April [A]. IG report. Sessions public attack. RR problems. Seals broken. [A]rrests. Why was Huber made public? Why now? Everything has meaning. [A]wan. Tarmac. Iran. NK. U1. FBI. DOJ. Mueller. Election Integrity. Immigration Bill. Border. Wall. Military start. BIG month. Q
The IG — Inspector General’s — report was scheduled for April but is now thought to appear in a few weeks’ time. Whether that is actually in May or June is unknown.
RR — Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — definitely had problems in April, which I will cover in a separate post.
Seals broken — if that meant indictments, that did not happen.
Arrests — none of note.
Awan — the Awan brothers from Pakistan, led by Imran Awan, who were running the IT for Democrats in the House of Representatives, did make pro-Trump news sites, and Trump tweeted about ‘the Pakistani mystery man’. I will cover the Awan investigation in a separate post.
Tarmac — the infamous secret meeting between then Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton in July 2016 on Lynch’s plane. James Comey and Lynch disagree on their recollections of the Hillary Clinton ‘investigation’, or ‘matter’. Comey said one thing in his new book, A Higher Loyalty, and Lynch remembers differently. In early April (after Q’s post), NBC’s Lester Holt interviewed Lynch:
LESTER HOLT: But, so Comey says you want to call it, “The Clinton matter.” He wants to call it, “The Clinton investigation.” To the extent, though, that he noted it, that it bothered him did he go to you and question your credibility with regard to the Clinton case?
LORETTA LYNCH: Well, look I can tell you that, you know, it was a meeting like any other that we that we had had where we talked about the issues. And we had a full and open discussion about it.
LESTER HOLT: And he didn’t raise any concerns about?
LORETTA LYNCH: And concerns were not raised.
Trump tweeted:
Comey throws AG Lynch “under the bus!” Why can’t we all find out what happened on the tarmac in the back of the plane with Wild Bill and Lynch? Was she promised a Supreme Court seat, or AG, in order to lay off Hillary. No golf and grandkids talk (give us all a break)!
Q corroborated the tweet (message 1161 of April 15), hinting that Lynch could have been offered Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court if Hillary had been elected. I have no interpretation of the mention of Rep Adam Schiff (D-California), the 187 (dead code) and John Brennan, former CIA director, other than it seems Q is saying Brennan is a black hat:
SC – Supreme Court. RBG. AS 187 / Clown Black (Brennan). Q
Q’s next message, 1162, says:
We made sure a reporter was there to capture. These people are stupid. Q
Key takeaway: Iranian officials may be preparing to retaliate against Israel after Israel launched its second airstrike against Iranian targets in Syria since April 8.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) targeted Iranian assets in western Syria on April 29 and reportedly killed 18 Iranian fighters. Iranian media denied the reports of Iranian deaths following the strike. The April 29 strike comes after Israel’s April 8 airstrike on the Pro-Syrian regime T-4 airbase in Homs, Homs Governorate in southern Syria. The April 8 strike killed seven IRGC fighters. Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Secretary Ali Shamkhani vowed to “punish” Israel for its “evil action” following the April 8 airstrikes. Defense Minister Artesh Brigadier General Amir Hatami warned Israel on May 1 to stop its “scheming and dangerous behaviors” and suggested that the Axis of Resistance and Iran would confront Israel with a “regrettable and blindsiding” response.
NK — North Korea — was April’s blockbuster news item, which will feature in a separate post.
U1 — Uranium One — made a brief blip in the news cycle and might relate to the Mueller investigation’s raid on the properties and hotel room of Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen on April 9:
THIS VIDEO appears to EXPLAIN Mueller and Rosenstein's reason to RAID Michael Cohen's files. COHEN received ORIGINAL WHISTLE-BLOWER materials on URANIUM ONE.
The whistleblower believes the raid was to view the drops. He is now going public.https://t.co/ACMbmXBgUX
FBI, DOJ and Mueller — much is happening there which will feature in a separate post, although some April news is in my post about Jeff Sessions’s recusals.
Election Integrity — a report about voting abuses and the actual number of votes from the 2016 election was due but has not yet materialised.
Immigration Bill — nothing has happened since the beginning of the year.
Border — two stories made the news: part of the human caravan reached the US border with Mexico and dozens of California communities voted against the state’s sanctuary city policy.
Wall — construction began on March 26.
Military start — the National Guard was sent to the border with Mexico, and there was another attack on Syria nearly a year to the day after 2017’s.
BIG month — yes, especially where North Korea is concerned.
Q’s daily posts discussed John McCain’s trip to Syria a few years ago, social media tracking, the raid on Michael Cohen, trade with China, the plane incidents (‘new booms’, message 1174), the change of government in Armenia (CIA — ‘clowns’ — losing control, message 1243), not to mention the Iran deal and Uranium One — asking about the possibility that Uranium One material ended up in Syria.
Q also reiterated that the administration has the information it needs and that it will soon be time to proceed to the next phase: justice (message 1296, April 29).
I hope so, because, right now, things look rather unsettled.
As always, Q advised everyone to stay united rather than divided.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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 claimsthe 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:
AG Jeff Sessions recused from the Russia investigation March 2. On March 7, the FBI found that there was no need for him to have disclosed his meetings with Ambassador Kislyak. #BREAKING#THESTORY .@edhenry Stay tuned…
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:
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:
35. Trump & Sessions have ONE SHOT at this. This is a zero-sum game, against dangerous people. There's no second chance.
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).
37. Ignore the doubters. Their abuse of Sessions is actually abuse of Trump. And that's not what we need. It doesn't help.
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.
39. ADDENDUM – Sessions HASN'T recused from U1, which is looking more & more like the main game:https://t.co/uvApVsWODg
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Today’s post looks at the memo from Senators Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) about the dossier. A second version — less redacted — appeared on Tuesday, February 6.
First, this is the current state of play with FBI and DOJ employees involved with the dossier:
On December 7, 2017, Fox News had more on Bruce Ohr’s demotion (emphases mine):
Until Wednesday morning, Bruce G. Ohr held two titles at DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, a post that placed him four doors down from his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein; and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), a program described by the department as “the centerpiece of the attorney general’s drug strategy.”
Ohr will retain his OCDETF title but has been stripped of his higher post and ousted from his office on the fourth floor of “Main Justice.”
Initially senior department officials could not provide the reason for Ohr’s demotion, but Fox News has learned that evidence collected by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., indicates that Ohr met during the 2016 campaign with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the “dossier.”
Also:
According to congressional sources, Simpson and Ohr met sometime around Thanksgiving last year, when President-elect Trump was in the process of selecting his cabinet, and discussed over coffee the anti-Trump dossier, the Russia investigation and what Simpson considered the distressing development of Trump’s victory.
How exactly Simpson and Ohr came to know each other is still being investigated, but initial evidence collected by the House intelligence committee suggests that the two were placed in touch by Steele, a former FBI informant whose contacts with Ohr are said by senior DOJ officials to date back to 2006.
A man by the name of Carter Page was used as the excuse to spy on Donald Trump. He very briefly volunteered for the Trump campaign but, contrary to what the media say, was not his foreign affairs adviser:
Christopher Steele, the former MI-6 spy, was responsible for that:
New Grassley/Graham memo reveals that the FBI warrant to spy on a Trump volunteer relied heavily on the credibility of Christopher Steele & failed to mention evidence that Steele had actually lied to the FBI!!!! This is unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/04wQQqcA5S
This is what Grassley referral of Steele is really about: Steele likely never swore under oath that anything in the dossier was actually true, or that he could verify any of it. This was the biggest omission in the FISA application — that Steele wasn't even their real source.
#GrassleyMemo CONFIRMS that Comey and the FBI had an extended relationship with Steele and relied heavily on him and his dossier "Mr. Steele himself was considered reliable due to his past work for the Bureau" (page 2)https://t.co/Nkw7FxC7wjpic.twitter.com/yU6IfpM0sC
Some at the FBI were heavily involved with Hillary Clinton’s campaign:
#GrassleyMemo CONFIRMS that Comey and the FBI worked for the Hillary Clinton Campaign. Perkins Coie got paid. #FusionGPS got paid. Steele got paid. Are we to believe that Comey did not get paid in some form? Why the slavish devotion? (page 3) pic.twitter.com/DyGfD7ndTX
The Conservative Treehouse points out the the DOJ was only interested in this state of affairs when Inspector General Michael Horowitz found out (purple highlights mine):
Proving, once again, this is a well thought-out strategy, Chuck Grassley’s newest partly declassified version of the Graham-Grassley memo highlights the DOJ didn’t care about Bruce Ohr meeting with Christopher Steele until Inspector General Michael Horowitz found out.
Page #5 of the Grassley Memo (pg. 7 pdf), highlights the FBI interviewed DOJ Deputy Attorney Bruce Ohr on November 22nd, and December 12th, 2016 [FD-302 Interview Notes], yet didn’t take any action about their discoveries until Inspector General Michael Horowitz found out and revealed the interviews on December 7th, 2017.
Based on what we know to date, the following tweets suggest how the dossier was most likely compiled:
Trey Gowdy just heavily implied that Sydney Blumenthal was a source for Christopher Steele's oppo dossier on Fox News: pic.twitter.com/cp1ztcEsB6
So this redacted Grassley letter: IF we have this right (fitting the names to the redactions) Steele received a report from Winer at State, who in turn had received info from Sid Blumenthal (Hillary’s BFF), who in turn received it from Cody Shearer’s sub-source pic.twitter.com/amx5fYRCsu
Custody chain seems to be: Source to Shearer to Blumenthal to Winer to Steele to FBI. Clinton associates feed Clinton-funded Steele, who feeds FBI. https://t.co/r2m9czHFQ3pic.twitter.com/FR3OS7v8Du
Cody is Cody Shearer, a longtime Clinton family operative—his brother was an ambassador under Bill Clinton and his now-deceased sister was married to Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott—who was in close contact with Blumenthal. https://t.co/JlTm4D9LgB
"Second Trump Russia dossier" – aka the dossier that tried to confirm the Fusion GPS dossier – was written by Cody Shearer
In 1999, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews ID’d Cody Shearer as the man who intimidated Kathleen Willey – just days before Willey was to testify against Bill Clinton pic.twitter.com/09q4M8K8vo
Cody Shearer intimidated and terrorized me for well over two years at the behest of HRC. I came home to a 1 yr. old, healthy pet. Another went missing. My car was vandalized. I encountered a stranger under my deck at 3 am one morning. Now he produces a bogus dossier? https://t.co/4ZldtVTX9V
Former U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova: "Now we know that additional Clinton allies…were involved in the transmission of false information, unverified information to the @FBI through State Department officials. Somebody's going to have to go to prison." @IngrahamAnglepic.twitter.com/0zfNwJLm0F
Today’s post is related to all of the above. It concerns the release of the Devin Nunes FISA memo on February 2, 2018.
