Email/Dossier/Govt Corruption Investigations

June 3, 2021 – Justice Department is probing the American lobbying firm linked to Hunter Biden and Burisma Holdings

Sally Painter (C) Karen Tramontano (R) U.S.-Ukraine Business Council members Greenbrier/Amsted Rail, Deloitte Ukraine, Blue Star Strategies, LLC and others for attending the event. (Credit: Burisma Group)

“A consulting firm linked to Hunter Biden that did work ​for Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that paid the Biden scion $83,000 a month to sit on its board, is under investigation by the Justice Department, according to a report on Thursday.

Blue Star Strategies​ is being probed for potential illegal lobbying after it took on Burisma as a client while Hunter was on its board, Politico reported.

The US Attorney’s Office in Delaware, ​which is already investigating Hunter for possible “tax” violations, is working with lawyers in the Justice Department’s National Security Division in Washington, DC, the report said.

One aspect of the investigation is whether Blue Star failed to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) that requires Americans to disclose lobbying work for foreign entities.

The report noted that there is no indication that Hunter is a target in the investigation, and Karen Tramontano, one of the firm’s co-founders, testified that the president’s son did not direct any of Blue Star’s work on behalf of Burisma.” (Read more: The New York Post, 6/03/2021)  (Archive)

June 13, 2021 – Reporter who broke Clinton-Lynch tarmac story, dies of alleged suicide

“The plan was perfect. No cameras, no microphones, no prying eyes and plenty of security. The setting for a clandestine meeting could not have been better. Former President Bill Clinton exited Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s private plane 20-minutes after he boarded. Both thought they got away with it. Both were wrong. Amid a heated Presidential race, federal investigations involving emails and Benghazi and society looking for clarity on the future of the country, the secret tarmac meeting would only complicate things. The secret meeting would have never been revealed if it weren’t for a veteran journalist and a trusted source..” (Quote: Christopher Sign/Amazon Books) (Photo credit: The Gateway Pundit)

“Veteran TV newsman and former University of Alabama football player Christopher Sign died Saturday morning in an apparent suicide, according to police.

At 8:13 a.m. Saturday, the Hoover 911 center received a call of a person down at a residence on Scout Trace. Hoover police and fire personnel arrived to find the 45-year-old Sign dead.

Hoover police Lt. Keith Czeskleba said the death is being investigated as a suicide.

(…) While a reporter and morning anchor at ABC affiliate KNXV-TV in Phoenix, Sign broke the story of the June 2016 secret tarmac meeting between former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Sign wrote a book about his experience called Secret On The Tarmac.”

Preserved photo of a pinned tweet dated January 29, 2020,  on Christopher Sign’s Twitter page. (Credit: Christopher Sign/Twitter)

(Read more: AL.com, 6/13/2021)  (Archive)

June 16, 2021 – Clevenger files FOIA, FBI response suggests it will take decades to release all Seth Rich and Awan documents

FBI Table

“Attorney Ty Clevenger has been trying for years to get to the bottom of Seth Rich’s death and the Deep State FBI’s actions in response to it.  Yesterday the FBI responded to his recent FOIA request and Clevenger believes based on the response it will be decades until all the requested records are released.

(…) This week Clevenger received a response from the FBI to his latest request.  In his request, Clevenger expanded his scope to include emails with the Awan brothers who may have worked with Seth Rich, emails relating to the supposed hack of the DNC in 2016, and then emails related to the FBI surveilling his client Ed Butowski.  (Butowski claimed Seth Rich was murdered by the Deep State and didn’t die from a robbery.)

The FBI’s response to Clevenger’s request is here:

FBI 2021.06.16 Response Ty … by Jim Hoft

Clevenger believes that according to FBI Section Chief Michael Seidel, the FBI wants to take 26 months in the Texas (Butowski) case to produce records (about Imran Awan and family) that it is already obligated to produce to Judicial Watch in a separate case in D.C. Clevenger says:

After the 26 months is over, it appears that the FBI wants to begin producing 495,862 pages about the hacking of DNC emails. If they’re intending to do that at the standard rate of 500 pages per month, that will take almost 83 years. Maybe they’re saying they could whittle down the 496k records first, then start producing them at 500 pages per month, but we’re still talking about decades.

If I’m understanding the affidavit correctly, the FBI will then produce 3 pages of records about surveillance of Ed Butowsky and Matt Couch (hmm, I wonder why they want to wait decades to produce those 3 pages?). The FBI’s latest response is worse than its 2017 response to my request for records about Hillary Clinton’s secret email server, i.e., when they told me her secret email server was “not a matter of public interest.”

(Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 6/17/2021) (Archive)

June 21, 2021 – New affidavits raise more questions about FBI’s role in Trump-Russia probe

“Affidavits filed in a federal court on June 21 raise crucial questions about the FBI’s role in the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign’s efforts to vilify her opponent, Donald Trump, as a Russian agent. The FBI obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on the Trump team based on a dossier of memos alleging Trump’s ties to Russia that was filed by Clinton campaign contractor Christopher Steele.

But the newly released court documents suggest the FBI may have helped shape the anti-Trump plot at its origins.

The affidavits are the latest revelation to come from the ongoing defamation suit that the owners of Alfa-Bank, Russia’s largest commercial bank, have brought against Fusion GPS, the communications firm that hired Steele to compile Trump–Russia reports on behalf of the Clinton campaign. In one of Steele’s memos, Alfa-Bank principals Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and German Khan are alleged to have engaged in corrupt practices.

Steele claims that this report and the others are sourced to a Russian national he hired, Igor Danchenko, who, in turn, says his information came from a network of Russia-based sources. The affidavits filed this week were sworn by five Russian nationals who say Danchenko’s allegations that they served as sources for Steele’s reporting are false.

Ivan Vorontsov (Credit: Facebook)

This may put Danchenko in a bind. Finding himself at the mercy of angry billionaires who are eager to clear their names and the reputation of their business, Danchenko’s clearest path out of financial and legal risk may be to reveal everything he knows about the anti-Trump plot.The affidavit signed by Russian financial journalist Ivan Vorontsov is the most significant of the five documents. Vorontsov said that he has been friends with Danchenko since 2013 and met him three times in 2016. According to him, Danchenko said that he was employed by Fusion GPS, and its co-founders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch.

This appears to contradict what Danchenko told the FBI in a January 2017 interview. According to the transcript, Danchenko “did not have any visibility into [Steele’s] end clients.” Danchenko’s attorney reaffirmed his client’s claim, “Never asked, and was never told [about final clients].”

Another section from Vorontsov’s affidavit may prove even more significant. He states that during a June 2016 reception at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Moscow, he was “whisked away and invited to have a discussion with representatives of the FBI about Mr. Danchenko.”

Though Vorontsov does not give any more details, the FBI’s interest in him is noteworthy. According to the Department of Justice’s December 2019 inspector general’s report, the FBI claims Steele didn’t provide them with Danchenko’s name. Moreover, the FBI says it didn’t speak with Danchenko until January 2017. And yet seven months earlier, the FBI was seeking information about Danchenko from a man he named as a dossier source.  (Read more: The Epoch Times, 6/23/2021)  (Archive)

July 1, 2021 – A Florida judge rules to unseal Ghislaine Maxwell documents that may tell more of her relationship with the Clintons

Maxwell and Epstein are pictured with Clinton in 1993. (Credit: Clinton Presidential Library)

“A judge has ruled that dozens more documents about Ghislaine Maxwell’s personal affairs should be made public, including some that could reveal more about her finances and her relationship to the Clintons.

Judge Loretta Preska said that unsealing the documents would not impact Maxwell’s right to a fair trial in November as her lawyers have claimed.

Among the documents which will be made public in two weeks’ time will be Maxwell’s efforts to quash requests from Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who sued Maxwell for defamation, to obtain her financial records.

Giuffre’s lawyers demanded a vast array of documents from Maxwell including ‘funding received from the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Foundation,’ according to court filings.

The judge also ruled that documents relating to a request from Giuffre for email accounts that Maxwell allegedly kept secret from the court should also be made public.

They could give an insight into powerful men who Maxwell knew, such and Prince Andrew of the British royal family.

(…) Giuffre’s lawyers sought Maxwell’s tax returns, balance sheets for companies Maxwell controlled and financial statements for companies she controlled among other materials.

One section reads: ‘From January 2012 to the present, produce all documents concerning any source of funding for the TarraMar Project (Maxwell’s nonprofit) or any other not-for-profit entities with which you are associated, including but not limited to, funding received from the Clinton Global Initiative, the Clinton Foundation (a/k/a William J. Clinton Foundation, a/k/a/ the Bill, Hilary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation),and the Clinton Foundation Climate Change Initiative’.

While it is unclear if the Clintons will come up in the documents which will be made public, there is considerable back and forth and dozens of documents on this subject that will be unsealed.

Bill Clinton’s relationship with Epstein and Maxwell came under intense scrutiny when the financier was arrested in July 2019.

Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane dozens of times and photographs have shown him receiving a neck massage from Chauntae Davies, one of Epstein’s victims who worked as a flight attendant on his private jet, known as the ‘Lolita Express’.

The book ‘A Convenient Death: The Mysterious Demise of Jeffrey Epstein’, by journalists Alana Goodman and Daniel Halper even claimed that Clinton and Maxwell had a secret affair.

Other documents that will be unsealed relate to a request for information from Maxwell regarding what Giuffre’s lawyers called an ‘undisclosed email account’ that she kept secret from the court in breach of an order to hand it over. (Read more: The Daily Mail, 7/01/2021)  (Archive)

July 9, 2021 – The FBI releases partially redacted Seth Rich documents suggesting Robert Mueller and the Clintons are behind his murder

The FBI releases several documents related to DNC operative Seth Rich including a few that suggest Robert Mueller and the Clintons were involved in his murder.

Page 137 is dated June 26, 2018, nearly 2 years after Seth Rich was killed:

Page 136 is dated almost a month later on July 22, 2018, and is an FBI document that says the Clintons hired a hitman to kill Seth Rich and Robert Mueller agrees he would have done the same thing and hired a hitman.

Page 135 is a response the following day July 23, 2018, and is mostly redacted.

Page 134: “We think mueller arranged the hit on Seth Rich” – “Who knows hitmen better than Robert Mueller”

Page 133: “We think Mueller planned the execution of Seth Rich…mueller has access to plenty of hit men and who owed him…and ready cash” “And that old bean counter muller is a rabid trump hater…and one of the most despicable human beings”

Page 132: “Muller had Seth Rich murdered”  “he had the means and the motive and intel”

Page 131: “Muellers crooked lawyers investigating judge and jury”  “and their extended families …mueller who arranged the assassination of Seth Rich thru his mafia friends…is a psychopath capable of any crime”

Page 130: “Pedophile Bob Mueller sent Seth Rich hitman after manafort lawyer”  “Pedophile Mueller sent the same hitman he used on Seth Rich to help his friend Hillary…after (redacted)”

July 14, 2021 – Special Counsel Durham issues subpoena to Georgia Tech Research Institute

July 14, 2021 – Tucker Carlson addresses 2020 election issues In Fulton County, Georgia

July 26, 2021 – Gen. Flynn reveals high-ranking GOP were behind plot to silence him

“Nobody better understands the psychopathic nature of the modern left better than General Michael Flynn. Just days into his tenure as National Security Advisor, Flynn was entrapped by a hostile FBI that wanted him gone for political reasons. Shortly after, the Mueller investigation targeted him, and he spent the next three years battling a relentless effort to send him to prison. Even after DOJ prosecutors attempted to drop Flynn’s case, D.C. Judge Emmet Sullivan frantically tried to keep the case alive, even appointing a “friend of the court” to argue that Flynn was guilty of perjury for trying to withdraw his guilty plea. In the end, a pardon from President Trump was needed to finally end a case that should have never existed in the first place.

But through it all, Gen. Flynn was never defeated.

Gen. Flynn generously agreed to meet with Revolver for a few questions.

In the first segment of our interview, we ask General Flynn why the deep state was so intent on destroying him and having him removed from the Trump Administration. What was it about his background, experience, skillset, and belief system that they found so threatening? In his answer, Flynn offered the disturbing revelation that some very high level members of the Republican establishment were part of the group trying to silence him.

Watch the full first segment for a more elaborate answer as to why the deep state was after General Flynn.

In the second segment of our interview, General Flynn offers his insights on geopolitics. Specifically, we ask the General about the geopolitical costs of the left’s extended Russiagate hoax. The damage the Russiagate hoax did to our domestic politics is well known, and here General Flynn elaborates on the damage it has done to our foreign policy and ability to build important strategic relationships.”

July 28, 2021 – Belton’s People — FBI investigation casts new shadow over Catherine Belton’s book in a London High Court

(Credit: John Helmer)

“Investigations by US government officials, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), of Christopher Steele’s (lead image, right) Russiagate dossier have identified Catherine Belton (left) as one of the targets for his fabrications. Belton was herself investigated as one of the journalists Steele recruited to plant his allegations of Russian interference days before the 2016 presidential election.

Catherine Belton is the former Moscow correspondent for Financial Times. (Credit: public domain)

In her book Putin’s People, Belton repeats many of Steele’s allegations but she does not cite him or his consulting company Orbis as her source. Belton adds at the end of the book: “I’ll always be grateful to Chris [Steele] for his moral support.” After Belton’s book appeared in April 2020, Steele admitted to lawyers engaged in a London High Court lawsuit against him that Belton is “a friend, yes, she’s a friend”.

Fresh evidence revealed in the indictment issued by the US Department of Justice on September 16, shows that the FBI has concluded Steele was lying when he and his American accomplices planted false allegations of Russian election interference through several named intermediaries, including a Russian bank and Russian émigrés in the US,. The New York Times and The Atlantic were identified in last month’s US court papers as willing outlets for the fabrications. Earlier litigation by the Alfa Bank group in the US has identified five New York Times reporters and David Corn of Mother Jones as collaborators in the scheme.

Belton’s name, tagged with the note “London meeting”, has also surfaced in meeting notes taken at the State Department on October 11, 2016, when Steele met with Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland and a deputy, Kathleen Kavalec.  Kavalec’s meeting notes, partially declassified, reveal that Steele’s allegations of Russian election interference followed a briefing of the same allegations at the FBI a month earlier, on September 19, 2016,  by Michael Sussmann, a lawyer working in secret for the Democratic National Committee (DNC).  Sussmann is now charged with lying then to the FBI.

The Justice Department’s indictment says Sussmann was one of the plotters with Steele and others, including journalists, university academics, and IT experts in publishing false stories of Russian election interference; their plot aimed at hurting the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, by making it appear he was in cahoots with the Kremlin to hurt the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.

“In or about late October 2016 – approximately one week before the 2016 U.S. Presidential election – multiple media outlets reported that U.S. government authorities had received and were investigating allegations concerning a purported secret channel of communications between the Trump Organization, owned by Donald J. Trump, and a particular Russian bank (‘Russian Bank-I’).”

The Kavalec notebook also reveals that Steele claimed there were “3 distinct channels” for this Russian operation “run by Kremlin, not FSB, Ivanov, Peskov, Putin.”  In addition to accusing Alfa Bank as the first channel “Alfa-Trump-Kremlin-comms”, Steele told Nuland that Serge Millian, a Russian émigré businessman in the US, was the second; Carter Page, a wannabe Trump campaign adviser, was the third.

In the sequence of Kavalec’s notes. Steele told Nuland there were “hackers out of R[ussia] – acting in US – [payments out of the state] pension fund Miami consulate payments – implants. Operations Paige [sic], Millian (émigrés?), Manafort.”  Steele then mentioned the London meeting with Belton whom he identified as “FT [Financial Times]”.

Reporting by Belton in the Financial Times followed days after her meeting was mentioned by Steele to Nuland.  In  Belton’s published report, she named Serge Millian as the channel Steele had alleged at State and the FBI. “Now, “ Belton claimed on November 1, one week before Election Day,  “the US administration has formally accused Russia of attempting to interfere in the US electoral process through the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s email servers, Mr Millian’s activities — and his ties to the Republican presidential nominee — are coming under increasing scrutiny.” Belton did not identify her sources for her allegations against Millian. She implied, however, that they were US intelligence agents and the FBI.  “Mr Millian came on to the FBI’s radar”, Belton reported. “The FBI probe was part of a wake-up call for US intelligence over suspicions that Russia was activating networks long thought defunct after the end of the cold war.”

Millian avoided Belton for an interview and she reported. “He declined repeated requests for an interview and left the US for Asia on a business trip in early October.” Two weeks before, Steele had told Nuland, according to Kavalec’s transcript, Millian was “now in China.”

According to Belton, Millian had been a real estate broker for Trump, selling Trump organisation properties to Russians. Steele had told Nuland “real estate entities used for massive set of purchases by Russians. Set up espionage network in FL[orida] – to buy a lot of properties for POTUS [Trump’s] businesses through a R[ussian] brokage. 100’s of real estate transactions.”

Mikhail Fridman (l), Petr Aven (c), and Lord Browne at the L1 Energy launch in New York, May, 2015. (Credit: LetterOne Group)

Two months ago, on July 28, Belton was exposed as a liar and fabricator of her source material by her British publisher, HarperCollins.  Settling the High Court case brought against them both by Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven of Alfa Bank, the publisher said there was “no significant evidence” for Belton’s allegations of KGB connections in the early careers of Fridman and Aven; and that she had failed to check her claims with Fridman and Aven before publishing them. The publisher agreed to delete Belton’s allegations from the book.

The terms of that settlement, and the ongoing High Court case in London, have stopped Macmillan, the US publisher of the book, from issuing the paperback edition, according to industry sources.

Once Belton’s allegations against the Alfa Bank group were abandoned by HarperCollins, lawyers for the remaining plaintiffs – Roman Abramovich, Rosneft and Shalva Chigirinsky – are now focusing on Belton’s acknowledged dependence on Steele – and on the fabrications Steele got Belton to print before the US election.” (Read more: John Helmer, 10/04/2021)  (Archive)

(Republished in part, with permission.)

August 18, 2021 – Daniel Jones namedrops Rodney Joffe in Alfa Bank deposition


(Fool Nelson, 10/15/2021)  (Archive)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Lisa Page a witness in the Sussmann case?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Sussmann (Credit: public domain)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

Michael Sussmann (Credit: Chalet Reports)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marc Elias (Credit: Getty Images)

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

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

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

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

Rodney Joffe (Credit: Neustar)

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

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

Sussman Indictment, paragraph 20, page 6

Sussmann indictment, page 7

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

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

Sussman Indictment, page 16

Sussman indictment, page 17

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

Franklin Foer (Credit: Curtis Brown)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sussmann indictment, Page 23

Sussman indictment, Page 24

Sussmann indictment, Pages 24-25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Georgia Institute of Technology (Credit: Georgia Tech University)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Vixie (Credit: Medium)

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

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

Faked Evidence?

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

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

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

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

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

gatech,edu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Caroline Krass (Credit: CIA Wikipedia)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s worse than we thought!
#ButNothingsHappening

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A great thread on Neustar & their connections:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But where in Utah?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There were likely surveillance devices in the White House too!

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

 

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

(Republished with permission.) 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Transcript provided by RealClearPolitics)

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

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

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

BARTIROMO: What is this about?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 1, 2021 – Durham reportedly issues subpoenas to Perkins Coie

(Credit: Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Special Counsel John Durham reportedly issued subpoenas to Perkins Coie, a law firm tied to the Steele Dossier, the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The subpoenas are part of Durham’s probe into the origins of the investigation into allegations that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russia, CNN reported.

(Read more: The Daily Caller, 9/30/2021)  (Archive)

Mark Wauck is a retired FBI agent who blogs and has been following Russiagate closely. He offers some interesting thoughts on what the subpoenas could be about.

(…) Yesterday I suggested that, as a result of Perkins Coie contesting Durham’s original subpoenas, a judge may have limited the scope of those subpoenas to those documents that the judge believed Durham had offered the best case as being relevant to his investigation. The relevance to a criminal investigation would form the basis of the crime or fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege that would normally apply to an attorney’s communications regarding a client.

Under this reasoning on my part, the original subpoenas may have sought emails and billing records not only for Sussmann but also for Elias—and potentially others. The judges, as I speculated, may have told Durham, in effect: Look, you can get the Sussmann docs because you’ve shown Sussmann’s links to persons of interest by other means, but hold off on the Elias docs—depending on your results you can always ask for those again at a later date.

Now, we know from the Sussmann indictment that Durham was, in fact, able to link Elias to Sussmann’s conspiratorial activities based on the emails and billing records. For that reason I want to be cautious regarding SWC’s idea that Sussmann is cooperating with Durham. Sussmann’s cooperation probably is not necessary for purposes of obtaining Elias’ records from Perkins Coie—although SWC is undoubtedly correct that Sussmann is under enormous pressure to cooperate and that the focus of that cooperation would include Elias. The positive results from the first round of subpoenas to Perkins Coie are almost certainly sufficient for those purposes, regardless of whether Sussmann is cooperating at this point. Sussmann may have begun cooperating, but we can’t be certain. Let’s not get too far out in front with speculation.

Before offering SWC’s tweets for your consideration, I want to return to what I’ve previously said about Elias—that he’s too major a player to be an initial target for cooperation by Durham. Elias is too close to Hillary and to all things legal as regards the Dem party—it’s difficult for me to believe that he would have led the race to cooperate. As SWC observes: “Elias takes you on a lot of directions other than just Alfa Bank.” Precisely.

Durham is well known for being a methodical investigator and prosecutor. My view remains that before attempting to turn the screws on Elias he’ll first want to build air tight cases against targets for whom he has hard evidence. Further, Sussmann is by no means a minor player—he’s just not as big as Elias. I believe Durham would prefer to obtain subpoenas targeting Elias’ records on his (Durham’s) own terms, based on his own investigative results, rather than based on cooperation from Sussmann. That would allow Durham to drive a harder bargain with Sussmann if it comes to a plea deal. By limiting Sussmann’s ability to say, Hey, I helped you with this, that, or the other thing, so gimme a break, Durham gains leverage over Sussmann and may be able to extract even greater cooperation. All that’s a maybe—it may not turn out that way, but the methodical Durham will surely want to put himself in the strongest possible position well ahead of any turn of events. (Read more: MeaningInHistory, 10/01/2021)  (Archive)

October 3, 2021 – Kash Patel predicts the Durham probe will lead to indictments ‘at the top’

Former Pentagon chief of staff Kash Patel discusses the Durham investigation with Maria Bartiromo.

Retired FBI, Mark Wauck, is kind enough to create a partial rough transcript of what Patel said and then shares a few thoughts:

“Below is a transcript of Patel’s statements to Maria Bartiromo this morning. I’ve paraphrased Maria’s questions, but this is as exact a transcript as I can manage of what Patel had to say about the Russia Hoax and where Durham is headed. I’ll add some of my own remarks, but let’s start with Patel:

MB: When do you think the FBI figured out this was the Clinton Campaign trying to take down Trump?

KP: I think they knew right away, and the documents we put out in the Nunes investigation and the Nunes memo and the HPSCI report on Russian active measures show that the FBI knew right away, because the FISA abuse process, now that declassification is complete. And your viewers can read it, that the FBI knew the evidence was fraudulent, they knew the credibility problems with Christopher Steele and they knew the DNC through Fusion GPS and Perkins Coie were piping in tens of millions of dollars into the machine so that they could get up a FISA warrant into President Trump. I think they knew right away which is why I think the individuals at the FBI need to be held accountable.

MB: Will John Durham reel in any big fish?

KP: I believe so. Let me just put this in perspective. When I was running large scale conspiracy and fraud investigations, they took me three, four, five years to prosecute. John Durham is in only his second year of the most political scandal in US history. So I believe in the next 6 months look out for indictments against the folks like Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson for helping to perpetuate this fraud. And look out for individuals like Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. I believe they’re already helping John Durham and they’re cooperating with him to get the bigger fish, like Andy McCabe who is the biggest fraudster next to James Comey. I think you’re gonna see these indictments come out on these individuals at the top. It’s just gonna take a few more months, but I remind your viewers that it takes a little time to work these matters.

MB: No surprise the MSM gave them all jobs.

In a sense this isn’t big news, because we saw the shape of this in Durham’s indictment of Michael Sussmann. In particular the references in the indictment to Fusion GPS (“investigative firm”) and Perkins Coie left no doubt that Durham saw Fusion GPS as key to the actual implementation of the Russia Hoax conspiracy. However, Patel says two things openly that are of bombshell quality.

First, while we knew that the money for the Fusion GPS operation was laundered through Perkins Coie, Patel openly states that the amounts ran to “tens of millions of dollars”. That’s real money in US political campaigns, even in these days. It’s also real money in the world of major law firms, so you can see why Durham has been so focused on Perkins Coie as well as why Perkins Coie is experiencing real difficulty in persuading Durham that they didn’t know what was going on—remember, this money laundering op was almost certainly a violation of campaign finance laws. Who believes nobody at a major law firm noticed the flow of that amount of money through their accounts? Not me and, it seems, not Durham. If Perkins Coie wants to somehow get through this without indictments they’ll need to be very cooperative with Durham.

Fusion GPS, of course, is no more than an organizational euphemism for Glenn Simpson and, most likely, Nellie Ohr. Nellie has, quite likely, been cooperating with regard to Simpson. Simpson, in his turn, will have a lot to offer Durham with regard to the Clinton legal operatives—Sussmann and Elias. Both. This is another reason why I want to wait before jumping to any conclusions about Sussmann cooperating against Elias. Both of these guys are very major players, and Durham won’t be over quick to offer them deals unless he has to.

Second, I was gratified to see Patel confirm my assessment, which I offered quite recently. I stated that, while Page and Strzok may have been big fish within the FBI, in the big scheme of this conspiracy they weren’t truly major players. At the FBI the major players—people who controlled the switches—were: Comey (Director), McCabe (Deputy Director), and James Baker (General Counsel). We’re pretty certain that Baker is cooperating. I doubt that Durham has even sought cooperation from Comey and McCabe. I think they’re major targets—they either go down or they get away with what they did, but their responsibility was too great for them to get a plea deal. Page and Strzok may be able to get some sort of a deal, but in my view they’ll also have to pay a price.

Now, extrapolating a bit from what Patel said …

(Read more: MeaningInHistory, 10/3/2021)  (Archive)

October 4, 2021 – More on Alfa Bank lawsuit; Steele; Nuland; Kavalec notes; Stephen Laycock; and the Russiagate fabrications in Belton’s book

(…) In a report commissioned by Alfa Bank and released by the Ankura Consulting Group in April 2020, the technical methods were exposed by which Sussmann and his Democratic National Committee clients had fabricated the evidence of the Russian “channel” to Trump. For the full Anura report, click to read.

In reporting this and the Sussmann indictment last month, it is now clear in retrospect that [Catherine] Belton was on the end of the chain of lying which started with Sussmann and Steele.  Sussmann first provided the Alfa channel fabrication to Steele on July 29, 2016; Steele admitted this to a lawyer for Alfa in London in March 2017.  Sussmann repeated the lie to the FBI on September 29, 2016. Steele then repeated it at the State Department on October 11, 2016. Hillary Clinton repeated it in a public tweet on November 1, 2016.  Steele has admitted some of the journalist names to whom he had repeated the Alfa lie in this UK court record; he has not admitted what he told Belton.

Belton did not admit her Alfa fabrications to HarperCollins in March of 2021, when the publisher issued a statement claiming the book was “an authoritative, important and conscientiously sourced work.”  Four months later, on July 28, The Bookseller printed a fresh statement from HarperCollins repeating the same endorsement and adding: “HarperCollins will robustly defend this acclaimed and groundbreaking book and the right to report on matters of considerable public interest.”  Hours later that day in court, the publisher contradicted itself and withdrew its defence of Belton’s Alfa claims.

To this day, the Financial Times website version of Belton’s November 1, 2016, story of the “second channel” shows no correction. Steele’s allegations at the State Department Belton repeated as innuendo: “questions are mounting over whether Mr Millian was one of a number of people who could have acted as intermediaries to build ties between Moscow and Mr Trump.”

In fact, the questions which started mounting immediately after Steele had met Nuland and Kavalec were immediately relayed to the FBI with warnings from both of them that they suspected Steele of faking.

By May 2019, a year before Belton’s book was due to be published, the first reports were surfacing in the Washington press revealing that Nuland and Kavalec had suspected Steele. Belton then erased Steele from the book as her source for the allegations she had already printed in the Financial Times on Millian’s Florida real estate schemes.

But into the book Belton kept up the same allegation, turning the innuendo into fact with a change of source: “Money then flowed into real estate in Miami, New York and London,” Belton alleged, ascribing this to Jack Blum, whom she reported as “a Washington lawyer specialising in white-collar financial crime”.  Blum is also the treasurer of an anti-Russia think tank in Washington funded in part by George Soros.  “Real estate was exempt from any kind of reporting of suspicious activity,” Belton says she was told at an “author interview with Blum, December 2018. Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organization, did not respond to a request for comment.”

In Belton’s book, she continued to parrot Steele. “In total,” she wrote, “more than $98.4 million worth of property in south Florida was bought by Russians in seven Trump-branded luxury towers.”  Kavalec’s notes reveal that Steele had told Nuland “$98M in 7 towers”.

Kavalec’s records reveal that at the October 11, 2016, meeting with Nuland, Steele spent most of his time promoting his claim that the Millian “channel” and the “émigré network” were responsible for “domestic espionage”. Money to pay for this, he claimed, came from a Russian state “pension fund Miami consulate payments”. Steele also claimed Millian and others used real estate transactions because there was “no due diligence”. He named two of the alleged fronts as “Global Group” and “Florida Best Realty – Marat Zitsman – located in Trump Towers. 12s [dozens] of Russians.”

Source: this and also as a typed transcript, dated May 19, 2019.  This version reports Belton’s first name as “Chasenual[sp?]! and “meeting” as “wre[?]ly” Another source, with commentary, can be read here. The reference to “Winer” above Belton’s name identifies Jonathan Winer, a State Department official at the time who was also part of the Russian allegation chain between Sussman, Steele, and Belton. In her book, Belton reports interviewing Winer in December 2018.  Winer is reportedly the source for the claim of “an alliance of the KGB working with organised crime.” For more on Winer’s role as go-between Steele and Nuland, read this.

Kavalec’s subsequent reporting to the FBI casts doubt on Steele’s truthfulness and motive.  In her written report to Nuland and the FBI,  Kavalec wrote: “It is important to note that there is no Russian consulate in Miami.” Nuland also issued a warning to cut off contact with Steele because “this is about U.S. politics, and not the work of — not the business of the State Department, and certainly not the business of a career employee who is subject to the Hatch Act.”  For more details, click to read.

FBI officials have confirmed that Kavelec sent the FBI a report of these concerns by email; she also spoke directly to Stephen Laycock, then the FBI’s section chief for Russian and Eurasian counter-intelligence and later one of the bureau’s top executives as assistant director for intelligence. In the pre-election period Laycock was also a member of the inter-agency “Russian Malign Influence Group”, together with Kavalec and Justice Department officials.  Laycock was also aware that FBI agents reporting to him had met in July in Rome with Steele.

The email to Laycock from Kavalec arrived on October 13, eight days before the FBI swore to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that it had no negative information on Steele’s credibility; the FBI used his anti-Trump dossier to secure secret surveillance warrants to investigate Trump’s possible ties to Moscow. The publicly disclosed version of Kavalec’s email to Laycock has been heavily redacted on the grounds of national security. 

The manipulation of some agents and groups inside the FBI was under investigation by others at the FBI in the days leading up to the presidential election. This resulted in the FBI sacking Steele as a confidential source on November 1, 2016.

On the same day, Belton repeated in the Financial Times word for word what Steele had told her about the Millian “channel” and “espionage network”.

By then Laycock was about to move up from the Russian section of the Agency’s counter-intelligence division to take charge of counter-intelligence at the FBI’s Washington field office.    The following year he was promoted again, this time to assistant director of the intelligence directorate.  He continued at the top of the Bureau until his retirement in 2020 when he went to work for the computer security firm KACE, a unit of Dell, and SCL Risk Management.   SCL are Laycock’s name initials; the firm is registered at his home address in Burke, Virginia.

Laycock prospered during the Russiagate affair; looking back, he has told others “that of all the characteristics of a successful leader that come to mind…there is one word that I think about a lot in looking back on my FBI career regarding leadership roles and success, and that is to be Thankful…being thankful and appreciating opportunity is what, again in my opinion, got me to where I ended in my incredible FBI career.”

Forgetful was the term Laycock relied on when he was interviewed under oath at the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 15, 2020.   He was repeatedly asked what he knew of Steele and his claims about Russian operations in the US. According to Laycock, he had “heard the name before [October 2016]”. Asked whether he or his staff had checked Steele’s claims Laycock testified he was “not aware”, “I don’t know”, “I can’t remember”. Asked what Kavalec had told him about Steele after the October 11 meeting with Nuland, Laycock said: “I don’t remember exactly what she said.”

Kathleen Kavalec (l) of the State Department’s Russia desk and Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs and Stephen Laycock (r) head of Russian counter-intelligence at the FBI. (Credit: public domain)

Asked whether Steele’s credibility had been called into question, Laycock told the Senate investigation: “I don’t recall that.” Asked again if he was present at meetings of his staff when Steele’s credibility had been examined, Laycock said: “I don’t recall any.” Had there been any verification of Steele’s allegations? “I don’t recall specifically any steps. It was more just status updates of kind of where things were.”

In her book Belton says that in July 2019 she interviewed Frank Montoya, head of the FBI’s counter-intelligence division between 2012 and 2014, before he was reassigned to Seattle. He then retired and went to work for StrikeForce Technologies — https://strikesource.com/team-member/frank-montoya-jr/ StrikeForce is one of the promoters of the Russia hacking allegations which Steele had started with Nuland.

STRIKE FORCE TECHNOLOGIES – RUSSIAGATE PLOT WAS SHARE PRICE BOOSTER FROM ELECTION DAY 2016 TO THE TRUMP-PUTIN MEETING IN JULY 2018

StrikeForce remains very small, with a current market capitalization of $70 million. Source: https://markets.ft.com/ CrowdStrike, the company which initially reported the allegation of Russian hacking of the DNC, did not list on the Nasdaq exchange until 2019. Its share price has moved steadily upwards; its current market cap is $57 billion. Shawn Henry, the second ranked executive at CrowdStrike, is an ex-FBI agent.

The only American reporter to have identified Belton’s reporting in the Financial Times as tied to Steele and the Sussmann plot is Matt Taibbi. He reported on September 22  “a long list of press figures “from [Brian] Stelter’s own CNN colleague and shameless intelligence community spokesclown Natasha Bertrand, to reporters from The New Yorker, Time, MSNBC, Fortune, the Financial Times, and especially Slate and The Atlantic — were witting or unwitting pawns in a scheme to sell the public on a transparently moronic hoax, i.e. that Donald Trump’s campaign was communicating mysterious digital treason to Russia’s Alfa Bank via a secret computer server.” Taibbi did not mention Belton by name.

It is not yet clear if FBI agents met with Belton at the time of her Millian story, or later. Belton refuses to respond to a request to confirm meetings she has had with FBI agents before her book was published.  The FBI was asked to clarify its contacts with Belton and to say if its agents had been the ones identified at the London meeting with Belton which Steele had mentioned to Nuland. The FBI replied: “we will decline comment.”

Sources who are familiar with FBI investigations of Russian money-laundering and US organized crime suspect that Steele, then Belton, were manipulated by the FBI counter-intelligence division trying to score personal and bureaucratic points against their traditional rivals, the organized crime division of the Bureau and the CIA’s counter-intelligence division. The FBI’s counter-intelligence division had been discredited in 2001 when Robert Hanssen, one of the division’s supervisors, had been convicted of spying for the Russians for many years.   His exposure followed the disgrace of the parallel operation at the CIA after the FBI arrested Aldrich Ames.

In her book, Belton has parroted the Montoya-Laycock script from the counter-intelligence division without checking with the FBI’s organised crime division. “It is a comic-book version of the facts”, says a source familiar with the Russian evidence and the FBI’s investigations of American crime gangs. “Some things are funny, like her spelling of the Genovese crime family.” The source says Belton misreports most of the details in her book about Jewish-Russian émigrés whom she calls “mobsters” and accuses of “network funnelling money from the former Soviet Union into America, including – indirectly – into the business empire of Donald Trump.”

“They,” Belton’s book claims, “were part of an interconnecting web of figures that became testimony to the enduring power of the black-cash networks created in the final years of the Communist regime. Some of them later joined Trump in real-estate ventures, helping bail him out when he fell into financial difficulty, offering the prospect of lucrative construction deals in Moscow… The money flows that went through part of this network to Trump’s business operations are yet to be fully uncovered – they remain at the centre of a legal standoff between the Trump Organization and Congress over what records can be disclosed. But some of the contours of Moscow’s influence over Trump can be traced.”

This was the Steele fabrication which the FBI counter-intelligence division and its Crossfire Hurricane group turned into a weapon in support of the Clinton campaign against Trump. Named seventeen times in Belton’s book, Sam Kislin, says a source directly involved in their business, “was partners with Misha Chernoy in Trans-CIS Commodities, starting off as trading in pig iron, not chrome. Sam had nothing to do with TransWorld, especially when Misha left. They also ran Blond Management together. Arik Kislin was the runner and gofer. Sam and Semyon [Mogilevich] were substantial contributors to the Democrats, not the Republicans. Yaponchik [Vyacheslav Ivankov] was sent to the U.S. to put down the warfare in Little Odessa [Brighton Beach, Brooklyn] because the American Mob was getting a lot of heat from the NYPD [New York Police Department] about the violence of the Russian gangsters in NY.”

Belton’s version of the Yaponchik story was sourced to court testimony by an FBI organised crime division agent, Lester McNulty.   McNulty’s affidavit of 1995 makes no reference to Trump or to Trump businesses.

Belton, however, links Yaponchik to Trump by reporting: “Agents eventually tracked him [Yaponchik] down to a luxury condo in Trump Tower in Manhattan, and then to the Taj Mahal [casino], to which he made nineteen visits while under surveillance between March and April 1993, gambling $250,000 there. Trump had survived his first threat of bankruptcy, and the Russians were among those who had helped him do so. The Taj Mahal became such a popular spot for Russian émigrés that part of a Russian movie was filmed there, a comedy that featured a casino owned by the Russian mob.”

“This”, said the source familiar with Belton’s “network”, “is a myopic view of the situation without any understanding of what was happening in the US from a US point of view. Donald Trump’s father owed the Mob a lot of money (some said $58 million). When Biff Halloran of Transit-Mix went to prison the Mob turned to [Donald] Trump to help reduce his father’s debt. Trump was building hotels, partially financed by the Mob, but using cement and building materials provided by the Colombo, Lucchese and Genovese families. The Teamsters got to do all the trucking; the Westies got the Irish construction jobs, the ILA got the dock jobs on the stevedoring at the piers where the cement was imported. It was a money machine.”

“The Russians had nothing to do with it. They only bought space in the buildings as a wash for the cash they were bringing into the country; hotel rooms and golf clubs. With all that, Trump still managed to fail. When they started up Atlantic City, the Mob used Trump as a front to get the licenses and took a hefty cut of the winnings and the skim. This was to reduce the father’s debt and the new debt run up by the Donald. The problem was that Atlantic City was run by the Philly Mob which was having a small war between Angelo Bruno, Phil Testa and Little Nicky Scarfo. It all fell apart. What is important about this is that this was all American greed and corruption. We did not need Russian adventurers to show us how it was done. The Russians brought their cash to the laundry but we didn’t ask them how to run a laundromat.”

“With all the book’s references to leading Russians coming to the US, the influence of the Solntsevskaya and Izamailova groups, [Belton’s book] pretends that the Russians were running things. They were providing hot money which got cooled down by passing through the NY building trades. Fat Tony Salerno, Paulie Castellano, Ralphie Scapo, Jimmy Blue-Eyes of the Westies did not take orders and advice from Russians. They took the money and gave them a fair return.”

“Pezzo Novantas [Sicilian slang for bigshot] like Trump just made it harder because they were ignorant and without power. Frankly, I was insulted by this book and its underlying premise that the Russian bad guys came to the US and corrupted the US with their evil ways.”

Shalva Chigirinsky (Credit: public domain)

A Russian émigré Belton interviewed four times in 2018 and 2019 and cites as her source for evidence of money links between Russian intelligence and Trump is Shalva Chigirinsky; Belton spells his name Tchigirinsky and cites him 64 times in the book. “In 2015, when Trump decided to run for the US presidency, Shalva Tchigirinsky was close by. He told me he was with Trump’s close friend and ally Steve Wynn, the casino owner who was to become a major donor for the Trump election campaign and subsequently the Republican Party’s finance chairman, soon after the decision was announced.” When she met Chigirinsky (right), she described him as“an ethnic Georgian with a thick mane of dark hair”. In fact, Chigirinsky is a Mingrelian Jew and from 2016 his hair was grey.

“What’s clear,” according to Belton, “is that ever since Tchigirinsky first appeared at the Taj Mahal in 1990, a network of Moscow/Solntsevskaya money men and intelligence operatives surrounded him, and that they stepped up the business connection after 2000”.

By the time Chigirinsky agreed to talk to Belton in 2018, his veracity had been called into doubt by court rulings on corporate fraud and wife beating in the UK and US. Belton omitted them in her footnotes. “Whether Tchigirinsky was involved in the Taj Mahal bondholders’ pact we may never know. He insisted he’d never invested in the Taj Mahal, but at one point when we were speaking of the financial difficulties that were facing the casino at that time, he spoke of the business almost as if it were his own.”

Chigirinsky is now suing Belton and HarperCollins in the High Court for libel. He filed on April 16, 2021. Two weeks later, the Financial Times reported the litigation with an attempt to discredit it. “Chigirinsky could not immediately be reached for comment through his lawyers,” the newspaper claimed, adding: “Jessica Ní Mhainín at the Index on Censorship, a group that campaigns for free expression, said London’s courts were becoming the venue of choice for legal action designed to ‘quash critical journalism, not only in the UK, but around the world’ .  She added that the UK is harbouring a global industry that profits from such lawsuits against journalists, and called for the introduction of reforms.”

At her new post in Bosnia-Herzogovina, Kavalevec [sic] was asked to clarify what her note of the Steele-Nuland meeting meant in referring to Belton and the London meeting. She did not respond.

Belton’s book does not mention the CIA in the text or index; she cites no CIA source of support for her allegations.” (Read more: John Helmer, 10/04/2021)  (Archive)

(Republished in part, with permission.)

October 4, 2021 – Former separatist sympathizer and now chairman of January 6 committee, defended secessionist group that killed a police officer and wounded an FBI agent

Bennie Thompson defends the RNA  in a 1971 press conference. (Credit: Mississippi Department of Archives and History)

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the congressional commission investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, has been a vocal critic of an event he deems an insurrection and offered his sympathy to the police officers injured that day. He’s even gone as far as to sue former President Donald Trump for responsibility for the melee.

But as a young African-American alderman in a small Mississippi community in 1971, Thompson placed himself on the opposite side, openly sympathizing with a secessionist group known as the Republic of New Africa and participating in a news conference blaming law enforcement for instigating clashes with the group that led to the killings of a police officer and the wounding of an FBI agent. Thompson’s official biography makes no reference to the separatist RNA.

Thompson’s affection for the RNA and its members — which FBI counterintelligence memos from the 1970s warned were threatening “guerrilla warfare” against the United States — was still intact as recently as 2013, when he openly campaigned on behalf of the group’s former vice president to be mayor of Mississippi’s largest city.

The congressman’s advocacy on behalf of RNA — captured in documents, newspaper clippings and video footage retrieved from state, FBI and local law enforcement agency archives — is a pointed reminder that some of the far-left figures of a half century ago are now the Democratic Party’s establishment leaders, their pasts now a fleeting footnote in the frenzied vitriol of modern-day Washington.

