went through a lot of information in the public domain. Notably, Mateen told his colleagues in 2013 that he was radicalised. Some of his colleagues went to the FBI at that time quoting what he said.
The FBI did nothing with that information because Seddique Mateen told them not to.
Cernovich also pointed out that the FBI received multiple warnings from the public about Nikolas Cruz’s weird behaviour. The FBI ignored those, too.
The FBI seems to be ignoring warnings about unhinged people.
And what about Seddique Mateen? Will the FBI now investigate him?
This looks like a case for FBI director Christopher Wray. Will he take action?
Warning: some readers might find the second half of this post disturbing.
A lot of confusion surrounds the Florida school shooting that took place on Valentine’s Day 2018.
One thing is certain: gun control is once again the current topic.
A case in point is Philip Mudd:
a deputy director for the FBI’s national security branch and an ex-CIA agent, Philip Mudd has interviewed terrorists and is considered a counterterrorism expert.
Mudd also loathes President Donald Trump, which is useful information in reading what he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. From USA Today:
“I have 10 nieces and nephews who are talking about bump stocks,” he said. “We’re talking about legislation. A child of God is dead. Cannot we acknowledge in this country that we can’t — we cannot accept this.”
He continued before breaking down in tears: “I can’t do it, Wolf, I’m sorr… — We can’t do it.”
Mudd’s emotional response came after Wednesday’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. At least 17 people were killed.
On February 16, a contributor to the CBTS_Stream board on Reddit, a Q discussion site, posted part of a page from the 1990 book, Behold A Pale Horse, written by William Cooper, a distinguished US Navy intelligence veteran. More about him in a moment.
For now, note the following from page 225 of the book (image courtesy of CBTS_Stream):
Mudd’s crying on television is designed to hype up the call for gun control. His mention of God is a particularly cynical move.
Reports say that the suspect in the shooting is a white supremacist. Seems strange for someone whose surname is Cruz.
Once again, the media has hauled out the white supremacist tag as they so often do when a light-skinned person commits a mass shooting.
Psychotropics
What we should be asking is if this young man was taking prescription SSRIs — psychotropics — for a mental health disorder.
On October 9, 2017 — eight days after the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas — the mental health watchdog, CCHR International, published an excellent article on psychotropics and mass shootings. Excerpts follow, emphases mine.
This is the introduction to the article:
Twenty-seven drug regulatory agency warnings cite psychiatric drug side effects of mania, psychosis, violence and homicidal ideation; 1,531 cases of psychiatric drug induced homicide/homicidal ideation have been reported to the US FDA; 65 high profile cases of mass shootings/murder have been committed by individuals under the influence of these drugs, yet there has never been a federal investigation into the link between seemingly senseless acts of violence and the use of mind-altering psychotropic drugs.
The first part of the article discusses Stephen Paddock’s prescribed Valium use.
The FDA does not receive many reports of homicide/homicidal ideation links to psychotropic drugs (bold emphasis in the original here, purple highlight mine):
… according to the FDA’s MedWatch reporting system for drug side effects, over a 10-year period, the FDA received 1,531 cases of homicidal ideation/homicide attributed to psychiatric drugs, 40% of which were reported by medical professionals. The FDA admits that only 1-10% of drug side effects are ever reported to MedWatch, so taking a medium range of 5%, the number could easily be 30,620 cases of homicidal ideation/homicide attributed to psychiatric drugs.
Regarding the concept that psychiatric drugs could not have been a contributing factor in a case where the perpetrator was involved in extensive planning or preparations, we look to the definition of “homicidal,” which includes homicidal ideation, a similar concept to the “suicidal ideation” black box warning on antidepressant drugs:
“Homicidal … may encompass a broad variety of ideation and behaviors. They may range from globally aggressive thoughts… to a specific lethal plan with available means to carry it out.”
— Emergency Psychiatry journal
The article acknowledges that these drugs can help many people, however, some patients will go off the rails.
The FDA gets so few reports of drug-linked homicide (ideation) because law enforcement is not required to test for the presence of these drugs:
There have been 65 high profile acts of senseless violence, including mass school shootings, mass stabbings, and even the intentional crashing of a commercial airplane, committed by individuals taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs, resulting in 357 dead and 336 wounded. Drug proponents argue that there are thousands of shootings and acts of violence that have not been correlated to psychiatric drugs, and that is exactly the point. They have neither been confirmed nor refuted to have been connected to psychiatric drugs, as law enforcement is not required to investigate or report on prescribed drugs linked to violence, and media rarely pose the question.
This is what happened in New York State, where the state Senate attempted to require such testing :
The New York State Senate recognized the lack of reporting correlating mind-altering psychiatric drugs to both suicide and violence as far back as 2000, when the senate introduced a bill which would “require police to report to the Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), certain crimes and suicides committed by persons using psychotropic drugs,” citing “a large body of scientific research establishing a connection between violence and suicide and the use of psychotropic drugs.”