Representative Devin Nunes (R-California) is the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).
His four-page memo concerns FISA warrants allowing surveillance of President Donald Trump and several others.
Democrats and media want one-party state
Before going into the content of the memo, what everyone around the world heard this weekend on media outlets has been an onslaught of anti-Republican and anti-Trump thought.
This is because — as I said in Part 2 — Donald Trump was patently not supposed to have won the 2016 election:
Remember when Obama said “Donald Trump will not be President”?
I thought when he made that statement that he knew something only a very small group of people knew.
Obama and Clinton are the masterminds behind all of this and deserve to be tried for treason.#MemoDay
A firestorm of protests and objections to Trump ran from the day after the election to the present. Even former attorney general Loretta Lynch got involved early in 2017:
The blurb for the video reads:
The Obama administration’s former Attorney General Loretta Lynch has made an impassioned video plea for more “blood” and “death” on the streets – a video that was later posted on the Facebook page of Senate Democrats as “words of inspiration.”
There are some big players behind the move for the one-party state, and many people who ally themselves with the Democrats have been persuaded that this is for the common good. However, based on this memo — and the Democrats’ clear disdain for the American people as seen at the State of the Union address — that might not play out:
Obama, Hillary, Deep State, the DNC and Silicon Valley all tried to create a one-party state. They succeeded. That party will be the Republicans.
Tucker Carlson (Fox News) interviewed Representative Eric Swalwell (D-California) the evening of the memo’s release. Swalwell suggested that Carlson, in defending the memo’s release, was doing Vladimir Putin’s work. Absurd:
The Nunes — FISA — memo
The Nunes — or FISA — memo is four pages long and has no footnotes. A two-page letter from the White House states the president approves of its release. Both are on Scribd and PDF.
Here is a big picture overview of the background to the memo (courtesy of The_Donald):
This image from 8chan has additional information, equally important:
Tom Fitton from Judicial Watch describes the scenario in a nutshell:
“You had Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party try to hide the fact that they gave money to GPS Fusion to create a Dossier which was used by their allies in the Obama Administration to convince a Court misleadingly, by all accounts, to spy on the Trump Team.” Tom Fitton, JW
Also involved is a man named Carter Page, who was briefly and peripherally involved with the Trump campaign. He was the gateway for the surveillance. Anyone he spoke to on the campaign was automatically surveilled.
1. FBI Used News Articled Sourced By Steele To Corroborate His Dossier
The memo, which President Trump agreed to declassify Friday, states that the FBI did not tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) a lot of crucial information about the dossier it was citing as evidence when the bureau sought a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to monitor Page.
In September 2016, ex-British spy Christopher Steele–who compiled an infamous dossier filled with unfounded claims about President Trump–told Yahoo News about Page’s visit to Moscow. Yahoo News subsequently published a story about this trip. The FBI then cited this Yahoo News report, sourced entirely by Steele, as evidence in its initial FISA warrant application to corroborate information the ex-British spy compiled in his dossier. The FBI incorrectly asserted to the court in its application that Steele did not provide information to Yahoo News about Page’s Moscow trip. British court filings, however, show Steele admitted he met with Yahoo News in September 2016, two months before the FBI got its initial warrant, to discuss the trip at the direction of Fusion GPS.
Think of it — using a Yahoo News article to obtain a FISA warrant. You could not make this up. The journalist who wrote the article is stunned:
2. FBI Knew Steele Was Being Paid By DNC, Hillary Clinton, Chose Not To Tell The Court
The FBI did not tell the court that information cited in its warrant application was gathered by an individual who was being paid by Trump’s political opponents.
The bureau was aware that Steele was working for Fusion GPS, a research firm that was hired by Perkins Coie, a law firm Hillary Clinton and the DNC were making payments to. The DNC and Clinton campaign paid Steele $160,000 …
In December 2017 FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe Steele testified that if the dossier hadn’t existed, the FBI would not have sought a warrant (Bombshell 3).
4. FBI Spied On Trump’s Associate For Nearly a Year
The FBI obtained the initial FISA warrant to surveil Page on October 21, 2016 after he visited Moscow and reportedly spoke to a Russian official who had expressed support for Trump in July 2016. The warrant was renewed three times for the full extent allowed of 90 days each, totaling 360 days under surveillance …
With each of these renewals, the FBI choose not to disclose to the court that it had relied on information funded by Trump’s political opponents in its quest to surveil a Trump campaign member.
Signatories included then-FBI director James Comey, then-deputy director Andrew McCabe, then-deputy attorney general Sally Yates, then-acting-deputy attorney general Dana Boente, and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.
What this means is that Trump was under surveillance even after he became president:
Steele began playing up his role in the operation and gave an interview to David Corn of Mother Jones on October 30, 2016, only several days after the first FISA warrant was approved. The FBI dismissed him as an ongoing source, as he violated bureau protocol (Bombshell 5). However, the FBI never told FISC — the FISA court — when seeking warrant renewals (Bombshell 6).
7. DOJ Official’s Wife Was Getting Paid By Fusion GPS
Throughout the process of obtaining the initial warrant, then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr’s wife worked for Fusion GPS, the firm that hired Steele to dig up dirt on Trump. At the firm, she helped conduct opposition research on Trump and his associates. The FBI did not disclose this to the court.
Ohr was demoted within the DOJ in December 2017 after it was discovered he had concealed meetings with Steele and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. During these meetings, Steele confided in Ohr that he was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected.” The FBI knew about Steele’s political bias against Trump, but did not make this known to the court.
Why this matters — constitutional crisis?
Exposing this — what many Trump supporters knew or suspected — is a very big deal and could cause a constitutional crisis:
Based off information from the memo, the senior officials at DOJ and FBI willfully and intentionally deceived the FISA court. They had 4 chances to clarify the partisan and political origins of the Steele dossier and didn't. #MAGA#tcot
Lying to a federal court in order to illegally spy on an incoming president's team is so normal Comey thinks it's nothing. Good to know. It also tells you everything you need to know about him & those involved in this stunning corruption. https://t.co/ynAZV6papw
The FISA abuse memo names McCabe. If it fingers him in the surveillance abuse, should he simply be summarily removed from office (as happened this morning) or also investigated and INDICTED? Introducing false evidence (Hillary-funded, Russian-sourced dossier) in court is a FELONY
Two possible truths from the memo 1. The most powerful agencies in our government are beholden to no one and conduct smear campaigns for political reasons behind closed doors. 2. The Obama administration knew about and directed these actions.
On February 2, Gateway Pundit reported that Senators Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) are busy attempting to get a Senate Judiciary Committee memo declassified.
The HPSCI will also vote to make supporting documents to the FISA memo discussed here available to the public.
Expected in March is the inspector general’s — Michael Horowitz’s — report which is likely to cover this and much more.
2018 will be quite the year for news. Stay tuned.
(Forbidden Bible Verses will appear on Sunday, February 4.)
EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of FBI cellphones were affected by the technical glitch that the DOJ says prevented five months’ worth of text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page from being stored or uploaded into the bureau’s archive system, federal law enforcement officials tell Fox News.
The missing messages have been at the center of a storm of controversy on Capitol Hill, after the DOJ notified congressional committees that there is a gap in records between Dec. 14, 2016, and May 17, 2017. Strzok and Page are under scrutiny after it was revealed that the former members of Robert Mueller’s team exchanged a series of anti-Trump texts during the presidential campaign.
The gap in records covered a crucial period, raising suspicion among GOP lawmakers about how those messages disappeared.
But Fox News is told that the glitch affected the phones of “nearly” 10 percent of the FBI’s 35,000 employees.
Senior Department of Justice officials told Fox News they are “taking steps” to possibly recover the texts from the appropriate cellphone carriers. The same officials told Fox News they are also making every effort to track down the physical cellphones in question so they could be subject to a forensic review.
True Pundit, which looks click-baity but is run by a former FBI employee, has more, possibly based on anonymous FBI tip-offs. Excerpts follow, emphases mine:
A high-ranking FBI official confirms a number of the missing 50,000 FBI text messages — as well as other text and email messages among FBI brass — reportedly discussed initiating physical harm to President Donald Trump …
The FBI official urged the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — which oversees the U.S. Secret Service — to launch an investigation of the Justice Department, the FBI and all text messages missing and otherwise that threatened the President.
“This is dangerous territory and all FBI text messages and personal phones should be examined,” the official said. “It would reveal some frightening conversations.”
Did FBI brass discuss the assassination of President Donald Trump? If not, what was the nature of the threats against the president from inside the alleged premier law enforcement agency in the United States?
“(Director) Wray wants a lid on this,” the FBI official said. “Many know there was talk of harming Trump politically but there is a group here (in D.C. HQ) that understands it goes deeper. We need a special counsel or Homeland Security. Somebody has to clean this up outside of DOJ. It is unacceptable.
This is scary:
As reported yesterday in True Pundit, members of the FBI and Justice Department’s top brass at their Washington D.C.headquarters and other field offices are now using burner phones to stay under the radar of federal investigators and lawmakers, according to FBI insiders.
The shocking revelations come on the heels of news that the FBI deleted thousands of text messages between anti-Trump FBI agents before investigators could review their content.
While that is disturbing on one level, FBI and DOJ hierarchy employing the telecom habits of drug cartel bosses reaches a new low for the once-heralded federal law enforcement agency and the DOJ. And breaks federal laws as well.
The Hill reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the DOJ will investigate the matter and do everything possible to recover the missing texts:
“We will leave no stone unturned to confirm with certainty why these text messages are not now available to be produced and will use every technology available to determine whether the missing messages are recoverable from another source,” Sessions said in a statement.