For instance, Thompson’s Democratic colleague in Congress and the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, famously cofounded the extremist Black Panthers chapter in Illinois in 1968 before he entered politics. Both the RNA and the Black Panthers were avowed supporters of insurrection, and at one point in 1967, armed Black Panthers stormed the state capitol in California.

Thompson, an affable, silver-haired politician known today simply as “Bennie,” is one of Mississippi’s longest serving congressmen and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. He dropped his NAACP-sponsored suit against Trump when he was appointed to lead the Jan. 6 commission.

The congressman had a much lower national profile back in 1971, when newspapers referred to him simply as Alderman B.G. Thompson from the community of Bolton, Miss., where he became acquainted with the RNA. He was never charged with any wrongdoing in connection with the group but on multiple occasions publicly sided with RNA members, even as law enforcement documented how the group had engaged in violence and was training for possible warfare.

Just the News was alerted to Thompson’s embrace of the RNA by former federal law enforcement officials and Mississippi state officials who remembered his advocacy for the group and criticism of police. Just the News obtained video footage, newspaper clippings and law enforcement documents from historical archives and the FBI that validate their story. (Read more: JustTheNews, 10/01/2021)  (Archive)

October 07, 2021 – John Durham provides 81k pages of documents to Sussmann

Techno_Fog continues on his Substack page:

Let’s decipher that last sentence. Who has received a subpoena from Durham?

  1. “Political organizations” likely refer to the DNC and the Hillary Clinton Campaign/Hillary for America.
  2. “A university” = Georgia Tech.
  3. “University Researchers” = the team involved in the Alfa Bank/Trump hoax.
  4. “An investigative firm” = Fusion GPS.
  5. “Numerous companies” = the companies involved with Rodney Joffe (named Tech Executive-1 in the Sussmann indictment).

As we have previously observed, Durham was already in possession of:

  1. E-mail records from Joffe, the research group, and Sussmann/Perkins Coie.
  2. Perkins Coie billing records.
  3. Perkins Coie records (notes, etc.) relating to calls and meetings re: Alfa Bank.
  4. Grand jury testimony.

And that’s just on the Alfa Bank issue. (Durham apparently remains focused on the broader FISA issues as well as other matters.) The filing also notes that Durham is “working expeditiously to declassify large volumes of materials to provide to the defense.” This includes:

But there’s still more. Durham states after the production of these records, “the government expects to produce additional materials in subsequent productions, which will include additional interview memoranda, emails, and other records.”

Why this matters.

We anticipate that Durham is gearing-up to charge the group that created and pushed the Trump/Alfa Bank hoax. This is based on the volume of information Durham possesses on this issue, which reflects substantial expenditures of time and energy and resources to put all this together. In other words, you don’t call the grand jury on this issue – and pursue this matter this far – if the Alfa Bank researchers acted properly. (Read more: Techno_Fog/Substack, 10/20/2021)  (Archive)

October 12, 2021 – General Flynn was the largest target of the Fourth Branch of government

General Michael Flynn was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. Many CTH readers are well versed in the fraudulent case manufactured by corrupt DOJ and FBI officials against Flynn. This extensive interview allows Flynn to describe what was happening in his own words.

General Flynn describes the “security state” that runs government. However, we have defined it as…The Fourth Branch of Government

(Conservative Treehouse, 10/12/2021)

October 17, 2021 – Christopher Steele appears with Stephanopoulos and insists Michael Cohen really went to Prague and that he’s covering for Trump

Christopher Steele, the author of the Russian collusion dossier, gave an extraordinary interview to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos this week where he stood by claims long debunked by past investigations. What was most striking about the interview was Steele effectively claiming that Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s most fierce critics, is still covering for Trump in denying a critical conspiratorial meeting with Russian intelligence.

The dossier alleged Cohen had “secret meeting/s with Kremlin officials in August 2016” in Prague. Cohen testified before the House Oversight Committee in 2019 that he had never been to Prague. The Special Counsel and the Justice Department were unable to confirm Steele’s claim despite exhaustive investigation. Indeed, American intelligence believed that Russian intelligence used Steele to pass along disinformation, including the use of a long suspected Russian agent as one of his critical sources.

On April 13, 2018, Chris Matthews breathlessly introduces Peter Stone who then breaks down his latest that Robert Mueller has evidence of Michael Cohen traveling to Prague in 2016. In the end, Michael Horowitz, Robert Mueller, and Michael Cohen debunk the lie, yet mainstream media and guilty parties continue to repeat it as truth. (Credit: MSNBC)

In the interview, Stephanopoulos noted that “one big claim the dossier, the FBI, according to the Inspector General’s report … is not true, is the claim that Michael Cohen had a meeting with Russians in Prague.” He then asked “do you accept that finding that it didn’t happen?” Steele responded that he rejects the findings of Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz.

Now stop for a second and think about that. Cohen was given a deal by prosecutors and worked tirelessly to incriminate Trump in any way that he could. He even shilled for contributions based on that promise. This included an admission that he lied when he was still Trump’s lawyer. As part of his deal, Cohen could have easily confirmed the Prague allegation and said that he did meet with Russians. It would have been devastating to Trump. Instead, he continued to deny that it ever happened.  He later wrote a book that called Trump every name in the book and said that he lied for him. However, he continued to maintain his long-standing denial that he has ever been to Prague or ever met with the Russians as alleged by Steele.” (Read more: Jonathan Turley, 10/20/2021)  (Archive)

October 18, 2021 – DHS whistleblower Aaron Stevenson exposes migrant asylum rule change that shifts the decision of ‘reasonable fear’ away from immigration judges

Aaron Stevenson (Credit: Project Veritas)

  • Aaron Stevenson, DHS Insider and Intelligence Research Specialist for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: “An email sent out by the Director of USCIS, which notified us about a rule change coming forward, is going to shift the adjudicative authority of defensive asylum away from immigration judges and giving it to asylum officers, which are USCIS.”
  • Ur Jaddou, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: “The proposed system seeks to reduce processing times by transferring the initial responsibility for adjudicating certain protection claims from immigration judges to USCIS asylum officers. This rule would simplify the adjudication process for certain individuals who are encountered at or near the border, placed into expedited removal proceedings, and determined to have a credible fear of persecution or torture.”
  • Stevenson: “This is going to be the biggest change to immigration policy in my lifetime. It’s being done without anybody knowing what’s going on about it and there’s been no coverage for the American people to know what’s going on.”
  • Stevenson: “[This new policy] leaves very little accountability to the public when this kind of operation exists. And when you couple that with giving the adjudicative authority away from an immigration judge to an asylum officer, you are removing any type of public pressure that they could apply on policies that they’re creating.”
  • Stevenson: “If the asylum officers get this ability, I will say it’s going to be a rubber stamp of immediately getting ‘credible fear’ or ‘reasonable fear’ [asylum seekers] to be able to stay in the country if they’re going to be deported…also their path to citizenship.”
  • Stevenson: “I will lose my job” for going public.

Project Veritas released a new video today featuring an interview with current U.S. Department of Homeland Security [DHS] insider Aaron Stevenson, who serves as an Intelligence Research Specialist for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS].  (Read more: Project Veritas, 10/18/2021)  (Archive)

October 19, 2021 – Aaron Maté hones in on the Perkins Coie contracts with Sussmann-Crowdstrike-Henry and Elias-Fusion GPS-Simpson

“The indictment of Hillary Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann for allegedly lying to the FBI sheds new light on the pivotal role of Democratic operatives in the Russiagate affair. The emerging picture shows Sussmann and his Perkins Coie colleague Marc Elias, the chief counsel for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, proceeding on parallel, coordinated tracks to solicit and spread disinformation tying Donald Trump to the Kremlin.

Earlier: The special counsel’s indictment last month of a lawyer for Hillary Clinton — implicating the present national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, right — doesn’t tell the entire story of the Clinton campaign’s orchestration of Russiagate. (Credit: Ng Han Guan/The Associated Press)

In a detailed charging document last month, Special Counsel John Durham accused Sussmann of concealing his work for the Clinton campaign while trying to sell the FBI on the false claim of a secret Trump backchannel to Russia’s Alfa Bank. But Sussmann’s alleged false statement to the FBI in September 2016 wasn’t all. Just months before, he helped generate an even more consequential Russia allegation that he also brought to the FBI. In April of that year, Sussmann hired CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that publicly triggered the Russiagate saga by lodging the still unproven claim that Russia was behind the hack of Democratic National Committee emails released by WikiLeaks.

At the time, CrowdStrike was not the only Clinton campaign contractor focusing on Russia. Just days before Sussmann hired CrowdStrike in April, his partner Elias retained the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump and the Kremlin.

These two Clinton campaign contractors, working directly for two Clinton campaign attorneys, would go on to play highly consequential roles in the ensuing multi-year Russia investigation.

Working secretly for the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS planted Trump-Russia conspiracy theories in the FBI and US media via its subcontractor, former British spy Christopher Steele. The FBI used the Fusion GPS’s now-debunked “Steele dossier” for investigative leads and multiple surveillance applications putatively targeting Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.

CrowdStrike, reporting to Sussmann, also proved critical to the FBI’s work. Rather than examine the DNC servers for itself, the FBI relied on CrowdStrike’s forensics as mediated by Sussmann.

The FBI’s odd relationship with the two Democratic Party contractors gave Sussmann and Elias unprecedented influence over a high-stakes national security scandal that upended U.S. politics and ensnared their political opponents. By hiring CrowdStrike and Fusion GPS, the Perkins Coie lawyers helped define the Trump-Russia narrative and impact the flow of information to the highest reaches of U.S. intelligence agencies.

The established Trump-Russia timeline and the public record, including overlooked sworn testimony, congressional and Justice Department reports, as well as news accounts from the principal recipients of government leaks in the affair, the Washington Post and the New York Times, help to fill in the picture.

‘We Need to Tell the American Public’

In late April 2016, after being informed by Graham Wilson, a Perkins Coie colleague, that the DNC server had been breached, Michael Sussmann immediately turned to CrowdStrike. As Sussmann recalled in December 2017 testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the cyber firm was hired based on his “recommendation.”

Although it is widely believed that CrowdStrike worked for the DNC, the firm in fact was retained by Sussmann and his Clinton campaign law firm. As CrowdStrike CEO Shawn Henry told the House committee, his contract was not with the DNC, but instead “with Michael Sussmann from Perkins Coie.”

Dec. 2017: CrowdStrike CEO Henry testifies he worked for the now-indicted Clinton lawyer Sussmann. (Credit: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence)

And it was Sussmann who controlled what the FBI was allowed to see. After bringing CrowdStrike on board, Sussmann pushed aggressively to publicize the firm’s conclusion that Russian government hackers had attacked the DNC server, according to a December 2016 account in the New York Times.

“Within a day, CrowdStrike confirmed that the intrusion had originated in Russia,” the Times reported, citing Sussmann’s recollection. Sussmann and DNC executives had their first formal meeting with senior FBI officials in June 2016, where they encouraged the bureau to publicly endorse CrowdStrike’s findings:

Among the early requests at that meeting, according to participants: that the federal government make a quick “attribution” formally blaming actors with ties to Russian government for the attack to make clear that it was not routine hacking but foreign espionage.

“You have a presidential election underway here and you know that the Russians have hacked into the D.N.C.,” Mr. Sussmann said, recalling the message to the F.B.I. “We need to tell the American public that. And soon.”

But the FBI was not ready to point the finger at Russia. As the Senate Intelligence Committee later reported, “CrowdStrike still had not provided the FBI with forensic images nor an unredacted copy of their [CrowdStrike’s] report.”

Instead of waiting for the FBI, the DNC went public with the Russian hacking allegation on its own. On June 14, 2016, the Washington Post broke the news that CrowdStrike was accusing Russian hackers of infiltrating the DNC’s computer network and stealing data. Sussmann and Henry were quoted as sources. According to the Times’ account, the DNC approached the Post “on Mr. Sussmann’s advice.”

‘We Just Don’t Have the Evidence’

The Washington Post’s June 2016 story, generated by Sussmann, was the opening public salvo in the Russiagate saga.

But it was not until nearly four years later that the public learned that CrowdStrike was not as confident about the Russian hacking allegation that it had publicly lodged. In December 2017 testimony that was declassified only in May 2020, Henry admitted that his firm was akin to a bank examiner who believes the vault has been robbed – but has no proof of how. CrowdStrike, Henry disclosed, “did not have concrete evidence” that alleged Russian hackers removed any data from the DNC servers.

Shawn Henry Transcript (Credit: Fox News graphic)

“There’s circumstantial evidence, but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated,” Henry told the House Intelligence Committee. “There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.”

Read in retrospect, public statements from U.S. intelligence officials indicate that they knew of this crucial gap early on, and used qualified language to gloss it over.

Dec. 2016: An FBI-DHS report hedges by claiming Russian hackers “likely” exfiltrated DNC data. (Credit: FBI/Department of Homeland Security)

A joint FBI-DHS report in December 2016 – the first time the US government attempted to present evidence that Russia hacked the DNC – describes the alleged Russian hacking effort as “likely leading to the exfiltration of information” from Democratic Party networks. (Emphasis added.)

April 2019: Still hedging, the Mueller Report says Russian intel “appears” to have exfiltrated DNC data. (Credit: Mueller Report, Page 40)

The report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of April 2019, which found no Trump-Russia collusion, likewise stated that Russian intelligence “appears to have compressed and exfiltrated over 70 gigabytes of data” and “appear to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments” from Democratic Party servers. (Emphasis added.)

These qualifiers – “likely” and “appear” – signaled that U.S. intelligence officials lacked concrete evidence for their Russian hacking claims, a major evidentiary hole confirmed by Henry’s buried testimony.

CrowdStrike’s admission that it lacked evidence of exfiltration was not its first such embarrassment. Just months after it accused Russia of hacking the DNC in June 2016, CrowdStrike was forced to retract a similar accusation that Russia had hacked the Ukrainian military. The firm’s debunked Ukrainian allegation was based on it claiming to have identified the same malware in Ukraine that it had found inside the DNC server.

Conflicting Accounts on DNC Server Access

The FBI relied on CrowdStrike’s forensics of the DNC servers, but both sides have given conflicting accounts as to why. The FBI claims that the DNC denied it direct access to its computer network, while the DNC claims that the FBI never sought such access. Once again, Sussmann was in the middle of this, and his sworn testimony is at odds with other accounts.

In their December 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, both Sussmann and CrowdStrike’s Henry claimed that the FBI did not try to conduct its own independent investigation of the DNC servers.

“I recall offering, or asking or offering to the FBI to come on premises, and they were not interested in coming on premises at the time,” Sussmann said. Instead, he recalled, “we told them they could have access to everything that CrowdStrike was developing in the course of its investigation.” Asked directly if the FBI sought access to the DNC servers, Sussmann replied: “No, they did not.” He then added: “Excuse me, not to my knowledge.”

Shawn Henry, CrowdStrike CEO: His firm’s reports on the DNC server breach have never been publicly released. (Credit: Crowdstrike)

Henry also told the committee that he was “not aware” of the FBI ever asking for access to the server or being denied it.

In 2017 congressional testimony, however, then-FBI Director James Comey recalled that the FBI made “multiple requests at different levels,” to access the DNC servers, but was denied. Asked why FBI access was rejected, Comey replied: “I don’t know for sure.” According to Comey, the FBI would have preferred direct access to the server, but “ultimately it was agreed to… [CrowdStrike] would share with us what they saw.”

And while Sussmann testified that Perkins Coie offered the FBI “access to everything that CrowdStrike was developing,” FBI officials and federal prosecutors tell a different story.

According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, CrowdStrike delivered a draft report to the FBI on Aug. 31, 2016 that an unidentified FBI official described as “heavily redacted.” James Trainor, then-assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, told the committee that he was “frustrated” with the CrowdStrike report and “doubted its completeness” because “outside counsel” – i.e. Sussmann – “had reviewed it.” According to Trainor, the DNC’s cooperation was “moderate” overall and “slow and laborious in many respects.” Trainor singled out the fact that Perkins Coie – and specifically, Sussmann – “scrubbed” the CrowdStrike information before it was delivered to the FBI, resulting in a “stripped-down version” that was “not optimal.”

In court filings during the prosecution of Trump associate Roger Stone, the Justice Department revealed that Sussmann, as the DNC’s attorney, submitted three CrowdStrike reports to the FBI in draft, redacted form. According to prosecutor Jessie Liu, the government “does not possess” CrowdStrike’s unredacted reports. It instead relied on Sussmann’s assurances “that the redacted material concerned steps taken to remediate the attack and to harden the DNC and DCCC systems against future attack,” and that “no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors.”

Jessie Liu, federal prosecutor: Told court the government “does not possess” CrowdStrike’s unredacted reports. (Credit: Department of Justice/Wikimedia)

In short, the FBI failed to conduct its own examination of the DNC server, and instead relied on CrowdStrike’s forensics. It also allowed Sussmann – now indicted for lying as part of an effort to spread the Russiagate conspiracy theory – to decide what it could and could not see in CrowdStrike’s reports on Russian hacking. The government also took Sussmann’s word that the redacted information did not concern “the attribution of the attack to Russian actors.”

CrowdStrike’s reports on the DNC server breach have never been publicly released. RealClearInvestigations has sought to obtain them under the Freedom of Information Act, but that request remains pending.

One source, who was able to review some of the redacted CrowdStrike reports and requested anonymity because this person is not authorized to publicly discuss them, said that they were unconvincing. “My impression was that CrowdStrike was trying very, very hard to make a case that this was Russia,” the source told RCI. “Their case, to me, was weak.”

Although Special Counsel Durham has recently subpoenaed Perkins Coie for documents, there are no indications that CrowdStrike’s work for the firm is a focus of his inquiry. A CrowdStrike spokesperson told RealClearInvestigations that the company has not heard from Durham’s office.

In response to questions about CrowdStrike, an attorney for Sussmann told RealClearInvestigations: “Mr. Sussmann is not answering questions at this time.”

Henry Struggles, Perkins Coie Intervenes

In addition to revealing a major evidentiary gap regarding alleged Russian hacking, Henry’s December 2017 testimony revealed that Sussmann’s law firm exerted significant influence over the flow of information in CrowdStrike’s handling of it.

Joining Henry at the deposition was Sussmann’s Perkins Coie partner, Graham Wilson, who represented the DNC, and David Lashway, who represented CrowdStrike.

Henry’s acknowledgment that CrowdStrike did not have “concrete evidence” of exfiltration came only after he was interrupted and prodded by his attorneys to correct an initial answer. After claiming that he knew when Russian hackers exfiltrated data from the DNC, Henry offered a sharp correction: “Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated. We do not have concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated.”

In another exchange, Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah pressed Henry to explain why the FBI relied on CrowdStrike. “I don’t understand why the FBI wouldn’t lead or at least have some role in investigating the evidence,” Stewart said. “…Could they [the FBI] conduct their own investigation in a thorough fashion without access to the actual hardware?”

Henry struggled to respond to Stewart’s queries, before finally answering: “You’re asking me to speculate. I don’t know the answer.”

At this point, Stewart noted that Henry had been actively consulting with his Perkins Coie attorney. “By the way, you need to pay him [Henry’s attorney] well, because he’s obviously serving you well today as you guys have your conversations back and forth together,” Stewart quipped.

Shortly after that exchange, the attorney present for CrowdStrike, Lashway, stressed that Henry’s testimony was subject to Perkins Coie’s discretion. Henry was discussing “work that was performed at the behest of counsel, Perkins Coie, Mr. Sussmann’s law firm,” Lashway said. Accordingly, he added, “we would turn to Perkins Coie, as counsel to the DNC, to ensure that Mr. Henry can actually answer some of these questions.”

An ‘Extraordinary Coincidence’

The CrowdStrike-Perkins Coie contract, signed in early May 2016, ensured that Sussmann and his firm would oversee the cyber firm’s work product, and subject it to the secrecy of attorney-client privilege.

May 2016: The Sussmann-CrowdStrike contract exploits the secrecy of attorney-client privilege.
(Credit: CrowdStrike-Perkins Coie contract)

The Perkins Coie-CrowdStrike contract is similar to the arrangement between the firm and another contractor pivotal to the Trump-Russia investigation, Fusion GPS. In their 2019 book, Fusion GPS founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch wrote that Sussmann’s colleague Elias “wanted it that way for legal reasons: If Fusion’s communications were with a lawyer, they could be considered privileged and kept confidential.”

After being hired in the same month of April, the two firms also lodged their respective Russia-related allegations within days of each other two months later in June. Just six days after CrowdStrike went public with the allegation that Russia had hacked the DNC on June 14, Christopher Steele produced the first report in what came to be known as the Steele dossier.

Glenn Simpson, Fusion GPS: an “extraordinary coincidence.” (Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)

Over the ensuing months, the two firms and their Democratic clients actively spread their claims to the FBI and media. Steele and Fusion GPS, backed by their Perkins Coie client Elias, shared the fabricated dossier claims with eager FBI agents and credulous journalists, all while hiding that the Clinton campaign and DNC were footing the bill. “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year,” the New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman commented when Elias’ secret payments to Fusion GPS were revealed in October 2017.

After going public with its Russian hacking allegation in June, CrowdStrike had contact with the FBI “over a hundred times in the course of many months,” CEO Henry recalled. This included sharing with the FBI its redacted reports, and providing it with “a couple of actual digital images” of DNC hard drives, out of a total number of “in excess of 10, I think,” Henry testified. When Wikileaks released stolen DNC emails on the eve of the Democratic convention in July, senior Clinton campaign officials doggedly promoted CrowdStrike’s claim that Russia had hacked them.

In congressional testimony, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson said that it was an “extraordinary coincidence” that the Russian hacking allegation (by fellow Clinton/Perkins Coie contractor CrowdStrike) overlapped with his firm’s Trump-Russia collusion hunt (while working for Clinton/Perkins Coie).

Coincidence is one possibility. Another is that the roles of Sussman and Elias behind CrowdStrike and Fusion GPS’s highly consequential claims about Russia and the 2016 election could be pillars of the same deception.

Whatever additional scrutiny they may face, it will no longer be as partners at Perkins Coie. Elias, who was also the Democrats’ leading election law attorney opposing Trump challenges to the 2020 vote, resigned in August to launch a new firm, taking 13 colleagues with him. Upon his indictment by Durham three weeks later, Sussmann stepped down as well to focus, he said, on his legal defense. (Aaron Maté/RealClearInvestigations, 10/19/2021)  (Archive)

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October 23, 2021 – Christopher Steele tells Sky News that Theresa May rebuffed the Clinton/DNC/Steele dossier after it went public

(Credit: Sky News)

A former British spy who wrote a dossier on Donald Trump said he once spent hours with then, home secretary Theresa May, briefing her on the Russia threat.

Christopher Steele also revealed he had been asked by a UK official to review sensitive government documents on Russia just days before his dossier, which alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow in the 2016 US election, became public.

It meant he was left feeling “surprised and disappointed”, he said, when Mrs May, as prime minister, then appeared to play down his links to the government.

“It was quite galling to have announcements made… to the effect that this was nothing, we were nothing to do with the government, we hadn’t worked with or for the government for years and so on,” the former senior MI6 officer said in an exclusive Sky News interview.

He was referring to remarks by Mrs May in January 2017 after the dosser ignited a political firestorm in the United States, drawing furious denials from then, president-elect Trump.

“It is absolutely clear that the individual who produced this dossier has not worked for the UK government for years,” she said at the time.” (Read more: Sky News, 10/22/2021)  (Archive)

October 28, 2021 – Kash Patel and Aaron Maté discuss the overlooked role of Crowdstrike and Sussmann overseeing their contract

“Former Congressional investigator Kash Patel, who helped expose the Steele dossier fraud, on the overlooked, suspicious role of another Clinton campaign contractor, CrowdStrike, which accused Russia of hacking the DNC.

As a top investigator on the House Intelligence Committee, Kash Patel helped uncover the Clinton campaign’s funding of the Steele dossier and the FBI’s extensive and deceptive reliance on it.

Patel joins Aaron Maté to discuss Steele’s new attempt to defend his discredited work via a softball interview with ABC News. Patel also addresses the key role of newly indicted Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann in hiring and overseeing another heavily influential Clinton campaign contractor, CrowdStrike, the cyber-firm behind the foundational allegation that Russia hacked the DNC. “CrowdStrike is one of the biggest culprits of the Russia fraud,” Patel says.

“For some reason, for the only time in FBI history that I can think of, they allowed an outside non-government entity to referee. That is, to go in and seize the servers of a target of an investigation and let a third party, CrowdStrike, referee what the FBI could and could not have access to.” (The GrayZone, 10/30/2021)  (Archive)

October 28, 2021 – Longtime Clinton friend and VA gubernatorial candidate, Terry McAuliffe, hires Marc Elias for his services

Virginia gubernatorial candidate ​Terry McAuliffe campaigns in Arlington, Virginia on October 26, 2021. (Credit: Reuters)

“As a long-standing associate of the Clintons, Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has long ties with the Democratic establishment. That history was placed into sharp relief this week when he made a hefty down payment on the services of former Clinton counsel Marc Elias.  Elias is a critical figure in the ongoing Durham investigation and has been accused of lying to the media to hide the role of the Clinton campaign in funding the Steele dossier. His former law partner Michael Sussmann at Perkins Coie was recently indicted by Durham.  Elias has also led efforts to challenge Democratic losses, even as he denounces Republicans for such election challenges.  Elias has been sanctioned in past litigation.

Like Sussmann, Elias has left Perkins Coie.  He ironically created a law firm specializing in campaign ethics. McAuliffe may be preparing to challenge any win by Republican Glenn Youngkin. He has given $53,680 to the Elias Law Group.  McAuliffe does not appear disturbed by Elias’ highly controversial career or his possible exposure in the Durham investigation.

I previously described news accounts linking the firm and Elias to the dossier scandal:

Throughout the campaign, the Clinton campaign denied any involvement in the creation of the so-called Steele dossier’s allegations of Trump-Russia connections. However, weeks after the election, journalists discovered that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the dossier made to a research firm, Fusion GPS, as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to the campaign’s law firm. New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said at the time that Clinton lawyer Marc Elias, with the law firm of Perkins Coie, denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

It was not just reporters who asked the Clinton campaign about its role in the Steele dossier. John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.

The Washington Post also reported that “Elias drew from funds that both the Clinton campaign and the DNC were paying Perkins Coie.”

That makes the choice of counsel astonishing given these allegations from reporters and McAuliffe’s previous assertion that “someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.” (Read more: Jonathan Turley, 10/28/2021)  (Archive)

October 29, 2021 – Fiona Hill testified she didn’t know about or support Trump’s call with Ukraine president Zelensky; an email proves she helped set it up

November 2, 2021 – Steele’s primary dossier source, Igor “Iggy” Danchenko, is indicted by Durham grand jury

Federal authorities on Tuesday arrested Igor “Iggy” Danchenko, a Russian national who was the primary researcher for the so-called Steele Dossier – a compendium of opposition research funded by the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and used to smear Donald Trump as a Russian operative. It was also used as justification for an FBI wiretap application targeting former Trump adviser Carter Page.

According to the New York Times, the arrest of Danchenko is part of John Durham’s special counsel investigation into wrongdoing connected to the Obama administration’s Russia investigation.

November 3, 2021 – Danchenko indictment alleges he *fabricated* Trump, Carter Page and Paul Manafort’s “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” with Russia

November 3, 2021 – Danchenko’s indictment exonerates Sergei Millian

(Danchenko Indictment, 11/03/2021)

November 4, 2021 – Techno Fog: What did the FBI have on Danchenko?

“I discussed the Igor Danchenko indictment here, laying out some of the more eye-raising parts of the facts and charges against Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source.

Taking a closer look at the Danchenko indictment, there is a curious question presented by the FBI to Danchenko in June 2017. A question that indicates the FBI might have known more about the true sources to the Steele Dossiers sooner than they have let on.

FBI Questions about Danchenko source Charles Dolan:

On June 15, 2017, the FBI interviewed Danchenko regarding the Dossiers (labeled “Company Reports” in the indictment). Here’s the line of questioning from the indictment:

Clipping of Danchenko/FBI interview on June 15, 2017.

These FBI questions – asking Danchenko specific questions about Dolan and his interactions with Dolan – are significant for a number of reasons:

  • It indicates the FBI had specific information linking Dolan to Danchenko. It is quite possible the FBI knew on June 15, 2017 that Dolan was a source for Danchenko.
  • The suspicion that Dolan was a source is explained by the FBI Agent stating that he thinks there are other Dossier sources, immediately followed by a question about Dolan.
  • If that is the case, then the FBI would have known that Danchenko lied about his communications with Dolan.

Olga Galkina (Credit: The Daily Mail)

  • This information may have come from surveillance on Danchenko source Olga Galkina. As observed by Chuck Ross: “The IG report indicates that the FBI had Section 702 coverage on Galkina, which would have allowed the agency to surveil her communications.”
  • If the FBI had Section 702 coverage on Galkina, it would have swept up the communications of Dolan and Danchenko – providing them with knowledge that a Hillary Clinton supporter was a source for the Dossiers.

Again, the dates are important. The Danchenko interview where he was questioned about Dolan took place on June 15, 2017, before the 4th FISA warrant on Carter Page, which was submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on June 29, 2017.

Let us assume for a moment the FBI questioned Danchenko about Dolan based on information from the Galkina surveillance (the 702). What types of information might they have had? Looking at the Danchenko indictment, they might have possessed:

  1. Dolan/Danchenko e-mails.
  2. Dolan e-mails referencing Danchenko.
  3. Communications between Dolan and Olga Galkina (Russian Sub-Source 1), including social media messages, e-mails, and likely messaging apps.
  4. Communications from Olga Galkina to her associates.

Reporting suggests the FBI had this information by June 2017 – by the time of the Danchenko interview. If that is the case, the FBI would likely have had their hands on this e-mail from Galkina to Dolan, stating that she was feeding him information on former USSR/UIC countries – and indicating her suspicion that Danchenko had informed Dolan of this.

It also means that the FBI likely possessed this information that Danchenko’s source was a huge Hillary Clinton fan and hoping for a job in the Clinton State Department.

(Read more: Techno Fog, 11/7/2021)  (Archive)

November 4, 2021 – Durham indictment of Danchenko reveals role of Clinton advisor, Charles Dolan, in dossier creation

Charles Dolan (Credit: public domain)

(…) Count One of Durham’s indictment relates to denials from Danchenko to FBI agents that he had spoken with “PR-Executive-1,” now identified as Charles Dolan, about any material contained in Steele’s dossier. As Durham’s indictment lays out, Dolan, described as a “long-time participant in Democrat party politics,” was actually Danchenko’s source for many of the allegations within Steele’s dossier. Dolan’s role in the creation of the dossier was not known publicly until yesterday.

Dolan’s identity as PR Executive-1 has been confirmed through a brief statement from his lawyer, who also noted that Dolan was a “witness” in Durham’s ongoing case.

Danchenko, who had worked at the left-leaning think tank Brookings Institute from 2005 to 2010, was introduced to Dolan in February 2016 by another Brookings employee, Fiona Hill, who had previously introduced Danchenko to Steele in late 2010. Following this introduction Danchenko began working for Steele in 2011. Hill would later become known to the public in 2019 during her testimony at the impeachment hearings of then-President Trump.

Durham notes in the indictment that Dolan’s role was “highly relevant and material” to the FBI’s review of Steele’s allegations because Dolan “maintained pre-existing and ongoing relationships with numerous persons” named in Steele’s dossier.

Additionally, as Durham’s indictment notes, “allegations sourced to [Dolan] by Danchenko formed the basis of a [dossier] report that, in turn, underpinned” the FISA applications made by the FBI on Trump campaign adviser Page.

Durham repeatedly notes that if Danchenko had not lied to the FBI regarding Dolan’s role, the FBI might have taken further investigative steps, including interviewing Dolan. While this assertion may be accurate, it also appears that the FBI failed repeatedly to investigate specific details or events that could have been easily verified or disproven.

Dolan and the Clintons have a lengthy history that dates back to the 1990s. In 2008, Dolan served as an adviser to then-Sen. Clinton’s presidential campaign and he “actively campaigned” on behalf of Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. (Read more: The Epoch Times, 11/04/2021)

November 5, 2021 – FBI continued investigation of Trump despite Danchenko contradictions

Igor Danchenko (l) and Sergei Millian (Credit: Chip Somodavilla/Getty, ABC screenshot)

(…) Although Steele named Millian as one of his sources to the media, State Department officials, and the FBI, he was more guarded when it came to his other alleged sources. Their identities were only uncovered last year after internet sleuths extrapolated information from Danchenko’s interview notes with the FBI. These individuals, friends and acquaintances of Danchenko, did not have any pertinent information about Putin’s thoughts or intentions, nor were they in a position to obtain any such information.

All six of these alleged sources have recently come forward and signed affidavits denying having ever told Steele or Danchenko anything in relation to the dossier.

While some commentators, including ex-FBI agent Peter Strozk, are now suggesting that the FBI was duped by Danchenko, that is categorically not the case. Durham’s revelations with respect to Millian were known to the FBI by late January 2017 as they knew that Steele had attributed information in early dossier reports to Millian. At the same time, the FBI also knew that Danchenko had not yet reached out to Millian at that point. Similarly, Millian’s alleged phone call could have been easily investigated and shown to have been fabricated by Danchenko.

However, instead of taking these simple investigative steps, the FBI forged on with their investigation, a process that tied up the Trump administration for the next three years.

One important question remains. When Danchenko was interviewed by the FBI in January 2017, he was given what is known as a ‘queen for a day’ immunity deal, which gave him the opportunity to walk away from the entire dossier affair, provided he told the FBI the truth. Danchenko had every incentive to tell the FBI the truth, but for reasons that remain unknown he chose not to do so.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 11/5/2021)

November 5, 2021 – Clinton adviser, Charles Dolan’s role in the dossier and his Russian connections

Dolan appears on CSpan July 2002 to talk about Bush’s efforts to improve the U.S. image abroad through the proposed creation of the Office of Global Communication. (Credit: CSpan)

(…) From 2006 to 2014, Dolan handled public relations for the Russian government and a state-owned energy firm. According to Durham, Dolan maintained relationships with the then-Russian Ambassador to the United States and the head of the Russian Embassy’s Economic Section in Washington. As Durham notes, both men would later appear by name in Steele’s dossier.

Durham’s indictment details Dolan’s communication’s with a number of high level Russian officials that took place at the same time that Clinton was accusing Trump of communicating with the Kremlin. Dolan’s ongoing work for Russia makes it likely that he should have been required to register with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, but Durham’s indictment does not address this matter.

Information from Dolan was featured in an Aug. 22, 2016, dossier report from Steele that ostensibly described the reasons behind the departure of Paul Manafort from the Trump campaign. Dolan told Danchenko that he had received this information from a “GOP friend.” But Dolan later acknowledged to the FBI that he had “fabricated” the meeting and instead relayed information he had obtained from public reporting.

It also appears that Dolan may have played a role, unknowingly or otherwise, in some of the more salacious aspects of Steele’s dossier. In what was described as a “June 2016 Planning Trip,” Dolan stayed at a Moscow hotel. As Durham’s indictment notes, Dolan was given a “tour” of the hotel’s presidential suite, and met with the manager and other staff of the hotel. During the tour, it was mentioned to Dolan that Trump had stayed in the presidential suite, but Durham notes that Dolan claims there was no mention of “any sexual or salacious activity.”

Allegations of a “pee tape” made at the hotel’s presidential suite during Trump’s stay were contained in Steele’s June 20, 2016, report. Steele’s dossier falsely attributed the story to American businessman Sergei Millian–but Danchenko later claimed that he had characterized the alleged activity to Steele as “rumor and speculation.” Danchenko, who initially told the FBI he was at the hotel in June with Dolan, later admitted that he had not visited the hotel until October 2016.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 11/05/2021)

November 5, 2021 -The fictitious Sergei Millian phone call with Danchenko and other deceptions

Sergei Millian (YouTube clipping)

(…) The remaining four charges laid out in Durham’s indictment of Danchenko relate to Sergei Millian, an American national of Belarus descent. Many of the details behind these charges were already known to those who had been investigating the Russia-Collusion stories.

Durham’s indictment alleges that Danchenko lied to the FBI on four separate occasions, each time claiming that he’d had a phone conversation in the summer of 2016 with someone he believed to have been Millian. For his part, Millian has always stated that he never met Danchenko, in person or by phone. Millian’s assertions are emphatically proven in Durham’s indictment of Danchenko where it is repeatedly stated that “Danchenko never spoke to Chamber President-1 [Millian].”

Millian differed from all of Steele’s other purported sources in that he had no actual contact with anyone within Steele’s orbit—including Danchenko. Steele has demonstrated a preference for his targets to be physically present with his operatives. And indeed, Steele told the FBI that he believed Danchenko had met with Millian on “two or three separate occasions.”

The allegations attributed to Millian are crucial to the Steele dossier. Steele used Millian as the supposed source for his allegations of a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which was foundational to the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Steele further attributed Millian as the source for allegations regarding secret communications between Russian Alfa Bank and Trump. Also ascribed to Millian were the Wikileaks email dump and the salacious “pee tape” story. All from a person whom neither Steele nor Danchenko had ever met with or spoken to.

Danchenko admitted to the FBI that his first outreach to Millian was on July 22, 2016, via email, which is cited in Durham’s indictment. But by this point, Steele, apparently believing that Danchenko had actually met Millian, had already published two reports in his dossier that attributed specific allegations to Millian. As Danchenko admitted to the FBI in a November 2017 follow-up interview, Steele erroneously believed that there had been in-person meetings between Danchenko and Millian, a belief which Danchenko did not correct.

It is unlikely that Steele would have placed so much emphasis on Millian as a major source without a plausible scenario for how these stories were obtained. (Read more: The Epoch Times, 11/05/2021)

November 12, 2021 – Judge Ronnie Abrams allows felony convicted Biden partner, Devon Archer, to travel the globe while he awaits sentencing since 2018

Devon Archer

(…) The permission for [Devon] Archer’s globetrotting was revealed in a Nov. 12, 2021 letter from his defense lawyers, who asked and received permission from U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams, an appointee of President Barack Obama, for his 41st trip since he was first charged by federal prosecutors.

“I write to respectfully request the Court’s permission for Mr. Archer to travel on vacation with his family from November 23 to November 28, 2021, to Jamaica for the Thanksgiving holiday,” defense attorney Craig Wenner wrote. He added for good measure: “The Court previously approved the same trip this time last year.”

You can read the letter here:

Judge Abrams — whose elite liberal family in New York includes famous First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams and TV legal analyst Dan Abrams — obliged once again by affixing her signature approving the request.

Dan Abrams and his sister, Judge Ronnie Abrams (Credit: public domain)

Remarkably, Abram’s husband was a federal prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and part of the team that seized passports and restricted travel for high-profile defendants like Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates.

Archer did not face the same restrictions. As he awaited trial since summer 2016 and since his conviction in summer 2018, Archer has been allowed to travel freely across the globe.

His travel log, enumerated in the court documents, reads like the travels of an American secretary of state: Russia, Mexico, China, Spain, Italy, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Ukraine, the money laundering capital of Latvia, Hong Kong, London, Singapore and the French Antilles, to name a few.

You can see the travel approvals here:

File
 DevonArcherTravelOrder11-15-21.pdf

Archer’s lead defense attorney, Matthew Schwartz, works at the same Boies Schiller Flexner law firm where Hunter Biden also once practiced law. Schwartz did not return a call seeking comment Thursday. (Read more: JusttheNews, 2/03/2022)  (Archive) (Devon Archer tag)

November 14, 2021 – A photo is released of Brennan telling Obama about Hillary’s efforts to paint Trump as Russian operative


“…former Rep. Doug Collins, the former ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, joined Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures.

During their discussion, they revealed that then CIA Director John Brennan gave then President Barack Obama a private briefing on Hillary Clinton’s efforts to paint Donald Trump as a Russian operative.

Doug Collins: I’m going to say, not only the FBI, Comey and Strzok and McCabe ought to be very worried about Durham’s investigation. I’m going to say Brennan and Clapper, remember they were the ones that actually briefed Obama about the entire plot from Hillary Clinton to try and paint Donald Trump with Russia. There’s got to be some accountability.

Maria Bartiromo: Yeah, we got a picture of John Brennan in the Oval Office with President Obama, explaining, and we know now the notes because John Ratcliffe exposed those notes showing that Brennan told Obama that Hillary Clinton was cooking up this idea to tie Donald Trump. So they all knew, they all were aware of what was going on.”

(The Gateway Pundit, 11/14/2021)

December 3, 2021 – Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson fail to disclose damning emails to Alfa Bank; Durham has them

Glenn Simpson (Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)

Back in May, we reported on the fight brewing in a DC federal court, where Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson were trying to keep secret their internal correspondence and records relating to their role in pushing the Alfa Bank/Trump hoax. New court filings indicate Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson improperly failed to disclose some of their most damning e-mails.

Overview

For background, the fight arises out of a lawsuit – Fridman, et al. (Alfa Bank) v. Bean LLC a/k/a Fusion GPS, and Glenn Simpson, where the owners of Alfa Bank have sued Fusion GPS and Simpson for falsely accusing “the Plaintiffs—and Alfa (“Alfa”), a consortium in which the Plaintiffs are investors—of criminal conduct and alleged cooperation with the ‘Kremlin’ to influence the 2016 presidential election.”

The case was filed in October 2017. Litigation has been ongoing for over four years – with Alfa Bank still fighting to obtain written discovery from Fusion GPS that is material to its case. Our previous report had to do with that very discovery dispute. Back in May, Alfa Bank “filed a motion to compel, asking the Court to require Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson to produce nearly 500 critically important documents improperly withheld as privileged.” (More background here.)

These documents included e-mail correspondence within Fusion GPS regarding the “Alfa Playbook” and showed the early development of the Fusion GPS/Simpson work on Trump/Russia. One would assume this entails the early or emerging thought process of the “intelligence” group as they sought to falsely accuse the Trump campaign of colluding with Russia.

(…) The Latest Developments

Today, the attorneys for Alfa Bank filed this, their “Supplement to Plaintiffs’ Second Motion to Compel Defendants to Produce Documents Improperly Withheld as Privileged.” The motion was filed to inform the court that Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson (and/or their attorneys) “possess numerous documents responsive to Plaintiffs’ RFPs [requests for production] that [Fusion/Simpson] neither produced nor included in their privilege log.”

Alfa v Fusion – PL Third Mo… by Techno Fog

(Brief interlude: generally, the parties request and exchange documents in a federal civil case like this. A party can avoid producing documents where they claim a privilege – they just need to typically submit a “privilege log” to the other side. This doesn’t mean the privilege will ultimately prevail.)

What does the latest filing by Alfa Bank reveal?

Fusion GPS/Glenn Simpson (or their attorneys) failed to submit in the privilege log certain communications ultimately uncovered by Special Counsel John Durham. I’ll let the Alfa Bank motion explain:

(Read more: Techno Fog, 12/03/2021)  (Archive)

December 8, 2021 – Hillary cries as she shares her would-be presidential victory speech

FAILED presidential candidate Hillary Clinton shared the victory speech she thought she would deliver on November 8, 2016.

(…) Hillary will share the full speech during her MasterClass on Thursday. She shared parts on The Today Show:

“Today with your children on your shoulders, your neighbors at your side, friends old and new standing as one, you renewed our democracy,” she says. “And because of the honor you have given me, you have changed its face forever. I’ve met women who were born before women had the right to vote. They’ve been waiting a hundred years for tonight.

“I’ve met little boys and girls who didn’t understand why a woman has never been president before. Now they know, and the world knows, that in America, every boy and every girl can grow up to be whatever they dream — even president of the United States.