It never passed:
Unfortunately that bill stalled out in the finance committee, yet if that bill had passed, a reporting system would be in place to determine the extent to which violence is committed by those under the influence of mind-altering prescribed drugs.
These mass shootings are Russian Roulette on the American population:
With millions of Americans being prescribed psychiatric drugs, it’s apparent not everyone will experience violent reactions to the drugs, besides which, violence is only one of many documented side effects of psychiatric drugs. But what the drug regulatory agency warnings confirm, is that a percentage of the population will. And no one knows who will be next.
Scopolamine
There are also natural, non-prescription drugs that present a universal danger. One such drug is scopolamine, known as ‘devil’s breath’, which comes from a beautiful flowering tree in Colombia.
A light dusting of it removes a person’s free will. The victim agrees to do the perpetrator’s bidding. Afterwards, the victim might not remember a thing.
In 2012, the Daily Mail had an excellent, if horrifying, article on the power of this drug, based on research from a Vice.com reporter who travelled to Bogota to find out more:
The Mail‘s article says, in part:
According to the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, the drug – also known as hyoscine – causes the same level of memory loss as diazepam.
In ancient times, the drug was given to the mistresses of dead Colombian leaders – they were told to enter their master’s grave, where they were buried alive.
In modern times, the CIA used the drug as part of Cold War interrogations, with the hope of using it like a truth serum.
However, because of the drug’s chemical makeup, it also induces powerful hallucinations.
The tree [is] common around Colombia, and is called the ‘borrachero’ tree – loosely translated as the ‘get-you-drunk’ tree.
It is said that Colombian mothers warn their children not to fall asleep under the tree, though the leafy green canopies and large yellow and white flowers seem appealing.
Experts are baffled as to why Colombia is riddled with scopolamine-related crimes, but wager much of it has to do with the country’s torn drug-culture past, and on-going civil war.
Scary.
Conclusion
The question with mass shootings is NOT gun control or even bump stock control.
The real question, which nearly everyone is ignoring, has to do with psychotropic drugs.
Footnote on William Cooper
Cooper’s Behold A Pale Horse is 500 pages long, but nearly half of that is supplementary documentation. One of those documents is something no one should ever read, yet millions do.
The premise of the book is that, since 1917, there has been a plan to bring about the New World Order by getting the population to believe there is extra-terrestrial life then instilling fear in people about it to the extent that they will willingly do the state’s bidding. That’s a real stretch.
However, it makes one wonder if this is why a lot of Democrats are so interested in ETs, including Hillary Clinton and her campaign supremo John Podesta.
Anyone who thinks there are UFOs will enjoy Cooper’s book. Disclosure: that excludes me.
However, what is of interest is Cooper’s interspersing of historical elements about the American government and intelligence agencies, such as the page highlighted here.
What Cooper wrote must have been true, because his life was often in danger. In his autobiography at the beginning of the book (p. 33), he describes being forced off the road by a black limo in the hills of Oakland, California. The same limo ran into him again a month later, causing Cooper to lose a leg. That happened in the 1970s.
People who read the book commented on the CBTS_Stream thread cited at the top of this post.
Someone wrote:
They trailed him and harassed him for years. When Clinton was president they sicced the IRS on him on some “tax evasion” crap. He denied any of it was legit. They sent armed officers to his house one day to take him in. He probably knew he’d never get out once they had him, and a gunfight broke out (supposedly). Apache County sheriffs deputy killed him. I don’t remember if his wife and daughter were home. Daughter was about +/-4yrs old when they killed him. I don’t know what ever happened to them.
Another added:
In July 2001, Cooper predicted a large scale terrorist attack would occur in a large metropolitan city (for purposes of garnering worldwide attention) and he specifically said it would be blamed on Osama Bin Laden, not that he was psychic but because he knew the dark side (deep state) of government. The Apache Co. Sheriffs Dept. came for him on the fifth of November in 2001. He died the next day from his wounds suffered in the previous evening’s gun battle.
Wikipedia tells us about his death in Arizona:
As Cooper moved away from the UFOlogy community and toward the militia and anti-government subculture in the late 1990s, he became convinced that he was being personally targeted by President Bill Clinton and the Internal Revenue Service. In July 1998 he was charged with tax evasion; an arrest warrant was issued, but Cooper eluded repeated attempts to serve it. In 2000, he was named a “major fugitive” by the United States Marshals Service.[6]
On November 5, 2001, Apache County sheriff’s deputies attempted to arrest Cooper at his Eagar, Arizona home on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and endangerment stemming from disputes with local residents. After an exchange of gunfire during which Cooper shot one of the deputies in the head, Cooper was fatally shot. Federal authorities reported that Cooper had spent years evading execution of the 1998 arrest warrant, and according to a spokesman for the Marshals Service, he vowed that “he would not be taken alive”.[1]
I feel sorry for William Cooper. It must have been awful to have been so caught up in the Deep State. It does things to the mind.
Churchmouse Campanologist 