“I have spoken to the Inspector General and a review is already underway to ascertain what occurred and to determine if these records can be recovered in any other way. If any wrongdoing were to be found to have caused this gap, appropriate legal disciplinary action measures will be taken,” he continued.
As my post of yesterday pointed out, there are several ways these and other ‘missing’ electronic data can be recovered.
In addition, the phones being used were supposed to be Samsung S5 phones, which do not have a bug that deletes texts. Hmm:
-2017: Samsung bug deletes texts on S8 phones (not S5)
-2018: FBI claims 10% of agents were affected by bug deleting their texts
-Bug apparently only affected FBI agents
-FBI forgets it affected 10% until a week after Strzok texts "vanish"
However, The Hill‘s article says that a number of Republican legislators are echoing Trump’s claim that the Robert Mueller investigation is a political witch hunt. Strzok and Page were part of Mueller’s team until he found out about the copious text exchanged between these two anti-Trumpers.
The Daily Caller recaps what Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee told a Milwaukee radio host about one of the texts in which Strzok says that they won’t find anything on Trump, insinuating that he only joined the Mueller investigation to depose the president:
In an interview with WISN-Milwaukee radio host Jay Weber, Johnson read aloud a May 19, 2017 text that Strzok sent to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer and his mistress.
Strzok wrote: “You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely, I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern that there’s no big there there” …
As the FBI’s deputy counterintelligence chief, Strzok was picked in July 2016 to oversee the investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with the Russian government. Prior to that, he was a top investigator on the Clinton email inquiry.
“I think that’s kind of jaw-dropping,” said Johnson, a Republican, said of the Strzok text.
“In other words, Peter Strzok, who was the FBI deputy assistant director of the counterintelligence division, the man who had a plan to do something because he just couldn’t abide Donald Trump being president, is saying that his gut sense is that there’s no big there there when it comes to the Mueller special counsel investigation,” he said.
The text message was included in 400 pages of text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page. Lawmakers have started reviewing the trove of documents for evidence of anti-Trump and pro-Clinton bias.
CBS News has a related article with several of the text messages the two exchanged.
Johnson and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, sent a four-page letter to Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz with a list of questions about these missing messages.
Imperator_Rex thinks there is a strategy behind the news about the missing texts:
5. So while Strzok & Page (or someone else) deleted the texts, I’m not buying the separate conclusion that they no longer exist. Here’s what I think may be happening.
6. Option #1 -The OIG discovered the texts were deleted during their investigation & recovered them. Working with DOJ, they are now leaking fake news to confuse the perps in this conspiracy and/or hoping to stimulate comms between them (they’d all be under surveillance), or
7. #2 – this is part of the lead up to the memo release & part of a well planned, calibrated campaign to educate the American public for that shock, as well as what follows. Remember,most Americans are only just waking up to what many of us have known for months.
8. #3 – they are ALL lost forever, never to be found again. Remember, even if the SMSs are lost (they aren’t), the signatures of where, who, how & when the deletions occurred will remain. AND they already have more than enough evidence to nail these sob’s to the wall, anyway.
9. May be wrong, but one thing I have learned in the last 12 months is NEVER to accept what’s happening on the surface at face value. ESPECIALLY leaks to the media. We learned this in the ‘leaks are real, news is fake’ campaign that started as soon as Trump was inaugurated.
Transfers, resignations
Strzok has been transferred internally and is now working in the FBI’s HR department.
Page has been transferred from the FBI to the DOJ.
However, more transfers — and resignations — have occurred. This could be because of IG Horowitz’s independent investigation of the FBI:
BREAKING: In addition to Strzok and Page's texts, IG Horowitz has obtained hundreds of other high-level text messages from the FBI-issued mobile devices of other FBI as well DOJ officials involved in pre-election investigations. May explain recent resignations and reassignments.
to testify as part of the committee’s investigation into the Department of Justice’s probe in Hillary Clinton’s private email server, and the decision by then-FBI Director James Comey to announce there would be no criminal charges against the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.
Rybicki will also appear before the House Judiciary Committee, an aide told the Washington Examiner.
Rybicki was the key figure in circulating and coordinating the “Clinton Exoneration Statement” read by Director Comey. For Clinton endeavor Rybicki was the hub collecting and dispatching communication as the ‘talking points’ were constructed, edited, refined and ultimately finalized.
Additionally, Rybicki was the communication hub surrounding the Clinton-Lynch ‘Tarmac Meeting’ discussion points that led to public statements therein by the FBI and ultimately Loretta Lynch’s public statements about distancing herself from the investigation.
Also, James Rybicki was listed as one of the key witnesses requested by Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes as outlined in the letter of agreement between Nunes and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. James Rybicki was/is being questioned by Nunes et al.
FBI Director Chris Wray says chief of staff Jim Rybicki is leaving for job in the private sector. He will be replaced by Zachary Harmon. Wray and Harmon worked together at law firm King & Spalding.
Dana Boente, the acting head of the Justice Department’s national security division and the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, has been picked to become the new FBI general counsel, according to a source familiar with the move.
Boente was first thrust into the spotlight in January 2017 as the acting attorney general after President Donald Trump fired Sally Yates for her refusal to defend the first travel ban. He later moved to the No. 2 spot at the Justice Department as acting deputy attorney general, tasked with overseeing the Russia probe after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself and then delivering the news to a slew of US attorneys left over from the Obama administration that they had been fired.
He will take the place of James Baker, who was reassigned within the FBI late last year.
I highlighted part of the first paragraph, because his move means that leaves a vacancy for a new US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, no doubt a Trump appointee.
Eventually, the FBI — and DOJ — will be cleaned up, but it won’t be any time soon.
TrumpSoldier has a good thread — complete with video clips — on FBI director Christopher Wray, who is waiting for the IG’s report on the bureau so he can do a complete clean up:
4. He could of said "We will evaluate what the IG finds." Instead, he says that we (FBI) or others (DOJ) would HAVE TO take steps in response. Not might take, but HAVE TO TAKE.
8. In addition to elaborating where he did not have to, Wray on multiple occasions expressed his readiness to take action in response to the findings of the IG.
13. These are all statements on the record UNDER OATH. Statements that make is abundantly clear that Christopher Wray is going to use the findings and recommendations of the Inspector General to clean up the FBI.
The Strzok/Page text exchange mentioned a ‘secret society’ intending to remove Trump from office:
ABC News has obtained the "secret society" text…
It's a stand alone message from Lisa Page: "Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society" https://t.co/qxlXSgYAme
Michael Goodwin mentions it in a good article in the New York Post about how politicised the FBI has become:
… each day brings credible reports suggesting there is a massive scandal involving the top ranks of America’s premier law enforcement agency. The reports, which feature talk among agents of a “secret society” and suddenly missing text messages, point to the existence both of a cabal dedicated to defeating Donald Trump in 2016 and of a plan to let Hillary Clinton skate free in the classified email probe.
If either one is true — and I believe both probably are — it would mean FBI leaders betrayed the nation by abusing their powers in a bid to pick the president.
ABC News has an exclusive on the ‘secret society’, which includes this:
Asked Wednesday whether he believes there’s a “secret society” inside the FBI to take down the president, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., said, “That’s Strzok and Page’s term.”
“Everything I take with a grain of salt,” he added. “[But] I’ve heard from an individual that … there was a group of managers within the FBI that were holding meetings off site.”
So “when Strzok and Page had described a secret society, that didn’t surprise me because I had corroborating information,” Johnson said.
He declined to describe the “whistleblower” in any way, and he said he did not know what the FBI’s “off-site” meetings might have entailed.
Nevertheless, he said he is “trying to be as transparent as possible.”
Johnson is pictured in the ABC tweet above. He also spoke to Fox News.
Infowars has more, summarising material from True Pundit and its founder who tweets as Thomas Paine:
Source who revealed existence of FBI secret society one month before it was in the news says it includes federal judges, former Attorney Generals and one sitting Attorney General of a large U.S. state.
On Monday, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) revealed that congressional investigators learned from a new batch of text messages between anti-Trump FBI investigators Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that a “secret society” within the DOJ and the FBI had schemed immediately after Trump’s election win to undermine the president …
“They communicate with meetings over cocktails, at homes, via encrypted chat rooms, texting on drug-cartel-inspired burner phones, and even via an email list, according to sources. Others have secured phones in the names of relatives to try to stay under the radar.”
The source of these claims, a Twitter account under the name of Thomas Paine who also runs the intelligence website True Pundit, could be easily dismissed as a crank – if were not for the fact that he exposed the secret society within the FBI a month before it was in the news.
On December 19, 2017 – over a month before it was made public, the Thomas Paine account tweeted, “What is this I hear about a private meeting away from FBI HQ by high-ranking FBI agents trying to get their stories and alibis straight?”
A source on the inside has informed me of a top secret meeting that is alleged to have taken place between prominent intelligence community officials, both currently serving and retired.
The source details a meeting that took place in Virginia of December 2016 at the The Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner. Officials met for several hours, there were some very, very prominent intelligence officials there, including Robert Mueller, James Comey, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, John Brennan, James Clapper, Leon Panetta, Phil Mudd, David Petraeus, Michael Hayden & former Attorney General Eric Holder.
My word. If true, that’s an all-star line-up.
There’s more:
They openly joked about the now famous Russian dossier, likely used to obtain the FISA court warrant to spy on the transition team. The source wouldn’t reveal that it was used to obtain the warrant, because of the legal repercussions of declassifying such a revelation, but strongly hinted that was indeed the case …
The source wouldn’t go into too many other details, citing the typical lingo of “can’t compromise sources and methods etc”… this person was also in fear they would be outed for going public about the meeting, a meeting they were told “never took place” upon arriving at the lavish hotel. They tried to take this to more mainstream outlets, but didn’t think anyone would believe the story …
This further proves that the IC was actively working to undermine the President from day one in backroom closed door meetings. I am also told this wasn’t the only meeting.