“This is a victory for all Americans. Men and women. Boys and girls. Because as our country has proven once again, when there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit.”

She also addresses the deep partisan divide in the country.

“If you dig deep enough through all the mud of politics, eventually you hit something hard and true,” she says. “A foundation of fundamental values that unite us as Americans. You proved that today.

“In a country divided by race and religion, class and culture, and often paralyzing partisanship, a broad coalition of Americans embraced a shared vision of a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America.

“An America where women are respected and immigrants are welcomed. Where veterans are honored, parents are supported, and workers are paid fairly. An America where we believe in science, where we look beyond people’s disabilities and see their possibilities, where marriage is a right and discrimination is wrong. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, or who you love.

(Read more: Legal Insurrection, 12/08/2021)  (Archive)

(…)”In parts of the speech shared with TODAY, Clinton shares the remarks she had prepared if she had won the contentious election against Trump.

“My fellow Americans, today you sent a message to the whole world,” she says. “Our values endure. Our democracy stands strong. And our motto remains: e pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

“We will not be defined only by our differences. We will not be an us versus them country. The American dream is big enough for everyone. Through a long, hard campaign, we were challenged to choose between two very different visions for America. How we grow together, how we live together, and how we face a world full of peril and promise together.

“Fundamentally, this election challenged us to decide what it means to be an American in the 21st century. And for reaching for a unity, decency, and what President Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature.’ We met that challenge.”

Clinton then talks about the significance of what becoming the first female president in U.S. history would have meant. (Read more: Today, 12/08/2021)  (Archive)

December 9, 2021 – Those who reported on the Steele dossier ruse…where Isikoff, Corn, and other beguiled journalists are today

David Corn and Michael Isikoff in a 2018 interview for their book “Russian Roulette.” (Credit: BUILD Series/YouTube)

(…) In the wake of the Durham revelations, the Washington Post has retracted or corrected sections of no fewer than 14 stories about Millian and the dossier. The Wall Street Journal, which first made the connection based on a single anonymous source in a January 2017 story by Pulitzer-winning reporter Mark Maremont, now concedes that the indictment raises “serious questions” about its reporting. ABC News, which aired a January 2017 story by former correspondent Brian Ross and producer Matthew Mosk identifying Millian as a key dossier source, said it is “reviewing” its reporting “in light of new developments.”

(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Igor Danchenko: His fabrications left egg on a lot of journalists’ faces. (Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press)

Corn, the Washington bureau chief for the leftist political magazine Mother Jones, and Isikoff, the chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, were among the first journalists to press the Steele dossier in the media, starting in the fall of 2016. Answering critics on Twitter last month, Isikoff claimed he had disavowed the dossier years ago: “I already did, some time ago (before [Justice Department IG Michael] Horowitz and Durham),” referring to remarks he made to USA Today in 2018.

In that interview, Isikoff indicated blandly that some of the information he was fed was wrong, stating that some of the dossier’s “more sensational allegations are likely false.” He summed up the dossier as a “mixed record.” Now he knows for certain what he reported was incorrect and yet he has issued no corrections or mea culpas.

Isikoff once tweeted a link to his book “Russian Roulette” to President Trump, arguing “here is what is true, Mr. President.” Currently atop his Twitter page, Isikoff still has a pinned 2018 tweet thanking MSNBC host Rachel Maddow for helping propel the book to No. 1 on Amazon.

Twelve Books

The e-book was updated for the first Trump impeachment but remains uncorrected in light of the Danchenko indictment. (Credit:Twelve Books)

In an attempt to face up to his own part in pushing the dossier fables, Corn last month penned a lengthy piece in Mother Jones arguing that just because the dossier turned out to be fiction doesn’t mean the Russiagate narrative is a hoax. He insisted Trump is still “guilty” of betraying America by cozying up to Russia.

Corn avoided mentioning Millian a single time in his 4,000-word essay and even cited “Russian Roulette” in his defense. In his telling, the fact that he and Isikoff showed some skepticism by reporting that the Justice Department watchdog revealed Steele may have exaggerated his most sensational allegations, makes up for repeating those stories in their book. Corn also continues to feature “Russian Roulette” as the backdrop to his Twitter page.

Corn admits he “chased after some of the allegations” but “couldn’t nail anything down.” Even so, he called on the FBI to investigate Millian in a Jan. 19, 2017, Mother Jones story. Months earlier, Corn gave a copy of the dossier to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker, whom he knows socially. (The magazine has appended an editor’s note to that article, stating: “Earlier Mother Jones reporting noted that Sergei Millian was reportedly a source for the Steele dossier … Content making reference to Millian has been appropriately updated.”)

In an RCI interview, Millian said that in addition to correcting the record, both men owe him an apology.

“Isikoff and Corn played a role in spreading evil rumors and gossip about innocent American citizens,” Millian said, noting he’s retained a libel attorney. “Now they are simply ducking reasonable questions about their role, as if they were not a part of harming people.”

Neither Corn nor Isikoff responded to requests for comment. (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 12/09/2021)  (Archive)

December 13, 2021 – As the pandemic rages, lawmakers buy and sell stock in companies that make COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and tests

Business Insider graphic (Credit: Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty; Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call; Marie Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call; Skye Gould/Insider)

(…) At a time when millions of Americans are struggling financially, members of Congress have traded extraordinarily well during the pandemic. This juxtaposition has led directly to the public sentiment that the trading activity of Congress must be curbed. The problem lies in the fact that members of Congress typically possess information that the public does not. The pandemic highlighted this issue, as Congress was briefed on the risks of COVID-19 before the public and before the March 2020 market crash.

Lawmakers were likely aware of the FDA’s approval of the COVID-19 vaccine before the news broke to the public. Approximately 93 senators and representatives held stock in Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer stock once the pandemic broke out in March 2020. Several spouses of these lawmakers held stock in Moderna in 2020 as well and traded thousands of dollars worth of company stock throughout the pandemic. Moderna and Pfizer stocks typically tended to fluctuate throughout the pandemic, but when talk of vaccine approval began, these stocks rose exponentially. In January 2020, Moderna stock sold for roughly $20 a share; in September 2021, the stock hit $455.

In March of 2020, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into the trading activity of Senators Richard Burr, and Kelly Loeffler, among others. While those investigations are now closed, and no charges were initiated against any lawmaker, the issues raised are troubling, to say the least. For example, Senator Burr and his wife traded between $628,000 and $1.7 million worth of stock in thirty-three transactions while at the same time stating to the public that the government had the coronavirus pandemic under control. At a minimum, signaling to the public that all is well while trading on the information in his possession raises ethical issues.

Ending Trading for Congress

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (whose stock trading, along with her husband, has come under scrutiny), initially opposed (I know, shocking) a stock trading ban, citing that the market is a “free market economy” and lawmakers “should be able to participate,” in trading on the market. She has since reversed her position on the issue — it appears that public sentiment is putting pressure on the hypocrisy of Congress to act on a long overdue issue.

While the Ethics Reform Act continues to collect dust, only time will tell if we see a long overdue change to the status quo, which has allowed members of Congress to enrich themselves while simultaneously undermining the trust of the American people. (Read more: Warren Law, 8/23/2024)  (Archive)

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December 14, 2021 – A Miranda Devine interview on Hunter Biden’s ‘Laptop from Hell’

CLAY: We’re joined now by Miranda Devine, who has got a fantastic book out. She writes at the New York Post. The book is called Laptop from Hell, and, Miranda, thanks for taking the time to join us here. I believe in the years ahead the collusion to cover up the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop is going to be seen as one of the greatest failures in the history of independent American media. Do you agree based on all the things that you’ve seen inside of this laptop and that was covered up? How massive was this story, and maybe more wildly, how massive was most of the media’s cover-up for this story?

DEVINE: You’re absolutely right. And thank you very much for having me on, both of you, Clay and Buck. Look, I think we understood that three weeks before the election when we published the first of the emails from the laptop that were so damning of Joe Biden, we knew it was a bombshell. And we expected that the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN and all this sort of media organizations that were in the tank for Joe Biden that just would do anything to get rid of Donald Trump.

We knew that they would ignore it, but what was so shocking was the power of social media, of the Big Tech oligopolies, Facebook and Twitter. And within a couple of hours of our story going online at 5 a.m. October 14, Facebook had come out and said that they were blocking it pending a fact check, which still — more than a year later — has never happened. And then Twitter followed suit and locked the New York Post’s account the next two weeks until a few days before the election and people couldn’t even share the story in true and correct message.

Kayleigh McEnany was the then president’s press secretary. She was canceled or suspended from Twitter for trying to share the story. It was really sort of lost at the time, but when you look back now, it was such a display of power and such an intervention into the election by these faceless, unaccountable, global corporatists that it’s really frightening. And, you know, shortly after that, of course, they de-platformed the sitting president of the United States.

And that prompted even Emmanuel Macron from France to say, “Whoa, this is rather frightening for all of us.” The whole world should realize that these companies have become more powerful than the leaders of countries, and they are still the same. I mean, nothing’s changed since then. And we know from polls taken after the election that almost half of Biden voters knew nothing about the scandal that was on the laptop.

The evidence of the influence peddling that was going on with Joe Biden, the evidence that Joe Biden had met with Hunter Biden’s business partners from overseas was compromised, in China and Russia and elsewhere. If they had known that, about one-tenth of Biden voters would have changed their vote. And so in an election that was won by 45,000 votes across a handful of battleground states, the censorship of our story could have made a difference.

BUCK: Absolutely. Miranda Devine, everybody. Laptop from Hell is her book. Miranda, it’s Buck. I want you to… I was at TheHill.com when a lot of stories were being broken about the relationship with Hunter Biden and Ukraine, and this has been around for a while. We didn’t have the laptop. We didn’t have the Laptop from Hell. What should people know?

Because the suppression story which Clay started out with is enormous and may very well have — likely did, I believe — change the trajectory of the election, and it was dishonest and a disgrace what the Big Tech and media did together. What do people need to know about the corruption aspect of it? We always say if this were Donald Trump Jr., they might actually cover this more than the January 6 insurrection at CNN. What did Hunter Biden actually do, and where is the real corruption that we know of from this laptop?

DEVINE: Look, the importance of the laptop is really not Hunter Biden, who is this sort of tragic figure: Drug addicted for most of the nine years the laptop covered, crackhead. The story is actually about Joe Biden and what the laptop tells you about his involvement in not just Hunter’s about his younger brother Jim’s scheme around the world to monetize his power, Joe Biden’s power, and what Joe Biden did in return for that money and how he financially benefited.

So we know that for the last two years of his vice presidency, Hunter Biden and his partners and Jim Biden were doing work overseas around the world using Joe Biden’s name to open doors. And we know that that was being done with Joe Biden’s OK, imprimatur, full involvement. The money, however, was going to come after Joe Biden left office. And this was why Tony Bobulinski was brought in to become CEO of their latest joint venture with China and sort of regularize and make everything, you know, squeaky clean.

Because by that stage, Joe Biden was a private citizen, future president. And, you know, it wasn’t just that the Bidens were doing business or had a joint venture with someone in China. They were in partnership with a company called CEXE, which is the capitalist arm of President Xi’s belt-and-road initiative. And this is the imperialist push by China into corrupting, buying up, paying off, putting into servitude poorer countries around the world — and the Bidens were involved.

They were using Joe Biden’s name to help the Chinese Communist Party push into the rest of the world at great expense to the United States, to America’s national interests, to America’s national security. And the other element, I think, is there is some evidence to show that Joe Biden financially benefited. We know Hunter Biden had been complaining about having to give half his salary to his dad.

We know about an email saying 10% of equity in this private venture was going to be held by Hunter Biden for “The Big Guy,” which Tony Bobulinski says is Joe Biden, and other documents on the laptop show was Joe Biden. But there’s also evidence of commingling of finances between Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, shared bank accounts, shared debit cards. Also, there’s a little bit of evidence — just a tip of the iceberg, I imagine, but it is there — showing that Hunter Biden was paying regular household bills for Joe Biden. (Read more: The Clay Travis & Bud Sexton Show, 12/14/2021)  (Archive)

December 2021 – Convicted pedophile George Nader pleads guilty to funneling millions in foreign cash to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign

George Nader and Hillary Clinton (Credit: Zero Hedge)

“Convicted pedophile, UAE adviser and central witness in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, George Nader, has pleaded guilty to his role in helping the UAE funnel millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions into US campaigns during the 2016 presidential election, according to The Intercept, citing federal court documents filed last month.

In a December sentencing memo, federal prosecutors disclosed that Nader had agreed months early to plead guilty to a single count of felony conspiracy to defraud the US government by pumping millions in donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign – concealing the foreign origin of the funds.

Nader conspired to hide the funds “out of a desire to lobby on behalf and advance the interests of his client, the government of the United Arab Emirates,” according to the prosecutors’ sentencing memo. Nader received the money for the illegal donations from the UAE government, the memo said. The filing marks the first time that the U.S. government has explicitly accused the UAE, a close ally, of illegally seeking to buy access to candidates during a presidential election.

Nader’s guilty plea opens a new window into the efforts of the United Arab Emirates and its de facto ruler, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, known as MBZ, to influence the outcome of the 2016 election and shape subsequent U.S. policy in the Gulf. The government’s memo notes that Nader and Los Angeles businessperson Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja also sought to cultivate “key figures” in the Trump campaign and that Khawaja donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. It is unclear where that money came from. – The Intercept

Nader is accused of taking instructions from UAE Crown Prince MBZ, and gave regular updates on his efforts to get close to Clinton.

In total, Nader transferred nearly $5 million from his UAE business to Khawaja – CEO of a Los Angeles-based payment processing company. According to prosecutors, the funds were disguised as a routine business contract between the two men. Of the total transferred, more than $3.5 million came from the UAE government and was given to pro-Clinton Democratic political committees. Prosecutors have yet to publicly identify what happened to the remaining $1.4 million Nader transferred to Khawaja.

In 2016, Khawaja co-hosted an August fundraiser for Clinton which included a laundry list of high-profile guests, including Univision owner Haim Saban, movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and basketball legend Magic Johnson, according to the report. According to the indictment, Khawaja conspired with six other individuals to conceal his excessive contributions. Others who were indicted were also linked to donations to Clinton and other Democrats.

The indictment quotes an alleged encrypted message that Nader sent an official from Foreign Country A via WhatsApp after Khawaja contributed $275,000 and invited Nader to attend and April 16, 2016, event for presidential Candidate 1.

Wonderful meeting with the Big Lady . . . Cant wait to tell you about it, Nader allegedly wrote, in an apparent reference to Clinton.

The indictment noted that political committees that received funding unwittingly submitted false disclosure reports and were presumably victims of the plot. Still, Hillary Clinton apparently attended numerous events, including small gatherings, with Nader, who on July 19, 2016, messaged the foreign official a photograph of him with Candidate 1s spouse an apparent reference to Bill Clinton at Khawajas home. –Washington Post

Prosecutors have sought a five-year sentence for Nader – after he completes the 10-year sentence he’s currently serving for possessing child pornography, and for sex-trafficking a minor to the US “for the purpose of engaging in criminal sexual activity.” (Read more: Zero Hedge, 1/17/2022)  (Archive) (Nader Sentencing Memo)

December 16, 2021 – DC Bar restores FBI Russiagate forger and convicted felon to ‘Good Standing’

By: Paul Sperry

RealClearInvestigations, 12/16/2021

A former senior FBI lawyer who falsified a surveillance document in the Trump-Russia investigation has been restored as a member in “good standing” by the District of Columbia Bar Association even though he has yet to finish serving out his probation as a convicted felon, according to disciplinary records obtained by RealClearInvestigations.

Kevin Clinesmith (Credit: Facebook)

The move is the latest in a series of exceptions the bar has made for Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty in August 2020 to doctoring an email used to justify a surveillance warrant targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Clinesmith was sentenced to 12 months probation last January. But the D.C. Bar did not seek his disbarment, as is customary after lawyers are convicted of serious crimes involving the administration of justice. In this case, it did not even initiate disciplinary proceedings against him until February of this year — five months after he pleaded guilty and four days after RealClearInvestigations first reported he had not been disciplined. After the negative publicity, the bar temporarily suspended Clinesmith pending a review and hearing. Then in September, the court that oversees the bar and imposes sanctions agreed with its recommendation to let Clinesmith off suspension with time served; the bar, in turn, restored his status to “active member” in “good standing.”

 

Before quietly making that decision, however, records indicate the bar did not check with his probation officer to see if he had violated the terms of his sentence or if he had completed the community service requirement of volunteering 400 hours.

To fulfill the terms of his probation, Clinesmith volunteered at Street Sense Media in Washington but stopped working at the nonprofit group last summer, which has not been previously reported. “I can confirm he was a volunteer here,” Street Sense editorial director Eric Falquero told RCI, without elaborating about how many hours he worked. Clinesmith had helped edit and research articles for the weekly newspaper, which coaches the homeless on how to “sleep on the streets” and calls for a “universal living wage” and prison reform.

From the records, it also appears bar officials did not consult with the FBI’s Inspection Division, which has been debriefing Clinesmith to determine if he was involved in any other surveillance abuses tied to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, in addition to the one used against Page. Clinesmith’s cooperation was one of the conditions of the plea deal he struck with Special Counsel John Durham. If he fails to fully cooperate, including turning over any relevant materials or records in his possession, he could be subject to perjury or obstruction charges.

Clinesmith — who was assigned to some of the FBI’s most sensitive and high-profile investigations — may still be in Durham’s sights regarding other areas of his wide-ranging probe.

The scope of his mandate as special counsel is broader than commonly understood: In addition to examining the legal justification for the FBI’s “Russiagate” probe, it also includes examining the bureau’s handling of the inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecured email server, which she set up in her basement to send and receive classified information, and her destruction of more than 30,000 subpoenaed emails she generated while running the State Department. As assistant FBI general counsel in the bureau’s national security branch, Clinesmith played an instrumental role in that investigation, which was widely criticized by FBI and Justice Department veterans, along with ethics watchdogs, as fraught with suspicious irregularities.

Clinesmith also worked on former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the 2016 Trump campaign as the key attorney linking his office to the FBI. He was the only headquarters lawyer assigned to Mueller. Durham’s investigators are said to be looking into the Mueller team’s actions as well.

The D.C. Bar’s treatment of Clinesmith, a registered Democrat who sent anti-Trump rants to FBI colleagues after the Republican was elected, has raised questions from the start. Normally the bar automatically suspends the license of members who plead guilty to a felony. But in Clinesmith’s case, it delayed suspending him on even an interim basis for several months and only acted after RCI revealed the break Clinesmith was given, records confirm.

It then allowed him to negotiate his fate, which is rarely done in any misconduct investigation, let alone one involving a serious crime, according to a review of past cases. It also overlooked violations of its own rules: Clinesmith apparently broke the bar’s rule requiring reporting his guilty plea “promptly” to the court — within 10 days of entering it — and failed to do so for five months, reveal transcripts of a July disciplinary hearing obtained by RCI.

“I did not see evidence that you informed the court,” Rebecca Smith, the chairwoman of the D.C. Bar panel conducting the hearing, admonished Clinesmith.

“[T]hat was frankly just an error,” Clinesmith’s lawyer stepped in to explain.

Smith also scolded the bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel for the “delay” in reporting the offense, since it negotiated the deal with Clinesmith, pointing out: “Disciplinary counsel did not report the plea to the court and initiate a disciplinary proceeding.” Bill Ross, the assistant disciplinary counsel who represented the office at the hearing, argued Clinesmith shouldn’t be held responsible and blamed the oversight on the COVID pandemic.

Hamilton “Phil” Fox: Disciplinary counsel who handled Clinesmith is a major donor to Democrats. (Credit: Facebook/D.C. Bar)

The Democrat-controlled panel, known as the Board on Professional Responsibility, nonetheless gave Clinesmith a pass, rubberstamping the light sentence he negotiated with the bar’s chief prosecutor, Disciplinary Counsel Hamilton “Phil” Fox, while admitting it was “unusual.” Federal Election Commission records show Fox, a former Watergate prosecutor, is a major donor to Democrats, including former President Obama. All three members of the board also are Democratic donors, FEC data reveal.

While the D.C. Bar delayed taking any action against Clinesmith, the Michigan Bar, where he is also licensed, automatically suspended him the day he pleaded guilty. And on Sept. 30, records show, the Michigan Bar’s attorney discipline board suspended Clinesmith for two years, from the date of his guilty plea through Aug. 19, 2022, and fined him $1,037.

“[T]he panel found that respondent engaged in conduct that was prejudicial to the proper administration of justice [and] exposed the legal profession or the courts to obloquy, contempt, censure or reproach,” the board ruled against Clinesmith, adding that his misconduct “was contrary to justice, ethics, honesty or good morals; violated the standards or rules of professional conduct adopted by the Supreme Court; and violated a criminal law of the United States.”

Normally, bars arrange what’s called “reciprocal discipline” for unethical attorneys licensed in their jurisdictions. But this was not done in the case of Clinesmith. The D.C. Bar decided to go much easier on the former FBI attorney, further raising suspicions the anti-Trump felon was given favorable treatment.

In making the bar’s case not to strip Clinesmith of his license or effectively punish him going forward, Fox disregarded key findings by Durham about Clinesmith’s intent to deceive the FISA court as a government attorney who held a position of trust.

Clinesmith confessed to creating a false document by changing the wording in a June 2017 CIA email to state Page was “not a source” for the CIA when in fact the agency had told Clinesmith and the FBI on multiple occasions Page had been providing information about Russia to it for years — a revelation that, if disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, would have undercut the FBI’s case for electronically monitoring Page as a supposed Russian agent and something that Durham noted Clinesmith understood all too well.

Bar records show Fox simply took Clinesmith’s word that he believed the change in wording was accurate and that in making it, he mistakenly took a “shortcut” to save time and had no intent to deceive the court or the case agents preparing the application for the warrant.

Durham demonstrated that Clinesmith certainly did intend to mislead the FISA court. “By his own words, it appears that the defendant falsified the email in order to conceal [Page’s] former status as a source and to avoid making an embarrassing disclosure to the FISC,” the special prosecutor asserted in his 20-page memo to the sentencing judge, in which he urged a prison term of up to six months for Clinesmith. “Such a disclosure would have drawn a strong and hostile response from the FISC for not disclosing it sooner [in earlier warrant applications].”

As proof of Clinesmith’s intent to deceive, Durham cited an internal message Clinesmith sent the FBI agent preparing the application, who relied on Clinesmith to tell him what the CIA said about Page. “At least we don’t have to have a terrible footnote” explaining that Page was a source for the CIA in the application, Clinesmith wrote.

The FBI lawyer also removed the initial email he sent to the CIA inquiring about Page’s status as a source before forwarding the CIA email to another FBI agent, blinding him to the context of the exchange about Page.

Durham also noted that Clinesmith repeatedly changed his story after the Justice Department’s watchdog first confronted him with the altered email during an internal 2019 investigation. What’s more, he falsely claimed his CIA contact told him in phone calls that Page was not a source, conversations the contact swore never happened.

Fox also maintained that Clinesmith had no personal motive in forging the document. But Durham cited virulently anti-Trump political messages Clinesmith sent to other FBI employees after Trump won in 2016 – including a battle cry to “fight” Trump and his policies – and argued that his clear political bias may have led to his criminal misconduct.

“It is plausible that his strong political views and/or personal dislike of [Trump] made him more willing to engage in the fraudulent and unethical conduct to which he has pled guilty,” Durham told U.S. District Judge Jeb Boasberg.

Boasberg, a Democrat appointed by President Obama, spared Clinesmith jail time and let him serve out his probation from home. Fox and the D.C. Bar sided with Boasberg, who accepted Clinesmith’s claim he did not intentionally deceive the FISA court, which Boasberg happens to preside over, and even offered an excuse for his criminal conduct.

“My view of the evidence is that Mr. Clinesmith likely believed that what he said about Mr. Page was true,” Boasberg said. “By altering the email, he was saving himself some work and taking an inappropriate shortcut.”

Fox echoed the judge’s reasoning in essentially letting Clinesmith off the hook. (The deal they struck, which the U.S. District Court of Appeals that oversees the bar approved in September, called for a one-year suspension, but the suspension began retroactively in August 2020, which made it meaningless.) Boasberg opined that Clinesmith had “already suffered” punishment by losing his FBI job and $150,000 salary.

But, Boasberg assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that Clinesmith also faced possible disbarment. “And who knows where his earnings go now,” the judge sympathized. “He may be disbarred or suspended from the practice of law.”

Anticipating such a punishment, Boasberg waived a recommended fine of up to $10,000, arguing that Clinesmith couldn’t afford it. He also waived the regular drug testing usually required during probation, while returning Clinesmith’s passport. And he gave his blessing to Clinesmith’s request to serve out his probation as a volunteer journalist, before wishing him well: “Mr. Clinesmith, best of luck to you.”

Fox did not respond to requests for comment. But he argued in a petition to the board that his deal with Clinesmith was “not unduly lenient,” because it was comparable to sanctions imposed in similar cases. However, none of the cases he cited involved the FBI, Justice Department or FISA court. One case involved a lawyer who made false statements to obtain construction permits, while another made false statements to help a client become a naturalized citizen – a far cry from falsifying evidence to spy on an American citizen.

Durham noted that in providing the legal support for a warrant application to the secret FISA court, Clinesmith had “a heightened duty of candor,” since FISA targets do not have legal representation before the court.

He argued Clinesmith’s offense was “a very serious crime with significant repercussions” and suggested it made him unfit to practice law.

“An attorney – particularly an attorney in the FBI’s Office of General Counsel – is the last person that FBI agents or this court should expect to create a false document,” Durham said.

The warrant Clinesmith helped obtain has since been deemed invalid and the surveillance of Page illegal. Never charged with a crime, Page is now suing the FBI and Justice Department for $75 million for violating his constitutional rights against improper searches and seizures.

Explaining the D.C. Bar’s disciplinary process in a 2019 interview with Washington Lawyer magazine, Fox said that “the lawyer has the burden of proving they are fit to practice again. Have they accepted responsibility for their conduct?” His office’s website said a core function is to “deter attorneys from engaging in misconduct.”

In the same interview, Fox maintained that he tries to insulate his investigative decisions from political bias. “I try to make sure our office is not used as a political tool,” he said. “We don’t want to be a political tool for the Democrats or Republicans.”

Bar records from the Clinesmith case show Fox suggested the now-discredited Trump-Russia “collusion” investigation was “a legitimate and highly important investigation.”

One longstanding member of the D.C. Bar with direct knowledge of Clinesmith’s case before the bar suspects its predominantly Democratic board went soft on him due to partisan politics. “The District of Columbia is a very liberal bar,” he said. “Basically, they went light on him because he’s also a Democrat who hated Trump.”

Meanwhile, the D.C. Bar has not initiated disciplinary proceedings against Michael Sussmann, another Washington attorney charged by Durham. Records show Sussmann remains an “active member” of the bar in “good standing,” which also has not been previously reported. The former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer, who recently resigned from Washington-based Perkins Coie LLP, is accused of lying to federal investigators about his client while passing off a report falsely linking Trump to the Kremlin.

While Sussmann has pleaded not guilty and has yet to face trial, criminal grand jury indictments usually prompt disciplinary proceedings and interim suspensions.

Paul Kamenar of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government ethics watchdog, has called for the disbarment of both Clinesmith and Sussmann. He noted that the D.C. Court of Appeals must automatically disbar an attorney who commits a crime of moral turpitude, which includes crimes involving the “administration of justice.”

“Clinesmith pled guilty to a felony. The only appropriate sanction for committing a serious felony that also interfered with the proper administration of justice and constituted misrepresentation, fraud and moral turpitude, is disbarment,” he said. “Anything less would minimize the seriousness of the misconduct” and fail to deter other offenders.

Disciplinary Counsel Fox appears to go tougher on Republican bar members. For example, he recently opened a formal investigation of former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who records show Fox put under “temporary disciplinary suspension” pending the outcome of the ethics probe, which is separate from the one being conducted by the New York bar. In July, the New York Bar also suspended the former GOP mayor on an interim basis.

Giuliani has not been convicted of a crime or even charged with one. (RealClearInvestigations, 12/16/2021)  (Archive)

This and all other original articles created by RealClearInvestigations may be republished for free with attribution. (These terms do not apply to outside articles linked on the site.)

December 16, 2021 – Ukraine and the United States vote against a UN resolution to condemn Nazism

“The Ukrainian vote against the U.N. resolution against Nazism was motivated by sympathy for the ideology of historic, genocidal active Nazis. It is as simple as that, writes Craig Murray.

This is verbatim from the official report of the U.N. General Assembly plenary of Dec. 16:

“The Assembly next took up the report on ‘Elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,’ containing two draft resolutions.

“By a recorded vote of 130 in favour to2 against (Ukraine, United States), with 49 abstentions, the Assembly then adopted draft resolution I, ‘Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance’.

By its terms, the Assembly expressed deep concern about the glorification of the Nazi movement, neo-Nazism and former members of the Waffen SS organization, including by erecting monuments and memorials, holding public demonstrations in the name of the glorification of the Nazi past, the Nazi movement and neo-Nazism, and declaring or attempting to declare such members and those who fought against the anti-Hitler coalition, collaborated with the Nazi movement and committed war crimes and crimes against humanity ‘participants in national liberation movements’.”

Members of the special Ukrainian neo-Nazi police regiment Azov in 2014. (Credit: My News24, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

(…) In Ukraine, support for the Ukrainian nationalist divisions who fought alongside the Nazis has become, over the last eight years, the founding ideology of the modern post-2013 Ukrainian state (which is very different from the diverse Ukrainian state which briefly existed 1991-2013). The full resolution on Nazism and racism passed by the General Assembly is lengthy,  but these provisions in particular were voted against by the United States and by Ukraine:

  • “Emphasizes the recommendation of the Special Rapporteur that ‘any commemorative celebration of the Nazi regime, its allies and related organizations, whether official or unofficial, should be prohibited by States’, also emphasizes that such manifestations do injustice to the memory of the countless victims of the Second World War and negatively influence children and young people, and stresses in this regard that it is important that States take measures, in accordance with international human rights law, to counteract any celebration of the Nazi SS organization and all its integral parts, including the Waffen SS;

  • Expresses concern about recurring attempts to desecrate or demolish monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought against Nazism during the Second World War, as well as to unlawfully exhume or remove the remains of such persons, and in this regard urges States to fully comply with their relevant obligations, inter alia, under article 34 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949;

  • Condemns without reservation any denial or attempt to deny the Holocaust;

  • Welcomes the call of the Special Rapporteur for the active preservation of those Holocaust sites that served as Nazi death camps, concentration and forced labour camps and prisons, as well as his encouragement of States to take measures, including legislative, law enforcement and educational measures, to put an end to all forms of Holocaust denial.”

As reported in The Times of Israel, hundreds took part in a demonstration in Kiev in May and others throughout Ukraine, in honor of a specific division of the SS. That is but one march and one division — the glorification of its Nazi past is a mainstream part of Ukrainian political culture.

Protesters in Kiev with neo-Nazi symbols – SS-Volunteer Division “Galicia” and Patriot of Ukraine flags, 2014. (Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

In 2018 a bipartisan letter by 50 U.S. representatives condemned multiple events commemorating Nazi allies held in Ukraine with official Ukrainian government backing.

There are no two ways about it. The Ukrainian vote against the U.N. resolution against Nazism was motivated by sympathy for the ideology of historic, genocidal active Nazis. It is as simple as that. (Read more: Consortium News, 12/23/2021)  (Archive)

December 17, 2021 – It’s official: Durham is investigating the Clinton Campaign

“The latest filings by Special Counsel John Durham reveal that lawyers for the Hillary Clinton Campaign now represent Christopher Steele primary subsource Igor Danchenko. In doing so, Durham reveals something else: that the Hillary Clinton Campaign and multiple former employees of the Hillary Clinton Campaign are under investigation.

(…) The Latest Developments

Now let’s review what’s going on in Danchenko’s criminal case. He was originally represented by Chris Schafbuch and Mark Schamel. On December 6, 2021, Stuart Sears appeared on behalf of Danchenko. Schafbuch and Schamel dropped out of the case.

According to Durham’s latest filing, Stuart Sears is a partner at the law firm Schertler Onorato Mead & Sears. Notably, the firm is currently representing the 2016 “Hillary for America” presidential campaign (the “Clinton Campaign”), as well as multiple former employees of that campaign, in matters before the Special Counsel.”

Did you catch that? I’ll emphasize:

The Hillary Clinton Campaign and its employees are subject to “matters before the Special Counsel.”

Durham notices the potential conflict of interest, informing the court that Danchenko’s trial might raise the following issues:

  1. the Clinton Campaign’s knowledge or lack of knowledge concerning the veracity of information in the Fusion GPS reports sourced by Danchenko,
  2. the Clinton Campaign’s awareness or lack of awareness of Dancehnko’s collection methods and sub-sources,
  3. meetings or communications between and among the Clinton Campaign, Fusion GPS, and/or Steele regarding or involving Danchenko
  4. Danchenko knowledge or lack of knowledge regarding the Clinton Campaign’s role in and activities surrounding the Fusion GPS reports, and
  5. the extent to which the Clinton Campaign and/or its representatives directed, solicited, or controlled Danchenko’s activities.

Durham even raises the potential that members of the Clinton Campaign may be called to testify at Danchenko’s trial.

To this observer, it seems like the Clinton Campaign’s involvement in the dossier might be deeper than anyone really knows.” (Read more: Techno Fog, 12/20/2021) (Archive)

December 22, 2021 – The Clinton Foundation whistleblowers, Moynihan and Doyle, are in touch with the Durham team regarding the Clinton/Gates Foundations and big pharma fraud

Moynihan and Doyle testify to the House Oversight Government Operations Subcommittee on oversight of foundations and restrictions on their political activities. (Credit: CSpan)

Clinton investigators John Moynihan and Larry Doyle, also known as the Financial Bounty Hunters,  reveal on the Thomas Paine Podcast that they have spoken multiple times with Special Prosecutor John Durham’s Justice Department team to assist with its ongoing investigation which now appears to be focused on the Clinton Foundation, Bill Gates and millions of dollars in profit from the illicit vaccine and pharmaceutical schemes worldwide.

A member of our research team,  D Smoley, muddled through this very long interview and took a few notes on the key issues discussed:

With Financial Bounty Hunters (FBH) and Charles Ortel dropping hints last week that there is a major breaking news story about fraud in the non-profit sector, it is a good time to look back at the last FBH interview, 3 months ago.

The same people involved in Clinton Foundation are involved in combatting Covid and distributing aid for COVID.

Here is my draft of notes on what they said during that marathon podcast in December of 2021.

FBH first appeared on the Thomas Paine podcast in June 2020 and introduced the concept of a Playbook that uses a cover of worldwide health to channel massive amounts of money to non-profit organizations. The people who run the Playbook are globalists who aim to take ownership of all of the world’s resources–including the plants and oceans and people–to create their version of utopia. Six months after coronavirus appeared in Wuhan, FBH predicted that this is the Playbook that would be activated for coronavirus pandemic support.

The second interview, in December 2021, looked deeper into the organizations, people, and methods that the Playbook implemented for pandemic response and then FBH warned about the likely way that it will be used in upcoming months.

Abuse of Tax Exempt Status
The Clinton Foundation was established as a 501c(3) organization in the late 1990’s to raise money for the Bill Clinton Presidential Library, an undertaking that required $100-$150 million dollars. The “reported” top line revenue for Clinton Foundation and Clinton Health exceeds $3 billion which leaves potential tax liability and penalties on $2.9 billion. As whistleblowers, the FBH could receive a reward of a third of the amount recovered by IRS.

Their work is not limited to Clinton Foundation, FBH have filed complaints for additional organizations where they saw evidence of non-compliance with requirements for 501c(3).

Timeline
August 2017 FBH made whistleblower submission to IRS. Kept working
Early Nov 2018 preliminary denial from IRS. Kept working
Dec 13, 2018 FBH Testimony before the House Oversight Subcommittee, subsequently received final denial, appealed IRS denial to US Tax Court. Kept working
August 28, 2019 US Tax Court Accepted Appeal notified via email. Kept working
October 2020 court records for their appeal were put under seal. The only records available are the docket entries recorded by John Solomon prior to sealing and two documents that the judge allowed to be released. Kept working.

Risk
We are laying out exhibits that get into this whole concept of risk. Where are people’s risks? The presumption that our public officials and our regulators are going to perform and protect the public interest is in my opinion (and what we are laying out here) that is the greatest risk of all. Does current response require commitments that do more harm than good, taking on considerable risks? What played out in those years in third world countries looks similar to what is going on today. Same play book, same players.

Right now, they are trying to set the biggest trap that has been ever been set, in terms of control of our personal lives. We happen to have the evidence and the judge has the evidence.

The Playbook puts conditions in agreements for health and financing to cause local governments to cede control of aspects of their decision making.

Here is an email from July 8. 2003.
“There was a clear consensus among the development assistance committee (In Tanzania) that the potentially enormous amounts of funds coming onstream, from Clinton Foundation and Global Fund and PEPFAR could do more harm than good in that there are considerable risks posed to the health sector program and reforms in Tanzania.”

The Playbook
With every crisis, there are indications that people on the inside were made aware of what was going on. Government officials, public health officials, all pharmaceutical officials are massively conflicted. This is the Big Rig in terms of regulatory capture. Our regulators protect and promote the interests of Wall Street, Big Pharma or our public health officials, that is Tony Fauci and the rest of them, Tony Fauci has the checkbook he provides funding for a lot of the activities, Bill Gates backs him up, tight at the hip, working for the interests of those pharmaceutical companies and not working for your interests.

We have seen this before. In our prior discussion we talked about the adulterated drugs from Ranbaxy Labs from India distributed throughout the third the world. Garbage drugs from Ranbaxy negatively impacted untold numbers of people in the developing world from those adulterated meds. When people take ineffective drugs, they end up developing drug resistance. viruses mutate. You end up with drug resistance. Same is happening with these vaccines people stated taking a year ago. People took them once, twice, a third time and are still getting infected? The viruses mutate. Are they ineffective?

When we heard the August 2021 interview with Dr. Fauci, we recognized the old playbook being used again: Clinton Foundation, Global Fund, PEPFAR just as predicted by FBH on the Thomas Paine Podcast in June 2020. We are participants for these drug trails, as opposed to recipients of drug trial research. That is how HIV worked with the Clinton Foundation Ineffective drugs that don’t stop the disease cause mutations and spread and even more drugs are needed.

Is it a coincidence that the countries with the largest contributors to the World Health Organization also have the greatest covid death rate?

A Geneva based WHO affiliate, UNITAID, a Gates backed, and Clinton backed initiative carveout made a $40 million payment to University of Liverpool shortly before Andrew Hill’s final report where he said we cannot support Ivermectin to treat Covid. Half a million lives could have been saved.

Globalists
There is no magic here. There is a practical trajectory of what all of these people are doing, these globalists are doing, when they are looking for worlds without borders, universal healthcare, all of these wonderful ideological thoughts, and they will do whatever they need to do to execute on the strategy, myopically, with blindfolds on as to what the real interests are of those of us who populate the planet.

Current Developments in DC
DC Swamp holds discussion in law firms.

While researching the case, FBH has seen a strategy to make decisions in law firms and then give advice to officials in DC instead of the elected officials making decisions. This makes all emails and discussions privileged; attorney-client information cannot be obtained in FOIA.

John Durham Investigation
While FBH have not met with John Durham, they did speak to people in his office on multiple occasions. Durham would have access to the material that FBH submitted to other agencies under Rule 6, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure which allows for intergovernmental agencies to communicate material and subject matter that is relevant and provides an exception to the grand jury rule

The indictment of Attorney Sussmann is encouraging because he was a counsel to the Clinton Foundation

FBH have not received cooperation from government, and that includes people in the legislative branch

END OF COMMENTS FROM FBH

The following remarks are made by Thomas Paine’s, Michael Moore, about Fauci’s interview:

Fauci opened his mouth in an August interview and said exactly to the “T” what FBH said to Paine in early 2020 when this started with 15 days to flatten the curve.

Fauci said that we are in active discussion to develop a worldwide pandemic strategy with a broad comprehensive approach to preparedness and response at every level. Equity has been the most important part of the vaccine program, both domestic equity, and now international equity and that is reason why Biden program has already committed half a billion dollars plus 80 million plus that is going out right now.

Fauci described his vision of using organizations like PEPFAR, CEPI (Center for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), GAVI (Global Vaccines Alliance) for procurement and distribution, The Global Fund, Jeremy Ferarr at Welcome Trust, UNITAID, and Intrepid.

The EU is pre-purchasing therapeutics and that are in development, setting up a new institution HERA a counterpart to our BARDA.

The entire August 2021 Fauci interview was included in the December 2021 Paine Podcast

(Thomas Paine Podcast, 12/22/2021) (Archive)

December 24, 2021 – Kash Patel: Clinton campaign lawyers are now defending Steele dossier source, Igor Danchenko

Full video interview HERE:

“What you have, at least optically, is the Clinton campaign nested into the [Igor] Danchenko camp and his representation. So all the information John Durham turns over in discovery, they could conceivably give over to Hillary Clinton.”

According to a recent court filing by John Durham’s team, two Clinton campaign lawyers are representing Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko, the Russian analyst who was indicted by a grand jury in November on five false statement charges.

In this episode, Kash breaks down the potential conflicts of interest this creates.

Below is a rush transcript of this Kash’s Corner episode from Dec 24, 2021. This transcript may not be in its final form and may be updated. 

Kash Patel: Hey, everybody, and welcome to our holiday special of Kash’s Corner. Thanks for tuning in this entire year, and we hope you enjoy our Christmas special.

Jan Jekielek: Yeah. So, to start here, I think we do need to say merry Christmas to everybody. Happy new year to your families, to your loved ones, to everybody. This is a very difficult year or has been a very difficult year for everybody, and I really hope that everyone gets a chance to celebrate a little bit. Find those things that perhaps they don’t look at too often, especially if things are looking a little grim and celebrate those.

Mr. Patel: And perhaps watch our episode on Christmas Eve and take it in with your family to brighten your day.

Mr. Jekielek: Absolutely. Well, and so it’s very interesting. It seems like Special Counsel Durham has a Christmas present for, I guess, many folks.

Mr. Patel: It is for me. I’ll take it.

Mr. Jekielek: Yeah. Well, so it’s really interesting. Friday afternoon, low news cycle as is typical of him. No fanfare there. He issues a filing, and in the filing, we learn a number of things, which we’ll talk about here, but one of the things we learn is simply that Igor Danchenko, one of the indicted people that he indicted, is actually being represented by the same lawyers that represent the Hillary Clinton Camp 2016 Campaign. I mean, fascinating, right?

Mr. Patel: It’s a shocking development, and I would say if it was the only one in the last five years saga of everything that was Russiagate, but as obviously we’ve shown to be the largest organized criminal enterprise. It’s no longer shocking unfortunately. It’s just more tragic application of law, and fact, and bias in the Department of Justice and the FBI, and it just continues.

I thank God that John Durham is on the case to help us keep our law enforcement members in check and also, equally as important, prosecute cases under the law and apply the facts wherever they lead, irrespective of who is possibly involved, i.e. a former senator, a former presidential candidate, a former secretary of state, and so many others.

So I’m glad that he is taking his action in a measured fashion, and he’s not taken to the media as we’ve talked about previously. He just doesn’t do that. I don’t even think he has a spokesperson, and if he does, all they say is, “No comment,” but he does talk where he’s legally and permissively allowed to talk, which is his filings in federal court.

We’ve talked about the indictments in the past of Sussmann and Danchenko, and I urge our viewers to… If you haven’t seen it, go check out those episodes. We did some fantastic deep dives into those indictments, but he did give us another pleading on Friday night.

Mr. Jekielek: Well, and so going back to the Sussmann indictment very briefly, we did learn the identity of Dolan, right?

Mr. Patel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mr. Jekielek: Somebody who seems like he was the main source for Danchenko, right? What’s very interesting about this is that nobody knew about him, and at the same time, this person was also deeply connected with the 2016 Clinton Campaign and others.

Mr. Patel: Yeah. No. You’re absolutely right. Look, and I, as the guy who ran the Russiagate investigation on House Intel, had never heard of Charles Dolan. That’s a little shocking for someone who was supposed to have been given all of the FBI, all of the DOJ, all of the intelligence community information regarding how the FISA was obtained, how the Steele dossier was procured, and everything. That just goes to show you that the FBI and DOJ failed to comply with congressional, valid congressional subpoenas we issued for documents because had they produced everything, they would’ve produced the documents that John Durham found, but at least thankfully he’s on the case.

Why it’s highlighting is because it seems that the Russiagate investigation and the criminal enterprise that John Durham is unfolding starts, and begins, and ends with Hillary Clinton and her campaign. That becomes more and more true as we reveal more and more information.

Charles Dolan is another example. A former Clinton operative, a former Clinton Campaign advisor, a former ally of hers in the State Department is now been shown to be an individual who… We don’t know if it was at the behest of the Clinton Campaign, but it stretches credulity to say otherwise was feeding information on behalf of the Clinton Campaign to Christopher Steele for their false dossier that was falsely presented by the FBI, and I believe knowingly so to get a FISA warrant on then candidate Trump.

So, yet, another member of the Clinton Campaign or Clinton World was shown to be involved in this corrupt… I don’t know what even there’s a new word for it or not, but this, I want to say, criminal enterprise and that was Sussmann indictment. Then, we move on to Danchenko and our latest pleading from John Durham this past Friday night.

Mr. Jekielek: What struck me as I was looking at this, and I want to thank our friend Techno Fog for actually drawing attention to this because I didn’t know it had come down, was how did this actually happen because Danchenko did drop his previous counsel, retain this new counsel. Did this counsel approach him? Did he approach them? The other question is like, is there a possibility that this could facilitate an information flow that… an unexpected information flow?

Mr. Patel: You’re right. I mean, we’ll get into the last bit of it later. Basically, what you have at least optically is the Clinton Campaign nested into Danchenko camp and his representation. So all the information John Durham turns over in discovery, they could conceivably give over to Hillary Clinton. We’ll circle back to that in more detail and why it is a problem.

You raised a point that’s very interesting. Danchenko was represented by someone else, and then at some point in time, these folks came along and said, “We’re going to represent you.” Now, what’s the nature of that? Are they doing it pro bono? Is someone else paying that fee? Because as someone who’s been subpoenaed by Congress, I can tell you from my personal experience, it’s expensive to hire lawyers to do that kind of work.

Igor Danchenko is criminally indicted in federal court. It’s even more expensive to do that kind of work. Maybe he’s a wealthy individual and can retain whatever counsel he wants, but the reason I became a public defender, and then later a prosecutor was because of one of the most important rights in our constitution is the right to counsel. It’s not just any counsel, it’s the right to counsel of your choosing if you can so afford, and if you can’t, then the public defenders come in. At least you’re provided great representation that way.

Igor Danchenko has now chosen his counsel, but there are some rules in the constitution and as interpreted by the Supreme Court that talk about conflicts of interest. We’ll get into all that, and that’s what this latest pleading is all about.

Igor Danchenko has this new set of lawyers or a relatively new set of lawyers who have come in, and they have for years, as best as I can tell, represented the Hillary Clinton Campaign, who was at the heart of and instigated the entire Russiagate conspiracy. So it’s problematic for many, many, many reasons, and there are a number of legal hurdles that the court must adjudicate properly in order to satisfy both the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments of the constitution and the Canon of Ethics, which we’ll get into too, which govern how lawyers are to behave before a federal judge.

Mr. Jekielek: You hear about conflict of interest a lot on television, right, right, and so forth.

Mr. Patel: Yeah.

Mr. Jekielek: But from what I understand, right, we’re not just looking at actual demonstrated conflicts of interest. These are conflicts of interest that may exist that…

Mr. Patel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mr. Jekielek: Right?

Mr. Patel: Look, and it applies to judges too. The same rules, the ethics apply for conflicts apply to judges as they do to lawyers that are appearing before the judge. For instance, many of these federal judges come from private law firms, deep private law firm backgrounds who represented some big Fortune 500 companies, some high-wealth individuals.

If they later became a judge, that judge has to recuse himself for matters forever relating to that company that his private law firm represented in the past or that he or she himself represented in the past even in peace not because there is an actual conflict of interest, but just because there could be. I’ve appeared before federal judges who have recused themself on situations like that.

Actually, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about this, but when we first subpoenaed the bank records of Fusion GPS, when we were running the Russiagate investigation in the fall of 2017, I believe, we had to go to federal court to get those records. The first judge in that cycle after a month or two recused herself from the proceedings, and that’s because there was a conflict of interest. Now, she doesn’t have to disclose to us what that conflict was.

We’re only left to guess that it might have to do with… and she came from a big law firm in her past, and it might have to do with a client or an institution they represent. So it happens. It happens in major cases. It happens in cases you don’t hear about. It happens to judges, but in this instance, it’s not about the judge. It’s about the lawyer, lawyers.

Mr. Jekielek: So what are these potential conflicts of interest here? I mean, it would be bizarre if information were able to flow in this direction as we just mentioned.

Mr. Patel: Yeah. There’s many, and the rules are governed by not just the law and the constitutions we talked about, but the Canon of Ethics, and they require that any prosecution and defense attorney have a free set of conflict events or be conflict-free with certain stipulations. What they’re saying is… In this instance, John Durham’s pleading is saying… because there’s a Supreme Court case that governs this.

The prosecution has a duty to affirmatively inform the court of a possible conflict of interest, and that’s what John Durham has done in this case. He, John Durham, is saying through his pleading that we think the individuals that now represent Igor Danchenko, who also represent the Hillary Clinton Campaign could have numerous conflicts of interest, not just the information flow.

So he laid out some of them, and it’s not up to the prosecution to investigate those on their own. They can request assistance, and I think appropriately did so to the judge because the judge has wider latitude to talk to defense counsel and even go what we call ex parte if need be, and that’s just to bring in defense counsel alone. So it’s not to divulge the defense of the defendant, which is to remain private. That’s never have to be divulged to the prosecution. So the judge has a little more leeway in how he investigates the potential conflict of interest.

But John Durham has now put these terms on notice that he should take those matters and those inquiries, and see where they lead. Namely, the number one thing that comes to my mind in terms of whether there’s a potential conflict of interest is witnesses, right?

These guys who represent Danchenko, who represent the Hillary Clinton Campaign. How many people in the Hillary Clinton Campaign universe do they represent? Did they represent five years ago, four years ago, three years ago? Is Igor Danchenko going to call one of those people as a witness in his trial? That’s a potential conflict of interest.

I don’t know Igor Danchenko’s defense. Only he and his attorneys do. Are those lawyers going to be shaded by their past representation of some of these said witnesses in their current representation of Danchenko? Are they going to be biased because they previously had a relationship with one of the witnesses that could be called? It’s not necessary that that witness has to be called. Is the government going to call one of those witnesses?

Let’s put the defense aside wholly. Is John Durham saying, “I might call witnesses A, B, and C,” and you represented A and B, and now you represent the defendant? It’s a potential conflict of interest, which basically… What the judge has to safeguard against is a reversible error, and a conflict of interest and a potential conflict of interest is almost… Once it’s established, it’s an automatic reversal.

So if he was convicted and this matter wasn’t adjudicated properly, the appeals court would look at it and say, “Why didn’t anyone look at this conflict of interest?” Which is why it’s so critical at this juncture for him to adjudicate. We can get it, about how you deal with an actual conflict of interest, but the witness thing is just one example for me of the possible conflicts. You brought up information sharing, and we can get into that too.

Mr. Jekielek: Well, okay. So let’s do it.

Mr. Patel: So it sounds pretty nefarious, right? But let’s be real with our audience. The entire Russiagate investigation, the Steele dossier, Hillary Clinton Campaign’s involvement in it, paying Perkins Coie $10 million, hiring Christopher Steele, paying him six figures, getting false information all the while informing the Clinton Campaign of what they were doing through their attorneys as we now know through the Michael Sussmann indictment who represented the Hillary Clinton Campaign.

That’s another possible conflict. Michael Sussman is indicted by the special counsel. He represented the Hillary Clinton Campaign. Did these lawyers that are representing Danchenko have anything to do with Michael Sussmann in the past? I don’t know the answer to that, but that’s another potential conflict of interest.

But what’s of greater note is that this information has cascaded down from the Hillary Clinton Campaign for four, five years now. Have these lawyers just nested themselves into a defendant that’s been charged so they can funnel information back to the Hillary campaign?

Now, that sounds pretty nefarious, but after everything we’ve proven and shown, I wouldn’t put it past them, and that’s why this judge has to adjudicate this matter now and appropriately. Can you imagine a scenario where lawyers for defendants where they’re not in his best interest, which is what is required by the constitution, but were being paid by someone to do that representation? Then, all the discovery, all the evidence that John Durham has to turn over so that the defendant’s rights are under the constitution are upheld, they take some of that information and leak it to the press. They go around and give it back to Hillary Clinton or her campaign, and that campaign uses it and puts it in the media.

It’s no surprise, and we’ll get into this as soon as well that Hillary Clinton is all of a sudden back in the news. So it’s raising a lot of questions. I don’t think there is anything… I don’t ever think there’s anything like a coincidence in these types of cases, and I think this judge… We should follow this. This judge has to deal with this matter. He doesn’t have to divulge how he deals with it or the details he deals with it, but he has to make a decision, and there has to be what we call a waiver by the defendant, and that’s a process.

Mr. Jekielek: So interesting, and so are there any other… these conflicts of interest that Durham outlined? I think there were others.

Mr. Patel: Well, the other one that’s actually… maybe it’s more prescient than the one we’ve talked about. I mean, this is crazy. It’s like all in one case. The other one is that John Durham quietly in his pleading basically told the world we’ve known the whole time. We’ve been saying, you and I, on this show.

The Hillary Clinton Campaign is being investigated by John Durham. So he’s telling the judge, “Not only am I not done with my special counsel investigation I’ve indicted clients with. I’ve indicted Sussmann. I’ve indicted Danchenko. I’ve told the world about Charles Dolan, Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, Mark Elias, who used to represent the Hillary Clinton Campaign, the corrupt activities of the FBI, but I’m now also telling you, judge, I’m looking into the Hillary Clinton Campaign’s conduct and involvement in the production of the Steele dossier.”

That’s a massive conflict of interest. Even if John Durham doesn’t indict anyone in the Hillary Clinton Campaign, what John Durham is saying is, “Judge, I’m looking at it. I’ve been looking at it. I don’t know what I’m going to find. Are one of the people I’m looking at the Hillary Clinton Campaign connected to this law firm?” I’ll take it one step further. Is he looking at one of the lawyers who represented the Hillary Clinton Campaign?

People might say that’s a super far stretch, but we now know that Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton, has already been indicted for his conduct during the Russiagate hoax. So I don’t put it past him. I don’t know these lawyers. I don’t know that they’ve done that, but John Durham would be the only one that knows the answer to that question, and what he’s saying is those roads may lead to them or clients they represented. So you have the money angle, the information angle, the investigative angle, and we haven’t even gotten to the defendant’s constitutional rights, which I think trump all of those.

Mr. Jekielek: So, well, I think we do need to get to those. I mean, you’re laying it out perfectly here. Right? Now, why is that the most important thing here? That’s very…

Mr. Patel: I mean, maybe I’m biased because of my time as a public defender, but what you’re supposed to do as a defense attorney is execute due process and stand up when your client has been charged with whatever they’ve been charged with. He’s afforded that right. Not at 50% or 70%, but 100%, and not just one day, but from beginning to end. He has to have that right. Otherwise, it could be a reversible error in the appellate courts because they’ll say counsel was ineffective as we call it.

If there’s a finding of ineffectiveness or a conflict because of ineffectiveness, it’s a reversal, and then he gets to go all over again, but I also believe that that’s the whole point of our justice system. That’s why it’s different from 90% plus of the world’s judicial systems. We have a system in place where everyone gets the counsel they’re choosing, and if they can’t afford one, there’s a public defender service to afford them that sort of representation that the constitution demands.

The defendant in this case, and the Supreme Court, again, adjudicated this, he has to be made aware of all these conflicts not just by his own attorneys, but by the prosecution and possible inquiry by the judge to further develop some of the lines that, in this case, John Durham has laid out for the court.

Only after the defendant has been made aware, all of those potential conflicts, the witnesses, the money, the bias, where the investigation is going. Then, the judge in open court has to ask the defendant if he wants to, even knowing all that information, stick with his lawyers. So he has to make what’s called the Knowing Intelligent and Intentional Waiver of a conflict of interest.

All three of those have to be met. So he can only do that if he’s been informed of the conflicts and the potential conflicts in their entirety, and then he has to go into open court and say, “Judge, I’ve reviewed all of that information,” and because the constitution speaks directly to this that is he is allowed his counsel of choosing, and I agree with this. If he knows about all of it and still wants to go with them, that should be his right. But what John Durham is saying is, “I don’t know if he knows about all of that.”

Plus, what John Durham is saying is, “I don’t know all of the information because I’m still investigating the Clinton Campaign. You, the judge, can talk to the lawyers outside of the prosecution’s presence. You can talk to the lawyers and the defendant outside of the prosecution’s presence. You, the judge, can call in witnesses and say, ‘I’ve been notified of a possible conflict of interest from your firm, or this organization, or this individual I hear might be indicted. I want to know the details so I can advise the defendant in this case of those details. So he can make that knowing and intentional waiver.’” (Full interview: Kash’s Corner, 12/24/2021)  (Archive)

January 3, 2022 – Theranos CEO and Clinton friend, Elizabeth Holmes, is convicted of fraud

“Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of fraud on Monday, only after she managed to convince figures from across the political spectrum that her company would revolutionize blood testing.

Holmes, who claimed that her biotechnology firm would create cheaper tests that used less blood, was convicted of four counts of fraud. The jury deadlocked on three counts, and Holmes was found not guilty of four others. She had denied all charges, with her lawyers arguing that her “mistakes are not crimes.”

In addition to lying to investors, Holmes impressed upon many political luminaries, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, the virtues of Theranos.

“This is inspiration. It is amazing to me, Elizabeth, what you’ve been able to do. What’s most impressive to me is you’re not only making these lab tests more accessible … empowering people whether they live in the barrio or a mansion, putting them in a position to help take control of their own health,” Biden told Holmes at a 2015 meeting at Theranos’ headquarters when he was vice president.

A special conversation on “The Future of Equality and Opportunity” with President Clinton and Founder and CEO of Theranos Elizabeth Holmes and Executive Chairman of the Alibaba Group Jack Ma, during the Closing Plenary Session of the September 2015 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting.  Video

She also convinced Gen. James Mattis and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to sit on Theranos’ board of directors. Mattis intervened on Theranos’ behalf with the Department of Defense after a DOD official requested an investigation into the company’s potentially illegal distribution of medical technology.” (Read more: The Daily Caller/1/03/2022) (Archive)

January 10, 2022 – Disgraced and fired Andrew McCabe calls for Feds to treat ‘mainstream’ conservatives like domestic terrorists

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe appears before Congress. (Credit: Elyse Samuels Bastien Inzaurralde / Washington Post)

…this last Thursday the University of Chicago invited former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe to join a panel of partisans to discuss the Jan 6 “insurrection.”

1. Conservatives Are in The Same Category As Islamic Terrorists 

(…) McCabe likened conservatives to members of the Islamic Caliphate: “I can tell you from my perspective of spending a lot of time focused on the radicalization of international terrorists and Islamic extremist and extremists of all stripes… is that this group shares many of the same characteristics of those groups that we’ve seen radicalized along entirely different ideological lines,” he said.

2. Parents at School Board Meetings Pose A ‘Threat To National Security’

“Political violence [is] not just confined to the Capitol,” McCabe asserted. “It’s going on in school boards around the country. It’s going on in local elections. It’s happening, you know, even to health-care workers.” According to this politically protected former FBI no. 2, the “political violence” occurring recently at school board meetings and during local elections is a “very diverse and challenging threat picture.”

3. McCabe Wants More Surveillance of ‘Mainstream’ Conservatives 

“I’m fairly confident,” McCabe said, “[that] the FBI [and other agencies] have reallocated resources and repositioned some of their counterterrorism focus to increase their focus on right-wing extremism and domestic violent extremists. And I think that’s obviously a good idea.”

But McCabe wants more. McCabe asserted that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and FBI need to stop merely focusing on the “fringes of the right-wing movement,” in order to “catch this threat” of the “right.”

“Are you going to catch this threat if your focus is only on the traditional, right-wing extremist, those groups that we know about, the quote-unquote, fringes of the right-wing movement?” asked McCabe. “And I think the answer to that is no.”

“It’s entirely possible that when the intelligence community and the law enforcement community looks out across this mainstream,” McCabe continued, “they didn’t assume [on January 6] that that group of people — business owners, white people from the suburbs, educated, employed — presented a threat of violence, and now we know very clearly that they do.

4. McCabe Believes No One Is Above The Law (Except Himself)

Ironically, one of McCabe’s last remarks was a proclamation of equality under the law. “Whether you are a Trump supporter or a Biden supporter, right, left, or otherwise, we should all be able to agree on the principle that no one is above the law,” stated McCabe.” (Read more: The Federalist, 1/10/2022)  (Archive) 

January 13, 2022 – New Peter Schweizer book: Red-Handed – How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win

“Politico Playbook exclusively reported Wednesday that publishing giant HarperCollins is preparing to release the next investigative bombshell book by six-time New York Times bestselling author Peter Schweizer titled Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win.

Red-Handed remains under a strict embargo until its January 25 release date.

The book’s cover, which Politico obtained a copy of, features photos of President Joe Biden and Chinese Communist Party Leader Xi Jinping, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), former House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), LeBron James, Elon Musk, Henry Kissinger, and Bill Gates. According to Politico, Red-Handed will “expose bad actors on both ends of the political spectrum and their willingness to do China’s bidding.”

Given the bestselling author’s investigative track record, the book’s subjects may have cause for concern. Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash sparked an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation. His last two books, Profiles in Corruption and Secret Empires, each hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China just 10 days after the trip.” (Read more: Breitbart, 1/12/2022)  (Archive)

January 14, 2022 – Paul Pelosi Jr. was involved in five companies probed by the feds as shocking paper trail connects him to fraudsters and convicted criminals

Pelosi Jr. gave a ringing endorsement of Asa Saint Clair’s IGObit digital token, calling it a game changer. ‘IGObit is the absolute best offering I have ever seen,’ he wrote on his website. (Credit: Paul Pelosi Jr.)

A shocking paper trail shows Nancy Pelosi’s son, Paul Pelosi Jr.’s connections to a host of fraudsters, rule-breakers and convicted criminals.

A DailyMail.com investigation can reveal that Paul, 52, was involved in five companies probed by federal agencies before, during or after his time there.

He joined the board of a biofuel company after it defrauded investors, according to an SEC ruling, and whose CEO was convicted after bribing Georgia officials.

Paul was president of an environmental investment firm that turned out to be a front for two convicted fraudsters, documents reveal.

He served as vice president of a company previously embroiled in an investigation of scam calls that targeted senior citizens.

A medical company Pelosi Jr. worked for was accused of testing drugs on people without FDA authorization, DailyMail.com can reveal.

A source close to a firm Nancy’s son worked for told DailyMail.com that Pelosi Jr. received $2.8 million of shares allegedly issued as part of a massive $164 million fraud in July 2016.

(…) The 52-year-old joined the board of a biofuel company after it defrauded investors according to an SEC ruling, and whose CEO was convicted after bribing Georgia officials.

Pelosi Jr. was president of an environmental investment firm that turned out to be a front for two convicted fraudsters.

He joined a lithium mining company and received millions of shares, allegedly issued as part of a massive $164 million fraud.

He was vice president of a company previously embroiled in an investigation of scam calls that targeted senior citizens.

He has close business ties with a man accused by the Department of Justice of running a fake UN charity that stole investors’ money.

A medical company Pelosi Jr. worked for tested drugs on people without FDA authorization, according to an FDA investigation.

Pelosi Jr. has never been accused or charged with crimes relating to these cases.

(Read more: The Daily Mail, 1/14/2022)  (Archive)

January 15, 2022 – NARA arranges for the transport of 15 boxes that contain presidential records at Mar-a-Lago

The National Archives in Washington D.C. (Credit: National Archives.gov)

(…) According to a Feb. 7 statement by the National Archives (NARA), NARA arranged for the transport of 15 boxes that contained presidential records from Mar-a-Lago, “following discussions with President Trump’s representatives in 2021.” Trump stated that the discussions were “collaborative and respectful” and said it was a “great honor” to work with the National Archives.

His representatives also told the agency they would continue to look for more presidential records. Shortly thereafter, on Feb. 14, NARA claimed in a statement that “some of the Trump presidential records received by the National Archives and Records Administration included paper records that had been torn up by former President Trump.”

The very next day, Feb. 15, 2022, Sens. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) sent a letter to Garland stating that the DOJ has so far refused to comply with Trump’s declassification order that he issued in January 2021. The letter noted that “the Justice Department has not only failed to declassify a single page, but the Department has also failed to identify for Congress records that it knows with certainty to be covered by the declassification directive.” Grassley told Garland that the DOJ must “identify the records subject to the declassification order and, second, produce those records to Congress and the American people without improper redactions.

Three days later, in a letter sent by NARA archivist David Ferriero to the politicized House Oversight and Reform Committee, Ferriero stated that “NARA has identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes.” Bear in mind that as president, Trump held ultimate authority on whether the documents were classified.

Also keep in mind that letter from Grassley just three days earlier, noting that the DOJ had thus far refused to comply with Trump’s declassification order. A week later, the House Oversight Committee demanded that “NARA turn over additional information, including an inventory of the boxes recovered from Mar-a-Lago and information on any classified documents, as well as documents from the Trump Administration related to the former President’s destruction of records.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 8/19/2022)  (Archive)

January 18, 2022 – Former Clinton official Alexandra Chalupa tweets Tucker Carlson “needs to be prosecuted” for treason

“Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American who worked in the Clinton administration and was a consultant for the Democratic National Committee, is calling for Fox News host Tucker Carlson to be prosecuted for treason.

Chalupa took to social media to rant about a segment in which Carlson suggested Russian aggression toward Ukraine would be akin to China trying to interfere with Mexico.

“Imagine if Mexico fell under the direct control of China. We would see that as a threat,” Carlson explained in a segment earlier this week.

“There would be no reason for that,” he continued. “That’s how Russia views NATO control of Ukraine … and why wouldn’t they?”

Carlson has aggressively opposed war with Russia on behalf of what he calls “a small, corrupt nation called Ukraine.” (Read more: The Political Insider, 1/20/2022)  (Archive)

January 25, 2022 – Durham filing suggests DOJ OIG withheld evidence that totals nearly half a million new pages

Look carefully at this tweet from Catherine Herridge at CBS. Notice anything?

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) has known about the Durham probe of Michael Sussmann for how long?  And specifically, the criminal case against Sussmann revolved around the central witness, the point of contact with former FBI General Counsel, Jim Baker.  Yet the OIG said nothing to John Durham about their possession of Baker’s phones until this month?

Think about what that tells us?

TechnoFog has more details about the latest court filing SEE HERE.  He also notes the issue of the Durham team only recently being notified by the OIG in January:

…”There is also a curious paragraph discussing the fact that Durham, in January 2022 – learned from the DOJ Inspector General that they possessed “two FBI cellphones of the former FBI General Counsel to whom the defendant made his alleged false statement, along with forensic reports analyzing those cellphones.” Durham’s team is going through those cell phones now to analyze their contents.

And there will be more, with Durham stating, “the Government expects to receive additional information and documents in the coming weeks that may be relevant to the charged conduct.” (read more)

Techno has a great perspective and is always a great source for interpretation of the legal filings.  However, I would draw attention to the obvious question about the internal policing unit of the DOJ, the Office of Inspector General, not notifying the special counsel of the evidence in their possession.

James Baker

It’s likely, from the information inside the current and previous filings, that sometime in the interviews with James Baker (a friend of the Lawfare alliance consisting of Ben Wittes, Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe), the former FBI general counsel noted he turned over his phones to the OIG, most likely as an outcome of the previous OIG investigation into the political weaponization of the FBI in the OIG FISA application investigation around Carter Page.

Baker telling Durham he gave his phones to the OIG, likely led to Durham asking DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz about them.  The OIG then recently admitting they had them…. as evidence… and so, here they are.

However, on its face, the OIG not informing the Durham probe about them previously confirms what we previously outlined about how the information silos are used to contain and control information adverse to the interests of the DC system, writ large.  Compartmentalization is how the corrupt enterprises of the Fourth Branch of Government, in this instance the DOJ, can bury information.  It’s a feature, not a flaw.

Why didn’t you tell us you had the murder weapon?  Well, you didn’t ask… and so it goes. (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 1/25/2022)  (Archive)

January 25, 2022 – Durham filing confirms the CIA collected info on President Trump

(…) According to Durham, Joffe and his associates manipulated that data to make it seem like Trump, and those in Trump’s world, had suspicious interactions with internet protocol (IP) addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provider. They then combined those allegations with the Alfa Bank hoax materials (the subject of Sussmann’s Fall 2016 meeting with then-FBI General Counsel James Baker).

This damaging information, purporting to demonstrate at least circumstantial evidence of Trump/Russia collusion, was presented on February 9, 2017 to what Durham describes as U.S. Government “Agency-2.”

That agency was the CIA. We know for sure that Sussmann met with the CIA General Counsel. We learned in January 2022 that, if Sussmann is to be believed, there were two other CIA employees at that meeting.

In other words, a Clinton supporting contractor (Joffe) obtained sensitive information (perhaps unlawfully) about the Office of the President of the United States (Trump), manipulated the information, passed it to a DNC/Clinton lawyer (Sussmann), who then delivered it to the CIA.

All on American soil.

This is important because the CIA is generally prohibited from conducting domestic operations. The FBI explains:

“The CIA collects information only regarding foreign countries and their citizens. Unlike the FBI, it is prohibited from collecting information regarding ‘U.S. Persons,’ a term that includes U.S. citizens, resident aliens, legal immigrants, and U.S. corporations, regardless of where they are located.”

In the CIA’s own words:

“The FBI is responsible for coordination of clandestine collection of foreign intelligence through human sources or human-enabled means and counterintelligence activities inside the United States.”

Yet when it came to Trump, here was the CIA doing what it is prohibited: “collecting information regarding U.S. persons” inside the United States.2 (See also the CIA’s bulk surveillance program.)

A top CIA official answered the call of a DNC lawyer who alleged that these suspicious internet “lookups” proved “that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.” Accusations that were baseless, according to Durham.

In other words, the secret police was more than willing to accept politically damaging information against the President. I’m curious what they did with it. It seems naive to think the information stayed at the CIA. I bet it was passed onto the FBI or DOJ, who may have used it to further the Trump/Russia investigation.” (Read more: Techno Fog/The Reactionary, 2/15/2022)  (Archive)

January 25, 2022 – Durham secures grand jury testimony from Marc Elias and others; secures records from Clinton campaign, Hillary for America, and others

(Credit: Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

Today, Special Counsel John Durham provided a “discovery Update” to the court in the Michael Sussmann case. In this filing, available here, he disclosed that his team has obtained a tremendous amount of information ranging from a variety of sources – including Perkins Coie, the Hillary Clinton Campaign, and former DNC/Clinton lawyer Mark Elias.

(…) Now, to the evidence. Durham and his team have secured grand jury testimony from the following individuals:

  1. Former Perkins Coie partner, and DNC/Hillary Clinton lawyer Marc Elias.
  2. Former FBI General Counsel James Baker
  3. Current CIA employees

Durham and his team have completed interviews of the following individuals:

  1. Former FBI General Counsel James Baker
  2. More than 24 other current and former FBI employees.
  3. Current and former employees of the CIA and DARPA.
  4. 12 Employees of the “internet companies” referenced in the Sussmann indictment.
  5. The former chairman of DNC/Clinton law firm Perkins Coie.
  6. A former employee of the Clinton campaign.
  7. Current and former employees of Georgia Tech (involved in the Alfa Hoax).
  8. An employee of “Tech Executive-1” – aka Rodney Joffe, a Sussmann client who assisted with the Alfa Bank hoax.

Still, there is more. Durham has obtained records/documents from the following entities:

  1. The Hillary Clinton Campaign
  2. Perkins Coie
  3. Hillary for America
  4. Fusion GPS
  5. A PR Firm that advised Perkins Coie regarding public statements about Sussmann’s meeting with James Baker.
  6. Phone logs for numerous current and former FBI employees.
  7. “a classified memorandum and related reports of interviews pertaining to a criminal investigation previously conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice regarding a potential leak of classified information”
  8. He also has secured nearly 400 e-mails between the FBI and Perkins Coie from January 2016 through June 2017.

While we expected some grand jury testimony, the fact that Mark Elias, the DNC/Clinton lawyer, was before a grand jury is certainly newsworthy.

And it leads us to believe that Durham is focused on something more substantial than the false Alfa Bank allegations – perhaps the inception of it all: the claim of Russian hacking. As we have said before, consider the possibility that evidence of “Russian hacking” was placed by the DNC, Perkins Coie, et al. for Crowdstrike to conveniently “find.” (Read more: Techno Fog, 1/25/2022)  (Archive)

January 25, 2022 – Durham filing confirms Brennan’s CIA notes that say Clinton campaign sought to tie Trump to Russia

On July 28, 2016, CIA director John Brennan briefed Obama on an “intelligence bombshell,” Information that the corporate media claimed was “drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government”. According to media reports describing the briefing, Vladi­mir Putin had approved a campaign to “defeat or at least damage” Hillary Clinton and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.

The media used quotes from former intelligence officials breathlessly describing Obama “as deeply concerned” noting that Obama wanted as much information as fast as possible.”

In truth, Brennan’s briefing was the exact opposite from what the media has reported for the last five years. What Brennan actually briefed Obama on was information indicating that Hillary Clinton had approved a plan to tie Trump to Russian election interference “as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”

 

A new filing from special counsel John Durham has raised major national security concerns. The filing, made in connection with his indictment of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, reveals that Rodney Joffe, a tech executive who was working with Sussmann, had exploited his access to internet traffic at the White House, as well as Trump Tower and Trump’s Central Park apartment building.

This raises an important question: How was Joffe, a private individual who has been implicated in mail order scams in the past, able to gain security clearances to access highly sensitive data—including information on the president’s internet activities?

But that’s not the only national security threat exposed by Durham. Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan appears to have been privy to this plan. Sullivan famously pushed Joffe’s data to allege Trump-Russia collusion in October 2016. And he kept doing it well into Trump’s presidency. (The Epoch Times, 2/17/2022)

January 27, 2022 – What Did Clinton Know and When Did She Know It? The Russiagate Evidence Builds

“As indictments and new court filings indicate that Special Counsel John Durham is investigating Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for feeding false reports to the FBI to incriminate Donald Trump and his advisers as Kremlin agents, Clinton’s role in the burgeoning scandal remains elusive. What did she know and when did she know it?

Top officials involved in her campaign have repeatedly claimed, some under oath, that they and the candidate were unaware of the foundation of their disinformation campaign: the 35-page collection of now debunked claims of Trump/Russia collusion known as the Steele dossier. Even though her campaign helped pay for the dossier, they claim she only read it after BuzzFeed News published it in 2017.

But court documents, behind-the-scenes video footage and recently surfaced evidence reveal that Clinton and her top campaign advisers were much more involved in the more than $1 million operation to dredge up dirt on Trump and Russia than they have let on. The evidence suggests that the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory sprang from a multi-pronged effort within the Clinton campaign, which manufactured many of the false claims, then fed them to friendly media and law enforcement officials. Clinton herself was at the center of these efforts, using her personal Twitter account and presidential debates to echo the false claims of Steele and others that Trump was in cahoots with the Russians.

A largely overlooked moment in the campaign film “Hillary,” when the candidate told running mate Tim Kaine of “scratching hard” to expose Donald Trump’s “weird connections” to Russia.  (Credit: Hillary)

Although Clinton has not been pressed by major media on her role in Russiagate, a short scene in the 2020 documentary “Hillary” suggests she was aware of the effort. It shows Clinton speaking to her running mate, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, and his wife, Anne, in hushed tones about Trump and Russia in a back room before a campaign event in early October 2016. Clinton expressed concerns over Trump’s “weird connections” to Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. She informed Kaine that she and her aides were “scratching hard” to expose them, a project Kaine seemed to be hearing about for the first time.

“I don’t say this lightly,” Clinton whispered, pausing to look over her shoulder, “[but Trump’s] agenda is other people’s agenda.”

“We’re scratching hard, trying to figure it out,” she continued. “He is the vehicle, the vessel for all these other people.”

The two then discussed “all these weird connections” between the Trump campaign and Russia. Kaine brought up former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort, and Clinton expressed suspicion about Trump’s then-national security adviser, ret. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, “who is a paid tool for Russian television.”

Added Clinton: “This is what scares me … the way that Putin has taken over the political apparatus, or is trying to—.” At that point, a media handler interrupted them over some staging issues, and they stopped discussing Trump and Russia.

Both Manafort and Flynn had been cited in dossier reports submitted to the Clinton campaign before the two Democratic nominees had their October 2016 conversation. The dossier falsely accused Manafort, Flynn and other Trump advisers of participating in a Kremlin conspiracy to steal the election for Trump.

Victoria Jones/PA via AP

Christopher Steele suggested to the FBI in July 2016 that Hillary Clinton had been briefed on his reports. (Credit: The Associated Press)

Dossier author Christopher Steele himself has suggested Clinton was briefed on his reports. On July 5, 2016 — the same day the FBI publicly exonerated Clinton in her email scandal — Steele handed off the first installments of the dossier to an FBI agent overseas who had handled him previously as an informant. In their London meeting, Steele noted that Clinton was aware of his reporting, according to contemporaneous notes Steele took of their conversation.

“The notes reflect that Steele told [his FBI handler Michael Gaeta] that Steele was aware that ‘Democratic Party associates’ were paying for [his] research; the ‘ultimate client’ was the leadership of the Clinton presidential campaign; and ‘the candidate’ was aware of Steele’s reporting,” Justice Department watchdog Michael Horowitz wrote in his 2019 report examining the FBI’s use of the dossier to justify spying on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Later that same month, during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, the CIA picked up Russian chatter about a Clinton foreign policy adviser who was trying to develop allegations to “vilify” Trump. The intercepts said Clinton herself had approved a “plan” to “stir up a scandal” against Trump by tying him to Putin. According to handwritten notes, then-CIA chief John Brennan warned President Obama that Moscow had intercepted information about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016, of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump.”

At the convention, Clinton foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan drove a golf cart from one TV-network news tent in the parking lot to another, pitching producers, anchors, correspondents and even some NBC network executives a story that Trump and his advisers were in bed with Putin and possibly conspiring with Russian intelligence to steal the election. He also visited CNN and MSNBC, as well as Fox News, to spin the Clinton campaign’s unfounded theories. Sullivan even sat down with CNN honcho Jeff Zucker to outline the opposition research they had gathered on Trump and Russia.

Jake Sullivan: Promoted collusion — but denied under oath knowing details of the dossier project. (Credit: The Associated Press)

Sullivan’s title was misleading. He was far more than a foreign policy adviser to Clinton. His portfolio included campaign strategy.

“Hillary told Sullivan she wanted him to take over [her campaign],” journalists Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen reported in their 2017 bestseller, “Shattered: Inside Hillary’s Doomed Campaign.” “You’re going to be my traffic cop and my rabbi, she told Sullivan, adding that he would be her de facto chief strategist.”

Sullivan was included in “every aspect of her campaign strategy,” they wrote, because “no one on the official campaign staff understood Hillary’s thought process as well as Sullivan.”

Now serving in the White House as President Biden’s national security adviser, Sullivan has denied under oath knowing details about the dossier project.

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Clinton Campaign Manager Robby Mook (with Director of Communications Jennifer Palmieri, rear) went in front of cameras to echo essentially what Steele had reported back to the campaign. (Credit: The Associated Press)

Sullivan spread the anti-Trump rumors behind the scenes while Clinton Campaign Manager Robby Mook went in front of the cameras to echo essentially what Steele, a former British intelligence officer, had reported back to the campaign.

“Experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump,” Mook told CNN’s Jake Tapper at the convention. He made the same allegations on ABC News’ “This Week,” anchored by George Stephanopoulos, who served as White House communication director during Bill Clinton’s presidency..

Hillary Clinton campaign Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri has acknowledged that they were all bent on casting a “cloud” of suspicion over Trump and seeding doubt about his loyalties by suggesting “the possibility of collusion between Trump’s allies and Russian intelligence.”

“We were on a mission to get the press to focus on the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton,” Palmieri stated in a 2017 Washington Post column. “We wanted to raise the alarm.”

It’s not known if their media blitz was coordinated with Glenn Simpson, the Clinton campaign’s opposition-research contractor who hired Steele for $168,000. But Simpson also attended the convention in Philadelphia, and at the same time Clinton’s top people were making the TV media rounds, Simpson and his Fusion GPS co-founder, Peter Fritsch, were meeting with the New York Times and other major print media outlets to pitch Russia “collusion” stories, focusing primarily on Manafort. Bad publicity from the planted stories would later pressure Trump to dump Manafort as his campaign manager.

That same week, Simpson worked with ABC News correspondent Brian Ross on a since-debunked story framing Trump supporter Sergei Millian as a Russian spy. Simpson also told Ross that Trump was involved in shady business deals in Moscow. Simpson set up Ross’ interview with Millian through ABC producer Matthew Mosk, an old Simpson friend.

Then in September 2016, ABC’s “Good Morning America,” which is co-hosted by Stephanopoulos, aired parts of the Millian report. Later that day, Hillary Clinton tweeted out a campaign video incorporating heavily edited quotes from Millian and suggesting they were more evidence Trump was “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” Above the video she posted on Sept. 22, Clinton personally tweeted: “The man who could be your next president may be deeply indebted to another country. Do you trust him to run ours?”

In effect, Clinton broadcast to her millions of followers a story her campaign had helped manufacture through a paid contractor.

(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Igor Danchenko: Clinton amplified his dossier falsehood about Sergei Millian as a key source. (Credit: The Associated Press)

Durham’s ongoing investigation has found that core parts of the dossier were fabricated and falsely attributed to Millian as their source, including the foundational claim of a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Russia and Trump. Durham reported that Steele’s main collector of information – onetime Brookings Institution analyst Igor Danchenko – never even spoke with Millian, as he had claimed, but simply made up the source of the most explosive information in the dossier.

sergeimillian.com

Sergei Millian: Danchenko never even spoke with him, Durham charges. (Credit: sergeimillian.com)

Durham recently indicted Danchenko for lying to the FBI about Millian.

The day after Clinton’s false tweet about Millian and Trump, her campaign released a statement by senior national spokesman Glen Caplin touting a “new bombshell report” by Yahoo News that revealed the FBI was investigating “Trump’s foreign policy adviser” for suspected links to the Kremlin.

“It’s chilling to learn that U.S. intelligence officials are conducting a probe into suspected meetings between Trump’s foreign policy adviser Carter Page and members of Putin’s inner circle while in Moscow,” according to the statement, which attached the Sept. 23, 2016, Yahoo article in full and noted the report came on the heels of ABC’s story about Millian.

“Just one day after we learned about Trump’s hundreds of millions of dollars in undisclosed Russian business interests,” Caplin’s statement continued, “this report suggests Page met with a sanctioned top Russian official to discuss the possibility of ending U.S. sanctions against Russia under a Trump presidency – an action that could directly enrich both Trump and Page while undermining American interests.”

“We’ve never seen anything like this in American politics,” the Clinton campaign statement added with alarm. “Every day seems to cast new doubts on what’s truly driving Donald Trump’s decision-making.”

But the Yahoo story about Page’s nefarious Kremlin meetings was apocryphal. Its main source was Steele, whose identity was hidden in the story. Yahoo reporter Michael Isikoff had interviewed Steele in a room at a Washington inn booked by Simpson. The FBI nonetheless cited the article to support its applications to a secret federal court for authority to spy on Page, claiming it corroborated the dossier’s allegations, even though they were one and the same.

Here again, Clinton’s team hyped as a “bombshell” Trump-Russia revelation a media report that it helped craft from opposition research it commissioned and from FBI interest it generated. All of this was hidden from voters.

alfabank.com

The Clinton campaign planted the allegation of a “secret hotline” to Putin through a Russia-based bank. (Credit: alfabank.com)

It was also in September that then-Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann planted at FBI headquarters the manufactured allegation that Trump had set up a “secret hotline” to Putin through Russia-based Alfa Bank. Steele had filed a campaign report about the bank’s ties to Putin around the same time.

perkinscoie.com

Michael Sussmann: This Clinton lawyer connected Trump with Alfa Bank, and the candidate echoed the charge with a tweet that went viral. perkinscoie.com

Durham last year indicted Sussmann for lying to the FBI, detailing how the lawyer and Simpson had collaborated with a team of anti-Trump, pro-Clinton computer researchers to draft a technical report for the FBI and media allegedly connecting Trump to Alfa Bank through email servers. Simpson, in turn, worked with Slate reporter Franklin Foer to craft a story propagating the allegation, even reviewing his piece in advance of publication.

Foer’s story broke on Oct. 31, 2016. That same day, Sullivan hyped the story on Twitter, claiming in a written campaign statement that Trump and the Russians were operating a “secret hotline” through Alfa Bank and speculating “federal authorities” would be investigating “this direct connection between Trump and Russia.” He portrayed the discovery as the work of independent experts — “computer scientists” — without disclosing their connections to the campaign.

“This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow,” Sullivan proclaimed.

‘October Surprise’ That Wasn’t

Clinton teed up that statement in an Oct. 31 tweet of her own, which quickly went viral. She warned voters: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.”

Twitter

October 31, 2016/Twitter

Also that day, Clinton tweeted, “It’s time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia,” while attaching a meme that read: “Donald Trump has a secret server. It was set up to communicate privately with a Putin-tied Russian bank called Alfa Bank.”

At the same time that Simpson was working Slate, he leaked to a friend at the New York Times that the FBI had evidence of the Trump-Alfa link, providing the Times and other friendly media outlets a serious news hook to publish the unfounded rumors on the eve of the November election.

The Alfa smear was meant as an “October surprise” that would rock the Trump campaign and take media focus off the probe of Clinton’s emails, which then-FBI Director James Comey had been pressured by a New York agent to revive in the final week of the campaign. Clinton’s team had even “prepared a video promoting the Trump-Alfa Bank server connection and was poised to make an all-out push through social media,” according to Isikoff and David Corn in their book, “Russian Roulette.” But “that plan was canned,” they wrote because the Oct. 31 Times story noted that the FBI had not been able to corroborate the claims of a cyber-link. The skepticism cooled the media firestorm the campaign had hoped for.

“We had been waiting for the Alfa Bank story to come out,” Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta told Isikoff and Corn. “Then — boom! — it gets smacked down.”

In congressional testimony, Podesta has largely claimed ignorance about the campaign’s opposition-research efforts.

Travis Long/The News & Observer via AP

Marc Elias: A focus of Durham, he briefed Clinton campaign leaders about the Alfa smear, emails show. (Credit: The Associated Press)

In Durham’s indictment of Sussmann for lying to the FBI about his work for the Clinton campaign while feeding them the Alfa Bank story, prosecutors revealed that Sussmann’s partner Marc Elias kept Clinton campaign bigwigs in the loop about the project to manufacture a Trump-Russian bank conspiracy, which the FBI months later completely debunked. Emails obtained by Durham’s investigators show the lawyer had briefed top Clinton campaign officials Sullivan, Palmieri and Mook about the Alfa smear in September 2016. Elias, the campaign’s general counsel, engaged with “individuals acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign to share information about the Russian bank data,” the indictment stated.