Former US Attorney Joe diGenova believes this could well be true and, if so, thinks the group still meets. He is none too happy with the current FBI director, Wray, either, for not cleaning house:
Representative Mark Gaetz (R-Florida) gave an interview about the ‘secret society’, calling it a ‘palace coup’:
I do not know how much of this message from another Anon is true — not all of it, one imagines — but it mentions the ‘secret society’ and a plan to kidnap Trump’s grandchildren, suggesting that is why Donald Trump Jr dropped his Secret Service detail for private security.
In closing, here is part of a thread from Representative Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina) about the widespread corruption at the FBI:
Think about how important that is. We have a text from Peter Strzok talking about the pressure to end the Clinton investigation, and then–within 48 hours–documents suggesting Peter Strzok changed Dir. Comey’s letter from criminal charges to just “carelessness.” That’s major.
Folks, this stinks to high heaven. If this is anything what it looks like–the FBI changing course on investigation, putting their thumb on the scale to undermine Donald Trump and essentially help Hillary Clinton–that is as wrong as it gets. This demands further investigation.
And remember, this doesn’t even address a host of other questions! The dossier. The Carter Page FISA application (that they still won’t show us). The 5 months of mysteriously “missing” Page/Strzok texts. The FBI communicating with Fusion GPS/DNC-hired Christopher Steele. Come on.
This is not party politics. This is not partisan bickering. This is an issue that gets at the very heart of who we are as a nation. If any officials at the FBI were engaged in this kind of behavior, we need to know.
Bottom line: tell us the truth. Tell us the truth about what happened with the Clinton investigation, the 2016 election, and leading up to this “collusion” investigation. All of it. Americans deserve the truth.
Yesterday’s post discussed the events that took place Friday, December 1, 2017.
Today’s entry serves as an update on the weekend’s news. I won’t be recapping much of what I wrote about Friday, so you might want to read that post before continuing here.
ABC’s Brian Ross
ABC’s veteran reporter Brian Ross was suspended for four weeks without pay for his fake news of Friday that caused the US stock market to dip for an hour:
ABC News suspends reporter Brian Ross for the network's incorrect report about Donald Trump directing Michael Flynn to make contact with the Russians. https://t.co/JQRQJd58bv
Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and “papers” should do the same with their Fake News!
People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused – many millions of dollars!
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, father of Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is a past Republican presidential candidate and former Fox News show host:
Having dealt with ABC's Brian Ross who fancies himself as an "investigative" something, not surprised he got caught making up some stuff. One of the most aggressively dishonest reporters I ever dealt with. https://t.co/SWReBMHXqT
One of Robert Mueller’s top investigators has been sacked from his team investigating the Trump campaign’s notional Russian collusion:
BREAKING: top FBI investigator for Mueller–PETER STRZOK–busted sending political text messages bashing Trump & praising Hillary during the 2016 campaign. STRZOK actually LED the Hillary email probe & recommended clearing her; then was tapped to SUPERVISE the Trump Russia probe!
The FBI Agent Who Supervised the Trump-Russia Probe as well as the Clinton email investigation is a Clinton supporter who just so happened to be the same one pushing the Steele dossier. Incredible. https://t.co/Yisd987ux1pic.twitter.com/Ir1NvcFvtc
This…is not good. Two FBI agents (who were having an affair) working on both the Clinton email investigation and now the Trump Russia investigation, were texting each other anti-Trump and pro-Clinton things: https://t.co/KsSMEWvweHpic.twitter.com/EPQ1n6rEft
Advice came in for the new FBI director, Christopher Wray:
Wray needs to clean house. Now we know the politicization even worse than McCabe's ties to McAuliffe/Clinton. It also infected his top investigator PETER STRZOK, who sent texts bashing Trump & praising Hillary during campaign. Strzok led Hillary probe & supervised Trump probe! https://t.co/0y403oeqvX
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 79 pages of Justice Department documents concerning ethics issues related to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s involvement with his wife’s political campaign. The documents include an email showing Mrs. McCabe was recruited for a Virginia state senate race in February 2015 by then-Virginia Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam’s office.
The news that Clinton used a private email server broke five days later, on March 2, 2015. Five days after that, former Clinton Foundation board member and Democrat party fundraiser, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, met with the McCabes. She announced her candidacy on March 12. Soon afterward, Clinton/McAuliffe-aligned political groups donated nearly $700,000 (40% of the campaign’s total funds) to McCabe’s wife for her campaign.
Most Trump supporters knew about that during the 2016 campaign, but it got little media coverage.
Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton has been doing great work in exposing Swamp scandals. See here, here and here.
This is very serious. Can one imagine a Republican getting away with such a thing?
McCabe may have violated corresponding Dept regs prohibiting political activity during his wife’s 2015 campaign for Virginia Senate. Gov McAuliffe’s PAC gave nearly $500,000 to Jill McCabe's campaign while the FBI’s investigation of Clinton was ongoing https://t.co/99LwgIuvtO
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn has been made to look like a criminal for lying to the FBI, but we have senior US officials — present and former — who have committed crimes. The American people are told there is nothing to see.
Congressman Steve Smith (R-Georgia) summarised the situation well:
Flynn lies about details that don't matter: federal indictment 😒@ABC lies and spreads #FakeNews that tanks the stock market: UNPAID VACATION 🥂
Mueller lies about Iraq War intelligence: CALLED A HERO😖
So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday “interrogation” with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times…and nothing happens to her? Rigged system, or just a double standard?
Is he having a go at his Attorney General Jeff ‘Sleepy’ Sessions?
Many people in our Country are asking what the “Justice” Department is going to do about the fact that totally Crooked Hillary, AFTER receiving a subpoena from the United States Congress, deleted and “acid washed” 33,000 Emails? No justice!
Sleepy will be leaving soon, probably early in 2018.
His immediate recusal from this probe, because it was connected with the Trump campaign and he was part of the campaign, caused a lot of grief for a lot of people, including the spring-summer campaign manager Paul Manafort, whom the Mueller team treated terribly — including a middle-of-the-night FBI raid on his and his wife’s home while they were asleep.
What Manafort has been indicted for isn’t even related to the Trump campaign but to work he did in Ukraine years before.
See how justly Manafort has been treated:
Compare the treatment of HRC's lawyers, who were given immunity, to that of Manafort's lawyer, who was forced to testify against Manafort. pic.twitter.com/GNRIIJ6ISm
While speaking to a group of business leaders in Paris, former President Barack Obama said there is a “temporary absence of American leadership” when it comes to tackling climate change.
“I grant you that at the moment we have a temporary absence of American leadership on the issue,” the former president noted, which was met with laughter from the room full of French former ministers and CEOs at the invite-only event, according to Reuters.
Obama also recently visited China:
Reporters are trying to cover up this picture after they realized it shows a Logan Act violation
On December 2, the CIA director Mike Pompeo — a Trump appointee — was a guest at the Reagan National Defense Forum.
TrumpSoldier has a detailed Twitter thread on Pompeo’s appearance, video clips and still photos included. A summary with most of the tweets follows. I corrected a few original typos below.
The Reagan National Defense Forum (RNDF) sounds conservative until one looks at who is on the steering committee (see point 4), including the CEO/Publisher of the Washington Post, a few Obama appointees, anti-Trump Republican senator John McCain and former Clinton adviser and CIA director Leon Panetta. Fox News’s Bret Baier conducted an interview on stage with Pompeo and Panetta (emphases mine below):
5) Mike Pompeo was going into swamp territory and now everything makes sense to me as you will soon see.
6) The slogan for the RNDF is “Investing in Peace Through Strength” I like Peace through Strength but the “investing” part sets off alarm bells. I am not going to investigate who funds them but I imagine it’s not pretty.
7) The RNDF is an organization that is run by active and retired swamp creatures whose main purpose is influencing and shaping policy.
8) Mike sat down with Panetta and his lackey Bret Baier for an hour and they discussed world events from a security perspective. It was light hearted and fun and that is all part of the set up.
9) Mike Pompeo is relaxed, joking and having fun. Panetta even tries to connect with him as “two Italians”. Bret’s ambush questions are strategically placed for maximum effect.
10) The Triggering! Baier asks Mike Pompeo about Saudi Arabia: Panetta and decades of swamp failure are brought face to face with the dramatic sudden success of Trump Administration Foreign Policy.
11) Everything was jovial up to this point (at about 30 minutes in) Panetta’s reactions became really serious and concerned and his responses became lectures. An old swamp thing cut off from power flailing for relevance.
12) The Soft Ball Baer asks Mike Pompeo how he shares intelligence with Trump.
No real answer, by the way. Good.
14) The Ambush! Mike Pompeo asked about #FakeNews stores regarding the mental state of President Trump: “It’s Absurd” (watch and listen closely)
15) Remember everyone is laughing and having a good time up to this point and on cue as the question is asked Panetta laughs. It was the perfect set up!
16) You can see the moment when Mike senses the trap he licks his lips and smiles ever so slightly. He is ready!
17) Mike breaks character, reveals his power level, and suddenly kills the room! Panetta nervously begins laughing some more to try to lighten the mood. I would have loved to see Baier’s face as he absorbed this stare. I guarantee he looked down and away.
18) The next order of business to to try to get Pompeo to listen to the wisdom of a “very concerned” Panetta regarding the danger of #TrumpTweets
19) #TrumpTweets are Dangerous! Mike Pompeo doesn’t think so. He uses them strategically.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo said on Saturday that President Trump’s Twitter habits have actually helped his agency gather and understand intelligence …
“I’ve actually seen it help us,” he said. “I have seen things the president has put on his Twitter account actually have a real-world impact on our capacity to understand what’s going on in other places in the world.”
“That is, our adversaries responded to those tweets in ways that were helpful to us to understand command and control issues, who’s listening to what messages, how those messages are resonating around the world.”
Back now to the Twitter thread. Baier was eager to pursue this line of questioning, even though Pompeo wanted to move on to other topics. Panetta also pressed Pompeo on Trump’s tweets, expressing ‘concern’.
22) Note Mike’s body language and comments he really is trying to politely end the conversation but they keep pushing…
23) THE KILL CIA Director Mike Pompeo reminds old swamp creature (Leon Panetta) that he is a failure and irrelevant.
24) After you are done laughing consider how deadly serious this was. It was a carefully orchestrated trap completely scripted and gamed out in advance and Mike came up aces!