Sullivan, who now serves as President Biden’s national security adviser, maintained in December 2017 congressional testimony he didn’t even know that the politically prominent Elias worked for Perkins Coie, a well-known Democratic law firm representing the Clinton campaign. Major media stories from 2016, however, routinely identified Elias as “general counsel for the Clinton campaign” and a “partner at Perkins Coie.”

“To be honest with you, Marc wears a tremendous number of hats, so I wasn’t sure who he was representing,” Sullivan testified. “I sort of thought he was, you know, just talking to us as, you know, a fellow traveler in this – in this campaign effort.”

Veteran FBI investigators doubt Sullivan or his boss were in the dark about the campaign-funded work of Elias, Sussmann, Simpson or Steele and other campaign operations designed to make Trump look compromised by a foreign adversary.

“Durham is telling us that this Alfa Bank hoax – and probably related matters – were Clinton campaign ops at the very highest level,” former FBI counterintelligence agent and lawyer Mark Wauck noted. “How credible is it to suppose that Hillary herself wasn’t in the know?”

Durham’s investigators have been questioning Elias under subpoena. A new court filing in the Sussmann case reveals that Elias has given testimony before a criminal grand jury impaneled by Durham in Washington, D.C.

Grand jury testimony is sealed and it’s not known what Elias told prosecutors. But In 2017, he testified in a closed-door session of Congress that Mook was his campaign contact for opposition-research projects, including the dossier. “I consulted with Robby Mook, who was campaign manager,” he said, noting that Mook handled budget matters and signed off on opposition-research expenses billed by Perkins Coie, which totaled more than $1.2 million.

While Mook has not been questioned under oath on the Hill, he told CNN: “I didn’t know that we were paying the contractor that created that document.”

“What I’ve known [about the dossier] is what I’ve read in the press,” he claimed. Mook said he doesn’t recall seeing the dossier memos during the campaign. “I just can’t attribute to what piece of information, you know, came to us at one time or where it came from, frankly. You know, as campaign manager, there’s a lot going on.”

Mook added that he wasn’t sure who was gathering the information for the dossier: “I don’t know the answer to that. … I wish we paid more attention to it on the campaign.”

Elias Met Simpson Often

In his testimony, Elias said he met with Simpson and other Fusion GPS researchers at least 20 times and Steele at least once during the campaign. He said he would receive written reports from them and direct them to find certain information. He, in turn, would travel each week to Clinton campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y., to report what he had learned about Trump and Russia.

(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Glenn Simpson: Clinton lawyer Elias said he met with him and other Fusion GPS researchers at least 20 times. (Credit: The Associated Press)

However, Elias insisted he left his interlocutors in the dark about the sources of that information, for which the campaign was paying him in excess of $1 million. He also insisted he didn’t tell his campaign contacts about his meetings with Steele or Simpson, despite billing the campaign for such consultations, and never shared the dossier reports or other materials they generated with those Clinton officials. Elias even maintained that he hired Fusion GPS on his own without consulting with Mook or the campaign. “I was the gatekeeper,” he said, between the research contractors and the campaign.

According to “Russian Roulette,” however, Elias shared the findings of Steele’s memos with at least Mook. “Elias would at times brief Mook on their contents,” Isikoff and Corn wrote.

Podesta has testified that he, too, had no idea Steele and Fusion GPS were on the campaign’s payroll and didn’t read the dossier until BuzzFeed posted it online after the election.

Under oath, Podesta denied speaking with Clinton about the dossier even after the election: “I don’t know that I’ve ever discussed the dossier with Mrs. Clinton.” He also swore Clinton never talked to him about opposition research, in general, or who the campaign might hire to conduct it.

The campaign’s in-house opposition research team, led by chief researcher Christina Reynolds, was under the direction of Palmieri, the head of communications who is close to Clinton.

CBS

Brian Fallon, ex-campaign spokesman: “She may have known [about the dossier and its financing before the election], but the degree of exactly what she knew is beyond my knowledge.” (Credit: CBS)

Former Bill Clinton political strategist Doug Schoen said it stretches credulity to suggest that top officials in the Clinton camp, including the candidate herself, weren’t fully aware of the research their campaign attorney was billing them for.

“With more than 380 payments from the Clinton campaign and the DNC being made to Perkins Coie, it is seemingly impossible that the candidate herself would not have direct knowledge of the purpose of those payments or any earmarks being made, especially those for Fusion GPS,” Schoen said.

Quoting unnamed Clinton surrogates, both the New York Times and CNN have reported that the candidate was unaware of the dossier prior to BuzzFeed publishing it two months after the 2016 election. Former Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told CNN in a separate interview she may not have been totally out of the loop, however. “She may have known [about the dossier and its financing before the election],” he said, “but the degree of exactly what she knew is beyond my knowledge.”

A senior congressional investigator who insisted on anonymity said the denials are hard to believe and described them as an effort to insulate Clinton from a major undertaking of her campaign that has proved scandalous, if not criminal.  “The biggest lie is Hillary didn’t know about any of this oppo stuff even though she tweeted about it!” he said.

AP Photo/John Locher, File

Walled off from her campaign’s oppo research? She seemed to cite dossier falsehoods in the debates. (Credit: The Associated Press)

Clinton also appeared to cite dossier disinformation in the presidential debates, casting further doubt on claims she was walled off from such opposition research. In the final debate, for example, Clinton accused Trump of being Putin’s “puppet” and accepting his “help” in sabotaging her campaign, drawing conclusions similar to ones made in the dossier. She claimed Trump did what the dossier falsely claimed he did — conspiring with the Russian government to hack her campaign and steal emails — though she allegedly never read Steele’s reports.

“You encouraged espionage against our people,” Clinton said on Oct. 19, 2016.

Durham Inching Closer

With each new indictment and court filing, Clinton inches closer to the center of the special prosecutor’s investigation, now in its third year.

Durham indicated in a recently filed court document that he is actively investigating the Clinton campaign and seeks to question its top officials. His office declined to say whether it intended to question Clinton herself.

(Departamento de Justicia de Estados Unidos vía AP, Archiva)

John Durham: His indictments make clear that the Clinton campaign’s influence on the contents of the dossier was much deeper than previously known. (Credit: The Associated Press)

Durham’s recent indictments of Sussmann and subcontractor Danchenko implicate key campaign figures and make clear that the Clinton campaign’s influence on the contents of the dossier was much deeper than previously known.

For instance, Durham found that a longtime Clinton insider and campaign adviser — Charles Dolan — was a key source for the dossier and most likely originated the false “pee tape” rumor involving Trump and Moscow prostitutes. It seems likely that he acted as an intermediary between the campaign and Steele’s primary sub-source, Danchenko, with whom he communicated. In 2016, Dolan “actively campaigned and participated in calls and events as a volunteer on behalf of Hillary Clinton,” according to the Danchenko indictment.

In other words, the Clinton campaign not only funded the Russia dirt on Trump but provided some of the actual sourcing for it. Campaign operatives, in turn, laundered the dirt through the FBI and into the mainstream media to damage Trump.

In a related filing in the Danchenko case, Durham noted that his “areas of inquiry” include investigating “the extent to which the Clinton campaign and/or its representatives directed, solicited or controlled the defendant’s [Danchenko’s] activities” surrounding the dossier. He also indicated prosecutors want to find out whether the campaign knew Danchenko and Steele were funneling false information to the FBI, and intend to summon “multiple former employees of the campaign” as trial or grand jury witnesses.

In the Sussmann case, Durham’s agents have already questioned one “former employee of the Clinton campaign” and subpoenaed Clinton campaign records, according to a new document filed by Durham earlier this week.

Sources familiar with his probe say Durham ultimately is investigating the Clinton campaign for, among other things, alleged conspiracy to defraud the FBI, the Justice Department and the Pentagon’s research arm, which provided funding and sensitive Internet logs to Clinton operatives who helped fabricate the Alfa Bank hoax.

Danchenko and the Clinton campaign, including Podesta and other officials, happen to share the same D.C. law firm – Schertler & Onorato – which gives the appearance that the Clinton campaign and the main source of the dossier have entered into a joint defense. Durham warned the court that the arrangement poses a conflict of interest.

Podesta’s attorney, Bob Trout, did not respond to requests for comment. Trout also represents other ex-campaign officials who recently retained him in matters before Durham.

Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, who practices at the Washington-based firm Williams & Connolly, did not reply to requests for comment.

J.D. Gordon, who held a position roughly equivalent to Sullivan’s on the 2016 Trump campaign, said in an interview that he hopes Durham adds Sullivan and other Clinton aides to his criminal investigation, “if he hasn’t already.”

He suspects Sullivan was “the Russiagate hoax mastermind” and hopes that he and other members of Clinton’s 2016 team — as well as the candidate herself — are subpoenaed for testimony and document production just as he and other Trump advisers were targeted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, based almost entirely on rumors started by the Clinton machine. He called the Clinton-funded smears “depraved” and “nationally destabilizing.”

“In addition to outright surveillance via the fraudulent FISA warrant against Carter Page, many of us were hit with federal and congressional subpoenas, subjected to grueling Senate and House investigations, special counsel interrogations and resulting harsh media spotlight,” he said. “I appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senate Judiciary Committee, House Intelligence Committee and produced requested documents to the House Judiciary Committee. Three times I was summoned before the special counsel, the first of which in August 2017 was apparently leaked to the Washington Post.”

Gordon is not alone in his desire to see Clinton held to account. Among those Americans aware of the Durham probe, fully 60% think the special counsel should question Clinton about her role in the dossier and other campaign foul play, according to a recent national poll by TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics. Broken down by political affiliation, 80% of Republicans, 44% of Democrats and 74% of independent voters agree that Clinton should be interviewed by investigators.

What happened more than five years ago may have renewed relevance: Some Democratic strategists speculate that Clinton is eyeing another run at the White House. As Vice President Kamala Harris’ popularity wanes and her shot at becoming the first female president slips, they say Clinton may see an opening.

“I will never be out of the game of politics,” Clinton told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in October.

This and all other original articles created by RealClearInvestigations may be republished for free with attribution. 

(RealClearInvestigations, 1/27/2022)  (Archive)

[Timeline editor’s note – A member of our team noted an even earlier date tying Podesta to Russia, Russia, Russia:

On 12/21/15, Podesta emails with Brent Budowsky, contributor to “The Hill” and “The Huffington Post”, Budowsky suggests to John in a manner which seems to show it is part of an ongoing conversation between the two that the “best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin.”

Mind you, the Wikileaks drops and “Russia Russia Russia” were still some seven months away.

Going back even earlier we have the “Pied Piper” email of 4/7/15 from Podesta to the DNC outlining the campaign’s plans for how to deal with any GOP candidate in general, and specific “weak points” to attack in specific potential candidates.

Their intent from the beginning was to make any candidate seem soooo far to the right that they would be a) easy to smear, and that b) Hillary would appear closer the the “middle” and thus more palatable to more voters. The Pied Piper would lead the “rats” astray for them. Of course with the help of smears.

Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Donald Trump were their top three most likely, but Podesta expressed the intent would be the same for any candidate nominated.

They intended from the beginning to color any candidate as weak with minorities. We know now that would have meant them calling ANY candidate a racist.

These are two of the most important drops for providing the background to all that was to come.

I’m sure they had a “dirt file” on every candidate with which to attempt to smear them. But they got Trump and went with the Russia angle, just as we see suggested almost a year before by Budowsky to Podesta.

She. Knew. Everything. All. Along.]

January 31, 2022 – New memo reveals senior State officials praised Ukraine Prosecutor General Shokin, months before VP Biden demanded his firing

Joe Biden and Viktor Shokin (Credit: public domain)

(…) During former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial two years ago, House Democrats alleged that Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was fired in March 2016 because State officials were widely displeased with his anti-corruption efforts and not because Shokin’s office was investigating the Ukrainian gas firm that had given then-Vice President Biden’s son Hunter a lucrative job.

But the memos obtained by Just the News and the Southeastern Legal Foundation under a Freedom of Information Act request show senior State Department officials — including then-Secretary of State John Kerry — were sending the opposite message to Shokin the summer before his firing.

“We have been impressed with the ambitious reform and anti-corruption agenda of your government,” then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland personally wrote Shokin in an official letter dated June 9, 2015 that was delivered to the prosecutor two days later by then-U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt.

Nuland, now President Biden’s undersecretary of state, wrote that “Secretary Kerry asked me to reply on his behalf” to let Shokin know he enjoyed the full support of the United States as he set out to fight endemic corruption in the former Soviet republic.

“The ongoing reform of your office, law enforcement, and the judiciary will enable you to investigate and prosecute corruption and other crimes in an effective, fair, and transparent manner,” Nuland added. “The United States fully supports your government’s efforts to fight corruption and other crimes in an effective, fair and transparent manner.” File

The letter stands out, according to Republican congressional investigators and Trump’s former impeachment defense lawyers, because it was sent just six months before Joe Biden began his pressure campaign to oust Shokin in December 2015 and appears to conflict with testimony given to Congress.

They also told Just the News they have no record the memo was produced to Trump’s impeachment defense team or to a Senate investigation that concluded the Bidens’ business dealings in Ukraine created a conflict of interest that undercut U.S. anti-corruption efforts. (Read more: Just the News, 2/01/2022)  (Archive)

February 8, 2022 – New evidence shows Fed gov colluded with Fusion GPS to frame Trump

(…) A document uncovered in a court case in D.C. with Fusion GPS shows that the company was working on nearly every piece of information eventually used by the Mueller gang to take down President Trump.  (Link to court documents.)

The below documents were provided to the courts in the above case where the defendants were suing Fusion GPS for libel.

This second document provides similar data along with the dollar values of their projects totaling more than $1 million.

We learned from the inventory of Fusion GPS projects that they were involved with Crowdstrike who was first reported as the experts claiming Russia had stolen the DNC’s emails back in 2016.  This lie was kept in place by the Mueller gang for years as the excuse to look into the Trump – Russia collusion.

Fusion GPS was involved in the Alfa Bank story that turned out to be a lie, the Carter Page story that was a lie since Page was working for the CIA, the Paul Manafort story, and the Papadopoulos story.  All of these stories and individuals were used by the DOJ and the Mueller gang as a means to harass and attempt to have President Trump removed from office.  Every one.

Fusion GPS also lists as projects, the “Trump kids”.   (Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 2/o8/2022)  (Archive)

February 11, 2022 – The CIA collected info on President Trump

“On Friday, Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion relating to a defense firm’s potential conflict of interest in the Michael Sussmann case. The conflict itself is certainly intriguing, with Sussmann’s lawyers at Latham & Watkins LLP (Latham) having represented potential witnesses in the case, including Perkins Coie, former Perkins Coie (and Clinton Campaign general counsel) Marc Elias, the Hillary Clinton Campaign, and Hillary for America.

The issue that made more noise, however, was Durham’s disclosure that Rodney Joffe – a contractor with deep ties to the Clintons, and what appears to be a deep hatred for Trump – had exploited Executive Office of the President of the United States data he obtained from a “sensitive arrangement” with the U.S. Government to damage President Trump. Here is our initial post on the topic.

And here is the talented Lee Smith providing a great explanation on Tucker:

Yet the data from the Executive Office of the President wasn’t all that Joffe had obtained. He also collected domain name system (DNS) internet traffic pertaining to a healthcare provider; Trump Tower; and Trump’s Central Park West apartment building.

Yesterday, February 14, Sussmann’s attorney’s disputed the Durham filing – to an extent. They said Sussmann provided the CIA with Executive Office of the President data from “when Barack Obama was president.”

(…) According to Durham, Joffe and his associates manipulated that data to make it seem like Trump, and those in Trump’s world, had suspicious interactions with internet protocol (IP) addresses affiliated with a Russian mobile phone provider. They then combined those allegations with the Alfa Bank hoax materials (the subject of Sussmann’s Fall 2016 meeting with then-FBI General Counsel James Baker).

This damaging information, purporting to demonstrate at least circumstantial evidence of Trump/Russia collusion, was presented on February 9, 2017 to what Durham describes as U.S. Government “Agency-2.”

That agency was the CIA. We know for sure that Sussmann met with the CIA General Counsel. We learned in January 2022 that, if Sussmann is to be believed, there were two other CIA employees at that meeting.

In other words, a Clinton supporting contractor (Joffe) obtained sensitive information (perhaps unlawfully) about the Office of the President of the United States (Trump), manipulated the information, passed it to a DNC/Clinton lawyer (Sussmann), who then delivered it to the CIA.” (Read more: Techno Fog/Substack, 2/15/2022)  (Archive)

February 11, 2022 – Unredacted Mueller Report docs reveal he considered charging Donald Trump Jr. and Roger Stone

Robert Mueller (Credit: Larry Downing/Reuters)

“The Department of Justice released a new version of the Mueller report Friday afternoon that reveals for the first time that former special counsel Robert Mueller considered charging Donald Trump Jr. with a misdemeanor “computer intrusion” crime for accessing an anti-Trump website using a password he obtained from WikiLeaks.

The new version of the report on Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election also said that Mueller declined, citing insufficient evidence, to charge the political operative Roger Stone with crimes related to the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers and email accounts. And the report “did not establish” that the Trump campaign’s then-director of national security, JD Gordon, was acting as an agent of Russia when he arranged for changes to the Republican platform during the 2016 convention.

The new version of the Mueller report contains nearly a dozen new unredacted passages and was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by BuzzFeed News in 2019. The lawsuit sought portions of the report that would reveal the identities of people Mueller considered charging and whose names were originally redacted. A lower court ruled against BuzzFeed News, which appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit last year. Today’s release marks the third time BuzzFeed News has forced the Justice Department to unredact portions of the 448-page report.

February 11, 2022 – New Durham filing: Rodney Joffe monitored Trump’s internet traffic and exploited the Executive Office of the President

More from Techno Fog:

Kash Patel:

No photo description available.

February 11, 2022 – Hillary ramps up public appearances and fans can pre-order a cool “dad hat” with the words “But Her Emails” for just $30

“Hillary Clinton is ramping up her public appearances ahead of the 2022 midterm elections as President Joe Biden’s popularity continues to plummet, even among Democratic voters.

Next week, for example, the twice-failed presidential candidate is expected to speak at the New York State Democratic Party Convention. Clinton, who used to command public speaking fees of more than $200,000 per hour, will address party leaders at the Sheraton Hotel in Times Square, according to CNBC.

Next month, Hillary will celebrate International Women’s Day by hosting a live virtual event with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and “other special guests to be announced.” She also recently touted some new merchandise available for purchase on the website of her political action committee, Onward Together.

For just $30, Hillary fans can pre-order a cool “dad hat” with the words “But Her Emails” printed on it, a reference to the catchphrase that was briefly popular among left-wing social media users circa 2016. (Read more: Washington Free Beacon, 2/11/2022)  (Archive)

“Due to high demand” – Bwahahaha!

February 11, 2022 – Durham motion to investigate a conflict with Sussmann’s attorney, Latham & Watkins, could be about their top attorney, Kathryn Ruemmler, Obama’s “fixer”

(…) When I wrote about the Durham motion to investigate potential conflicts of interest between Michael Sussmann and his attorney, the law firm of Latham & Watkins, I focused on the core point, which was that Hillary’s campaign, acting through the Perkins Coie law firm, spied on Trump.  Bongino, though, had a few more subtle points to make.  You can watch his video here, of course, but here are the two main takeaways:

First, I  missed something very important in Durham’s motion.  Here’s what Durham wrote at paragraph 5: “The Government’s evidence at trial will also establish that among the Internet data Tech Executive-1 and his associates exploited was domain name system (DNS) Internet traffic pertaining to …”

What Bongino caught is that Durham wrote “among the Internet data … was domain name system … Internet traffic.”  That strongly implies that DNS information, which simply means sites accessed, isn’t the only information involved.  It’s possible that Durham can show that there are other internet data that the Hillary camp exploited, things such as emails or shared documents.

Kathryn Ruemmler hugs Obama following a Supreme Court victory. (Credit: public domain)

Second, Bongino thinks the real bombshell in this is that Durham is warning Sussmann that Latham & Watkins is a very dangerous law firm to have representing him.  The reason is that one of the top Latham & Watkins attorneys is a gal named Kathryn Ruemmler or, as Bongino calls her, “The Fixer.”  He points out that Ruemmler has her finger in every single corrupt pie baked during the Obama administration.

Before moving to Latham & Watkins, Ruemmler was Obama’s White House counsel and ran interference for him.  But before that, she worked on the Enron case with Andrew Weissmann, the man who really ran the Mueller “investigation.”

After leaving the White House, Ruemmler represented George Nader, a convicted pedophile who set up meetings between Trump people and representatives of the United Arab Emirates.  He eventually pleaded guilty to having helped the UAE put millions of dollars illegally into Hillary’s 2016 presidential campaign.  Ruemmler also represented Susan Rice.  Rice was the one who sent a memo to self on her last day in the White House assuring posterity that, when the Obama administration was spying on people, it was doing everything “by the book.”

Bongino believes that both Obama and, probably, Biden knew about the spying.  Ruemmler’s job, as always, will be to keep Obama clean.  As a power partner at Latham & Watkins, she can be expected to force the “Sacrifice of Sussmann,” if need be. (Read more: American Thinker, 2/16/2022)  (Archive)

February 14, 2022 – Ukrainian ultra-nationalists add former diplomat, Andrii Telizhenko to a potential target list due to his knowledge of Clinton and Biden criminal networks in Ukraine

“A Ukrainian former diplomat who exposed corrupt Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden networks, and who warned Americans about a Russian agent of influence, is now on what appears to be an assassination list.

After working for years with the Obama White House and a Clinton-aligned lobbying firm working for the Burisma gas company, Andrii Telizhenko became a source for Senate Republicans in 2019-2020.  He helped expose some of Hunter Biden’s corrupt dealings in Ukraine and their dangers to American national security policy.

Telizhenko had been one of many witnesses who provided evidence to joint Senate committee investigation of Hunter Biden, the Burisma gas company, and corruption impacting US government policy.

Telizhenko’s revelations prompted Senate Democrats to accuse him of being a Russian disinformation agent, and ultimately for partisan bureaucrats to trick the Trump Administration into sanctioning him as a Russian asset in the last days before Biden took office. Two of Telizhenko’s accusers, Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) pushed the Russian disinformation in the discredited Steele Dossier.

Telizhenko, left, enters a meeting with then-Senator Bob Corker, center; and at right, President Obama’s ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, just weeks after the ouster of Yanukovych. (Credit: public domain)

Now that wrongful partisan action was used to put Telizhenko on what many Ukrainians consider a kill list.

The list appears on a website that Ukrainian ultranationalists use to dox and track people they consider pro-Russian. Ukrainians understand it to be a kill list in the event of armed conflict with Russia.

(…) Telizhenko fell afoul of Democrat partisans in the US Treasury and State Department bureaucracies after he began exposing Hillary Clinton’s corrupt networks relating to Ukraine, and to Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian gas company.

He said he learned of the networks between 2013 and 2019 while serving as a Ukrainian diplomat, working with the Obama White House and the office of then-vice president Joe Biden, and State Department; and working for a Clinton-affiliated lobbying group called Blue Star Strategies. The lobby shop had a contract with Burisma while he was a contractor there.

Telizhenko was one of many witnesses who helped a joint investigation by the Senate Homeland Security Committee and Finance Committee, chaired at the time by Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA).  Democrat defense of then-candidate Joe Biden caused the Republicans under Johnson and Grassley to issue their own staff report, which discussed Telizhenko’s testimony and email and WhatsApp messages he produced as evidence.

Democrats were fine with Telizhenko until he exposed Hunter Biden. Then they called him a Russian agent.

“The Obama administration and the Democrat lobby shop Blue Star Strategies had consistent and extensive contact with Andrii Telizhenko over a period of years,” the Johnson-Grassley report said.

Telizhenko told me that his involvement with the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s team began in 2013, during the Revolution to overthrow the pro-Putin regime of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. He said he was coordinator of international relations for the Maidan movement and worked with the US Embassy in Kyiv between 2010-2014 to remove Yanukovych and his government.

“Yet despite these well-documented contacts with Democratic officials, Democrats have attempted to impugn this investigation for having received some Blue Star-related records from him. … Democrats have claimed that Telizhenko is involved in a Russian disinformation campaign,” according to the senators’ staff report.

“In doing so, they conveniently have ignored their own long history of meeting with Telizhenko and his year-long for a Democrat lobby shop. If Democrats are concerned that Telizhenko presents any risk of advancing disinformation, it is notable that the Ranking Members [Democrat Senators Gary Peters (D-MI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR)] have not expressed any curiosity about his work with the Obama administration or Blue Star Strategies.” (Read more: Center for Security Policy, 2/14/2022)  (Archive)

February 2022 – Swedish telecom, Ericsson, who controls America’s connection to Emergency Services, admits they funded and bribed ISIS in Iraq

When you dial out to 911…

Your phones connection needs to be ported over to Emergency Services – Fire, Police, EMS etc.

The company controlling that process is Ericsson.

In Feb 2022 their CEO admitted that Ericsson funded & bribed ISIS from 2000-2017.

So how’d we get here?Image

In 2019 the Justice Dept fined Ericsson $1B to resolve the government’s investigation into violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

I’ll highlight some salacious points but you should really read the whole thing. It’s pretty unbelievable.

“Ericsson’s corrupt conduct involved high-level executives and spanned 17 years and at least five countries, all in a misguided effort to increase profits,”

This next part is rich…

Ericsson “agreed to the imposition of an independent compliance monitor.”Image

Investigation or Coverup?

The $1B in total charges include a criminal penalty of more than $520 million, plus $540 million to be paid to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a related matter.

– SDNY
– SEC
– IRS
– Law Enforcement authorities in Sweden…Image

The SEC to Ericsson on September 29th, 2010…

“As you know, Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria are countries that are identified by the U.S. Department of State as state sponsors of terrorism, and are subject to U.S. economic sanctions and export controls.”

sec.gov/Archives/edgar…Image

In 2009-10, Ericsson was in hot water w Hillary Clinton’s State Department for trading with an enemy state in Iran.

“We are not going to broaden sanctions on Iran to include Technologies like Telecom.

We’re going to rely and expect companies like Ericsson to police themselves.” 

NOV 28, 2010
The US diplomatic cables leak, widely known as Cablegate part of a series known as PlusD.DEC 1, 2010
Amazon kicks WikiLeaks off of their servers.DEC 2, 2010
INTERPOL Office in Gothenburg, Sweden issues fresh arrest warrant for @wikileaks founder Julian AssangeImageImage
DEC 3, 2010
US blocks access to WikiLeaks for federal workersThe Clinton Foundation’s outpost in Stockholm, Sweden received nearly 270 million Swedish crowns, or $30 million, since it was established in 2011, while Clinton was still secretary of state.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/0…ImageImageImage

“Sweden blocked an effort by other EU states to add two telecoms firms in Syria with commercial links to Swedish firm Ericsson”

Telecoms control the Airwaves and the only Telecom allowed to do business with Terrorists and get away with it is Ericsson…

Joe Biden: “Julian Assange is a high tech terrorist”

Julian Assange is a hero and he needs our support now more than ever…

Oct 21, 2011
Barack Obama announces total withdrawal of US troops from IraqOn this occasion there would be no redrawing of lines in the sand… Obama had to “keep his promises”.President says ‘America’s war in Iraq will be over’

ISIS faded into obscurity for several years after the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq in 2007.

It began to reemerge in 2011. Over the next few years, it took advantage of growing instability in Iraq & Syria to carry out attacks & bolster its ranks.

With Ericsson’s help of course!Image

April 23, 2012
Executive Order — Blocking the Property and Suspending Entry into the United States of Certain Persons with Respect to Grave Human Rights Abuses by the Governments of Iran and Syria via Information TechnologyEricsson avoids sanctions…

So let’s recap…

Since 2008, Ericsson is known to be trading with an enemy state in Iran.

The SEC knew.

The State Department knew.

U.S. authorities knew because Ericsson was cooperating in 2013.Image

In 2013, the FCC put the Local Number Portability Administrator contract up for bid.

Neustar and Telcordia (Ericsson) were the only two bidders.

One concern was that the FCC didn’t include national security requirements in the initial bid process…

Let that sink in…

The Government knew what Ericsson was up to and they chose to ignore it or defer action.

AND THE FCC DID NOT INCLUDE NATIONAL SECURITY REQUIREMENTS in the initial bid process?!Image

“Evidence emerged several months ago that Telcordia had improperly used a small number of foreign nationals, including one Chinese citizen, to do computer coding for early work on the system after Telcordia was given preliminary approval for the job.”

nytimes.com/2016/07/22/bus…ImageImage

Crazy as it seems… It’s all connected.

Representing Neustar and Rodney Joffe before the FCC “against” Telcordia (Ericsson)?

Indicted Perkins Coie Attorney Michael Sussman…

web.archive.org/web/2017031616…ImageImage

Also working on Neustar’s behalf is Hogan Lovells, Inc.

See my notes on that star studded cast of misfits…

The Clinton Email investigation started in the EDNY where Telcordia is… Then was moved to the SDNY.

So how corrupt is the SDNY?ImageImage

SDNY – Weiner evidence collection
SDNY – Clinton Foundation Investigation
SDNY – Epstein evidence collection
SDNY – Ghislaine Maxwell Case
SDNY – Trump Tax Returns
SDNY – SEC v Ripple LabsObama made the appointment of Allison Nathan upon the recommendation of sen. Chuck SchumerImage
IJIC Leak from February
icij.org/investigations…From a few days ago…”Iran seeks tech in Sweden for nuclear weapons”

So Ericsson supports Terrorism and controls our Numbers Portability Contract…

Pretty alarming…

Find out how we plan to use this information to hold people in positions of power accountable through PLVS VLTRA Action Reports through the links below:Image

There’s a lot more connections to Joffe and Sussman that I’ll be revealing in the coming days…

We have a lot of work to do, please consider joining us through plvsvltra.org.

Telegram & Twitter link provided below. 

Confirmed by Ron Wyden on December 15th, 2022…

(Michael Rae Khoury @Vltra_MK/Twitter, 3/04/2022) (Archive)

February 14, 2022 – Page 119 of the 2019 DOJ OIG FISA report says the FBI debunked Alpha Bank claims by early February 2017

Page 119 has been “intentionally left blank” until now…

(Timeline editor’s note: Page 119 in the IG FISA report is blank, so we’re curious if it was released or leaked to Ms. Herridge. Also, oddly, Ms. Herridge works for CBS News and there are no available reports about this story on their website. It’s also suggested that Ms. Herridge has been tweeting about additional notes regarding Durham’s latest filing and Page 119 could part of that.)

February 16, 2022 – Clintonworld member, Marc Elias, takes over Black Lives Matter

“Black Lives Matter filings reveal prominent Democratic lawyer Marc Elias and another longtime ally of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have taken on key roles in the charity amid scrutiny over its leadership and finances.

Elias, best known for his funding of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited anti-Trump dossier while he served as Clinton’s 2016 campaign general counsel, appears to be representing the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation through his recently formed Elias Law Group. BLM’s national organization repeatedly lists the Elias firm as one of its addresses and states in its short-year 2020 Form 990 that its books were now in the care of the Elias Law Group.

Additionally, Minyon Moore, a longtime top ally of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, is now listed as part of BLM’s board of directors in the charity’s filings.

It’s not clear when BLM’s relationships with Elias Law Group and Moore began.

Black Lives Matter filed a charitable organization registration statement earlier this month with the New Mexico attorney general’s office, listing addresses for BLM in Arizona and Oakland, California, but says BLM’s “other address” is “c/o [courtesy of] Elias Law Group” in Washington, D.C.

BLM also filed an annual registration renewal fee report with the California attorney general this month, with the filing saying multiple times that one of its addresses was “c/o Elias Law Group.” The filing also states BLM’s “books are in the care of … the organization” that is “located at … c/o Elias Law Group.”

“The latest filing’s addition of partisan lawyer Marc Elias confirms the group is more political than charitable,” Scott Walter, the president of the Capital Research Center, a conservative investigative nonprofit group, told the Washington Examiner. “But it also suggests that finally some left-wing heavyweights have begun to deal with the embarrassing mess made by a major activist group the institutional Left has failed to, pardon the term, police.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 2/16/2022)  (Archive)

Rosie Memos shares a clue:

February 17, 2022 – Durham says no basis to strike ‘factual background’ from filing, denies intent to ‘politicize’

“Special Counsel John Durham on Thursday said that there is “no basis” to “strike” any part of his recent filing, despite a motion from Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann to do so.

Durham pushed back against claims that his office “intentionally sought to politicize” the case, and instead, defended the “additional factual detail” he included, which he argued is “central to proving” Sussmann’s “alleged criminal conduct.”

(Credit: Fox News)

Sussmann’s legal team on Tuesday filed a motion demanding that the court “strike” portions of Durham’s Feb. 11 filing, including the section titled “Factual Background,” claiming the sections would “taint” the jury pool.

Durham, in a new filing Thursday night, urged the court to “deny the defendant’s motion.”

“As an initial matter, defense counsel has presumed the Government’s bad faith and asserts the Special Counsel’s Office intentionally sought to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool,” Durham’s filing states.

“That is simply not true,” Durham states, noting that his Feb. 11 filing “included two paragraphs of limited additional factual detail in its Motion for valid and straightforward reasons.”

“First, those paragraphs reflect conduct that is intertwined with, and part of, events that are central to proving the defendant’s alleged criminal conduct,” Durham wrote.

“Second, the Government included these paragraphs to apprise the Court of the factual basis for one of the potential conflicts described in the Government’s Motion, namely, that a member of the defense team was working for the Executive Office of the President of the United States (“EOP”) during relevant events that involved the EOP,” Durham wrote.

Durham added: “If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government’s Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government’s inclusion of this information.”

“In light of the above, there is no basis to strike any portion of the Government’s Motion,” Durham wrote, adding that the government intends to file motions in which it will “further discuss these and other pertinent facts to explain why they constitute relevant and admissible evidence at trial.” (Read more: Fox News, 2/17/2022)  (Archive)

Techno Fog writes:

February 17, 2022 – The checkered past of the FBI cyber contractor who ‘spied’ on Trump

Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations

Long before FBI computer contractor and Clinton operative Rodney L. Joffe allegedly trolled Internet traffic for dirt on President Trump, he mined direct-marketing contact lists for the names and addresses of unwitting Americans to target in a promotional scam involving a grandfather clock.

Rodney Joffe: Back in the 1980s, this anti-Trump computer contractor had a mail-order racket that enticed millions — and landed him in trouble. (Credit: LinkedIn)

Not just any clock, mind you, but a “world famous Bentley IX” model, according to postcards his companies mailed out to millions of people in the late 1980s claiming they’d won the clock in a contest they never entered. There was just one hitch: the lucky winners had to send $69.19 in shipping fees to redeem their supposedly five-foot mahogany prize.

Tens of thousands of folks forked over the fees, only to discover the grandfather clock that arrived was nothing as advertised. It was really just a table-top version made of particle board and plastic and worth less than $10. Some assembly was required.

The scheme generated thousands of complaints, sparking federal and state investigations. Joffe and his then-California partner, Linda M. Carella, were eyed by federal postal authorities and several state attorneys general for allegedly operating a multi-state mail-order scheme. Joffe settled several state lawsuits by agreeing to refund hundreds of thousands of dollars mainly to elderly victims, according to several published reports at the time.

Joffe and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment. But in a phone interview, Carella told RealClearInvestigations that Joffe ran the operation. “I was just the secretary, the receptionist,” Carella, 76, said from her home in Florida, where she is now retired. She did say she picked up the returned postcards and checks from mailboxes.

Carella said she quit after the investigation: “I said I don’t want anything more to do with this … I have not seen Rodney since then.” But Joffe pressed on with his direct-mail marketing business before packing up for Arizona a few years later. Federal and state tax lien records reveal Joffe — who also sent out mailers for skin care and other beauty products — owed more than $110,000 in back taxes on his property in Los Angeles in 1995.

A 1988 consumer article in the St. Joseph (Mo.) News-Press citing Joffe’s role in the alleged grandfather clock scam. 

Joffe’s checkered past now has national security ramifications after the South African-born computer expert was outed as a key player in Special Counsel John Durham’s ongoing Russiagate probe. To date he has not been charged with a crime. But in a September indictment of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, and a court filing last week, Durham has suggested that Joffe (identified as “Tech Executive-1”) was at the center of an effort to monitor President Trump’s communications and then share the information with Clinton associates.

Former prosecutor and assistant FBI director Chris Swecker said the credibility issues that cropped up from Joffe’s early career raise questions about how he managed to pass an FBI personal background check and obtain the government’s highest security clearances, although he noted that such background checks were often ridiculed in the bureau as “a joke.” In addition, the federal mail-order probe involving Joffe’s companies might not have raised serious red flags since the case was opened decades earlier and was settled without any charges or judgments against Joffe.

The FBI declined comment.

Another part of the answer as to why Joffe’s past remained buried may involve how successfully he appears to have reinvented himself during the 1990s.

He relocated then to Phoenix from Los Angeles and changed the name of his mass-marketing firm American Computer Group to “Whitehat Data Services.” Instead of targeting consumers, he developed a reputation as a cyber-security expert and, ironically, a champion of consumers battling abusive direct-marketers and spammers.

Perhaps it was a sign of his redemption. But Joffe soon joined the board of PlasmaNet Inc., a marketing network that until recently operated FreeLotto.com, an online sweepstakes game. PlasmaNet has had to pay millions of dollars in fines for deceptive advertising. Echoing the grandfather clock scam, PlasmaNet led consumers to believe they won free prizes when in fact they had to pay $14.99 a month to claim them. RCI has learned that FreeLotto.com was a customer of UltraDNS, an Internet resolution company founded by Joffe. Business incorporation records show Joffe remains a PlasmaNet director.

A decade later, Joffe moved to Washington, where he eventually landed lucrative security-related contracts with the FBI and Pentagon requiring top secret clearance.

In 2006, Joffe joined Neustar Inc., a Beltway computer contractor that, among other things, secures and maintains Internet servers for federal agencies, including the White House. This high-level position gave the alleged former grandfather clock wheedler access to a proprietary archive of Internet traffic records – both public and nonpublic – known as “DNS logs.” These logs reveal the back-and-forth pinging that computers and cellphones generate when they communicate with Internet servers, including ones transmitting emails.

It also put him in the same orbit with political VIPs. Joffe started advising not only FBI brass but White House officials, including President Obama, on cybersecurity matters. By 2016, his access to proprietary internet logs became of interest to operatives for the Hillary Clinton campaign, who appear to have offered him a plum job in a Clinton presidency for help on an opposition-research project against Donald Trump. (Shortly after Clinton’s loss to Trump in November 2016, Joffe said in an email: “I was tentatively offered the top [cybersecurity] job by the Democrats when it looked like they’d win. I definitely would not take the job under Trump.”)

One of those operatives was ex-Clinton attorney Sussmann, indicted by Durham last fall in connection with allegations of lying about his work on the project for the campaign.

In the indictment and recent court filings that widen the case, Durham accused Joffe of exploiting Neustar’s nonpublic data to monitor Trump’s Internet activities even after the 2016 election – through early 2017. He shared the sensitive information with Sussmann, who in turn gave it to the CIA. The prosecutor said Joffe mined data from Trump Tower, Trump’s Central Park West apartment building and even the Executive Office of the President “for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.”

According to court papers, Joffe cherry-picked data to create a “narrative” that Trump was secretly communicating with the Kremlin as part of the Clinton campaign’s effort to make the GOP nominee look like he was compromised by Russia, a foreign adversary. Before the election, Joffe led a team of computer researchers vying for a major Pentagon contract to link Trump to Russian Alfa Bank through private DNS logs. He handed off their findings to Sussmann who fed the data to the FBI to drive an investigation and bad press against Trump.

“The data was highly manipulated,” said Robert Graham of Atlanta-based Errata Security, an independent cyber forensics expert who examined the logs and debunked the link at the time. He suspects Joffe and his biased crew set out to invent a connection between Trump and Russia.

“A link between Trump and Alfa Bank wasn’t something they accidentally found, it was one of the many thousands of links they looked for,” he added. “The purpose was to smear Trump.”

Though Graham as a Clinton supporter shares Joffe’s disdain for Trump, he said the suspicious server data were easily explained as innocent spam traffic. Graham noted that Trump didn’t even have control over the domain in question: trump-email.com. It was created by a hotel marketing firm that inserted Trump’s name in the domain.

“Hints of a Trump-Alfa connection have always been the dishonesty of those who collected the data,” Graham said.

Manos Antonakakis: Joffe’s lead researcher said in an email that “the only thing that drives us is that we just don’t like [Trump].” (Credit: gatech.edu)

Even though Joffe encouraged Sussmann to present the server data to the FBI as possible evidence of foreign espionage, he privately confessed to his reseachers in an August 2016 email obtained by Durham that the host for the trump-email.com domain  “is a legitimate valid [marketing] company” – Boca Raton, Fla.-based Cendyn. “We can ignore it,” Joffe said, “together with others that seem to be part of the marketing world.” He urged his team to keep searching for data that would “give the base of a very useful narrative.”

In previous statements, lawyers for Joffe and the researchers he recruited have said they had no political ax to grind but were monitoring Trump to track a credible national security threat related to Russia. But Joffe’s lead researcher – Manos Antonakakis of the Georgia Institute of Technology – revealed in one email obtained by Durham that “the only thing that drives us is that we just don’t like [Trump].” Other emails, released this week by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act request, show that Antonakakis believed even the most salacious – and debunked – rumors in the Clinton-commissioned Steele dossier.

Recent court filings indicate Durham and his prosecutors aren’t buying their “concerned patriot” defense. Some see a crime in exploiting high-security government contracts for political purposes.

“In my opinion, Joffe is someone who should be indicted and probably will be,” former FBI official Swecker said in an RCI interview.

“As I see it,” Swecker explained, “Joffe, who worked for Neustar at the time, had a contract with either the Executive Office of the President or the [presidential] transition team, and he used information gleaned from his contractual relationship to provide that private information to the Clinton campaign. Depending on the actual facts on the ground, it could constitute mail or wire fraud, and if it were an actual government contract, perhaps fraud against the government – that is, the Executive Office of the President.”

Added Swecker: “There could be other criminal statutes [invoked] as well” — including conspiracy — “but to me, the key issue is his contractual relationship. He also engaged researchers at Georgia Tech who were working on a government contract and being paid by the U.S. government.”

In a public statement, a spokesman for Joffe argued that the then-Neustar executive had authority to mine the White House data: “Under the terms of the contract, the data could be accessed to identify and analyze any security breaches or threats,” including concerns about Russian interference in the election.

Joffe Internet Firms in Durham’s Sights

While not charged with a crime, Joffe, despite being subpoenaed, does not appear to be actively cooperating with Durham’s investigation. He does not show up on a discovery document recently filed by Durham listing people interviewed by investigators or the grand jury. Asked if Joffe has received a target letter, his attorney Steven Tyrrell did not answer. On Twitter, Joffe has removed all his tweets dating back to 2014.

Sources told RCI that Durham’s office is looking closely at Washington-based Neustar – which Joffe left in September following Sussmann’s indictment – and two Internet firms Joffe operated while still working there: Packet Forensics and Vostrom Ventures, both of which are controlled by Vostrom Holdings Inc. and also have offices in the greater Washington area.