25) Pompeo’s ruthless defense of Donald Trump speaks volumes about his loyalty and dedication to the cause. His defense of#TrumpTweetsconfirms that they are highly strategic and coordinated with the CIA. This frightens everyone… but us.
No doubt this week’s narrative will be about Trump’s mental health again.
The Left’s dirty game
For over a year, the media and other Democrats have been saying that it was wrong for the Trump team to speak to the Russians prior to the inauguration.
It is legal and something that every president-elect’s transition team does.
As for contact with Russia during the campaign, to date, Mueller’s team has found nothing, except for the abortive meeting with the Russian lawyer. Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner left soon after it started. President Trump was unaware of it at the time.
My post yesterday listed three meetings that campaign advisers to then-candidate Obama had with Hamas and FARC. When he was still president-elect in January 2009, he met with the president of Mexico.
The Democrats — including the media — are being very dishonest with this anti-Trump narrative which is dividing the country.
In January 2017, Obama’s press secretary Mark Toner said there was no problem with the Trump team speaking with the Russian ambassador:
QUESTION: — reports starting yesterday, but then more of them this morning, about contact between the incoming national security advisor and the Russian ambassador. I’m just wondering, from the State Department’s point of view, is this something that’s of concern at all? Or – I’ll just leave it there and then follow up.
MR TONER: Again, not necessarily – I’ve seen the reports. I don’t think they’ve been confirmed or corroborated yet. But that’s – as he’s part of the transition team, that’s really for them to speak to in how they are engaging. I mean —
QUESTION: Right, but —
MR TONER: — the president-elect is also engaged on his own with many world leaders.
Lt Gen Michael Flynn
Now a word about the embattled Lt General Michael Flynn.
On Saturday, December 2, Trump tweeted:
I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!
The Conservative Treehouse has a good analysis and timeline of Flynn and the Russian ambassador, including Flynn’s dismissal. Excerpts follow (emphases in the original):
Many people have asked the question why would Michael Flynn have lied about talking to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the first place?
It’s a great question.
The Occam’s Razor answer is the toxic political environment that existed in January 2017, where the administration was being hammered by a tsunami of media narratives and political opposition claiming that any scintilla of contact with anything Russian meant that Putin and Trump were “colluding” BFFs,…. and Flynn didn’t want to fuel that nonsense.
That’s really the only reason to mislead about Russian contacts.
And/or once Vice-President Mike Pence made the statement that Flynn had no contact with anyone from Russia etc. any contradictory statement from Flynn would make Pence appear compromised; so Flynn had to stick to it without clarification.
Sunday January 15th – VP-elect Mike Pence appears on Face The Nation. [Transcript Here] …
[*NOTE* Notice the narrative questioning at the time (early Jan) was framed that ‘any contact’ with Russians was evidence of meddling/election-collusion with Russians.]
•Friday January 20th – Inauguration
•TuesdayJanuary 24th – Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn was interviewed at the WH by the FBI. [Either Flynn contradicts Pence, or he tells a lie, those were his options.]
Afterwards, having received a report of the interview, Department of Justice (DOJ) employee, Sally Yates — since fired — had discussions about Flynn with other senior Obama holdovers still working there. This was what brought about the charge that Flynn lied to the FBI.
Another part of this story is that Flynn had talked to the Russian ambassador in December 2016 about the sanctions that Obama had imposed on Russia.
The following comes from The Last Refuge, the founder and author of The Conservative Treehouse (emphases mine below):
11. So on December 29th, sanctions day, Flynn spoke to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak… Essentially, saying ‘chill out, we’ll get through this’ etc.
14. We arrive at Sunday January 15th. VP-Elect Mike Pence appears on Sunday talks to discuss political stuff and the Trump administration.
15. On that Sunday 1/15/17 Pence appeared on CBS Face the nation (John Dickerson)
16. What does Dickerson start off with? Of course – The Vast Russian Hacking Election conspiracy: “did any advisor or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who were trying to meddle in the election?”
17. Amid the questioning, there is no distinction between *BEFORE* the election, and during the President-Elect transition period (ie. *AFTER* the election). It’s just one long framed question about “contact” and “collusion” etc.
18. And with that framework VP-Elect Pence says: “Of course not. And I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.”
19. VP-Pence says “of course not”, ie NO CONTACT. In doing so, and without pointing out the transition team would have ordinary and customary contact, Pence has now painted Flynn into a corner.
20. Flynn has had contact (ordinary and appropriate contact), but VP-Elect Pence gave an emphatic: “Of course not.”
22. The January 24th [FBI] interview is where the “Flynn Lied” to the FBI came from.
23. At the time of the interview the media cycle was filled with intelligence leaks. During that interview Flynn had two options: Option #1) tell investigators he did have conversations with Kislyak in December – and as a consequence contradict VP Pence.
24. Option #2) tell investigators he did not have conversations with the Russians (Kislyak) and align with VP Pence statement a week prior.
Option #1 puts the criticism and Russia story on VP Pence for lying to CBS. (He didn’t, because the question was vague on timing but that didn’t matter amid the frenzy) and as an outcome weaken the incoming administration 4 days after inauguration.
26. Option #2 puts himself at risk; but protects VP Pence and avoids the immediacy of a narrative against the White House and new administration.
27. Likely Flynn knew the FBI was up to no good because they probably already knew the answer to the question (wiretapping). But these decisions were about politics amid the frenzied media swarm. The downstream sh[*]t-storm on Pence would have been brutal.
28. The very next day, Wed Jan 25th, Sally Yates (DOJ) gets an after action report on the FBI questioning of Flynn.
37. Note the presumption here is that Flynn had lied to VP Pence. However, there is nothing to indicate that angle/aspect is or was actually correct. Specifically, there is ample evidence the ‘lie to Pence’, evolved from a storyline -driven by necessity- to save face for Pence.
38. The administration was now boxed in. Flynn lied to protect Pence’s political posture/integrity/position, (ie. Military Leadership Training 101: never compromise your leadership), but was now confronted by Sally Yates. FUBAR!!
Conclusion — thus far
It seems this past weekend served, in part, as a watershed moment.
As I write, Trump’s Twitter account has over 43m subscribers. Imagine factoring in millions of others, e.g. yours truly, who don’t subscribe but check it at least once a day.
Tens of millions of people are reading and passing his tweets along to millions more every day.
Over time, that’s a lot of red pills being handed out.
I have read several online commenters saying that they never realised how corrupt America is until they read about the Strzok dismissal and the crookedness of this Mueller investigation which, so far, has cost around $5m in taxpayer money.
After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters – worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.
The post-election events of just this week alone could be turned into a potboiler of a television series.
I feel bad for people who didn’t have the time (work, family) or inclination (closed-mindedness) to follow this election every day. Those who didn’t have the time are excused. The second group do not realise how serious the situation in the United States is today.
America is in grave danger. People who warned against Obama in 2008 and again in 2012 will be proven correct. Some news items in this post illustrate that.
Mischief afoot — fake news from Big Media
Last weekend, America’s news shows discussed at length stories in the Washington Post and New York Times that ‘intelligence officials’ (anonymous, but within the CIA) stated that the Russian government
First, the media’s choice of wording is critical within both reports.
It is impossible to “hack an election“. What was hacked was the DNC email system, and John Podesta’s email. WikiLeaks published the content of both “hacks”.
Additionally, WikiLeaks has denied the source of the information was a foreign government.
Both The Washington Post and New York Times, simultaneously, published articles on Friday claiming anonymous sources within the CIA (note: intensely political CIA Chief John Brennan in charge) point to the Russian government as the originators of the hacking. However, both articles are written with very obtuse and non specific language intended to cover over the fact these reports are not actually stating the official intelligence community are making these specific claims.
All other media outlets subsequently take this illogically based presentation and spin their coverage whereby the “DNC hacked” becomes “the election hacked“.
On Monday, December 12 John Podestaresponded to a request from 10 Democratic electors, including a daughter of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for more information about the CIA’s assertions that Russians were involved in affecting the outcome of the election.
“The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” Podesta said in a statement Monday. “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed” …
Podesta’s statement is the first public statement from the Clinton campaign raising questions about the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s victory.
… Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told POLITICO on Monday that Trump is a “potentially dangerous president.”
In telephone conversations with Donald Trump, FBI Director James Comey assured the president-elect there was no credible evidence that Russia influenced the outcome of the recent U.S. presidential election by hacking the Democratic National Committee and the e-mails of John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
What’s more, Comey told Trump that James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, agreed with this FBI assessment.
The only member of the U.S. intelligence community who was ready to assert that the Russians sanctioned the hacking was John Brennan, the director of the CIA, according to sources who were briefed on Comey’s conversations with Trump.
Later that day, Fox News reported lawmakers were furious that a House Intelligence Committee briefing on the matter was cancelled:
Anger on Capitol Hill boiled over Wednesday night after the intelligence community’s alleged “intransigence” forced the cancellation of a House Intelligence Committee briefing on claims of Russian interference in the U.S. election.
“Somebody has the time to leak it to The Washington Post and The New York Times, but they don’t have the time to come to Congress,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., a member of the committee, told Fox News’ “The Kelly File.” “It’s their job to come. They don’t have any choice. They have to come in, especially when they have created this.”
… Fox News was told the CIA Director John Brennan declined to provide a briefer, citing its focus on the full review requested by President Obama. The other agencies did not respond to the committee’s request, which is unusual given the panel is the most-senior committee with jurisdiction.
Larry Johnson, the founder of No Quarter, used to work for the CIA. He picked up on this story in his post, ‘John Brennan’s Failed Soft Coup?’ He wrote:
This should be setting off alarm bells throughout the U.S. Government, but especially within the intel community and the military. CIA Director John Brennan appears to have tried and failed to take out Donald Trump. It is his Agency that spread the lie that Russia made it possible for Trump to win the Presidency. This was not the idle opinion of some underling. Someone was given permission to tell elected Legislators a lie. A bald faced lie. Brennan, and no one else, bears ultimate responsibility for this lie.
When the news first broke last Friday that the CIA had told Senators that Russia essentially gave the election to Donald Trump the politicians and pundits infesting Washington were up in arms. Hell, even John McCain and Lindsay “Little Old Lady” Graham jumped on the hysteria bandwagon to voice outrage and threaten Russia. Tonight we learn that Brennan was lying.