Durham’s investigators have interviewed several current and former employees at all three companies, and obtained thousands of pages of subpoenaed documents from them, recent court filings reveal. In September 2016, Sussmann billed Neustar for “communications regarding confidential project,” a reference to Joffe’s mission to find a “secret hotline” between Trump and the Kremlin via Alfa Bank’s servers. That Sussmann billed Neustar for this work suggests a level of involvement by the company that has not been explained.

A month earlier, Joffe had tasked employees at his two small Internet startups to search for any Internet data (including private DNS holdings) reflecting potential connections or communications between Trump or his associates and Russia. Joffe emailed them a five-page dossier – the “Trump Associates List” – to guide their queries. As RCI first reported, the list included highly personal information on Trump campaign advisers Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. Steve Bannon appears to have been added to the list later as another target, the emails released by Judicial Watch reveal.

Packet Forensics reportedly landed a recent Pentagon contract to manage a large chunk of Internet domains owned by the military. The bid was awarded the day Joe Biden was inaugurated president. The massive cyberspace will allow Joffe’s firm to set up dedicated digital infrastructure, including servers and software, to comb through private Internet traffic for the purported purpose of monitoring suspicious activity.

Joffe’s company also sells wiretapping equipment that allows federal authorities to spy on private web-browsing through fake Internet security certificates, instead of real ones that websites employ to verify secure connections. Once installed, Packet’s device lets agents see an individual’s online transactions without obtaining a warrant.

Over the past decade, Packet Forensics has landed almost $40 million in federal contracts, according to publicly disclosed contract information. Joffe’s firm counts the FBI and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, among its customers. The contracts generally involve cybersecurity. Joffe monitors the computers of government officials for threats, including as it turns out, even investigators in the office of Justice Department watchdog Michael Horowitz, recent court filings reveal.

State incorporation records show that Joffe has created more than two dozen startups across 20 states, some of which have no employees, revenue or even offices.

‘Friends in High Places’

Joffe’s second-act success in government seems rooted in a simple fact: “He has friends in high places,” proferred a career Justice Department official. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, pointed out that Joffe personally advised President Obama on cybersecurity and other issues, and was also close to former FBI Director James Comey.

Secret Service entrance logs reveal Joffe visited the White House several times during the Obama administration. And in 2013, Comey gave Joffe an award recognizing his work helping agents investigate a cybersecurity case. Sources told RCI that Joffe has also worked as an FBI informant on various cybersecurity cases opened by the bureau over roughly the past 15 years.

Sussmann’s attorneys have pointed to that acclaim to explain why Sussmann trusted the findings from Joffe he shared with the FBI. “Far from being a stranger to the FBI, [Joffe] was someone with whom the FBI had a long-standing professional relationship of trust and who was one of the world’s leading experts regarding the kinds of information that Mr. Sussmann provided to the FBI,” Sussmann’s lead defense lawyer Sean Berkowitz of Latham & Watkins said in a court filing last year.

A recent court paper filed by Durham in the Sussmann case suggests he may be looking into Joffe’s relationship with the FBI. The document, which discloses information to Sussmann’s lawyers as part of the discovery process, reveals that a criminal grand jury in D.C. has obtained “approximately 226 emails from within the FBI’s holding involving a company founded by [Joffe].” Durham does not identify the company, but sources told RCI it is Packet Forensics. The 226 emails were generated in 2016 alone. All told, the FBI has a total of approximately 17,000 emails that reference Joffe’s company – and those are just from a search of the bureau’s unclassified files.

Durham said that his investigators are “also conducting other searches and communicating with other government agencies regarding [Joffe’s] companies.”

The 67-year-old Joffe is commonly described as an award-winning and highly respected computer expert. But colleagues say he is more of an operator.

Graham said he’s “a quite average” computer programmer and network analyst. “He’s more of an executive than an operations guy.”

In a 2015 promotional video by Neustar, Joffe disclosed that his real gift is recruiting other experts, making phone calls to people in high places, and providing the resources needed for projects.

“I’m not the smart guy in the room. I’m really the dumb guy that carries the bags – but fortunately in those bags, I have a lot of money,” Joffe said with a grin. “So my role has really been carrying the bags of money to help whenever I can when folks in the [cyber-security] community want things. I’m really happy to be able to do that kind of thing.”

“So those are the things I really do,” he added. “I’m not really good at actually understanding spam and finding that. I’m not any of those things. I couldn’t have an intelligent conversation about the techniques and methods used.” (RealClearInvestigations, 2/17/2022)  (Archive)

(This and all other original articles created by RealClearInvestigations may be republished for free with attribution.)

February 18, 2022 – National Archives official who notified DOJ in Trump probe admits he didn’t do the same with Clinton’s deleted emails

“The official who triggered the federal probe into former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents opted against doing the same concerning Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.

David Ferriero, who served as the director of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) from November 2009 until he retired this past April, said in a February letter to House Oversight Committee leadership that his staff had started communicating with the Department of Justice (DOJ) earlier this year.

President Barack Obama receives a leather-bound 2009 edition of the ‘Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States’ from David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, center, in the Oval Office, Feb. 25, 2011. Joining them are staff from the Office of the Federal Register and National Archives and Records Administration. (Credit: Pete Souza/White House)

In January, Trump returned 15 boxes of documents from his time in office to NARA after the agency notified him the material belonged to the federal government.

“Because NARA identified classified information in the boxes, NARA staff has been in communication with the Department of Justice,” Ferriero wrote in his Feb. 18 letter.

(…) However, Ferriero said he took a different approach in 2015 when Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Neb., who at the time chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked whether NARA had notified the DOJ about its investigation into the deletion of Clinton’s emails during her time as secretary of state.

“The Federal Records Act requires that when a deletion occurs, the head of the agency in question must notify the Archivist, and with the help of the Archivist, initiate an action through the Attorney General for the recovery of those records,” Grassley wrote on Sept. 4, 2015.

“Will you now request the Attorney General initiate an action for recovery for the 15 missing emails and potentially other federal records that may have been deleted by Secretary Clinton.”

In response, Ferriero said NARA didn’t believe it was necessary to notify the DOJ about the missing emails.

“In light of the ongoing activities, reviews, inquiries, and litigation described above, in which the Department of Justice reportedly is actively involved, we do not believe that it is appropriate or necessary at this time for NARA to request that the Attorney General initiate an action,” he wrote to Grassley.

Ferriero’s letter included a timeline of events that showed NARA first learned of Clinton’s emails in March 2015, several months before the DOJ reportedly began its review of Clinton’s handling of potentially classified national security information. NARA never notified the DOJ about its own review into Clinton’s email usage, according to the timeline.” (Read more: Fox News, 8/11/2022)  (Archive)

February 24, 2022 – General Flynn OMB complaint reveals a FISA warrant was obtained to spy on him

“As first reported by Tracy Beanz of UncoverDC and Adam Carter of The Washington Pundit, some stunning details were included in Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn’s (Ret.) recent complaint with the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) seeking $50 million for “unjustifiable, outrageous, and malicious prosecution.”

(Credit: Gen. Flynn’s Feb. 24, 2022, OMB Complaint)

(…) Attached to the OMB complaint was a summary of the allegations of the political targeting and the weaponization of the power of the United States federal government by the FBI, DOJ, Obama administration officials (some held over into the Trump administration), up to and including President Barack Obama, and then-Vice President Joe Biden themselves—to “get Flynn” at all costs. A detail that seemed to escape the notice of many was the revelations that the FBI had obtained surveillance warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court or “FISC”) in order to spy on Gen. Flynn’s electronic communications as part of the now-discredited Trump-Russia Collusion Investigation.

(Credit: Gen. Flynn’s Feb. 24, 2022, OMB Complaint)

The day after the news broke, Tracy Beanz discussed the impact of the FISA warrants on the Dark To Light podcast with Michael Opelka. The ramifications for Gen. Flynn are apparent. During the time the FISA warrant(s) were issued—as well retroactively back six months—the FBI would have unfettered access to any of Gen. Flynn’s electronic communications without his knowledge or need to notify him after the fact. Independent journalist Harold Finch pointed out that due to the FISA “Three Hop Rule,” the FBI would also have free rein to surveil the electronic communications of anyone Gen. Flynn messaged and anybody those individuals messaged. This potentially included all the members of the Trump campaign and transition team, including President Trump himself. Additionally, Flynn family members, business associates, government contacts, advisors, even journalists, and their sources who Gen. Flynn may have interacted with, and many others could potentially be surveilled due to the FISA Three Hop Rule.

Another revelation in the filing should raise the antennas of those who have followed Spygate closely. The OMB complaint specifically accuses FBI Special Agent Joseph “Joe” Pientka of having “made multiple false statements to the [FISC] in order to secure surveillance warrants.” For those unaware, Joseph Pientka was the other FBI agent in the room besides Peter Strzok during the infamous Jan. 24, 2017, meeting with Gen. Flynn in the White House. This meeting was the basis for the charges of Making False Statements to Federal Investigators brought by the Mueller Special Counsel Office (SCO) as part of the Russia collusion hoax. (Read more: UncoverDC, 5/24/2022)  (Archive)

February 24, 2022 – General Flynn files $50 million claim against feds in prelude to lawsuit

Michael Flynn and new attorney, Sidney Powell. (Credit: Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images)

“Former Trump national security adviser, retired general alleges “malicious prosecution,” “political motivation” and “abuse of process” by FBI, DOJ, the Obama White House and Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

In a prelude to a formal lawsuit, former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has quietly filed a $50 million claim against the FBI and Justice Department for “malicious prosecution” related to the now-discredited Russia collusion investigation.

The notification, known as a Form 95 Civil Claim, obtained by Just the News, was filed Feb. 22. It names the DOJ, FBI, U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington D.C., Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office and the Executive Office of the President as potential defendants and alleges former President Barack Obama and the FBI had a vendetta against him that biased their actions.

“Of all of President Trump’s appointees, the Obama White House hated Flynn the most,” the filing noted as it laid out a long list of irregularities in his case it said proved political interference inside the FBI.

Beginning in July 2016, “the FBI began to express disdain for candidate Donald J. Trump and began to consider ways in which it could hamper Donald Trump as candidate or as President, were he to win the 2016 election,” the filing alleges.

“As part of these efforts, the FBI began to target Flynn,” it claims. “Flynn was no stranger to the FBI and its leadership, many of whom considered Flynn to be a personal enemy of the FBI and the success of their own FBI careers.”

Flynn, according to the form, is seeking “compensatory damages including but not limited to lost past and future earnings/revenue, emotional distress, lost opportunity to be President’s National Security Advisor, significant restraints of personal liberty, attorney fees/expenses and court costs in defending against malicious prosecution, abuse of process, false arrest.”

In a supplemental filing accompanying the notification, Flynn and his lawyer Jesse Binnall make a detailed claim that there was a “political motivation” behind the prosecution of the former Trump adviser on a charge of lying to the FBI.

Flynn, a three-star Army general who served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, initially pled guilty to the charge and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s probe, then requested to withdraw his plea when belated exculpatory evidence emerged showing the FBI did not believe he had lied to agents, who actually tried to shut down the case but were overruled by superiors. Flynn was eventually pardoned after DOJ lawyers asked that his charges be dismissed.

Binnall said Flynn is prepared to sue if DOJ rejects the claim.

“For years government bureaucrats and left-wing agitators believed they could attack General Flynn with impunity. No more,” he said. “If you wrongfully attack an American hero, then you should be held to account.

“This Federal Tort Claims Act Action is just the beginning of that accountability. Lt. General Michael Flynn will no longer be the pincushion of the radical left.” (Read more: JusttheNews, 5/15/2022)  (Archive) (Flynn FTCA, 2/24/2022)  (Flynn FTCA, Additional Sheets)

February 24, 2022 – Facebook reverses policy and allows praise of neo-Nazi Ukrainian Azov Battalion, if it fights Russia

Facebook banned the Ukrainian far-right group, Azov Battalion, over ‘Hate Speech’ in 2019, (Photo credit: Radio Free Europe)

“Facebook will temporarily allow its billions of users to praise the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit previously banned from being freely discussed under the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, The Intercept has learned.

The policy shift, made this week, is pegged to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and preceding military escalations. The Azov Battalion, which functions as an armed wing of the broader Ukrainian white nationalist Azov movement, began as a volunteer anti-Russia militia before formally joining the Ukrainian National Guard in 2014; the regiment is known for its hardcore right-wing ultranationalism and the neo-Nazi ideology pervasive among its members. Though it has in recent years downplayed its neo-Nazi sympathies, the group’s affinities are not subtle: Azov soldiers march and train wearing uniforms bearing icons of the Third Reich; its leadership has reportedly courted American alt-right and neo-Nazi elements; and in 2010, the battalion’s first commander and a former Ukrainian parliamentarian, Andriy Biletsky, stated that Ukraine’s national purpose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].” With Russian forces reportedly moving rapidly against targets throughout Ukraine, Facebook’s blunt, list-based approach to moderation puts the company in a bind: What happens when a group you’ve deemed too dangerous to freely discuss is defending its country against a full-scale assault?

Neo-Nazi leader Arsen Avakov was Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs from 2014-2021 and that included control of their National Guard. (Photo: Radio Free Europe)

According to internal policy materials reviewed by The Intercept, Facebook will “allow praise of the Azov Battalion when explicitly and exclusively praising their role in defending Ukraine OR their role as part of the Ukraine’s National Guard.” Internally published examples of speech that Facebook now deems acceptable include “Azov movement volunteers are real heroes, they are a much needed support to our national guard”; “We are under attack. Azov has been courageously defending our town for the last 6 hours”; and “I think Azov is playing a patriotic role during this crisis.”

The materials stipulate that Azov still can’t use Facebook platforms for recruiting purposes or for publishing its own statements and that the regiment’s uniforms and banners will remain as banned hate symbol imagery, even while Azov soldiers may fight wearing and displaying them. In a tacit acknowledgment of the group’s ideology, the memo provides two examples of posts that would not be allowed under the new policy: “Goebbels, the Fuhrer and Azov, all are great models for national sacrifices and heroism” and “Well done Azov for protecting Ukraine and it’s white nationalist heritage.” (Read more: The Intercept, 2/24/2022) (Archive)

(Timeline editor’s note: According to recent statements by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, extreme right, white supremacist militias are considered the number one threat to America’s national security. So it’s odd they are now to be accepted and cheered for their continuous attacks on the Russia friendly citizens in Ukraine since 2014.)

February 28, 2022 – Hillary Clinton: “We have to make sure that within our own country, we are calling out people giving aid and comfort to Putin and siding with autocrats against the global cause of democracy.”

(Archive)

(We created new tags for this one.)

March 10, 2022 – Email confirms Durham is investigating the 2016 DNC hack and DARPA’s investigation of the hack

“Margot Cleveland has obtained an email that appears to confirm that SC John Durham is actively investigating at least some aspects of the DNC ‘hack’ that was a central part of the “Russia meddled” hoax. Margot’s account is here:

Special Counsel’s Office Is Investigating The 2016 DNC Server Hack

Manos Antonakakis  (Credit: Public Domain)

Steve McLaughlin . (Credit: GaTech)

The email in question is from one of the Georgia Tech researchers who helped Raymond Joffe and Michael Sussmann cook up the Alfa Bank hoax—Manos Antonakakis. Antonakakis’ email appears to be an attempt at covering his behind with administrators at Georgia Tech, as he is being called before Durham’s grand jury. Of note is the fact that the emails and the grand jury subpoena that Antonakakis received date back to July 2021. That means that the question that Antonakakis was asked before the grand jury, and which implies that Durham is investigating the DNC ‘hack’, derives from [an] investigation that Durham’s team conducted before that date. In other words, Durham has been on this aspect of the case for quite some time.

Chaouki Abdallah became Executive Vice President for Research at the Georgia Institute of Technology in September 2018. (Credit: public domain)

It seems that DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is an R&D agency—was involved in investigating the DNC hack. DARPA asked Antonakakis to lend his expertise. This is the question that one of Durham’s prosecutor’s posed to Antonakakis:

“Do you believe that DARPA should be instructing you to investigate the origins of a hacker (Guccifer_2.0) that hacked a political entity (DNC)?”

Margot examines Antonakakis’ semi-hysterical response in some detail at the link (above). Make of it what you will. The important points are twofold—first, that Durham is clearly interested in the DNC ‘hack’ and has been for quite a while, and second, that DARPA—an R&D agency—was involved and was using an expert who would become deeply involved in the Russia Hoax. As for the first point, it’s perfectly logical that Durham should be examining this part of the Russia Hoax, since it was a key part of the Russia – Trump collusion and meddling narrative that the overall Russia Hoax conspiracy was pushing on the American public.

Annie Jacobson writes in her book of the original logo created for the Total Information Project and calls it “The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA.”  – The Atlantic

Unfortunately, we can’t be sure what the status of Durham’s investigation into this matter is. Here is Margot’s summary:

Why was the assistant special counsel investigating the investigation of the DNC hacking?

Something caused the special counsel’s office to discover that DARPA had tasked Antonakakis with investigating the DNC hack. And something caused the special counsel’s office to question the Georgia Tech researcher about that project.

The public storyline until now had been that CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm Sussmann hired in April 2016, had concluded Russians had hacked the DNC server, and that the FBI, which never examined the server, concurred in that conclusion. Intelligence agencies and former Special Counsel Robert Mueller likewise concluded that Russian agents were behind the DNC hack, but with little public details provided.

It now appears that DARPA had some role in that assessment, or rather Antonakakis did on behalf of DARPA, which leads to a whole host of other questions, including whether DARPA had access to the DNC server and data and, if so, from whom did the DOD’s research arm get that access? Was it Sussmann?

Most intriguingly, why is Special Counsel Durham concerned with the DARPA connection and the DNC hack or hacker in the first place?

Yes, lots of questions. Including: Has Durham got the answers to these questions? (MeaningInHistory/substack, 3/10/2022)  (Archive) (Federalist Archive)

March 11, 2022 – How Ukrainian billionaire, Ihor Kolomoyski, funded Hunter Biden, Volodymyr Zelensky, and the Azov Battalion

Credit: Kanekoa News/Substack)

The real person who was the benefactor to, and the boss of, Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, was not the CEO of Burisma Holdings, Mykola Zlochevsky.

Instead, it was Ihor Kolomoysky, who was part of the newly installed Ukrainian government, which the Obama Administration itself had just installed in Ukraine, in what the head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor correctly called “the most blatant coup in history.”

Shortly after the Obama Administration’s Ukrainian coup, on March 2, 2014, Kolomoysky, who supported Yanukovych’s overthrow, was appointed the governor of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. Hunter Biden, with no experience in the industry or region, would join Kolomoysky’s Burisma Holdings two months later, on May 12, 2014.

A 2012 study of Burisma Holdings done in Ukraine by the AntiCorruption Action Centre (ANTAC), an investigative nonprofit co-funded by American billionaire George Soros and the U.S. State Department, found the valid owner of Burisma Holdings was none other than Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky.

The study, funded to dig up the corruption of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, found that Ihor Kolomoysky “managed to seize the largest reserves of natural gas in Ukraine.”

Burisma Holdings changed owners in 2011 when it was taken over by an off-shore Cyprus enterprise called Brociti Investments Ltd, and subsequently, moved addresses under the same roof as Ukrnaftoburinnya and Esko-Pivnich, two Ukrainian gas companies which happened to be also owned by Kolomoysky through off-shore entities in the British Virgin Islands.

Oleh Kanivets, who worked as CEO of Ukrnaftoburinnya, confirmed Kolomoysky as the owner of Burisma Holding in the 2012 report saying, “The Privat Group is the immediate owner. This company was founded by Mykola Zlochevsky some time ago, but he later sold his shares to the Privat Group.”

In other words, Hunter Biden’s boss and benefactor at Burisma Holdings is the same Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch who also claimed the position of boss and benefactor over Volodymyr Zelensky before he became Ukraine’s president.

Kolmoysky, who currently holds a net worth of $1.8 billion, making him the 1750th richest person in the world, owns holdings in metal, petroleum, and the media sector, where he has had a long history with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

For years, Zelensky’s company produced shows for Kolmoysky’s TV network, 1+1 Media Group, one of the largest media conglomerates in Ukraine. Zelensky achieved national fame, portraying a president on a hit television sitcom called Servant of the People, which was broadcasted on a channel owned by Kolmoysky.

In 2019, Kolmoysky’s media channels significantly boosted Zelensky’s presidential campaign, while Kolmoysky even provided security, lawyers, and vehicles for Zelensky during his campaign. Kolmoysky’s bodyguard and lawyer accompanied Zelensky on the campaign trail as Zelensky was chauffeured around in a Range Rover owned by one of Kolmoysky’s companies.

The Pandora Papers showed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his TV production partners were beneficiaries of a web of offshore firms created in 2012, the same year Zelensky’s production company entered into a deal with Kolomoysky’s media group, which allegedly received $41 million in funds from Kolomoysky’s Privatbank.

Zelensky’s political rival, President Petro Poroshenko, commented on their connection during the campaign trail, “Fate intended to put me together with Kolomoyskiy’s puppet in the second round of the elections.”

After Zelensky’s victory, Kolomoysky, who had spent the last few years living between Israel and Switzerland, returned to Ukraine to keep up his relationship with the new president, nominating over 30 lawmakers to Zelensky’s newly established party and maintaining influence with many of them in parliament.

Igor Kolomoysky has been a top funder of the Azov Battalion since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions and has personally deployed them to protect his financial interest. (Read more: Kanekoa News/Substack, 3/11/2022)  (Archive)

March 19, 2022 – The NY Post calls out the spies who lied about the Biden laptop

(Credit: The New York Post)

(…) They are the supposed nonpartisan group of top spies looking out for the best interest of the nation.

But the 51 former “intelligence” officials who cast doubt on The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop stories in a public letter really were just desperate to get Joe Biden elected president. And more than a year later, even after their Deep State sabotage has been shown again and again to be a lie, they refuse to own up to how they undermined an election.

The officials, including CNN pundit and professional fabricator James Clapper — a man who was nearly charged for perjury for lying to Congress — signed a letter saying that the laptop “has the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

What proof did they have? By their own admission, none. “We do not know if the emails . . . are genuine or not,” the letter said. They’re just “suspicious.” Why? Because they hurt Biden’s campaign, that’s evidence enough.

Keep in mind this was written Oct. 19, 2020, five days after The Post published its first story. Neither Joe Biden nor Hunter Biden had denied the story, they simply deflected questions.

(Read more: The New York Post, 3/18/2022)  (Archive)

March 19, 2022 – Matthew Graves signals to David Weiss they would NOT participate in the prosecution of Hunter Biden

Mathew Graves (Credit: Department of Justice)

I have reviewed House Judiciary Committee’s transcribed interview with Matthew Graves, US Attorney for the District of Columbia.

A few observations related to Hunter Biden inquiry:

* It is obvious that Graves and his team signaled to David Weiss they would not participate in the prosecution of Hunter Biden.

*Just one example of Graves’ flailing word salad related to a 10-minute conversation he had with David Weiss in late Feb, early March 2022: “As I recall the conversation, my question is–was: ‘What do you need?’ And my attitude was (emphasis added) ‘Of course we’re going to provide it to you.’ So, you know, how he heard it, what he expected, and the long litany of things one could need in returning, I don’t know, but I could just say my immediate response ‘What do you need’ I was trying to signal we will give you whatever you need logistically.” SURE.

*For the next three weeks, according to Graves, his top deputies analyzed the matter including whether DOJ could pursuade a DC jury to convict Hunter Biden. Following a March 19, 2022 meeting with his team, Graves said his office “conveyed to Delaware that we wouldn’t be looking to add our own prosecutor to the case.”

*Graves refused to name the officials involved.

*Graves did not read the underlying evidence against Hunter Biden including the lengthy report prepared by DOJ Tax Division detailing Hunter Biden’s tax crimes in 2014 and 2015 which included omitting income from Burisma.

*Graves never followed up directly with Weiss.

*Despite claims he offered assistance with grand jury process, Graves also admitted that at that time, the federal courthouse in DC was very busy with grand jury proceedings–yes because his office was charging and prosecuting Capitol protesters.

*His office at the time also was investigating Trump associates (and beginning stage of full blown investigation into Trump himself) for January 6.

*Graves, appointed by Biden, repeatedly played dumb when asked about conflict of interest and whether he should’ve recused from considering the case. “There was no conflict of interest and no reason” to seek ethics guidance from DOJ. “A family member of the administration? I don’t see it as necessarily a conflict of interest or perception of a conflict of interest.”

*IRONICALLY Graves confirmed he was a top official in US Atty-DC Fraud and Public Corruption section beginning in 2015–as Hunter Biden raked in millions from hostile regimes including China and Russia. (Special Counsel Jack Smith also ignored the Bidens as head of DOJ’s Public Integrity Unit btw 2010 and early 2015.)

*Graves attempted on numerous occasions to discredit the whistleblowers in the case except he never read the transcripts. He accused whistleblowers of relying on hearsay while admitting he’s only read media accounts of their accusations.

I’ll have more on this related to Graves’ laughable claims about his handling of Jan 6 cases. But Graves is just another partisan operative disguised as a federal prosecutor. He protected the Bidens by thwarting Weiss’ inquiry to prosecute in the proper venue–which Graves should have pursued WITHOUT Weiss’ request.

And his testimony is just one more reason why House GOP should strip federal funding for US Atty for DC office.

March 22, 2022 – Barr says Hunter Biden Russian disinformation claims ‘probably affected’ election outcome

William Barr (Credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)

Former Attorney General William Barr argued the effort by dozens of former intelligence officials to cast doubt on the Hunter Biden laptop revelations by baselessly suggesting Russia involvement “probably affected the outcome” of the 2020 presidential race.

The 51 former spy officials who signed a letter suggesting Russia was involved with the laptop saga are now largely silent about why they weighed in on the story weeks before the election. Despite offering no proof, President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, along with many in the media, dismissed the October 2020 laptop story as being part of a Russian disinformation operation, with Biden citing the letter in a debate with then-President Donald Trump, which Barr critiqued.

Conservative radio show host Hugh Hewitt asked Barr on Tuesday about four “interventions” in presidential elections and which was most “material” to the outcome. Hewitt’s examples were Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh issuing an indictment against former Reagan Defense Secretary Caspar Willard Weinberger just four days before the election between then-President George H.W. Bush and future President Bill Clinton in 1992, debate moderator Candy Crowley inserting herself on President Barack Obama’s side during a debate with then-candidate Mitt Romney, Russian influence efforts in the 2016 race between Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Facebook and Twitter censoring stories about the laptop just before the 2020 election.

“Well, the ones that stick with me are Walsh and the laptop — the intelligence officials suggesting that it was Russian disinformation in order to essentially keep a cork in it until after the election,” Barr replied. “I do think that that, given how close the election was, you know, I think that that probably affected the outcome, or at least there is a very distinct probability of that. The same, I think, with Walsh.”

Joe Biden called the laptop story “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan” and cited the letter. He was referring to a Politico report about the letter in an article titled “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” The title was misleading because the letter never directly called the laptop Russian “disinformation.” The laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” the officials claimed, but they admitted that “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement.” But the letter also referred to “our view that the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue.”

A recent report from the New York Times said emails from the laptop were authentic, which multiple other outlets had previously concluded. The Justice Department is reportedly investigating Hunter Biden for foreign lobbying violations related to his overseas business dealings, in addition to scrutinizing his taxes.

Barr had expounded on all of this on Monday, criticizing the president’s falsehoods and the decision by former intelligence officials to influence the race.

“I was very disturbed during the debate when candidate Biden lied to the American people about the laptop,” Barr said on America Reports on Fox News. “He was squarely confronted with the laptop, and he suggested that it was Russian disinformation and pointed to the letter written by intelligence people that was baseless, which he knew was a lie. And I was shocked by that.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 3/22/2022)  (Archive)

March 24, 2022 – Trump sues Hillary, others for falsely accusing him of colluding with Russia

Trump and Clinton during a 2016 election debate. (Credit: Rick Wilking/Reuters)

“President Donald Trump has sued failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and others for falsely accusing him of colluding with Russia during the 2016 presidential election:

“Acting in concert, the Defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty,” the former president alleged in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Florida.

Trump, who beat Democratic nominee Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, alleges “racketeering” and a “conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood,” among other claims.

The other RICO defendants include names you will recognize: James Comey, Christopher Steele, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Andrew McCabe.

Trump wants damages awarded to him:

In the lawsuit, Trump is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. Trump said he was “forced to incur expenses in an amount to be determined at trial, but known to be in excess of twenty-four million dollars ($24,000,000) and continuing to accrue, in the form of defense costs, legal fees, and related expenses.”

The counts include:

  • RICO
  • RICO Conspiracy
  • Injurious Falsehood
  • Conspiracy to Commit Injurious Falsehood
  • Malicious Prosecution
  • Conspiracy to Commit Malicious Prosecution
  • Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
  • Theft of Trade Secrets
  • Stored Communications Act
  • Agency
  • Respondeat Superior/Vicarious Liability

The lawsuit alleges the RICO defendants “conspired with each other” and they “knowingly agreed, conspired and acted in concert for the express purpose of injuring the Plaintiff’s political career and/or impeding his ability to effectively govern through a pattern of racketeering activity.”

(Read more: Legal Insurrection, 3/24/2022)  (Archive)

The following day, Trump discusses the lawsuit with Glenn Beck:

March 26, 2022 – Beau Biden Foundation rakes in millions, spends fraction on kid programs

VP Joe Biden poses with his son, Army Capt. Beau Biden at Camp Victory on the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq on July 4, 2009. (Credit: AP)

The Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children raked in $3.9 million in 2020, but spent only a fraction of that on its purported mission to help kids, The Post has learned.

The Delaware-based charity, which was started in honor of President Biden’s late son, got an infusion of $1.8 million from the Biden Foundation before that group shut down in 2020, according to the charities’ latest tax filings. The Biden Foundation was started by Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, to champion “progress and prosperity for American families.”

The Beau Biden charity also took in $225,000 from entities tied to a top political donor and bundler to President Biden.

Despite the $2 million-plus windfall, the organization put only $544,961 in 2020 toward its stated purpose of protecting children from abuse, according to tax filings.

The charity spent a total of $932,865 that year, with a large chunk of it going to the six-figure salaries of Biden cronies who held executive jobs at the non-profit.

Patricia Dailey Lewis, who served as Delaware deputy attorney general under late AG Beau Biden, runs the non-profit and was paid $150,660 in 2020, including a $3,500 bonus.

Joshua Alcorn, a longtime Democratic operative and consultant on both Beau Biden’s and Joe Biden’s political campaigns, served as COO and was paid $131,437. He has since stepped down.

CharityWatch, a watchdog group, says that its top-rated nonprofits generally spend at least 75 percent of their budgets on programs. In this charity’s case, just 58 percent of its spending went to its cause.

“A 58 percent program ratio does not reflect a high level of financial efficiency,” said Laurie Styron, the executive director of CharityWatch.

Biden’s troubled son, Hunter, served on the board of the Beau Biden charity in 2020 during the time The Post revealed the discovery of his infamous laptop, a device plastered with a sticker from the foundation. Biden’s daughter, Ashley, and Beau’s widow, Hallie Biden, were also on the board.

Hallie Biden is the only family member still on the board, which includes former FBI director Louis Freeh.

The group said that following Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, it wouldn’t take money from lobbyists or foreign donors and would release names of its major contributors on its website in a bid to increase transparency.

But the organization refused to provide a copy of its 2020 tax filing to The Post in early March. It later said the document was available on the Guidestar website. (Read more: New York Post, 3/26/2022)  (Archive)

March 27, 2022 – Twitter Files: FBI helps Ukraine censor Twitter users and obtain their info, including journalists

(Credit: The Epoch Times)

Authored by Aaron Maté via Substack,

In March 2022, an FBI Special Agent sent Twitter a list of accounts on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Ukraine’s main intelligence agency. The accounts, the FBI wrote, “are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation.” In an attached memo, the SBU asked Twitter to remove the accounts and hand over their user data.

The Ukrainian government’s FBI-enabled targets extend to members of the media. The SBU list that the FBI provided to Twitter included my name and Twitter profile. In its response to the FBI, Twitter agreed to review the accounts for “inauthenticity” but raised concerns about the inclusion of me and other “American and Canadian journalists.”

The FBI’s attempt to ban Twitter accounts at the request of Ukrainian intelligence is among the most overt requests for censorship revealed to date in the Twitter Files, a cache of leaked communications from the social media giant.

The FBI’s censorship request was relayed in a March 27th, 2022 email from FBI Special Agent Aleksandr Kobzanets, the Assistant Legal Attaché at the US Embassy in Kyiv, to two Twitter executives. Four FBI colleagues were copied on the exchange.

“Thank you very much for your time to discuss the assistance to Ukraine,” Kobzanets wrote. “I am including a list of accounts I received over a couple of weeks from the Security Service of Ukraine. These accounts are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation. For your review and consideration.”

 

The document, drafted by Ukraine’s SBU, contained 163 accounts, including mine. (The list is numbered to 175, but some accounts have two corresponding numerical lines).

The listed Twitter profiles, the SBU alleged, have been “used to disseminate disinformation and fake news to inaccurately reflect events in Ukraine, justify war crimes of the Russian authorities on the territory of the Ukrainian state in violation of international law.”

In order “to stop Russian aggression on the information front,” the SBU continued, “we kindly ask you to take urgent measures to block these Twitter accounts and provide us with user data specified during registration.”

The SBU expressed its “gratitude for the existing level of interaction.”

If granted, the users on the list would not only have been banned from Twitter but had their phone number, date of birth, and email address disclosed to both the FBI and SBU.

In response, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then-Head of Trust and Safety, informed Special Agent Kobzanets and his FBI colleagues that Twitter would “review the reported accounts under our Rules.” But he warned that the list included “a few accounts of American and Canadian journalists (e.g. Aaron Mate).” Therefore, Roth said, Twitter’s review would “focus first and foremost on identifying any potential inauthenticity.”

(Read more: Aaron Maté/Substack, 6/7/2023)  (Archive)

March 29, 2022 – The FEC fines DNC and Clinton for Trump dossier hoax

Hillary Clinton makes a stop at DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s campaign office on August 9, 2016. (Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

“The Federal Election Commission has fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for lying about the funding of the infamous, and discredited, Russian “dossier” used in a smear attempt against Donald Trump weeks before he shocked the world with his 2016 presidential victory.

The election agency said that Clinton and the DNC violated strict rules on describing expenditures of payments funneled to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through their law firm.

A combined $1,024,407.97 was paid by the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign to law firm Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s information, and the party and campaign hid the reason, claiming it was for legal services, not opposition research.

Instead, the DNC’s $849,407.97 and the Clinton campaign’s $175,000 covered Fusion GPS’s opposition research on the dossier, a basis for the so-called “Russia hoax” that dogged Trump’s first term.

The memo said that the Clinton campaign and DNC argued that they were correct in describing their payment as for “legal advice and services” because it was Perkins Coie that hired Fusion GPS. But the agency said the law is clear and was violated.

It added that neither the campaign nor the party conceded to lying but won’t contest the finding. “Solely for the purpose of settling this matter expeditiously and to avoid further legal costs, respondent[s] does not concede, but will not further contest the commission’s finding of probable cause to proceed” with the probe, said the FEC.

The FEC, in a memo to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, which filed its complaint over three years ago, said it fined Clinton’s treasurer $8,000 and the DNC’s treasurer $105,000.

The memo, shared with Secrets, is to be made public in a month.

Dan Backer, who brought the complaint on behalf of the foundation, which focuses on free speech and the First Amendment, told Secrets, “This may well be the first time that Hillary Clinton — one of the most evidently corrupt politicians in American history — has actually been held legally accountable, and I’m proud to have forced the FEC to do their job for once. The Coolidge Reagan Foundation proved that with pluck and grit, Americans who stand with integrity can stand up to the Clinton machine and other corrupt political elites.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 3/30/2022)  (Archive)

March 29, 2022 – Matt Gaetz enters Hunter Biden’s laptop into the congressional record; FBI Cyber testifies “no assessment had been made” of laptop

“Florida Representative Matt Gaetz entered into the US House Judiciary Committee records the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop as well as a receipt from Mac’s Computer Repair, where the laptop had been dropped off, that evidenced the FBI taking possession of the laptop in December of 2019.

“Still, the FBI Cyber Assistant Director testified that after three years in possession of the Laptop, no assessment had been made,” a release from Gaetz’s office states.

Gaetz pressed FBI Assistant Director for the Cyber Division Bryan Vorndran in a Tuesday committee meeting on whether the laptop created cyber vulnerabilities for the country.

Vorndran stated that he does not know the current location of the laptop, or whether outside actors like Russia were using the laptop’s contents to compromise the First Family. He also stated that the reason he was appearing before the committee that day was not to discuss the laptop, but rather the FBI cyber program. (Read more: The Post Millennial, 3/29/2022)  (Archive)

April 2022-March 2023 – Clinton group “Onward Together” wires $500,000 to activist climate group behind disruptive and destructive anti-oil protests

Hillary Clinton attends the “Suffs” Broadway opening night performance at the Music Box Theatre on Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. (Credit: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

A progressive group founded by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cut a large check recently to a climate change activist hub financing organizations behind disruptive anti-oil protests, bringing the total cash transfers to at least $500,000, records show.

Onward Together, which Clinton launched after losing the 2016 election, says it’s “committed to lifting up emerging organizations and leaders who are fighting for our shared progressive values and defending our democracy.” That pledge apparently includes funding Climate Emergency Fund, a charity backing groups leading demonstrations to bring awareness to climate change by vandalizing fine art, blocking major roads, gluing themselves to sports cars, and engaging in other extremist forms of protest.

Between April 2022 and March 2023, the nonprofit advocacy arm of Onward Together granted $200,000 to Climate Emergency Fund, according to Onward Together’s tax forms filed in 2024.

CEF, which during the preceding fiscal year received $300,000 from the Clinton-tied group, is based in Beverly Hills and props up activists at groups like Just Stop Oil that, in 2022, splattered tomato soup on a Vincent Van Gogh painting at London’s National Gallery estimated to be worth $84 million. In March 2024, activists for Declare Emergency, which along with Just Stop Oil is part of a coalition primarily funded by CEF called A22 Network, were charged with vandalizing the display of the U.S. Constitution at the National Archives.

Moreover, CEF funds the Washington, D.C.-based Climate Defiance, the activists of which have also been arrested for unorthodox protests. This upcoming Tuesday, Climate Defiance will host an event in the district for its one-year “birthday” alongside progressive Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), according to an event invitation.

“Anyone who cares about public safety and preventing vandalism should be deeply concerned that money connected to Hillary Clinton is propping up these radicalized eco activists,” said Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of the Power the Future energy advocacy group. (Read more: Washington Examiner, 5/03/2024)  (Archive)

April 4, 2022 – Durham filing reveals Bill Priestap and Trisha Anderson notes that corroborate Baker’s claim Sussmann lied

(…) Notes (produced by Durham) taken by Assistant FBI Director Bill Priestap and former FBI Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson – taken in their conversation with Baker after his Sussmann meeting – help corroborate Baker’s recollection of Sussmann’s lies:

Bill Priestap (Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

In this filing, Sussmann seeks to preclude the use of these notes, arguing they are hearsay not subject to an exception. (It also confirms that Priestap has testified before a grand jury – something we posited back in January.) Durham disagrees and argues they are admissible, and Durham likely wins this dispute.

Sussmann also asks the Court to order the Special Counsel to give Rodney Joffe immunity for his testimony – or have the case dismissed.

Of course, Joffe (Tech Executive-1 in the Sussmann indictment) is the Sussmann client who helped lead the effort to manufacture the Alfa Bank/Trump hoax. Sussmann maintains that Joffe would “offer critical exculpatory testimony on behalf of Mr. Sussmann” – but cannot because Durham is “manufacturing incredible claims of continuing criminal liability for Mr. Joffe that are forcing Mr. Joffe to assert his Fifth Amendment right.”

Trisha Anderson (Credit: public domain)

That’s a long way of saying that Joffe faces real (and perhaps imminent) criminal exposure. Let’s talk about that for a moment. The bad news for Joffe is good reading for us.

The April 1, 2022 letter from Joffe’s attorney to Sussmann’s attorney. In this letter (available here – with my highlights), Joffe’s counsel confirmed that Joffe “remains a subject” of the Special Counsel’s investigation. According to Andrew DeFilippis (from the Office of the Special Counsel), Joffe’s “status in the investigation was sufficient to establish a good faith basis to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination.”

To this statement, Joffe’s attorney responded that the statute of limitations had run since the events described in the Sussmann indictment. The Special Counsel disagreed, stating that “certain fraud statutes have longer than a five-year limitations period,” and the Russian Yota phone-related allegations (given to the CIA in February 2017) “percolated through various branches of the government and around the private sector after that date, in various forms.”

Sussmann’s attorney argues that Joffe would provide favorable testimony, including:

  1. Sussmann and Joffe agreed that the information should be conveyed to the FBI and the CIA to help the government.
  2. The information was conveyed to the FBI to provide a heads-up that newspaper outlets were going to publish a story about links between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.
  3. The researchers and Mr. Joffe himself held a good faith belief in the analysis that was shared with the FBI, and Mr. Sussmann accordingly and reasonably believed the data and analysis were accurate.

Again, Sussmann likely loses on this front.   (Read more: Techno Fog/Substack, 4/05/2022)    (Archive) (Court Transcript, 4/04/2022)

April 4, 2022 – FBI seizes yacht of Russian oligarch who was a major donor to Clinton Foundation; profits from Hillary’s Great Reset and the exchange of American military technology

The luxury yacht ‘Tango’, owned by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. (Credit: ADN America)

“Spanish law enforcement today executed a Spanish court order freezing the Motor Yacht (M/Y) Tango (the Tango), a 255-foot luxury yacht owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. Spanish authorities acted pursuant to a request from the U.S. Department of Justice for assistance following the issuance of a seizure warrant, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which alleged that the Tango was subject to forfeiture based on violation of U.S. bank fraud, money laundering, and sanction statutes.

According to documents filed in this case, the U.S. investigation alleges that Vekselberg bought the Tango in 2011 and has owned it continuously since that time. It further alleges that Vekselberg used shell companies to obfuscate his interest in the Tango to avoid bank oversight into U.S. dollar transactions related thereto. Additionally, after Vekselberg was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department on April 6, 2018, the warrant alleges that Vekselberg and those working on his behalf continued to make U.S. dollar payments through U.S. banks for the support and maintenance of the Tango and its owners, including a payment for a December 2020 stay at a luxury water villa resort in the Maldives and mooring fees for the yacht. Vekselberg had an interest in these payments and therefore a license was required from the Treasury Department, which was not obtained.

“Today marks our taskforce’s first seizure of an asset belonging to a sanctioned individual with close ties to the Russian regime. It will not be the last.” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “Together, with our international partners, we will do everything possible to hold accountable any individual whose criminal acts enable the Russian government to continue its unjust war.”

“Today’s action makes clear that corrupt Russian oligarchs cannot evade sanctions to live a life of luxury as innocent Ukrainians are suffering,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco. “Today the Department of Justice delivers on our commitment to hold accountable those whose criminal activity strengthens the Russian government as it continues to wage its unjust war in Ukraine. That commitment is one we are not finished honoring.” (The Department of Justice, 4/4/2022)  (Archive)

Dan Bongino reminds us of the history between Vekselberg and the Clintons.

Bongino mentions this article by Diane West:

Hillary’s Hypersonic Missile Gap

“Starting in May 2010, The Washington Examiner reported, drawing on emails obtained by Citizens United, “Clinton Foundation staff pushed Hillary Clinton’s State Department to approve a meeting between Bill Clinton and a powerful Russian oligarch as her agency lined up investors for a project under his purview.”

His name was Viktor Vekselberg of Renova (a Clinton Foundation donor) and the project under his purview was the Skolkovo Innovation Center, which is being built near Moscow. The following month, Bill Clinton would receive $500,000 for a speech in Moscow from Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin, a Clinton Foundation donor, a Skolkovo executive, and which talked up Uranium One, whose sale the Clinton State Department would approve, and whose executives together contributed $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.

This shocking set of emails that the Examiner reported on shows the nexus of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s foundation, Hillary Clinton’s State Department, Bill Clinton, Russian oligarch Vekselberg, and Skolkovo, “Russia’s Silicon Valley,” the Putin project to transfer Western technology to Russia that was championed and driven by Mrs. Clinton — and, what do you know, 17 out of 28 tech companies that hitched up with Skolkovo also contributed to the Clinton Foundation? What a coincidence. Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s support for Russian WTO membership made the whole global flow so much easier.

No wonder Herd Media, the Uniparty Congress and FBI Director James Comey never noticed a thing. Oh, except that Putin “hated” Hillary Clinton, “wanted to do her harm,” as Comey told Congress this week. Grrr. Maybe hypersonic technology wasn’t enough. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

Let’s pick up with an Army report on Skolkovo written in 2012 (released in 2013) to assess “the implications … for U.S. policymakers.”

Although military activities are not an official cluster of activity, the Skolkovo Foundation has, in fact, been involved in defense-related activities since December 2011, when it approved the first weapons-related project—the development of a hypersonic cruise missile engine. The project is a response to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, part of the Prompt Global Strike program.

Fast forward to November 2016, shortly after Donald Trump was elected president when the US Air Force released a report on — no way — the Russian and Chinese hypersonic missile threat to the United States.

The United States is vulnerable to future attack by hypersonic missiles from China and Russia and is falling behind in the technology race to develop both defensive and offensive high-speed maneuvering arms, according to a new Air Force study.

“The People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation are already flight-testing high-speed maneuvering weapons (HSMWs) that may endanger both forward deployed U.S. forces and even the continental United States itself,” an executive summary of the report says.

“These weapons appear to operate in regimes of speed and altitude, with maneuverability that could frustrate existing missile defense constructs and weapon capabilities.”

In a functioning democratic republic, the executive branch decisions and procedures and corruption that led to this defense cataclysm would actually alarm security officials, lawmakers, and even arouse media curiosity, if nothing else. But Skolkovo, the money, the corruption, the treachery, the danger, inspire no reaction at all.

Not even this plain, shocking language, from the Army, circa 2012:

Skolkovo is an ambitious enterprise, aiming to promote technology transfer generally, by inbound direct investment, and occasionally, through selected acquisitions. As such, Skolkovo is arguably an overt alternative to clandestine industrial espionage—with the additional distinction that it can achieve such a transfer on a much larger scale and more efficiently.

Hillary Clinton, her State Department, the Clinton Foundation, Bill Clinton did much to make Skolkovo possible — did much to activate what was, according to the Army report, “arguably” a massive “clandestine industrial espionage” operation. Not that any of this is in the past. This plain-sight-“research”-cum-collusion with the Russian government goes on, and goes on unchecked — and despite the Obama administration’s supposedly hard-as-nails, cold-as-ice, tough-on-Russia finish.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 3/21/2017)  (Archive)

April 4, 2022 – New Durham court filing suggests Clinton campaign and others formed a ‘joint venture or conspiracy’ to smear Trump

The Alfa Gang – Left to Right: Andrew Sullivan, Hillary Clinton, John Durham, Michael Sussmann, Mark Elias

“Special Counsel John Durham is revealing new smoking gun evidence, a text message  that shows a Clinton campaign lawyer lied to the FBI, while putting the courts on notice he is prepared to show the effort to smear Donald Trump with now-disproven Russia collusion allegations  was a “conspiracy.”

In a bombshell court filing late Monday night, Durham for the first time suggested Hillary Clinton’s campaign, her researchers and others formed a “joint venture or conspiracy” for the purpose of weaving the collusion story to harm Trump’s election chances and then the start of his presidency.

“These parties acted as ‘joint venturer[s]’ and therefore should be ‘considered as co-conspirator[s],'” he wrote.

Durham also revealed he has unearthed a text message showing Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann falsely told the FBI he was not working on behalf of any client when he delivered now discredited anti-Trump research in the lead-up to the 2016 election. In fact, he was working for the Clinton campaign and another client, prosecutors say.

The existence of the text message between Sussmann and then-FBI General Counsel James Baker was revealed in a court filing late Monday night by Durham’s team. Prosecutors said they intend to show Sussmann gave a false story to the FBI but then told the truth about working on behalf of the Clinton campaign when he later testified to Congress.

“Jim – it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss,” Sussmann texted Baker on Sept. 18, 2016, according to the new court filing. “Do you have availibilty for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own – not on behalf of a client or company – want to help the Bureau. Thanks.”

Prosecutors said the text message will become essential evidence at trial to show Sussmann lied to the FBI.

“The defendant lied in that meeting, falsely stating to the General Counsel that he was not providing the allegations to the FBI on behalf of any client,” Durham’s motion said. “In fact, the defendant had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including (i) a technology executive (“Tech Executive-1”) at a U.S.-based Internet company (“Internet Company-1”), and (ii) the Clinton Campaign.” (Read more: JustTheNews, 4/05/2022)  (Archive) (Court Transcript, 4/04/2022)

April 5, 2022 – Svetlana Lokhova’s defamation lawsuit against Stefan Halper has been revived by federal appeals court

Stefan Halper (l), Svetlana Lokhova (c) and Lt. General Michael Flynn (Credit: public domain)

“A federal appeals court has breathed new life into a lawsuit brought by a London-based academic against one of the FBI’s confidential informants during the Russia collusion probe, litigation that is likely to focus new attention on the quality of evidence that led the bureau to investigate former President Donald Trump and his cohorts during the 2016 election.

Judge Leoni Brinkema (Credit: public domain)

There has been a flurry of new legal activity this month in Svetlana Lokhova’s lawsuit in federal court in Virginia against former FBI confidential human source Stefan Halper since the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema abused her authority in dismissing the lawsuit a year ago.

“We conclude that the court could not have properly concluded that Lokhova’s complaint … had absolutely no chance of success,” the appeals court ruled in April in a unanimous 3-0 decision that reversed Brinkema’s dismissal of the case and her order of a penalty against Lokhova for filing an allegedly frivolous lawsuit.

“We conclude that the district court abused its discretion in finding Lokhova’s complaint frivolous and concluding on that basis that its filing violated Rule 11,” the appeals court ruled. “The judgment of the district court — as reflected in its orders of May 5, 2021, and July 9, 2021 — is therefore reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings.”

Lokhova Reverse Remand Opinion/File

The decision revives a years-long dispute between Lokhova, a Russian-born, London-based academic, and Halper, a Cambridge academic who served as one of the two primary confidential human sources, along with former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, in the FBI’s now-discredited Crossfire Hurricane investigation of alleged collusion between Trump and the Kremlin.” (Read more: JusttheNews, 6/28/2022)  (Archive)

(Timeline editor’s note: We are thrilled to learn Ms. Lokhova’s defamation lawsuit will move forward and share in her new hope for justice. Her story has always stuck in our craw, knowing how crudely a handful of men plotted against her, and until now, seemed to have gotten away with their crimes. We admire Ms. Lokhova’s grit and determination to defend her honor and restore her damaged reputation by these unsavory men.)

April 6, 2022 – Durham files motion to compel the Clinton campaign, DNC, Perkins Coie, and Fusion GPS to release documents withheld from general counsel

April 6, 2022 – Durham filing shows John Podesta and high ranking Hillary for America officials have been interviewed

April 8, 2022 – US lawmakers welcomed notorious Georgian warlord now boasting of war crimes in Ukraine

Top lawmakers in US Congress hosted Mamuka Mamulashvili, an infamous Georgian Legion warlord who has boasted of authorizing field executions of captive Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

Georgian Legion warlord Mamuka Mamulashvili (center) visits Rep. Eliot Engel in 2017. (Credit: public domain)

Having taken up arms against Russia for a fifth time, Georgian Legion commander Mamuka Mamulashvili has bragged on video about his unit carrying out field executions of captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

While Western media pundits howled about images of dead bodies in the city of Bucha, echoing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy’s accusation that Russia is guilty of “genocide,” they have largely overlooked the apparent admission of atrocities by an avowed ally of the United States who was welcomed on Capitol Hill by senior lawmakers overseeing congressional foreign policy committees.

Having fought in four wars against Russia, and despite allegations that he played a leading role in the massacre of 49 protesters in Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014, Mamulashvili has taken multiple trips to the United States, where he received a warm welcome from members of Congress, the New York Police Department, and Ukrainian diaspora community.

In an interview this April, Mamulashvili, was asked about a video showing Russian fighters who had been extrajudicially executed in Dmitrovka, a town just five miles from Bucha. Mamulashvili was candid about his unit’s take-no-prisoners tactics, though he has denied involvement in the specific crimes depicted.

“We will not take Russian soldiers, as well as Kadyrovites [Chechnyan fighters]; in any case, we will not take prisoners, not a single person will be captured,” Mamulashvili said, implying that his fighters execute POWs.

The warlord’s battle dress shirt was emblazoned with a patch reading, “Mama says I’m special.”

“Yes, we tie their hands and feet sometimes. I speak for the Georgian Legion, we will never take Russian soldiers prisoner. Not a single one of them will be taken prisoner,” Mamulashvili emphasized

Executions of enemy combatants are considered war crimes under the Geneva Convention.

Ukrainian and Georgian Legion fighters celebrate after executing captive Russian soldiers on video. (Credit: public domain)

Western governments continue to block a Russian request for a United Nations investigation into alleged massacres in Bucha, where scores of corpses were photographed following the Russian withdrawal from the city, some with hands bound and shot execution style – as Mamulashvili described doing to prisoners.

While the events in Bucha have become a source of outrage and heated contention, a clear case of war crimes by Ukrainian forces which took place just five miles down the road on March 30 as Russian troops withdrew has received a more muted response despite coverage by the New York Times.

The macabre footage shows Russian paratroopers dead or bleeding out in the road, some with their hands clearly bound — reportedly the handiwork of the Georgian Legion. (Read more: The Grayzone, 4/08/2022) (Archive)

April 11, 2022 – Memos reveal Biden White House facilitates DOJ’s criminal probe against Trump, scuttles privilege claims

Jonathan Su (Credit: law.com)

“Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump’s estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-a-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president’s claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News.

The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.

By May, Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive privilege, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.

The machinations are summarized in several memos and emails exchanged between the various agencies in spring 2022, months before the FBI took the added unprecedented step of raiding Trump’s Florida compound with a court-issued search warrant.

Debra Steidel Wall assumes the office of acting Archivist of the United States on May 1, 2022. (Credit: Wikipedia)

The most complete summary was contained in a lengthy letter dated May 10 that acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall sent Trump’s lawyers summarizing the White House’s involvement.

“On April 11, 2022, the White House Counsel’s Office — affirming a request from the Department of Justice supported by an FBI letterhead memorandum — formally transmitted a request that NARA provide the FBI access to the 15 boxes for its review within seven days, with the possibility that the FBI might request copies of specific documents following its review of the boxes,” Wall wrote Trump defense attorney Evan Corcoran.

That letter revealed Biden empowered the National Archives and Records Administration to waive any claims to executive privilege that Trump might assert to block DOJ from gaining access to the documents.

“The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, [Christopher H. Schroeder] regarding whether or not I should uphold the former President’s purported ‘protective assertion of executive privilege,'” Wall wrote. “… I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege.”

The memos provide the most definitive evidence to date of the current White House’s effort to facilitate a criminal probe of the man Joe Biden beat in the 2020 election and may face again as a challenger in 2024. That involvement included eliminating one of the legal defenses Trump might use to fight the FBI over access to his documents.” (Read more: JusttheNews, 8/22/2022)  (Archive)

April 12, 2022 – The Department of Homeland Security broadens efforts to curb speech and censor American citizens

THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. Years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents — obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents — illustrate an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms.

The work, much of which remains unknown to the American public, came into clearer view earlier this year when DHS announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board”: a panel designed to police misinformation (false information spread unintentionally), disinformation (false information spread intentionally), and malinformation (factual information shared, typically out of context, with harmful intent) that allegedly threatens U.S. interests. While the board was widely ridiculed, immediately scaled back, and then shut down within a few months, other initiatives are underway as DHS pivots to monitoring social media now that its original mandate — the war on terror — has been wound down.

Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.

Matt Masterson (Credit: Stanford University)

“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, texted Jen Easterly, a DHS director, in February.

In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government. Dehmlow, according to notes of the discussion attended by senior executives from Twitter and JPMorgan Chase, stressed that “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.”

FBI Foreign Influence Task Force Chief Laura Dehmlow is tied to the Twitter decision to suppress the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story. (Credit: TCB conference)

“We do not coordinate with other entities when making content moderation decisions, and we independently evaluate content in line with the Twitter Rules,” a spokesperson for Twitter wrote in a statement to The Intercept.

There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use. At the time of writing, the “content request system” at facebook.com/xtakedowns/login is still live. DHS and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment.

DHS’s mission to fight disinformation, stemming from concerns around Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election, began taking shape during the 2020 election and over efforts to shape discussions around vaccine policy during the coronavirus pandemic. Documents collected by The Intercept from a variety of sources, including current officials and publicly available reports, reveal the evolution of more active measures by DHS.

According to a draft copy of DHS’s Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHS’s capstone report outlining the department’s strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target “inaccurate information” on a wide range of topics, including “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

“The challenge is particularly acute in marginalized communities,” the report states, “which are often the targets of false or misleading information, such as false information on voting procedures targeting people of color.”

The inclusion of the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is particularly noteworthy, given that House Republicans, should they take the majority in the midterms, have vowed to investigate. “This makes Benghazi look like a much smaller issue,” said Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., a member of the Armed Services Committee, adding that finding answers “will be a top priority.”

How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated, and the inherently subjective nature of what constitutes disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech. (Read more: The Intercept, 10/31/2022)  (Archive)

April 15, 2022 – Durham filing reveals there are five Clinton associates invoking the Fifth

Hillary Clinton uses her power and connections to gaslight the American public with Russiagate only to then lose the 2016 presidential election. (Credit: clipping from video of Clinton concession speech, Nov 2016)

“Five associates of Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign are invoking their Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to cooperate with Special Counsel John H. Durham, according to a filing in federal court revealed later Friday in Washington, DC.

The revelation emerged in a motion filed by Durham to oppose the efforts of defendant Michael Sussmann and the Clinton campaign to withhold some documents from evidence by asserting attorney-client privilege.

(…) In the filing, Durham noted that while one witness, identified as “Researcher-2,” was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony, “at least five other witnesses who conducted work relating to the Russian Bank-1 allegations invoked (or indicated their intent to invoke) their right against self-incrimination.”

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley noted in a commentary on the filing:

Durham is now moving to give immunity to a key witness while revealing that the claims made by the Clinton campaign were viewed by the CIA as “not technically plausible” and “user created.” He also revealed that at least five of the former Clinton campaign contractors/researchers have invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to cooperate in fear that they might incriminate themselves in criminal conduct.

Turley also noted that Durham’s filing “also detailed how the false Russian collusion claims related to Alfa Bank involved Clinton General Counsel Marc Elias and Christopher Steele.” (Read more: Breitbart, 4/18/2022)  (Archive)

April 15, 2022 – Durham releases CIA memoranda that suggest the Alfa Bank/Yotaphone tech gurus tracked Trump’s physical movements as early as 2014

Rodney Joffe, John Durham, and Michael Sussmann (Credit: public domain)

“Newly released CIA memoranda suggest the tech gurus behind the Alfa Bank hoax also tracked Donald Trump’s movements to devise another collusion conspiracy theory. While smaller in scale than other aspects of Spygate, the Yotaphone hoax represents an equally serious scandal because it involved both the mining of proprietary information and sensitive data from the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and the apparent surveillance of Trump’s physical movements.

(   ) …two months ago, as part of the government’s “Motion to Inquire Into Potential Conflicts of Interest,” Durham’s team revealed for the first time that when Sussmann met with the CIA in early 2017, he provided agents with internet data beyond the Alfa Bank conspiracy theory. This data, Sussmann claimed, “demonstrated that Trump and/or his associates were using supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones in the vicinity of the White House and other locations.”

The “supposedly rare, Russian-made wireless phones” were “Yotaphones.” Following Durham’s filing of the conflicts of interest motion, it appeared Sussmann bore responsibility for peddling a second conspiracy theory to the CIA. But the details contained in the government’s motion proved insufficient to understand the Yotaphone angle to Spygate. That all changed on Friday, when the special counsel filed two CIA memoranda memorializing what Sussmann said about the Yotaphones and the data Joffe and his tech experts had compiled.

The first memorandum, dated January 31, 2017, summarized what Sussmann told a former CIA employee in hopes of scoring a meeting with the CIA. Sussmann said his client “had some interesting information about the presence and activity of a unique Russian-made phone around President Trump.” Sussmann claimed the activity started in April 2016 when Trump was working out of the Trump Tower on its Wi-Fi network. That phone was also used on the “Wi-Fi at Trump’s apartment at Grand Central Park West,” according to Sussmann.

The memorandum then noted that “when Trump traveled to Michigan to interview a cabinet secretary, the phone appeared with Trump in Michigan.” The unnamed cabinet secretary apparently refers to Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos, whose husband Richard DeVos was chairman of the Michigan-based Spectrum Health in 2016.

According to the notes, Sussmann also told his contact that “the phone was never noticed in two places at once” and was seen “only around the President’s movement.” The memo noted that once, when Trump was not in Trump Tower, the phone was active on the Trump Tower WiFi network. Then, “in December 2016, the phone disappeared from Trump Tower Wi Fi network and surfaced on [the Executive Office Building] network,” the memorandum said, with Sussmann claiming it was the same Yotaphone and that it “surfaced” at the Executive Office Building after Trump moved to the White House.

The Yotaphone is rare, Sussmann told his contact, with only about a dozen or so present in the United States, and Russian government officials often receive a high-end version of the phone as a gift. According to Sussmann, the Yotaphone connected to Trump made a number of WiFi calls to Moscow and St. Petersburg from April 2016 until February 2017.

(…) During Sussmann’s February 9, 2017 meeting with the CIA, the memorandum notes that Sussmann provided the agency thumb drives with separate data files for the Yotaphone by the location of the “domain name system” or DNS lookups, including one for Trump’s Central Park apartment, one for the EOP, one for Spectrum Health Care, and one for the Trump Tower. That data, Sussmann told the CIA agents, related to DNS information, “indicat[ed] that a Russian-made Yota-phone had been seen by [Sussmann’s contacts] connecting to the WiFi from the Trump Tower in New York, as well as a from a location in Michigan, at the same time that then-candidate Trump was believed to be at these locations.”

(…) The data included in those files, however, reflected but a segment of the DNS lookups by the Yotaphones. The special counsel discovered that fact when it obtained more complete DNS data from a company that assisted Joffe in assembling the Yotaphone allegations. For instance, the more complete data assembled by Joffe and his associates showed the DNS lookups involving the EOP began at least as early as 2014, but Sussmann omitted that detail when providing the material to the CIA.

That Joffe and his associates had assembled more complete DNS data related to the Yotaphones than that provided to the CIA—data that disproves the Trump-Russia collusion theory—is a huge scandal: Those allegations indicate an intent to deceive by omission.” (Read more: The Federalist, 4/20/2022)  (Archive)

 

April 15, 2022 – Sussmann doesn’t want Clinton tweets touting Trump Russia collusion to be admitted as evidence

“The Democratic cybersecurity lawyer charged with concealing his work for the Clinton campaign from the FBI doesn’t want special counsel John Durham to be able to use Hillary Clinton’s tweet touting the Trump-Russia collusion claims he was pushing as evidence at trial.

(…) Durham told the federal court last week he wanted an October 2016 tweet from the Clinton campaign promoting the Alfa-Bank claims to be admitted as evidence at the May trial.

The special counsel argued the tweet is not inadmissible hearsay “because it is not being offered for its truth” — emphasizing that the prosecutors actually believe its claims were false. Durham said he instead wanted to present the tweet to “show the existence of the defendant’s attorney-client relationship with the Clinton Campaign, which is directly relevant to the false statement charge.”

On Halloween 2016, Clinton tweeted, “Donald Trump has a secret server … It was set up to communicate privately with a Putin-tied Russian bank.”

Clinton later tweeted, “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.”

She also shared a lengthy statement by then-Clinton campaign adviser and current Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

The FBI, CIA, special counsel Robert Mueller, a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, and Durham’s team have all cast doubt on or shot down the Alfa-Bank claims.

Sussmann’s lawyers argued the Clinton tweet sharing Sullivan’s statement and touting the story, which originally appeared in Slate, should be considered “inadmissible” for two “fundamental” reasons.

The defense attorneys said, “First, contrary to the Special Counsel’s misleading statement of the law, the Tweet is hearsay and it is plainly being offered for the truth: so that the Special Counsel can argue that the Campaign’s plan all along was to make a public statement about ‘federal authorities’ looking into the ‘direct connection between Trump and Russia.’ Second, the Tweet — which Mr. Sussmann did not author, issue, authorize, or even know about — is irrelevant, prejudicial, and would only confuse and distract the jury from the single false statement charge it must decide.”

Sussman’s lawyers wrote, “The Tweet, which was posted on October 31, 2016, does not reveal anything about Mr. Sussmann’s state of mind over a month earlier when he purportedly made the alleged false statement.”

“There is no evidence that Mr. Sussmann’s meeting with Mr. Baker had anything to do with the Clinton Campaign’s broader media strategy.”

But Durham wrote, “In the months prior to the publication of these articles, the defendant had communicated with the media and provided them with the Russian Bank-1 data and allegations” and had kept Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias “apprised of his efforts” while Elias “communicated with the Clinton Campaign’s leadership about potential media coverage of these issues.

The special counsel says the evidence at trial would show that beginning in late July and early August 2016, Sussmann, Joffe, and “agents of the Clinton campaign” were “assembling and disseminating the Russian Bank-1 allegations and other derogatory information about Trump and his associates to the media and the U.S. government.” The special counsel said evidence will “establish that these efforts amounted to a joint venture.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 4/19/2022)  (Archive)

April 15, 2022 – Durham’s latest filing reveals the guardrails, rules, and general direction of Sussmann’s prosecution

“CTH begins every outline of the ongoing Durham investigation with the following disclaimer:  How is John Durham going to reveal everything that is possible about the deep state Trump targeting operation, and simultaneously handle the involvement of Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, and the Special Counsel team who were specifically appointed to cover it up?

Thanks to a more detailed filing by John Durham last night {pdf here, h/t Techno}, we can now see the guardrails, rules, and general direction the prosecution is taking.

In essence, the underlying Trump-Russia conspiracy theory material from the Clinton campaign, via Rodney Joffe to Michael Sussmann, was fabricated – likely for a dual purpose:

(A) to cover up and make excuses for the stunningly embarrassing, potentially unlawful and politically terrible April 2016 DNC email leaks, which showed the DNC Club internally working to secure the nomination for Hillary Clinton, while trying to destroy her primary opponent, Bernie Sanders.

and

(B) to create the political Russia narrative against Trump, to be deployed later in the general election.

Within the general direction Durham is following, the FBI was duped by a purposeful and manipulative intent from the Clinton campaign.  Meanwhile, the CIA [Agency-2] did not buy into the technological evidence saying it was not “technically plausible” and was “user-created and not machine/tool generated.”  

For a complete breakdown of the legal filings and what they mean on a detailed level –

–Read Techno Fog Substack Here.

The prosecutorial approach by John Durham positions all of the corruption outside the institutions of government, thereby protecting them.

The bad guys, the corrupt lawbreakers, are the people directly connected to the Clinton Campaign and all of the political and legal agents in/around the Clinton political machine.

As the prosecutorial narrative is unfolding, the institutions of government were victims of the horrible, terrible activity by the Clinton outsiders.

Pay no attention to the aligned politics and weaponization of the White House, DOJ, DOJ-NSD, FBI main, FBI-CoIntel, CIA, Senate Intelligence Committee, or memberships therein.  The entire apparatus of the most robust, capable, excellent, and diligent intelligence apparatus in the history of all mankind, along with all the oversight mechanisms that exist to support that apparatus, was duped by Hillary Clinton’s team.

That’s John Durham’s investigative thesis, and the court filings show he’s sticking to it.”

 

(Read: Conservative Treehouse, 4/16/2022)  (Archive)

April 2022 – Fani Willis Trump prosecutors collude with January 6 Committee investigators

Trump Fulton County prosecutor, Nathan Wade (Credit: Campbell and Wade)

Georgia prosecutors working for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis secretly met with January 6 Committee investigators in April 2022 before a special grand jury was convened to investigate Trump’s effort to challenge the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia.

Recall that it was reported in early May 2022 that Fani Willis convened a special grand jury to investigate Trump.

According to Politico, Fani Willis’s prosecutors secretly met with January 6 Committee investigators to review evidence.

“Committee staff quietly met with lawyers and agents working for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in mid-April 2022, just as she prepared to convene a special grand jury investigation. In the previously unreported meeting, the Jan. 6 committee aides let the district attorney’s team review — but not keep — a limited set of evidence they had gathered.” Politico reported.

“Over the next few months, committee staff also had a series of phone calls with Willis’ team. They answered the prosecutors’ questions and shared insight on matters like Trump’s false electors gambit and his efforts to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Both of those ploys ultimately featured prominently in the criminal charges that Willis brought against Trump and his allies last summer.” Politico reported.

In December, House Judiciary Committee Republicans launched an investigation into Fani Willis colluding with the January 6 Committee.

In December 2023, House Judiciary Republicans unearthed a December 17, 2021 letter between Fani Willis and January 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson.

Fani Willis refused to cooperate with Jim Jordan’s request to disclose details about her team’s contact with the January 6 Committee. (Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 1/11/2024)  (Archive)

April 15, 2022 – Durham filing reveals the “user created” data Sussmann gave to CIA, includes Trump’s alleged secret activities on a Russian-made phone

Via Techno Fog:

The CIA Notes Part 1: January 31, 2017

Durham provided to the Court two sets of notes related to Sussmann’s representations to the CIA. The first was from Sussmann’s January 31, 2017 contacts with a CIA employee where Sussmann discussed wanting to provide to the CIA data on “the presence and activity of a unique Russian made phone around President Trump.” It was said that this secret activity started in April 2016 and continued after Trump’s “move to the White House.”

Sussmann alleged the Russian phone (YotaPhone) was always close to Trump (“only around the President’s Movements”), surfacing at his Trump Tower Network in April 2016 and being used through Wi-Fi at Trump’s Grand Central West apartment. The phone even “appeared with Trump in Michigan” when he was interviewing a Cabinet Secretary.

At a minimum, this confirms what we reported nearly two months ago: that the Trump transition data was passed to the CIA. Yet it’s also more than that. The CIA was provided with data all the way back from April 2016.

Why does April 2016 matter? Because Russia was alleged to have hacked “the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and DNC networks in April 2016.” Recall that “Crowdstrike was contacted on April 30, 2016 to respond to a suspected breach” of the DNC.

(…) The CIA Notes Part 2: Sussmann’s February 9, 2017 meeting with the CIA

That January 31, 2017 conference was used to schedule the February 9, 2017 meeting with the CIA. At that meeting, Sussmann repeated his allegations that a “Russian-made Yota-phone” had been seen at Trump properties and had traveled with Trump to Michigan. He further alleged that “In December 2016, the Yota-phone was seen connecting to WIFI from the Executive Office of the President (the White House).”

(…) The CIA reviewed the Trump/YotaPhone data (and the Alfa Bank data) in early 2017. The fact that the CIA accepted this data on President Trump is its own scandal. In any event, the CIA’s findings are significant, as they concluded that the data was not “technically plausible” and was “user created and not machine/tool generated.”

(Read more: TechnoFog.substack/4/16/2022)  (Archive)

April 15, 2022 – Durham filing reveals Sussman made false statements to the CIA

Michael Sussmann (Credit: CNN screenshot)

On Feb. 9, 2017, Sussman met with CIA officers—where he also made false statements, according to the new filings.

A memorandum introduced by the special counsel’s team and penned by a CIA official said that Sussman provided documents and thumb drives that he claimed contained data related to potential Russian activities linked with Trump.

Sussman “advised that he was not representing a particular client,” according to the notes. Instead, he said he was conveying information from “contacts” who he believed “were acting in good faith and out of a sense of loyalty to the USG,” or U.S. government.

That contradicts how Sussman told a former CIA employee, who was said to have helped set up the February meeting, that he “represents a client who does not want to be known,” according to notes of the meeting taken by the former employee.

It also contradicts testimony Sussman delivered to the House Intelligence Committee. Under oath, Sussman said (pdf) he received the information “from a client of mine.”

Sussman said he learned of the information by the summer of 2016 but only came forward months later because President Barack Obama ordered an intelligence review of possible Russian interference in elections.

“This information seemed to fall roughly within that, and so I thought that might be—or my client thought that that might be something that was relevant for those that were gathering information regarding foreign-based actors,” Sussman said. (Read more: Zero Hedge, 4/16/2022)  (Archive)

April 15, 2022 – Obama attempts to rewrite his history with Russia

In 2012, Obama told Medvedev in Russia to tell Putin that he would be more flexible after the election.

In a debate with Romney, he laughed at Romney for remarking how dangerous Putin and Russia were, saying the ’80s called and wanted their foreign policy back:

Now, Obama says Putin was always dangerous,  though he did nothing in his eight years to rein Putin in.

Barack Obama and Fareed Zakaria, 2/15/2015 (Credit: CNN)

Putin Has Always Been a Threat and Ruthless: Obama

Former President Barack Obama said Russian President Vladimir Putin has always been a threat on the world stage. He described him as ruthless against his own people and others.

“He has always been somebody who’s wrapped up in this twisted, distorted sense of grievance and ethnic nationalism. That part of Putin, I think has always been there,” Obama told Al Roker on NBC’s “Today.”

Mitt Romney finally gets credit years later for his warnings on Russia

Last week, Obama lied through his teeth when he said he had been tough on Russia after they invaded Crimea. He said he had to drag Europe in to be tough.

Barack Obama Rewrites His Russia History

His claim that he was tough on Putin is contradicted by his eight-year record.

(Read more: American Thinker, 4/15/2022)  (Archive)

April 18, 2022 – Former Clinton campaign official, Robby Mook, signs affidavit swearing that Fusion GPS provided the campaign with legal advice

Robby Mook (Credit: Douglas Graham/Getty Images)

“The battle over documents and e-mails in the Michael Sussmann case just got hotter.

Back in August 2017, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee, explaining how his firm was retained to gather “lots of facts about Donald Trump.” He admitted that Fusion GPS met with reporters leading up to the 2016 election to spread opposition research against then-candidate Trump.

The context of Perkins Coie’s retention of Fusion GPS was further explained in a book co-authored by Simpson and Fusion GPS co-founder Peter Fritsch. They documented an April 20, 2016 meeting with Mark Elias (Perkins Coie partner and counsel for the DNC/Clinton Campaign), where Elias requested their services for opposition research:

Now the stories have changed.

Fusion GPS is no longer an opposition research firm, and they weren’t hired to dig-up dirt against Trump. Instead, they would have you believe, after the phony dossier and the Alfa Bank hoax, that Fusion GPS was retained to provide legal advice to the Hillary Clinton Campaign. Remarkable.

Background

On April 6, Durham filed this motion to compel in the Michael Sussmann case, requesting the court require the production of “emails and attachments between and among” Perkins Coie, Rodney Joffe, and Fusion GPS. These emails and documents, according to Durham, “appear or involve or relate to” Fusion GPS’s provision of research and media services to Hillary for America, the DNC, and Perkins Coie. (Some documents had been produced pursuant to grand jury subpoenas dating back to the 2021.)

(Read more: Techno Fog/substack, 4/20/2022)  (Archive)

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April 20, 2022 – Hillary asks a Florida federal court to throw out Trump’s lawsuit that accuses her of conspiring against him

(Credit: Wall Street Journal)

“Hillary Clinton asked a federal court Wednesday to throw out a lawsuit from former President Donald Trump that accuses her and the Democratic National Committee of conspiring against him to smear his 2016 campaign.

Clinton’s attorneys said Trump’s $24 million lawsuit that claims an “unthinkable plot” to “cripple” his bid for the presidency and paint his campaign as colluding with Russia had no legal basis, according to a motion filed in US District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

“Whatever the utility of Plaintiff’s Complaint as a fundraising tool, a press release, or a list of political grievances, it has no merit as a lawsuit and should be dismissed with prejudice,” the 22-page court filing said.

In a 108-page complaint filed last month, Trump claimed Clinton and others orchestrated a plan to manufacture the Russia scandal to ruin his candidacy in 2016 when he was running as a Republican candidate against Clinton.

Clinton, the former Secretary of State and first lady, worked with others as the then-Democratic nominee for president to allegedly falsify evidence to spark federal investigations in a ploy he called “so outrageous, subversive and incendiary that even the events of Watergate pale in comparison,” Trump’s suit says.” (Read more: New York Post, 4/20/2022)  (Archive)

April 21, 2022 – Hillary Clinton and Obama come out against free speech and in favor of internet censorship

“Over the last 24 hours, former President Barack Obama and twice-failed presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton have come out against free speech – calling for big tech to go further to censor views they disagree with.

On Thursday, Obama told an audience at Stanford University that tech companies are “turbo-charging some of humanity’s worst impulses,” adding “One of the biggest reasons for the weakening of democracy is the profound change that’s taken place in how we communicate and consume information.”

He then said that people are ‘dying because of disinformation.’

Obama’s ‘misinformation’ shtick was largely a repeat of a speech he gave two weeks ago in Chicago, when he claimed “You have to fight to provide people [with] the information they need to be free and self-governing.” In other words, government-approved narratives.

As The Federalist noted, however, Obama “Spied on the Donald Trump campaign with a secret court warrant backed by the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded Christopher Steele dossier which, in an ironic twist, was the product of Russian disinformation. Democrats used this disinformation to repeatedly smear President Trump and undermine the integrity of the 2016 election.”

Hillary Clinton joined the fray on Thursday, tweeting “For too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability,” and called on “our transatlantic allies to push the Digital Services Act,” aimed at regulating online platforms.

Of course, Hillary Clinton funded the Russian disinfo dossier that Obama’s administration used against Trump, and the former British spy that was paid to fabricate it pushed it to major news outlets which peddled the misinformation as long as they could squeeze blood from that stone.

What was that about misinformation, Hillary? (Read more: Zero Hedge, 4/22/2022)  (Archive)

April 21, 2022 – FISA Court releases report claiming the FBI repeatedly misused surveillance tool pertaining to January 6 cases; FISC corrective measures haven’t worked

FISA Court rubber stamps FBI warrant applications to spy on Americans. (Credit: River City Reader)

The FBI repeatedly misused a surveillance tool in searching for foreign intelligence to use in cases pertaining to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and 2020 racial justice protests, according to an April 2022 court order publicly released Friday.

The order, which was released by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, is significantly redacted but reveals thousands of violations of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the federal government to collect communications between certain targeted foreign individuals outside the U.S.

The court has legal oversight of the U.S. government’s espionage activities.

FBI officials said the violations came before corrective measures the agency took starting in summer 2021 and continuing into last year.

(…) The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the report Friday to promote transparency, but members of Congress originally received the order last year.

The FBI’s program maintains a database of intelligence that U.S. agencies can search, but the FBI must have a foreign intelligence purpose or be looking for evidence of a crime to conduct a search.

The order shows the FBI turned to the database to look into someone it believed was present at the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, an inquiry that did not have any “analytical, investigative or evidentiary” purpose.

An analyst conducted 13 searches of people who were suspected of participating in the riot to see whether they had any foreign ties, but the Justice Department later determined that it did not meet the standard required for a search. (Read more: The Hill, 5/19/2023)  (Archive)

This problem existed eight years ago and any ‘corrective measure’ the court took to safeguard our First and Fourth Amendment rights, hasn’t worked.

(…)  The FISA court found that the government had been engaging in a long pattern of significant abuses that were revealed to the court by then-National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers.

“On October 24, 2016, the government orally apprised the Court of significant non-compliance with the NSA’s minimization procedures involving queries of data acquired under Section 702 using U.S. person identifiers. The full scope of non-compliant querying practices had not been previously disclosed to the Court,” the FISC ruling read.

The court noted the government’s failure to previously notify the court of these issues, referring to the government’s actions as exhibiting an institutional “lack of candor” while emphasizing that “this is a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.”

April 26, 2017 – An unsealed FISC Report reveals systematic abuses in accessing 702 data

April 22, 2022 – Ga Tech Spygate researchers did work for former Special Counsel Robert Mueller

(   ) …an email obtained by The Federalist indicates Georgia Tech researchers drafted a series of white papers for DARPA, including on the “DNC attack attribution,” and on what they called a “Mueller List” of “domains and indicators related” to DNC hackers.

The email dated July 23, 2021 followed Durham dropping a second subpoena on Georgia Tech for more documents related to its investigation of the Alfa Bank hoax and other related issues. (More on that subpoena below). In that email, a lawyer representing David Dagon, the second Georgia Tech researcher involved in the Alfa Bank hoax who also worked on the DARPA Enhanced Attribution program, shared a list of “documents/data sources” Dagon believed would be responsive to the subpoena of Georgia Tech documents.

Listed under the heading of “DARPA whitepapers” were four documents, including “Whitepaper on DNC attack attribution”; Analysis of attacks of EOP (Executive Office of the President) networks”; “Whitepaper for DOJ on APT-29 related hackers, crypto coin transactions, and analysis that includes Yota-related domains”; and “‘Mueller List’—list of domains and indicator related to APT-28.”

Of these DARPA whitepapers, the first and fourth both relate to the DNC hack, with the final paper also connecting to the Mueller investigation. APT-28 is the more formal name for the Russian intelligence group of hackers known colloquially as Fancy Bear. As part of his investigation, Mueller charged 12 Russian intelligence agents allegedly working as Fancy Bear with crimes related to the DNC hack.

This email represents the latest evidence suggesting Georgia Tech and DARPA assisted in the DNC hack investigation and Mueller’s investigation, notwithstanding DARPA’s strident denials.” (Read more: The Federalist, 4/22/2022)  (Archive)

April 22, 2022 – The Coolidge Reagan Foundation writes letter to Durham re the FEC’s recent decision to fine Hillary for America and the DNC

The Coolidge Reagan Foundation logo. (Credit: public domain)

(…)  After the Hillary for America and the DNC’s motions to intervene hit the Sussmann docket, The Coolidge Reagan Foundation penned a three-page letter to Durham and Assistant Special Counsel Jonathan Algor. That letter alerted the special counsel’s office to key facts about the FEC’s recent decision to fine the political groups in relation to a complaint the foundation had filed with the FEC. That complaint charged Hillary for America and the DNC with using the “law firm, Perkins Coie, to hire and funnel over $1 million to ‘outside research firms’ such as Fusion GPS ‘to perform potentially sensitive, controversial, or politically embarrassing’ opposition research into Donald Trump.”

Coolidge Reagan Foundation … by The Federalist

The FEC complaint, filed in 2018, alleged that “the research was not ‘for the purpose of assisting Perkins Coie in providing legal advice,’” but to further the “political and campaign-related goals” of the organizations. The foundation also claimed in its FEC complaint that because the work was not “for the purpose of providing legal advice or assisting with impending or potential litigation, it was not covered by attorney-client, work-product, or other privileges.”

Significantly, as the foundation noted in its April 22, 2022 letter to the special counsel’s office, the FEC had “found probable cause to believe” the political organizations had misreported the purpose of certain disbursements. The FEC reached that conclusion based on a memorandum prepared by the FEC’s Office of General Counsel, but under controlling regulations that memorandum “will not be made public for another week,” the letter explained.

Foundation counsel Dan Backer added that while the memorandum is not yet public, the special counsel’s office would likely be able to obtain it directly from the FEC. That memorandum also will provide Durham’s team further details on the FEC’s investigation and fact-finding that may be useful to the special counsel in the Sussmann litigation, noted the letter.

In Friday’s letter, Backer also highlighted Hillary for America and the DNC’s commitment in their settlement agreement with the FEC to “not further contest the Commission’s finding of probable cause to believe” that the political organizations had “falsely reported their payments through Perkins Coie to Fusion GPS as being for legal services.” In contrast, in the Sussmann case, Hillary for America and the DNC “ are nevertheless asserting materials generated by Fusion GPS and provided to Perkins Coie are protected by attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine,” the letter stressed.

“The Government should not permit HFA and the DNC to adopt conflicting positions in different proceedings, depending on the federal agency against which they are litigating,” the foundation’s letter concluded, suggesting the trial court may find those breaches of the settlement agreement “material in ruling on any privilege claims.” (Read more: The Federalist, 4/25/2022)  (Archive)

April 25, 2022 – Durham email release proves the FBI pursued a dossier rumor at the same time the press shot it down as ‘bullshit’

Peter Fritsch (l) and Glenn Simpson, founders of Fusion GPS,  join Meet The Press on November 24, 2019, for an exclusive interview to discuss their work on the Steele Dossier. (Credit: Meet the Press/YouTube)

Paul Sperry/RealClearInvestigations

“The FBI decision to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser hinged on an unsubstantiated rumor from a Clinton campaign-paid dossier that the Washington Post’s Moscow sources had quickly shot down as “bullshit” and “impossible,” according to emails disclosed last week to a D.C. court hearing the criminal case of a Clinton lawyer accused of lying to the FBI.

Though the FBI presumably had access to better sources than the newspaper, agents did little to verify the rumor that Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page had secretly met with sanctioned Kremlin officials in Moscow. Instead, the bureau pounced on the dossier report the day it received it, immediately plugging the rumor into an application under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to wiretap Page as a suspected Russian agent.

The allegation, peddled to both the press and FBI in the summer of 2016 by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to dig up dirt on Trump during the presidential race, proved to be the linchpin in winning approval for the 2016 warrant, which was renewed three times in 2017 – even though the FBI learned there were serious holes in the story and had failed to independently corroborate it.

The revelations of early media skepticism about the Trump-Russia narrative before journalists embraced it are included in a 62-page batch of emails between Fusion and prominent Beltway reporters released by Special Counsel John Durham, who is scouring the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign for evidence of abuse and criminal wrongdoing.

The documents suggest that some journalists, as keen as they were to report dirt on Trump, were nevertheless more cautious than FBI investigators about embracing hearsay information served up by Clinton agents. (The FBI declined comment.) The new material also offers a look at the lengths to which those working on Clinton’s behalf went in order to seed the government with unverified rumors about Trump and Russia that amounted to a disinformation campaign. Among those targeted were powerful Democratic members of Congress, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who proved to be a willing collaborator.

Trump as ‘Manchurian Candidate’

The story of high-level Kremlin meetings didn’t ring true with some in the press, who checked with sources in Moscow and pushed back on Fusion GPS. But journalists’ interest in the story remained high during the campaign.

In an interview, Page said he was flooded with calls during the summer of 2016 from Washington journalists, including veteran reporters from the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He said Fusion had misled them into believing they were working on the story of their lifetimes – that a real-life “Manchurian candidate,” or Russian sleeper agent, was running for president.

“Each news outlet kept calling me,” he said. “One by one.”

Page said he strenuously denied the accusations.

“It was B.S.,” he said. “I tried to warn them.”

“As eager as journalists may have been to make Trump appear to be a Kremlin operative, some were skeptical about what Fusion was telling them about Page. Among those were now former Wall Street Journal foreign affairs correspondent Jay Solomon, who used “Manchurian candidate” in a July 2016 email exchange with Fusion, expressing his doubt.

“Everyone wants shit on this,” insisted Fusion co-founder Peter Fritsch, a former Journal reporter himself, in an attempt to coax his old colleague Solomon into covering the story.