There’s more at the link, but it is important to see this:
I have heard from knowledgeable friends that Clapper finally decided he would not walk the plank for John Brennan. Clapper has lied once before to the Senate and apparently felt that he could stomach no more lies. This isolated Brennan. He has no place to hide now. He could have sent a briefer who would have had to endure the indignity of admitting that the CIA had no hard evidence to buttress its speculation that Russia favored Trump.
This is more than a lie folks. This represents the first time in my life that the Director of the CIA has tried to intervene and disrupt a Presidential election. Brennan should be immediately dismissed and he should pray to God (or Allah) that he is not prosecuted for sedition. Given his prior service as the Chief of Station in Saudi Arabia, one begins to wonder if he has been protecting the interests of America or serving those of a foreign power?
And:
This also completely destroys the Democrat effort to gather support to brief the Electors, who have no security clearances. How in the world can you justify briefing Electors when you are refusing to brief members of Congress who do have the clearances?
In today’s Washington Post, John Podesta blamed the FBI — and people connected with Donald Trump — for Hillary’s loss:
Comparing the FBI’s massive response to the overblown email scandal with the seemingly lackadaisical response to the very real Russian plot to subvert a national election shows that something is deeply broken at the FBI.
Podesta’s picture accompanying the article is priceless. Sorry, the Democrats have only themselves to blame. The Podesta WikiLeaks made it abundantly clear that the Democrats — and Hillary — do not like everyday Americans. They also do not like each other.
On the Russian interference front, I have seen reports this week that a British MP said Russians were to blame for Brexit. Someone in Germany thought the Russians could be influencing their election set for next year. Don’t believe it for a moment!
The faithless elector — more fake news from Big Media
Chris Suprun is a Republican elector for Texas. He doesn’t want to vote for Donald Trump, the voters’ choice in that state. Not voting for the winner in one’s state makes one a ‘faithless’ elector.
He is one of a handful of ‘Hamilton electors’ who take the moral high ground. The expression ‘Hamilton elector’ did not surface until this year. These people claim to be voting in the manner of Alexander Hamilton, instrumental in establishing the Electoral College in the infancy of the United States.
Suprun probably thought he had it made when the New York Times published his op-ed on December 5 listing the many reasons why Trump is no good.
He lives in the Dallas area and works as a paramedic.
He wrote some interesting things, including these gems:
Fifteen years ago, as a firefighter, I was part of the response to the Sept. 11 attacks against our nation.
I owe a debt to my children to leave them a nation they can trust.
Fifteen years ago, I swore an oath to defend my country and Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. On Dec. 19, I will do it again.
Rule No. 1 for electors: vote for the winning candidate in your state. Each elector signs a pledge to do just that. Any elector who has a problem with that should stand down. (I couldn’t be an elector. I was for Gore in 2000. I could not have cast a vote for W then or in 2004.)
A man from Texas started a petition on Change.org to demand that very thing. Unfortunately, it is still 14,000+ votes shy of the necessary 50,000. The Electoral College vote takes place on Monday. Still, it was worth a try and a decent effort.
On December 8, Suprun appeared on Tucker Carlson, who confronted him over his soi-disant description of ‘moral elector’. He told Carlson that several other electors have contacted him and they have had very interesting conversations:
This is very sinister. What this man is describing is an Electoral College coup to unseat #Trump, no doubt exploited by #Hillary & Soros. pic.twitter.com/BEel8KYyy8
Discussing the upcoming vote with other EC Republican electors could be interpreted as an ‘ILLEGAL electoral college coup d’état’. Such actions could give rise to charges of treason, rebellion, insurrection or sedition.
The following day, news emerged that the media contact company Suprun had on his Twitter account is Van Jones’s (former Obama adviser) PR firm. Did they come up with ‘Hamilton elector’ and ‘moral elector’?
After tweets about Megaphone Strategies appeared, Suprun listed a different media contact on his Twitter page. Texas ABC television news affiliate WFAA contacted both firms:
Two public relations firms he has hired – Megaphone Strategies and Fenton Communications – responded to our requests for an interview saying: “Suprun’s schedule is jammed packed.”
But that wasn’t all. His first responder story turned out to be bunk:
on at least two occasions over the last couple years at crowded Major League Baseball games, Suprun has been introduced as a 9/11 veteran before throwing out first pitches.
“He claimed to be a first responder with the Manassas Park [Virginia] Fire Department on September 11, 2001 and personally told us stories ‘I was fighting fire that day at the Pentagon.’ No, I was on a medic unit that day at the Pentagon and you make a phone call to Manassas Park and you find out that he wasn’t even employed there until October 2001,” said a first responder who knows Suprun and only agreed to speak about him if his identity was concealed.
The City of Manassas Park confirmed to WFAA that it hired Suprun on October 10, 2001, one month after the 9/11 attacks.
The fire chief there added that his department never even responded to the Pentagon or any of the 9/11 sites.
And there is more, much more. His CV is littered with lies:
It shows he was, at the time this story aired on WFAA, a paramedic with Air Methods air ambulance service. But Christina Brodsly, a spokeswoman for that company, said he is not an employee there.
Suprun also claims to currently be a paramedic with Freedom EMS in Dallas. But records from the Texas Department of State Health Services indicate there’s no such company. A firm with that name used to exist in Houston, but it went out of business in 2008, according to DSHS.
The article goes on to say that Chris Suprun — upholder of the nation’s morality when it comes to voting for a president — has been bankrupt for most of the past five years. He was released from bankruptcy supervision only this month.
The story isn’t over yet, though. On December 12, Gotnews revealed that this moral guardian depends on his wife to work to pay off their $200,000 debt owed to various creditors. Suprun and his wife have three young children.
Gotnews got digging. While Mrs Suprun is busy working to support the family, her moralistic husband has been surfing on the cheating website Ashley Madison:
According to the data, Suprun joined Ashley Madison in February 2012, just six months after joint-filing for bankruptcy with his wife, Dianne Michelle Suprun, in September 2011, and paid for an “affair guarantee” in September 2012.
Where did he get the money?
An “affair guarantee”, which costs $249 today, is a discounted “package” for “credits” that allow men to chat with potential cheating partners on the website. Suprun, who had three kids under the age of 10 at the time, listed himself on the site as “attached male seeking female.”
Gotnews tells us:
Even though he used a throw-away e-mail address and changed his birth date by a few days, the Ashley Madison credit card data is unmistakably Suprun …
There’s only one Stephen Christopher Suprun, from Texas, born in March 1974, and the P.O. box is one of many P.O. boxes registered to Stephen Christopher Suprun that can be found with a quick search of any public records database.
It’s also the same P.O. box used for Suprun’s “Never Forget 9/11” charity, which he still lists on his Twitter profile …
And this upstanding man — someone who has lied about his career, being a 9/11 first responder and also registered with a cheater’s website — has a problem voting for Donald Trump?
News becomes ‘performance art’
Tucker Carlson recently had another guest from Newsweek. Kurt Eichenwald appeared, alleging that Trump had been in a mental hospital for treatment in the 1980s or early 1990s. Eichenwald explained some of the background but spent nine minutes avoiding giving a definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as to whether the president elect actually was a patient.
Carlson rightly accused Eichenwald of ‘filibustering’, winding down the time so he wouldn’t have to give an answer to a topic he himself raised as the issue he wanted to discuss. He never did give an answer and accused Carlson of interrupting him. Eichenwald ended by saying he had an important message from the CIA. He never delivered that, either. Meanwhile, he occasionally waved around a white binder that read ‘Tucker Carlson Falsehoods’.
This interview was very strange indeed. Carlson called it ‘performance art’ and ‘the craziest interview’ he’d ever done, which it probably was:
The_Donald has more, including partial transcripts of the dialogue.
And it didn’t end when he got off air. A bizarre series of tweets ensued. Someone also sent him an assault gif, which Eichenwald’s ‘wife’ said, using his account, gave him a seizure. (The assault gifs are linked to in the aforementioned The_Donald thread. Don’t look. They are potentially dangerous for people prone to seizures.) It’s unclear whether his wife was actually tweeting on his behalf. Then Eichenwald couldn’t find the all-important CIA message. Let’s hope it wasn’t sensitive information!
This man appears to have a peculiar journalistic past with regard to an incident involving investigating pornography (more here). That was in 2007. This year, he was a big water carrier for Hillary Clinton and is sure there is a link between Trump and the Kremlin. He got aggressive about the issue with a fellow journalist in October and began tweeting repeatedly about it.
Faithful electors in the majority
Regardless of Chris Suprun, two reports state that the electors are highly likely to be faithful to the process and to their states’ voters.
Politico reports that Suprun is the only faithless Republican elector we know about. The Republican National Committee (RNC) is contacting their electors to ensure they will be voting for Trump. the article goes on to say that the RNC routinely contacts them after presidential elections. However, this year, there’s a difference as the Democratic National Committee has also been contacting GOP electors in an effort to discourage them from voting for Trump.
Trump currently has 306 electoral votes. He needs 270 to win:
If 37 Republican electors rejected him, he’d fall below the 270-vote threshold necessary to become president, sending the election to the House of Representatives for a January vote.
Democrats are attempting to persuade Republican electors to vote for someone like John Kasich of Ohio instead of Trump. However, Kasich said he does not want electoral votes.
Being a faithless elector is not a light matter in some states. Utah:
binds electors to support the candidate who won the statewide popular vote, as the most prominent reason he won’t consider voting for someone other than Trump. Similar laws exist in29 states, including 14 where Trump won.
The penalties for violating these laws vary widely, with some states carrying no penalty at all, some issuing modest fines, and some requiring immediate replacement of electors. One state, New Mexico, treats “faithless” electoral votes as felonies.
Two Republican electors have already resigned, but still have until the day of the Electoral College vote to change their minds. If they do not turn up on the day in their respective state capitals, they will be replaced with alternates.
Business Insider reported that the Associated Press was able to contact all 538 electors and interview 330 of them:
finding widespread Democratic aggravation with the electoral process but little expectation that the hustle of anti-Trump maneuvering could derail him. For that to happen, Republican-appointed electors would have to stage an unprecedented defection and Democrats would need to buck tradition, too, by peeling away from Hillary Clinton and swinging behind a consensus candidate in sufficient numbers.
Business Insider tells us that Bret Chiafalo of Everett, Washington, co-founded Hamilton Electors. He said that the goal of the group is to steer electors away from the two main party candidates to a third party candidate. However, electors say the group’s tactics leave something to be desired:
“We got a stack of letters from idiots,” said Republican elector Edward Robson, 86, a Phoenix homebuilder.
Fellow elector Carole Joyce, 72, a state committeewoman in Phoenix and retired public-health nurse, was more charitable.
“They’ve caused me great distress on my computer, that’s for sure,” she said.
Trump appointees
On a brighter note, Deplorable Dave from New York not only has a fun countdown calendar but also a highly useful blog page of Trump appointees with the briefest of comments by each name. He updates it every day. It’s well worth visiting between now and the inauguration.
There aren’t many open posts left, which is good. That means the Trump administration can be up and running by January 20.
The Conservative Treehouse has timely analyses of new and potential appointments. Trump has drawn heavily on senior military officers. Former Navy SEAL Commander Ryan Zinke is the latest; he is likely to be the new Secretary of the Interior.
What is also interesting is that Trump is approaching conservative media personalities such as Monica Crowley, appointed to the National Security Council, and Kimberly Guilfoyle as his potential White House press secretary.
Trump has three appearances. He will hold a rally in Orlando on Friday evening. On Saturday afternoon, he will media at the airport in Mobile, Alabama. Then he will meet Pence an hour later in the city’s Ladd-Peebles Stadium for the final rally.
On Monday, December 19, the Electoral College will vote. Although the votes are not counted in the House of Representatives until early January, the media often give an indication before then of the expected result. If credible news appears, I’ll provide an update.
Stand Firm is a traditional Episcopalian/Anglican site with excellent articles not only on the Episcopal Church but also on American politics.
A S Haley is a regular contributor to Stand Firm and wrote a great column which I recommend to all my readers. Excerpts and a summary of ‘The Professor Is Right Again’ follow.
This is why so many American voters are happy (emphases mine):
The biggest loser in this election was not Hillary Clinton. She lost, and lost decisively, to be sure—but the professors’ models predicted she would lose, and they’ve been infallible in past elections for decades.
No, the biggest loser—actually, losers (to use a term beloved of our President-elect)—are (1) the Beltway elite; and (2) the mainstream media—who gave it everything they had, and still fell way short.
Haley posted his article on November 9 and prepared his readers for what we see now: the narratives that Trump will be harmful to America.
He then reminded us of what we can look forward to:
the mainstream media will lose ever more and more of their readers and listeners, to the point where they, too, will have to look around for other lines of work.
And last but not least, James Comey’s stalwart agents in the field may finally be able to investigate some people worthy of their attention: start with Comey’s former boss, Loretta Lynch, and her attempts to squelch the ongoing investigations into Hillary’s violations of our secrecy laws; move on to Patrick Kennedy and the whole corrupt bunch at the State Department who lied about Benghazi and then have been enabling and hiding Hillary’s outrageous and dangerous disregard for our security; then to the IRS and its illegal targeting of conservative non-profit groups; then to Eric Holder and his scheme of gun-running, while also letting others get away with voter intimidation; and … oh, yes—did I mention a certain former Secretary of State? And her husband? Who together enriched themselves by selling access and favoritism at this country’s expense? And broke all the laws about charitable organizations in the process?
Who knows where all this is going to lead, indeed? Certainly not the entrenched elite, nor their lapdogs, the mainstream media.
That said, whilst Trump’s victory is a blessing despite his imperfections:
And no one can assure us that a shakeup of this magnitude will be totally beneficial in all ways—some things that are truly good may perish along with so much else that is so bad, and deserves to come to an end. As I have maintained throughout this campaign, America is under God’s judgment—which is why we were presented with the Hobson’s choice we had. We are not out from under that judgment yet, because America has not yet turned back from its ways, and repented of its manifold sins and wickedness. Whether it will do so under its new government remains to be seen.
So fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a riveting ride.
It will indeed be a riveting ride. I, for one, can hardly wait.
I predict with confidence based on what I have been reading outside Big Media that 2017 will be the year of evil exposed in the United States and beyond. Good people, especially devout Christians, will find these exposés unbelievable because they will be so utterly disturbing in content.
I will post on one of these soon in more detail. For now, if you have not already read FBI Anon parts 1, 2 and 3, please do so when you can because they will prepare you for what is coming next year.
Yesterday’s post recapped the announcement on Friday, October 28, that the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails had been reopened — or resumed (as some prefer to say).
Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner’s laptop is being examined in connection with Weiner’s recent sexting scandal involving a 15-year-old girl.
In addition to Weiner’s material, there are 650,000 emails related to Mrs Weiner’s — Huma Abedin’s — work with Hillary Clinton.
It is highly unlikely that federal investigation involving the DOJ (Department of Justice) will be complete by November 8. At least these emails can be digitally searched, unlike Clinton’s print outs of 33,000, making the work of agents and officers more efficient in the weeks ahead.
The FBI notified James Comey when they saw the 650,000 emails.
Why would there be so many? Mainly because Clinton instructed Abedin to print relevant emails. We can see evidence of that in State Department emails:
From: H
To: Huma Abedin
Sent: Monday Oct 12 02:06:15 2009
Subject: Fw: H: Memo on your speech meeting on Monday, Sid
Pls print
And:
From: H
To: Huma Abedin
Sent: Mon Oct 26 07:27:12 2009
Subject: Fw: Honduras
All of this did not print last night, It stopped after Fourth! [Redacted due to information “kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy;” “foreign relations or foreign activities of the US, including confidential sources”]
Abedin used to send the emails to her laptop at home because of inadequate printing infrastructure at work. Hmm.
The emails are allegedly in a folder on the laptop labelled ‘Life Insurance’. Hmm.
‘Life Insurance’ for whom and for what exactly? After Weiner’s sexting scandal during the summer, Abedin decided to separate from her husband on August 29. Therefore, relations between two are likely to be strained. Abedin also spent a lot of time away from home working for Clinton. Has Weiner ever looked at these emails? On the other hand, could Abedin be keeping a record of these emails for her own purposes?
The two met through the Clintons, and Bill Clinton performed their wedding ceremony in 2010.
Please be warned: adult content follows, including at Weiner-related media links.
Anthony Weiner
In 2011, Anthony David Weiner, 51, had to resign as congressman for New York (9th District) because he accidentally posted a private picture of himself publicly. It was meant for a woman he had been communicating with online.
In 2013, he decided to run for mayor of New York City. However, he could not stop himself from sexting. Under the pseudonym Carlos Danger (!) he sent explicit photos to a 22-year-old woman. That ended his mayoral run.
In August, he was sexting to a woman with whom he had corresponded online since 2015. The New York Post reported that he took the photos of himself with his and Abedin’s four-year-old son lying on the bed next to him. Legal Insurrection has a cleaner version of the story.
Abedin was no doubt highly embarrassed and angry about these incidents, to say the least. The 2016 episode was the last straw.
Unfortunately, it got worse. On September 21, the Daily Mail reported that Weiner had been caught sexting to a 15-year-old girl with whom he had been communicating online for several months:
The girl, whose name is being withheld by DailyMail.com because she is a minor, said the online relationship began last January while she was a high school sophomore and before Weiner’s wife, Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin, announced she was ending their marriage.
Weiner was aware that the girl was underage, according to DailyMail.com interviews with the girl and her father, as well as a cache of online messages …
The former congressman has faced scrutiny over online chats with minors in the past [2011] …
DailyMail.com reached out to the 15-year-old girl’s family earlier this month after receiving information about her relationship with Weiner.
Although the girl said she did not want to press charges because she believes her relationship with Weiner was consensual, she and her father agreed to sit down for an interview out of concern that Weiner may be sexting with other underage girls …
Huma Abedin has been working for Hillary Clinton for 20 years.
Although she was born in the United States, when she was two years old, her family moved to Saudi Arabia where they lived until Abedin reached university age, at which point she returned to the United States to attend George Washington University. Two years later, she began working for Hillary as an intern and has been by her side ever since.
Abedin’s parents are/were not American. Her mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, was born in Pakistan. Her late father Syed Zainul Abedin (1928–93) was born in New Delhi but earned his Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978. They left the United States around this time.
Later that year, Syed Abedin founded The Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, which has its headquarters at 49 Goodge Street in the heart of London. In 1979, he launched the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, which his widow, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, continues to edit.
Huma worked on the journal as assistant editor between 1996 and 2008, during which time she was also working for Hillary Clinton.
That means she would have been working for both on 9/11. Hmm.
Huma’s father had radical ideas that her mother continues to foster through the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. It is pro-Sharia in a fundamentalist way.
The Free Beacon unearthed information about a 1971 interview titled The World of Islam, which was first broadcast on Western Michigan University television. There are pictures of him at the link. He looked very angry and quite unfriendly. Excerpts follow (emphases mine):
Syed Abedin, the father of top Hillary Clinton aide Huma, outlined his view of Sharia law and how the Western world has turned Muslims “hostile” during a wide-ranging video interview that shines newfound light on the reclusive thinker’s world views, according to footage exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Abedin, a Muslim scholar who was tied to the Saudi Arabian government until his death in 1993 …
Abedin said that Arab states must police the upholding of Sharia, or Islamic law, and explained why the majority of Muslims view Israel and the Western world in primarily “hostile” terms.
The video provides a window into the Abedin family’s ideology, which has been marred by accusations it is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Big Media, especially CNN, will ignore or explain away the Abedins’ views and connections, but not everyone is so sanguine. Leaked Uploads has an important eight-minute film everyone should see:
If Hillary — chronically ill as she is — gets into the White House, Huma is likely to be running the show.
Don’t for a minute think Tim Kaine will be doing so.
The gravity of the situation
On October 28, the New York Post had an excellent article explaining the seriousness of this investigation and the holes in the original Clinton probe.
First (emphases mine):
It appears the FBI agents investigating Anthony Weiner for sexting an underaged girl have done the job that the FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information didn’t or weren’t allowed to do.
Then, how they did it — the right way:
How did agents examine the devices? By seizing them. It’s a common practice in criminal investigations, but one that clearly was not applied in the case of Clinton or her top aide — even though agents assigned to that case knew Abedin hoarded classified emails on her electronic devices.
The FBI report even says so:
On page 3 of their 11-page report, the agents detail how they showed Abedin a classified paper on Pakistan sent from a State Department source which she, in turn, inexplicably forwarded to her personal Yahoo email account — an obviously unclassified, unencrypted, unsecured and unauthorized system. The breach of security was not an isolated event but a common practice with Abedin.
“She routinely forwarded emails from her state.gov account to either her clintonemail.com or her yahoo.com account,” the agents wrote. Why? “So she could print them” at home and not at her State Department office.
Abedin downplayed it:
Abedin contended that she “would typically print the documents without reading them” and “was unaware of the classification.” Uh-huh.
The FBI also pointed out that “the only person at DoS (Department of State) to receive an email account on the (clintonemail.com) domain was Abedin.”
“Multiple State employees” told the FBI that they considered emailing Abedin “the equivalent of e-mailing Clinton.” Another close Clinton aide told the FBI that “Abedin may have kept emails that Clinton did not.”
It gets worse:
In her April interview with the FBI, Abedin incredulously maintained that she “did not know that Clinton had a private server until about a year and a half ago, when it became public knowledge.” The clintonemail.com server was set up in the basement of the Clinton family residence in Chappaqua.
However, another witness told agents that he and another Clinton aide with computer skills built the new server system “at the recommendation of Huma Abedin,”who first broached the idea of an off-the-grid email server as early as the “fall (of) 2008.”
Will Comey go after Abedin now? He didn’t pursue her earlier in the year:
Comey was a believer; he didn’t even bother to call her back for further questioning. Case closed.
But Abedin’s role in this caper begs for fresh scrutiny. Making false statements to a federal agent is a felony. So is mishandling classified information.
By forwarding classified emails to her personal email account and printing them out at home, Abedin appears to have violated a Classified Information NonDisclosure Agreement she signed at the State Department on Jan. 30, 2009, in which she agreed to keep all classified material under the control of the US government.
‘Collector of info’
Donald Trump hasn’t forgotten about Weiner in all of this. As far back as July 6, 2012, he tweeted:
Keep an eye on Anthony Weiner. Weasels are hard to get rid of.
Last Friday, October 28, FBI Director James Comey announced a reopening — or resumption — of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
It came as a shock to everyone, but he had to do it.
Ed Klein, author of the recent book on the Clintons — Guilty As Sin — wrote an article for the Daily Mail stating that, after Comey said in July Hillary would not be indicted, he started receiving a slew of resignation letters from FBI agents. Comey’s wife was also angry at him because of this (emphases mine):
‘The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,’ said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week …
‘Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,’ said the source. ‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.’
According to the source, Comey fretted over the problem for months and discussed it at great length with his wife, Patrice.
He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom …
‘The people he trusts the most have been the angriest at him,’ the source continued. ‘And that includes his wife, Pat. She kept urging him to admit that he had been wrong when he refused to press charges against the former secretary of state …
He also has Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch angry at him:
As I revealed in my latest New York Times bestseller Guilty As SinObama said that appointing Comey as FBI direct was ‘my worst mistake as president.’
‘Lynch and Obama haven’t contacted Jim directly,’ said the source, ‘but they’ve made it crystal clear through third parties that they disapprove of his effort to save face.‘
Alex Jones has more on the FBI’s fury with Comey and the danger the United States is in, especially if Hillary Clinton wins on November 8. Be warned — this is no ordinary election:
Comey’s statement in July
I wrote about this on October 10, briefly excerpting Klein’s book. That post recounts the events of June 27 when both Lynch and Bill Clinton happened to be on the tarmac at the airport in Phoenix at the same time.
A summary from the post, including the relevant part from Guilty As Sin, follows.
Bill insisted on boarding Lynch’s plane, which was about to take off. That’s a big no-no. Lynch knew it. Bill knew it, too, but, as Klein wrote, he wanted to intimidate Lynch into laying off Hillary. Lynch, on board with her husband, was frightened.
Klein says they probably did talk about grandchildren and golf. He explains that the subject matter was irrelevant. What mattered was Clinton’s presence at length with her on her plane. She understood his purpose, which was — in Klein’s words — to:
send a message to everyone at Justice and the FBI that Hillary had the full weight of the Clinton machine, the Democratic Party, and the White House behind her.
That meant no indictment. Lynch would take that message back to the White House.
As proof that no action would be taken, Obama gave Hillary a lift on Air Force One to a campaign rally in North Carolina.
Klein explains that Obama would never have offered to have her as a passenger on the presidential plane if she were in danger of being indicted.
Then came the day of Comey’s announcement. He spoke at length about the investigation. Lynch watched the broadcast in her office. The longer Comey spoke, the angrier she became, fearing he would recommend an indictment. Then, suddenly, he concluded (Klein’s words):
Hillary, he said, shouldn’t be prosecuted for her handling of classified information — even though it wasn’t his job to make prosecutorial decisions. That was up to the prosecutors in the Justice Department. There was no evidence, he said, that Hillary had intentionally transmitted or willfully mishandled secret documents in order to harm the United States.
“Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”
Klein wrote:
Hillary was clearly guilty as sin, and the right thing would have been for Comey not only to say so — which he did — but to make her pay for her sins.
But he didn’t.
The back story from 2015
On October 27, Judge Andrew Napolitano wrote an article for Fox News explaining how the FBI agent at the head of the email investigation came to believe it was going nowhere before resigning.
John Giacalone had headed the New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., field offices of the FBI before being appointed to head the email investigation. When he retired he was chief of the FBI National Security Branch.
Napolitano tells us how Giacalone became disillusioned. In 2015, after the investigation started, agents and senior managers from the FBI met to discuss how to proceed:
It was obvious to all that a prima-facie case could be made for espionage, theft of government property and obstruction of justice charges. The consensus was to proceed with a formal criminal investigation.
Six months later Giacalone said the investigation was going ‘sideways’ — nowhere by design. Napolitano explains:
The reason for the “sideways” comment must have been Giacalone’s realization that DOJ and FBI senior management had decided that the investigation would not work in tandem with a federal grand jury. That is nearly fatal to any government criminal case. In criminal cases, the FBI and the DOJ cannot issue subpoenas for testimony or for tangible things; only grand juries can.
Giacalone knew that without a grand jury, the FBI would be toothless, as it would have no subpoena power. He also knew that without a grand jury, the FBI would have a hard time persuading any federal judge to issue search warrants. A judge would perceive the need for search warrants to be not acute in such a case because to a judge, the absence of a grand jury can only mean a case is “sideways” and not a serious investigation.
The progress of the investigation in 2016 made it clear to Giacalone’s successors and some of their agents working on the case that the powers that be wanted Clinton exonerated.
In late spring, agents began interviewing aides close to Clinton. In July, she herself was interviewed:
on July 2 — for only four hours, during which the interviewers seemed to some in the bureau to lack aggression, passion and determination — some FBI agents privately came to the same conclusion as their former boss: The case was going sideways.
That was when she could not remember anything and said so in her responses, making an:
oblique reference to a recent head injury she had suffered as the probable cause of that.
Afterwards, agents:
sought to obtain her medical records to verify the gravity of her injury and to determine whether she had been truthful with them. They prepared the paperwork to obtain the records, only to have their request denied by Director Comey himself on July 4.
That same day, some agents contacted the intelligence community — ‘unthinkable’, Napolitano says — for any information they might have had stored digitally on Clinton’s health.
The next day, Comey made his announcement that no further action would be taken in the case.
Now, in October, Napolitano says two things have come to light. First, Obama corresponded with Clinton on her private server about classified matters. Secondly, Andrew McCabe — Giacalone’s successor in the Washington field office and the No. 3 man in the FBI — is married to a woman:
to whom the Clinton money machine in Virginia funneled about $675,000 in lawful campaign funds for a failed 2015 run for the Virginia Senate.
While those funds might be lawful:
Comey apparently saw no conflict or appearance of impropriety in having the person in charge of the Clinton investigation in such an ethically challenged space.
In conclusion, it appears not only to agents but also to the American public that the FBI has become compromised and is being used as a political tool instead of a force for justice.
James Comey
The most important thing to remember about James Comey is that he is not a cop.
He has never been a law enforcement officer. He has never been an FBI agent.
He is a lawyer.
Much of his career has involved work for the government.
During the first Bush II term, Comey served as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. During Bush’s second term, Comey was appointed Deputy Attorney General but left in 2005 to become General Counsel and Senior Vice President of Lockheed Martin.
He stayed in the private sector until 2013, when Obama appointed him FBI Director.
More interesting is the fact that Comey knew Loretta Lynch from their days as US Attorneys for New York. WND tells us:
They crossed paths in the investigation of HSBC bank, which avoided criminal charges in a massive money-laundering scandal for which the bank paid a $1.9 billion fine.
In 2004, serving under Bush II, Comey was involved with the investigation of former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, accused of removing classified documents from the National Archives:
The New York Times reported in 2005 that Republican leaders speculated Berger removed the documents from the National Archives because he was trying to conceal material that could be damaging to the Clinton administration.
There is no evidence Comey’s investigation for the Justice Department made any attempt to determine if anyone affiliated with the Clinton White House prompted Berger or coordinated with him in the decision to remove the classified documents.
Various statements Comey made about Berger’s mishandling of classified documents bear comparison to his comments regarding Hillary Clinton’s email server.
In 2004, Fox News noted Comey told reporters he could not comment on the Berger investigation but did address the general issue of mishandling classified documents.
“As a general matter, we take issues of classified information very seriously,” Comey said in response to a reporter’s question.
Berger was fined $50,000,[23] sentenced to serve two years of probation and 100 hours of community service, and stripped of his security clearance for 3 years.[21][24] The Justice Department initially said Berger stole only copies of classified documents and not originals,[25] but the House Government Reform Committee later revealed that an unsupervised Berger had been given access to classified files of original, uncopied, uninventoried documents on terrorism …
This dragged on until 2007. In order to avoid further cross examination, Berger relinquished his licence to practise law. He died in 2015.