Fritsch then outlined the rumors Fusion had just received from Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer his firm had hired to help tie Trump to Russia as part of its contract with the Clinton campaign. Those rumors, contained in a series of memos known as the Steele dossier, were shared with the FBI, including “Intelligence Report 94” dated July 19, 2016. It claimed that during a July 2016 trip to Moscow, Page attended a “secret meeting” with Putin crony Igor Sechin to discuss lifting Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia. The dossier also alleged that Page met with Kremlin official Igor Divyekin to share compromising information about Clinton with the Trump campaign.

An ‘Easy Scoop,’ Said GPS

“The easy scoop waiting for confirmation: that dude carter page met with igor sechin when he went to moscow earlier this month,” Fritsch stated in a July 26, 2016, email pitching the story to Solomon. “sechin discussed energy deals and possible lifting of sanctions on himself et al. he also met with a senior kremlin official called divyekin, who told page they have good kompromat on hillary and offered to help. he also warned page they have good kompromat on the donald.” (“Kompromat” is compromising information typically used in blackmail.)

Rep. Adam Schiff: A Fusion GPS-recommended source for a skeptical journalist. (Credit: Scott Applewhite)

Added Fritsch, referring in part to the mass leak of Democratic emails by WikiLeaks before the 2016 Democratic National Convention in late July: “needless to say, a senior trump advisor meeting with a former kgb official close to putin, who is on a treasury sanctions list, days before the republican convention and a big russian-backed wikileak would be huge news.”

Indeed it would be – if it were true. “Thanks for this,” Solomon said. “Will run down.”

But later that day, Solomon reported back that “Page is neither confirming nor denying,” so Fritsch suggested he “call adam schiff or difi,” referring to the then-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is not clear what information Fritsch expected the two Democrats to provide. (Schiff would later read the same raw dossier rumors about Page into the congressional record during a public hearing about Trump’s alleged Russian ties.)

Tom Hamburger (Credit: Twitter/@thamburger)

Three days later, Fusion’s attempts to plant their rumor in influential media outlets hit more resistance. Another Journal alumnus, Tom Hamburger, said he was “getting kick back” while trying to confirm the rumor for the Washington Post, where he worked on the paper’s national desk.

“That Page met with Sechin or Ivanov. ‘Its [sic] bullshit. Impossible,’ said one of our Moscow sources,” Hamburger reported back to Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson, who also previously worked for the Journal. (The rumor included Sergei Ivanov, a top Putin aide.) The Post’s Moscow bureau chief at the time was David Filipov. Hamburger added that another reporter he knew “doesn’t like this story” and was passing on it.

“No worries, I don’t expect lots of people to believe it,” Simpson replied. “It is, indeed, hard to believe.”

As Fusion was pushing the rumors to reporters that July, its subcontractor Steele was pushing them to FBI agents, who received copies of his dossier earlier in the month. Steele also briefed a top Justice Department official, Bruce Ohr, on the Carter Page rumors on July 30 during a breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel in D.C., and asked Ohr to relay them to FBI brass. The next day, the FBI officially opened its Crossfire Hurricane investigation targeting Trump advisers – though the bureau says this decision was based on a tip it had received from an Australian diplomat.

For his part, Hamburger still pursued the story, asking for documents on Page later that month; and Fusion recycled the false rumor in an internal report, separate from the Steele dossier, which it emailed to Hamburger and another Post reporter in September.

President Obama’s appearance at the New Economic School in Moscow, 2009, brought none of the suspicions that Carter Page created years later. (Credit: Euractiv/YouTube)

The report, which Fritsch claimed that “one of our [research] associates wrote,” went beyond even the dossier. It asserted that Page’s July 8 speech at the New Economic School in Moscow (where President Obama had also once spoken) was “concocted to give Page a public explanation for his trip to Moscow, which sources say included secret meetings with top Kremlin officials, where the American presidential campaign and U.S. sanctions against Russia were both discussed.”

Fritsch did not say who the Fusion “sources” were. But around the same time, he and Simpson brought Steele to Washington to brief journalists from the Post, the New York Times, CNN, and Yahoo News on Page in a private room at the Tabard Inn, a hotel-bar long a favorite of Washington scribes.

Glen Caplin (Credit: Twitter)

Fusion had finally found a media outlet to take the bait it had been chumming out to reporters for months. After meeting with Steele for about an hour, Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff ran with the rumors in a September 23 online article, which the FBI then used to corroborate the dossier in its initial October 2016 FISA application, even though the supposed corroboration was redundant: Steele and his dossier were Isikoff’s source for the story. (Isikoff, who did not respond to requests for comment, would later write in a 2018 book he co-authored, “Russian Roulette,” that the rumors about Page were just “pillow talk.”)

The Clinton campaign jumped on what it called Isikoff’s “bombshell report” and heavily promoted it on social media. Clinton campaign official Glen Caplin issued a statement republishing the Yahoo piece in full and proclaiming: “It’s chilling to learn that U.S. intelligence officials are conducting a probe into suspected meetings between Trump’s foreign policy adviser Carter Page and members of Putin’s inner circle while in Moscow … [T]his report suggests Page met with a sanctioned top Russian official to discuss the possibility of ending U.S. sanctions against Russia under a Trump presidency – an action that could directly enrich both Trump and Page while undermining American interests.”

Added Caplin: “This is serious business and voters deserve the facts before election day.”

But the media never reported the real facts behind the story – that it was all based on Clinton campaign opposition research – which allowed the rumors to survive without any real scrutiny for years.

Sergei Millian: He wasn’t the source of the Trump sex-tape story, and the Washington Post had to retract. (Credit: Twitter)

The Washington Post eventually stopped paying attention to the red flags surrounding the dossier. The newspaper seized on other rumors Fusion fed reporters from the Clinton-paid document.

Hamburger, for one, later bit on a tip that the source for the most explosive allegations in the dossier was a Trump supporter with Kremlin ties. He reported in 2017 that Sergei Millian was behind the claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin had compromising sex tapes of Trump and that he and Trump were engaged in a “well-developed conspiracy” to steal the 2016 election.

However, the Post had to retract his stories after Special Counsel John Durham last year disclosed that Millian was fabricated as a source. The prosecutor indicted Steele’s “primary subsource,” Igor Danchenko, for lying to the FBI when he told agents that Millian was a source for the dossier. Millian had nothing to do with the dossier, as RCI reported. Danchenko, who awaits trial, apparently made it all up.

Hamburger did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

‘Pushed It Over’ the Line

Carter Page, who is suing the former corporate parent of Yahoo News for defamation, suggested anti-Trump bias blinded the media to glaring problems with the dossier. But even more alarming, he said, is how FBI leaders, whose text messages reveal that they shared the media’s hatred for Trump, were even more reckless in gunning for him. Page said it’s outrageous that, at least initially, the press seemed to have “higher ethical standards” than FBI headquarters.

On Sept. 19, 2016, the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team formally received Steele’s dossier Report 94 alleging Page’s secret Kremlin meetings, according to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who detailed the FBI’s handling of the rumors in a 2019 report. That same day, the team began discussions with department lawyers “to consider Steele’s reporting as part of a FISA application targeting Carter Page.”

Brian Auten, FBI supervisor: The Steele dossier’s bogus “Report 94,” alleging secret Page-Russia meetings, helped make the case for spying on him. (Credit: Twitter)

In an email to attorneys, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten forwarded an excerpt from Steele’s report and asked, “Does this put us at least *that* much closer to a full FISA on [Carter Page]?” The FBI agent handling the case said the rumors from Steele “supplied missing information in terms of what Page may have been doing during his July 2016 visit to Moscow.”

The attorneys thought it was a “close call” when they first discussed a FISA targeting Page in early August, Horowitz relayed in his report, but the Steele reporting in September “pushed it over” the line in terms of establishing probable cause.

In the run-up to the FBI securing approval for the FISA request in late October 2016, the bureau tasked an undercover informant, Stefan Halper, to question Page about the alleged meetings with Kremlin officials. Halper struck out. In a conversation Halper recorded surreptitiously, Page not only denied huddling with Sechin and Divyekin but said he had never even heard of Divyekin. The FBI decided not to include these inconvenient facts in its FISA warrant application, an omission the Justice Department’s inspector general found striking.

“The application did not contain these denials even though the application relied upon the allegations in Report 94 that Page had secret meetings with both Sechin and Divyekin,” the Horowitz report noted.

It wasn’t the only exculpatory evidence the FBI left out of its FISA applications. It also omitted information it possessed showing that Page, who had once worked in Moscow as a Merrill Lynch investment banker, had earlier assisted the FBI in catching a Russian spy, as RealClearInvestigations first reported. The former Navy lieutenant also previously helped the CIA monitor Russia, something an FBI attorney deliberately hid from the FISA court. (The lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, was recently convicted of charges related to his doctoring of a government email documenting Page’s role as a CIA source.)

In early 2017, as the FBI was preparing to reapply for wiretaps on Page, Steele’s primary subsource Danchenko told Auten and other FBI officials that he had made it clear to Steele that he had only heard a rumor that such clandestine meetings might take place but not that they actually occurred as Steele wrote in his dossier. The FBI nonetheless omitted from subsequent FISA renewal applications the revelation of Danchenko backing away from the critical piece of information supporting probable cause and admitting it was merely hearsay.

In the end, “The FBI was unable to determine whether a meeting between Sechin and Page took place,” Horowitz wrote in his report.

Page said it’s “chilling” that the nation’s most powerful police force could act so cavalierly, disregarding basic investigative procedures like verifying tips and rumors before obtaining wiretaps on a U.S. citizen.

Worse, he said, is how the FBI misled the secret FISA court. In a 2020 review of the applications, the powerful court determined that at least two of the surveillance warrants were invalid and therefore illegal. Page is now suing both the FBI and Justice Department for $75 million for violating his constitutional rights. (RealClearInvestigations, 5/4/2022)  (Archive)

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April 25, 2022 – Durham filing states he has hundreds of e-mails between Fusion GPS and reporters

“Special Counsel John Durham just filed this motion in response to the efforts of Hillary for America, Fusion GPS, et al. to keep secret (by use of the attorney-client and work product privileges) communications involving Fusion GPS. You can read it here.

Durham states the “purported privilege holders who have intervened do so in a case in which the defendant has denied representing any client when he brought the Russian Bank-1 allegations to the FBI.” The privilege controversy thus entraps Sussmann to a certain extent, seemingly precluding his denial that he was working on behalf of a client. Brilliant.

Additionally, Durham casts doubt on the declaration of Marc Elias that Fusion GPS was retained to provide “legal advice.” Here he makes a key point:

”…if rendering such advice was truly the intended purpose of Fusion GPS’s retention, one would also expect the investigative firm to seek permission and/or guidance from [Hillary for America] or its counsel before sharing such derogatory materials with the media or otherwise placing them into the public domain.”

(Credit: New York Post)

In support of that point, Durham states he is in possession of “hundreds of emails in which Fusion GPS employees shared raw, unverified, and uncorroborated information – including their own draft research and work product – with reporters.” (He even filed them under seal with the court.) These include:

  • Emails with Slate’s Franklin Foer from May 14, 2016 in which Fusion GPS conveys information on a Trump advisor and Alfa Bank.
  • July 26, 2016 e-mails from Fusion GPS to the Wall Street Journal communicating allegations from Christopher Steele stating “a Trump advisor meeting with a former KGB official close to Putin … would be huge news.”
  • July 29 and July 31, 2016 emails with a reporter (Washington Post’s Tom Hamburger) concerning Carter Page’s investments and meetings with Russians – of which the reporter said “Its bullshit.”

  • July 27, 2016 e-mails between an ABC News reporter (Matthew Mosk) and Fusion GPS concerning Sergei Millian. Fusion GPS responded with a “comprehensive report” regarding Millian.
  • Fusion GPS communications with NY Times reporters pushing more dirt on Millian.
  • This e-mail from a Fusion GPS co-founder to the New York Times – dated October 31, 2016 – pushing the Alfa Bank allegations and stating the US Government is investigating. (Timeline editor’s note: this date is also the first time Hillary and Podesta tweet about Trump Russia collusion.)

Here are e-mails between Franklin Foer and Fusion GPS, in which they discuss going after Carter Page in May 2016.

As Durham makes clear, no lawyers are copied in these e-mails and this doesn’t have anything to do with legal advice. And even if there were some type of privilege or work product, it was waived when Fusion GPS distributed the info to the press.” (Read more: Techno Fog/Substack, 4/25/2022)  (Archive)

April 25, 2022 – Durham releases email confirming Adam Schiff and Diane Feinstein were involved in Spygate/Russiagate by at least July 2016

(…) And here is Fusion GPS telling a WSJ reporter to call Adam Schiff or Diane Feinstein about Carter Page. This is solid evidence that Fusion GPS, by July 26, 2016, had briefed Schiff and Feinstein (and their staffers – including Daniel Jones, a person of interest in the Durham investigation) about their Trump/Russia “research.” (Techno Fog, 4/25/2022)  (Archive)

April 25, 2022 – Durham filing appears to confirm Laura Seago is the Fusion GPS employee to testify

(…) The Fusion GPS witness who will testify is the “tech maven” referenced in their e-mails with the New York Times. This appears to be confirmation that Laura Seago will be the Fusion GPS employee to testify.

Here’s more on the Fusion Witness and her knowledge of what went down leading up to the 2016 election:

(Read more: Techno Fog/Substack, 4/25/2022)  (Archive)

April 25, 2022 – Durham team member email confirms DARPA contracted to share classified information with GaTech researchers

(…) The Sussmann indictment mentions “non-public Internet data” that was exploited by Joffe, et al, for the purposes of their political hit-job. This information was provided to Georgia Tech as part of a prospective contract with DARPA to “identify the perpetrators of malicious cyber-attacks and protect U.S. national security.” (More details here.) After the indictment, it was revealed that Durham’s team has interviewed former DARPA employees.

Based on this information, we hinted that “there might be charges relating to the misuse of classified government data from DARPA.”

We now have confirmation that this contract included classified information.

Take a look at this e-mail (obtained by Twitter sleuth UndeadFOIA) where Andrew DeFilippis, who is part of Special Counsel Durham’s team, states that “DARPA has no objections to Georgia Tech’s provision of any records or information (both classified and unclassified) to our team and to the grand jury.”

(Techno Fog, 4/25/2022)  (Archive)

April 26, 2022 – Evelyn Farkas of Spygate/Russiagate infamy, will serve as McCain Institute Executive Director

Evelyn Farkas was forced to admit under oath before Congress that despite what she claimed on MSNBC, she never had evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. (Credit: MSNBC)

“The McCain Institute at Arizona State University (ASU) and ASU President Michael M. Crow are proud to announce Dr. Evelyn Farkas has been named the McCain Institute’s new executive director. Dr. Farkas will begin her new position at the Washington, D.C.-based McCain Institute on May 2, 2022.

“I am humbled and grateful to ASU and to the McCain Institute Board of Trustees for this opportunity. American leadership and a commitment to furthering human rights and democracy in the spirit of Senator John McCain is needed now more than ever, and I am excited to get to work alongside the McCain Institute’s talented and determined staff,” said Dr. Evelyn Farkas. “This is a critical time in our country’s history that calls on us to be unequivocal about the differences between democracy and autocracy. I look forward to helping advance character-driven leadership around the world.”

Dr. Farkas brings decades of American foreign policymaking to the McCain Institute. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, and executive director of the congressional Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, among many other senior national security positions in the U.S. government.

“We’re proud to welcome Evelyn Farkas to the McCain Institute and to Arizona State University,” said ASU President Michael M. Crow. “Her area of expertise could not be more appropriate for this moment in time and the possibilities for this new chapter of the McCain Institute at ASU are truly exciting.” (Read more: The McCain Institute, 4/26/2022)  (Archive)

April 27, 2022 – Sussmann’s evidentiary hearing; transcript; Steele not cooperating; VIPs “have desires”; Clinton tweet excluded from evidence

(   ) …there was a pre-trial hearing in the Michael Sussmann case relating to various evidentiary issues. For the uninitiated, Sussmann a former Perkins Coie partner, and former attorney for the DNC/Clinton Campaign (and Rodney Joffe), has been charged by Special Counsel John Durham with providing false statements to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in the fall of 2016. Here is more background on his indictment.

We have the full transcript of yesterday’s hearing. Here are some of the most notable disclosures:

More info on the investigation into Rodney Joffe.

(…) Rodney Joffe’s exposure and 18 U.S.C. 1031. The Special Counsel was understandably hesitant to get too deep into what they have on Rodney Joffe. However, when Sussmann’s attorneys brought up the fact that Joffe couldn’t be charged due to the 5-year statute of limitations, the Special Counsel responded that “certain statutes of limitations are longer than five years.”

The court asked for an example, and the Special Counsel referenced 18 U.S.C. 1031, “which involves defrauding the government in connection with procurement and contract matters.” This has to do with the Georgia Tech/DARPA contract. In the Special Counsel’s own words:

Laura Seago from Fusion GPS will (likely) testify at trial. We previously reported that Seago was identified as the “tech maven” the government expected to call at trial. At this hearing was the first time we saw Seago’s name explicitly mentioned as the Fusion GPS witness.

Christopher Steele will not be a witness. Sussmann’s lawyer informed the court that the Special Counsel stated on April 26 that Steele is “out of the country and isn’t likely to be a witness.”

In fact, Steele is not cooperating with the Special Counsel.

Finally, this statement from the Special Counsel relating to how “the VIPs, meaning Perkins Coie and the [Clinton] campaign” wanted the “Internet data” to be pulled for purposes of digging up information to damage Trump.

(Read more: Techno Fog, 4/28/2022)  (Archive)

November 2, 2022 – EU warns Twitter not to restore free speech protections after calls from Clinton and other Dem leaders

EU’s Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton and Elon Musk (Credit: Zero Hedge)

“We have been discussing how Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton called on foreign companies to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter. The EU has responded aggressively to warn Musk not to allow greater free speech or face crippling fines and even potential criminal enforcement. After years of using censorship by surrogates in social media companies, Democratic leaders seem to have rediscovered good old-fashioned state censorship.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) declared Musk’s pledge to restore free speech values on social media as threatening Democracy itself. She has promised that “there are going to be rules” to block such changes. She is not alone. Former President Obama has declared “regulation has to be part of the answer” to disinformation.

For her part, Hillary Clinton is looking to Europe to fill the vacuum and called upon her European counterparts to pass a massive censorship law to “bolster global democracy before it’s too late.”

(…) EU censors have assured Democratic leaders that they will not allow free speech to break out on Twitter regardless of the wishes of its owner and customers.

One of the most anti-free speech figures in the West, EU’s Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has been raising the alarm that Twitter users might be able to read uncensored material or hear unauthorized views.

Breton himself threatened that Twitter must “fly by [the European Union’s] rules” in censoring views deemed misleading or harmful by EU bureaucrats. Breton has been moving publicly to warn Musk not to try to reintroduce protections that go beyond the tolerance of the EU for free speech. Musk is planning to meet with the EU censors and has conceded that he may not be able resist such mandatory censorship rules.

The hope of leaders like Clinton is the anti-free speech measure recently passed by EU countries, the Digital Services Act. The DSA contains mandatory “disinformation” rules for censoring “harmful” thoughts or views.

(Read more: Zero Hedge/Jonathan Turley, 11/02/2022)  (Archive)

April 2022 – (…) As is often the case, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stripped away any niceties or nuance. Clinton called for the European Union to pass the Digital Services Act (DSA), a measure widely denounced by free speech advocates as a massive censorship measure. Clinton warned that governments need to act now because “for too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability. The EU is poised to do something about it.”

Clinton’s call for censoring disinformation was breathtakingly hypocritical. President Obama was briefed by his CIA Director John Brennan on “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016, of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.” The intelligence suggested it was “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”

Moreover, her call for censorship came just weeks after special counsel John Durham offered more details about the accusation that her campaign manufactured a false Russian collusion theory. One of Clinton’s former lawyers is under indictment for the effort. Clinton personally tweeted out the disinformation that is the subject of the federal prosecution. And the Federal Election Commission recently fined her campaign for hiding the funding of the Steele dossier.

Given that history, it would be easy to dismiss Clinton’s calls as almost comically self-serving. However, the 27-nation EU just did what she demanded. It gave preliminary approval to the act, which would subject companies to censorship standards at the risk of punitive financial or even criminal measures.

If implemented, it might not matter if Musk seeks to restore free speech values at Twitter. Figures like Clinton are now going to the EU to effectively force companies to continue to censor users.

Faced with liability across Europe, the companies could be forced to base their policies on the lowest common denominator for free speech.

Countries like Germany and France have spent decades criminalizing speech and imposing speech controls on their populations. That is why the premise of the DSA is so menacing.

European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager was ecstatic in declaring that it is “not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.”

Sound familiar? Freedom is tyranny, and democracy demands speech controls. (Jonathan Turley, 4/29/2022)  (Archive)

May 2, 2022 – Court orders FBI to provide details on officials listed in Strzok memo that opened spy operation against Trump


“Judicial Watch announced today that a federal court has ordered the FBI to disclose additional details about FBI and other officials “cc-ed” on the memo used to justify launching the “Crossfire Hurricane” spy operation against President Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign.  Judge Carl J. Nichols has given the FBI until June 16, 2022 to respond.  The order comes in a September 2019 FOIA lawsuit Judicial Watch filed after the FBI failed to respond to a request for the memo, known as an “Electronic Communication” or “EC.”  (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:19-cv-02743)).

In May 2020, Judicial Watch obtained a redacted version of the previously secret memo, authored by former FBI agent Peter Strzok.  The Biden Justice Department argued that there is no significant public interest in disclosing the names of officials “cc-ed” on the memo.

Judicial Watch filed a motion countering that claim and arguing that the public had a significant interest in knowing who at the FBI had knowledge of the memo and presumably approved the investigation.

The court held a hearing on the dispute in September 2021, and on May 2, 2022 issued a minute order requiring the FBI to file Kevin Brock, a supplemental memorandum of up to 5 pages, supported by affidavit or declaration, explaining the positions and seniority held by any persons whose names are redacted from the “CC:” section of the document.

“The Biden administration is still covering up who was involved in the Obama administration’s unprecedented and illicit spying on Donald J. Trump,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “This court decision is another step forward in accountability for the worst government corruption scandal in American history.”

In support of its position, Judicial Watch provided the Court with two declarations by Kevin Brock, former assistant director of the Directorate of Intelligence and former FBI principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center.  Brock testified that it is not standard procedure to have an EC drafted, approved, and sent to and from a single agent and that doing so violates FBI oversight protocols:

In the EC document here, the “From” line indicates the EC – and authorization to begin an investigation as required under FBI policy – is from a part of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division.  The contact listed is Peter Strzok.  The EC was drafted by Peter Strzok.  The EC was approved by Peter Strzok. On the face of the document produced, it appears the EC that initiated a criminal FARA investigation of unidentified members of the Trump presidential campaign was created by Peter Strzok, approved by Peter Strzok, and sent from Peter Strzok to Peter Strzok. This is not usual procedure.

FBI policy prohibits an agent from initiating and approving his or her own case.  Such action violates FBI oversight protocols put in place to protect the American people from an FBI agent acting unilaterally.” (Read more: Judicial Watch, 5/06/2022)  (Archive)

May 2, 2022 – Durham releases FEC filings to counter Clinton claim that Fusion GPS emails should remain secret because they’re ‘legal advice’

Hillary attends the Met Gala on May 2, 2022, unmasked, while a staffer who is masked, adjusts her dress. (Credit: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

(…) The Clinton Campaign (including Robby Mook and John Podesta), Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie, Rodney Joffe, and the DNC are fighting to keep these e-mails and records secret, reasoning Fusion’s “role was to provide consulting services in support of the legal advice attorneys at Perkins Coie were providing to” the Clinton Campaign.

That argument – that Fusion GPS was helping with “legal advice” – is hopefully the last conspiracy theory they’ll provide to the public, after Fusion GPS has already poisoned America through the FBI, DOJ, and the press, with baseless allegations of secret back-channels between Trump Organization and Russian marketing servers, piss tapes, and broader allegations of Trump/Russia collusion.

Today, Special Counsel Durham addressed those arguments by providing to the court the FEC findings where the agency found “probable cause to believe” the DNC and Hillary for America violated the law by hiding the real purpose of payments meant for Fusion GPS as “legal and compliance consulting.”

In support, he provided the First (link) and Second (link) General Counsel Reports, which recommend that the Federal Election Commission find the DNC and Hillary for America violated election laws (52 USC 30104(b)(5)(A)) “by misreporting the payee of the funds paid to Fusion GPS through Perkins Coie LLP.”

While much of the information in these now-public reports has been known for years (Glenn Simpson’s testimony to Congress, for example), they provide additional context – and newly uncovered details – on how the FEC dismantled the bogus Hillary for America/DNC Billing. Some examples:

  • Fusion GPS invoices reflected the work was not “legal advice” or related to legal concerns.

  • The FEC report matched Fusion GPS invoices to the amounts paid to its “sub vendors” (including Nellie Ohr). It concluded: “there is no evidence that Fusion provided services other than this opposition research.”

(Read more: Techno Fog, 5/02/2022)  (Archive)

May 2, 2022- Federal Court orders FBI to disclose more of Strzok’s redacted email used to justify the launch of Crossfire Hurricane

“Judicial Watch announced today that a federal court had ordered the FBI to disclose additional details about FBI and other officials “cc-ed” on the memo used to justify launching the “Crossfire Hurricane” spy operation against President Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign.  Judge Carl J. Nichols has given the FBI until June 16, 2022, to respond.  The order comes in a September 2019 FOIA lawsuit Judicial Watch filed after the FBI failed to respond to a request for the memo, known as an “Electronic Communication” or “EC.”  (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:19-cv-02743)).

In May 2020, Judicial Watch obtained a redacted version of the previously secret memo, authored by former FBI agent Peter Strzok.  The Biden Justice Department argued that there is no significant public interest in disclosing the names of officials “cc-ed” on the memo.

Judicial Watch filed a motion countering that claim and arguing that the public had a significant interest in knowing who at the FBI had knowledge of the memo and presumably approved the investigation.

The court held a hearing on the dispute in September 2021, and on May 2, 2022, issued a minute order requiring the FBI to file a supplemental memorandum of up to 5 pages, supported by an affidavit or declaration, explaining the positions and seniority held by any persons whose names are redacted from the “CC:” section of the document.

“The Biden administration is still covering up who was involved in the Obama administration’s unprecedented and illicit spying on Donald J. Trump,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “This court decision is another step forward in accountability for the worst government corruption scandal in American history.” ((Read more: Judicial Watch, 5/17/2022)  (Archive)

May 3, 2022 – Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andrey Melnik, is accused of being a Nazi sympathizer by deputy leader of Germany’s Bundestag Left Party

Andrey Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany. (Credit: Kay Nietfeld/Getty Images)

“Kiev’s envoy, Andrey Melnik, is under fire for insulting Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The deputy leader of the Bundestag’s Left Party, Sevim Dagdelen, has accused the Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin, Andrey Melnik, of being a Nazi sympathizer and urged for his immediate expulsion. The move was called for after Melnik insulted Chancellor Olaf Scholz, calling him an “offended liverwurst” for his reluctance to pay a state visit to Ukraine.

“If you don’t expel the Nazi sympathizer Melnik now, you have lost all self-respect,” the MP tweeted on Tuesday.

“Anyone like Melnik who describes the Nazi collaborator Bandera as ‘our hero’ and makes a pilgrimage to his grave or defends the right-wing Azov Battalion as ‘brave’ is actually still benevolently described as a ‘Nazi sympathizer,’” she added. (Read more: Azerbaycan24, 5/3/2022)  (Archive)

May 4, 2022 – Judge grants an ‘in camera review’ of the “privileged” Fusion GPS emails

The Alfa Gang – L to R: Andrew Sullivan, Hillary Clinton, Special Counsel John Durham, Michael Sussmann, Mark Elias

(…) Hillary for America (or what we might call the Clinton campaign), the DNC, Rodney Joffe, Perkins Coie, and Fusion GPS have all been involved in this privilege fight, submitting declarations in support of their motions against Durham’s access to these documents/e-mails. Here we discussed the Clinton Campaign’s dubious assertion that Fusion GPS was providing “legal advice” to the campaign’s lawyers, Perkins Coie.

We’ve been confident that Durham would win this fight, especially in light of newly-available FEC General Counsel Reports which concluded “there is no evidence that Fusion provided services other than this opposition research.”

Yesterday’s hearing only seems to confirm that Durham will get these records – to an extent (more on that “extent” below). As we updated on Twitter, the Court granted Durham’s motion to compel production of documents for in camera review (meaning review by the judge). The purpose of this step is so the judge can determine whether the attorney-client privilege and/or the work product protections apply to these documents and communications.

The key part of the Clinton Campaign’s “privilege” argument is that Fusion GPS was providing “legal support” or “legal advice” to their attorneys at Perkins Coie. For the 38 e-mails in question, the judge asked the Clinton Campaign lawyer about whether those e-mails might support that theory. (This is important because the judge will look at these e-mails individually – and because the judge recognized that “opposition research . . . does not, under the case law, fall within the attorney-client or work product privileges.”) The Clinton Campaign lawyer response to that question was a damning “I don’t”:

The transcript also sheds light on the content of the e-mails – or at a minimum, the subject matter of the e-mails. All 38 e-mails relate to the Alfa Bank allegations. 30 of those are “internal Fusion emails” and 8 are correspondence involving Rodney Joffe.

(…) The judge also pressed the Hillary for America attorney about the broader Fusion GPS role in “media relations”:

(…) Near the end of the hearing, the judge granted Durham’s request for an in camera review of the 38 emails. In doing so, he observed “there is a distinction between hiring a public relations firm to provide fact-checking or consulting on litigation risk and the affirmative creation and dissemination of research about an opposing candidate or business, for that matter.”

I mentioned that Durham will get these records “to an extent.”

We believe he’ll likely get the 30 the Clinton Campaign was fighting to keep secret. As to the rest? The judge was “dubious” about Durham’s argument that the 8 e-mails regarding Rodney Joffe weren’t privileged, seemingly buying the argument from Joffe’s counsel that “as Mr. Joffe understood, Fusion was a third party that was hired by his counsel to supply resources and expertise that were essential to the legal advice that Mr. Joffe was seeking from Mr. Sussmann on an extremely complex and sensitive matter.” (Read more: Techno Fog, 5/05/2022)  (Archive) (Transcript)

(Timeline editor’s note: It was mentioned in the comments of Techno Fog’s article that the term “In Camera” is Latin for “in a Chamber.”)

May 9, 2022 – Democratic political operatives and officials are set to testify in Sussmann trial

“Several high-profile Democratic political operatives and officials are set to take the witness stand next week in the trial of former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann, attorneys for both sides revealed in court Monday.

Durham witnesses for Sussmann trial include from left to right, Robby Mook, Marc Elias, Bill Priestap, James Baker and Laura Seago (Credit: public domain)

Mr. Sussmann is denying government charges that he lied to FBI officials when he tried to supply them with information related to possible links between the campaign of Republican rival Donald Trump and Russian banks, links that were subsequently discredited.

Robby Mook, who managed Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign, Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias and FBI counterintelligence leader Bill Priestap and former top FBI lawyer James Baker are among those called as government witnesses, said prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis.

May 10, 2022 – Biden’s deputy AG, Lisa Monaco, who attended secret WH meetings that spawned the Russiagate hoax, now wants to indict Trump for the January 6th rally

Brennan, ex-Obama homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco and ex-national intelligence director James Clapper, interviewed by Nicolle Wallace of MSNBC, right, at a 2018 Aspen Institute event. {Credit: Aspen Institute)

“The DOJ’s Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco was caught using a pseudonymous email while in office during the Obama years. This comes as no surprise since Monaco was part of Obama’s secret team that met in the White House basement in 2016 to discuss how to set up Donald Trump in their Trump-Russia collusion sham.

The Gateway Pundit reported on the secret Obama meetings in June of 2018. These meetings were attended by various Obama lackeys per Yahoo.

For the usual interagency sessions, principals and deputies could bring staffers. Not this time. “There were no plus ones,” an attendee recalled. When the subject of a principals’ or deputys’ meeting was a national security matter, the gathering was often held in the Situation Room of the White House. The in‑house video feed of the Sit Room — without audio — would be available to national security officials at the White House and elsewhere, and these officials could at least see that a meeting was in progress and who was attending. For the meetings related to the Russian hack, Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, ordered the video feed turned off. She did not want others in the national security establishment to know what was underway, fearing leaks from within the bureaucracy.

Rice would chair the principals’ meetings — which brought together Brennan; Comey; Kerry; Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; Defense Secretary Ash Carter; Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson; Treasury Secretary Jack Lew; Attorney General Loretta Lynch; and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — with only a few other White House officials present, including White House chief of staff Denis McDonough; homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco, and Colin Kahl, Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser. (Kahl had to insist to Rice that he be allowed to attend so that Biden could be fully briefed.)

John Kerry and Tony Blinken from the State Department were also present but not the country’s National Security Director at that time, General Mike Rogers, who could not be trusted to push the Trump Russia lie.

Earlier this week Lisa Monaco told an audience at the University of Chicago that top Republicans including President Trump may be indicted in the sham investigations.

And like always, they know they can count on the fake news media to push their lies.

Via Julie Kelly:

(Gateway Pundit, 5/13/2022) (Archive)

May 10, 2022 – Former Clinton attorney, Michael Sussmann, wants DC jurors to know he is anti-Trump

 

Former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann’s lawyers asked to use explicit text in his trial that showed he was anti-Donald Trump. (Credit: Jose Luis Magana/The Associated Press)

“Former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann wants to make sure the jurors at his upcoming trial in heavily Democratic Washington, DC, know he was working against former President Donald Trump — even before they hear any evidence in the case.

In court papers filed ahead of jury selection set for Monday, Sussmann’s lawyers asked federal Judge Christopher Cooper to include an explicit reference to Trump in his preliminary instructions for the trial.

Sussmann’s lawyers also asked Cooper to refer to special counsel John Durham’s prosecutors as “the special counsel” instead of “the government,” which is the preference of Durham, who was appointed by then-Attorney General Bill Barr in October 2020.

In 2016, DC voters favored Clinton over Trump, 90.9% to 4.1%, and Democrats in the nation’s capital now outnumber Republicans, 76.5% to 5.4%, according to an April 30 tally posted online by the DC Board of Elections.

Tom Fitton of the conservative group Judicial Watch said Sussmann’s requests amounted to an attempt to tilt the playing field against Durham.

“The goal of the defense suggests this is a political operation,” he said Tuesday.

(…) In court papers filed late Monday, defense lawyers asked Cooper to summarize Sussmann’s indictment instead of reading it verbatim to the jury before opening statements.

They also requested that the judge note that Sussmann is accused of “conveying particular allegations concerning Donald Trump” when he describes the alleged crime at issue.  (Read more: New York Post, 5/10/2022)  (Archive)

May 10, 2022 – NARA’s Debra Steidel Wall launches the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago

(…) With every development regarding this federal ransacking, two things remain unchanged. It looks increasingly clear that the Trump legal team was cooperating with federal officials regarding the documents in question, so the obstruction of justice allegation gets weaker by the day. Second, where is the crime that precipitated this search of Trump’s home because recent updates only make it seem like the Justice Department cobbled together statutes that aren’t criminal to justify this ransacking?

Trump recognizes Debra Steidel Wall (second left) during a signing of a Proclamation on the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, August 18, 2020. (Credit: YouTube Clip)

The latest development in this legal fiasco is Acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall’s role in the document retrieval, where she seems to be one of the leading figures who triggered the FBI raid. As Tom Elliott of Grabien clipped, Trump honored this woman during his presidency, which he cited as a failure on the former president’s part for not draining the swamp (via WaPo):

Acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall also notified Trump’s lawyer Evan Corcoran that the agency would provide the FBI access to 15 boxes of materials in order to investigate “whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner” and conduct an assessment to determine if any damage might have resulted from the improper handling of materials, according to the May 10 letter.

Matthew G. Olsen was sworn in as Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division on November 1, 2021. (Credit: justice.gov)

[…]

“As the Department of Justice’s National Security Division explained to you on April 29, 2022: ‘There are important national security interests in the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community getting access to these materials. According to NARA, among the materials in the boxes are over 100 documents with classification markings, comprising more than 700 pages. Some include the highest levels of classification, including Special Access Program (SAP) materials,’” Steidel Wall wrote.

The FBI removed an additional 20 boxes of items from the Mar-a-Lago Club earlier this month, including four sets of top-secret documents and seven other sets of classified information, according to a written inventory of the items seized in the high-profile search of Mar-a-Lago earlier this month.

[…]

Trump’s lawyers sent letters on April 29 and May 1, according to Steidel Wall’s account, to delay the production of the materials to the FBI so that Trump could decide whether to assert executive privilege over the materials. John Solomon, a writer who also serves as one of Trump’s representatives to the National Archives, first posted the text of the letter on Monday.

Steidel Wall ultimately rebuffed their request after consulting with the Department of Justice.

“The question, in this case is not a close one,” Steidel Wall wrote. “The Executive Branch here is seeking access to records belonging to, and in the custody of, the Federal Government itself, not only in order to investigate whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner but also, as the National Security Division explained, to ‘conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps.’”

(Read more: TownHall, 8/24/2022)  (Archive)

May 11, 2022 – Obama-appointed Sussmann judge, also knew Sussmann as a “professional acquaintance”

“As the trial against Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann begins, questions have emerged over the judge’s apparent conflicts of interest.

In addition to having been “professional acquaintances” with the defendant, US District Judge Christopher “Casey” Cooper, an Obama appointee (who was on Obama’s transition team), is married to lawyer Amy Jeffress who’s representing key ‘Russiagate’ figure Lisa Page in her lawsuit against the FBI. Jeffress also served as a top aide to former Attorney General Eric Holder, while current Attorney General Merrick Garland presided over the 1999 wedding of Cooper and Jeffress.

In a Wednesday Zoom call, Cooper told the parties in the case that he knew Sussmann in the 1990s when both of them worked at the DOJ.

“I worked in the ’90s at the deputy attorney general’s office two years following law school. Mr. Sussmann also worked at the building at the same time in the criminal division. We did not work together or socialize, but I think it’s fair to say we were professional acquaintances,” Cooper said, per the Washington Examiner. “I don’t believe that this creates a conflict, but my regular practice is to disclose these sorts of relationships with lawyers or with parties on the record. And I would advise you that I would be happy to entertain a motion if either side believes there is a conflict on that basis or any other.”

So – both the judge in the Sussmann case and his wife are deeply connected within the Democratic party, and have connections to key individuals involved in the attempt to take down Donald Trump. Interestingly, Cooper was also the judge in the Benghazi ringleader case, where his wife’s ties to the DOJ posed another potential conflict of interest.

Judge Christopher “Casey” Cooper (Credit: public domain)

After graduating from Stanford Law School in 1993, Cooper clerked for Chief Judge Abner J. Mikva on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1994 to 1996. He then went to work as a special assistant to Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick in the Clinton Justice Department. In 2001, he went into private practice for 17 years, working at the firms of Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin; then Baker Botts, and finally at Covington & Burling, where Holder was a partner before becoming Obama’s first attorney general.

…

In private practice, Cooper and his father-in-law William Jeffress successfully defended senior-level Saudi Arabian government officials in U.S. court against a lawsuit brought by the families of 9/11 victims.

(Read more: Zero Hedge, 5/16/2022)  (Archive)

May 12, 2022 – Fusion GPS loses its fight over “privileged” documents and how Joffe’s “privilege” can be overcome

Glenn Simpson (Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

“We’ve documented the ongoing battle to obtain Fusion GPS e-mails and documents in the Michael Sussmann case. At issue in the Sussmann case are 38 e-mails and attachments between and among Fusion GPS, Rodney Joffe, and Perkins Coie. These 38 e-mails and attachments are among approximately 1,500 documents that Fusion GPS withheld from production to the grand jury based on “privilege.”

What Fusion GPS has to produce.

Today, the court in the Sussmann case made an important ruling and rejected, in large measure, Fusion’s assertion of attorney-client or work-product privilege:

Fusion GPS will have to produce these documents to Special Counsel Durham by May 16, 2022. What do these e-mails and documents contain? The court’s order provides guidance, stating they relate to:

Internal Fusion GPS e-mails discussing the Alfa Bank data and e-mails circulating draft versions of the Alfa Bank white papers that were “ultimately provided to the press and the FBI.”

Here are some examples of what these e-mails might include. These are privilege logs in Fusion GPS’s other litigation relating to the Alfa Bank hoax.

The other emails.

This leaves 16 e-mails and documents remaining. For now, Durham will not get them. These are divided into two categories:

  1. Eight of the e-mails involve internal communications among Fusion GPS employees. The court was “unable to tell from the emails or the surrounding circumstances whether they were prepared for a purpose other than assisting Perkins Coie in providing legal advice to the Clinton Campaign in anticipation of litigaiton.” Coming from the court, that’s a long way of saying that the sworn declarations of Fusion/Clinton lawyers (Levy and Elias) were sufficient to meet the “privilege” burden. This doesn’t mean that Durham can’t overcome this hurdle – just that it hasn’t been overcome yet.
  2. The other eight e-mails and attachments include those among Fusion GPS’s Laura Seago, Sussmann, and Rodney Joffe. The court observed that the e-mails are consistent with Joffe’s assertion of privilege.

With respect to the Joffe e-mails, we note that he is still a subject – perhaps a target – of the Special Counsel’s investigation. Here’s a portion of the transcript from an evidentiary hearing in the Sussmann case that discusses their ongoing investigation into Joffe:

Because the investigation into Joffe is ongoing, it makes sense that the Special Counsel is hesitant to disclose to the court information that could overcome this purported “privilege.” Keep in mind the crime-fraud exception, where communications are not considered privileged where they “are made in furtherance of a crime, fraud, or other misconduct” (citation omitted). In other words, the Special Counsel may still be able to get Joffe’s e-mails – assuming Joffe is charged under 18 USC 1031. He can also get them through the grand jury process, as we saw with Mueller’s investigation of Paul Manafort.”  (Read more: Techno Fog, 5/12/2022)  (Archive)

May 14, 2022 – Biden laptop research group, MarcoPoloUSA, releases 128k emails

(Credit: MarcoPoloUSA/Telegram)

(MarcoPoloUSA/Telegram, 5/14/2022)  (Archive) (BidenLaptopEmails)  (Archive)

May 16, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 1 – Judge allows Hillary Clinton donors in jury pool

“As many as three Hillary Clinton donors — including one who also supported US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — are among the prospective jurors for former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann’s trial.

Special counsel John Durham’s team objected to putting one Clinton contributor on the panel after the man said he would “strive for impartiality as best I can.”

But the prosecution was overruled by Washington, DC, federal Judge Christopher Cooper, who said the man — who works in public policy for Amazon and appeared to be in his 40s — “expressed a high degree of confidence” that he could be impartial.

Cooper, nominated by former President Barack Obama, also said Durham’s prosecutors could use one of its peremptory challenges to strike him from the panel for the trial, the first to result from his three-year probe into the government’s investigations of purported ties between former President Donald Trump and Russia.

Judges can only remove people from a jury pool if questioning reveals they’re not suited for service, including being biased in favor of one side or the other.

Prosecutor John Durham is investigating the origins of the Russia collusion lie. This all leads back to Hillary. Michael Sussmann was one of Hillary’s attorneys in her failed 2016 campaign. During the summer of 2016, her campaign started rumors that candidate Donald Trump was involved with Russia. During the debates, Hillary made all this garbage up and shared it in front of the world. It was all made up by Hillary.” (Read more: The New York Post, 5/16/2022)  (Archive)

The criminal case against Hillary Clinton’s former campaign lawyer Michael Sussman starts Day 1 with Jury Selection and we’ve got the transcripts! #Durham #Sussmann #Clinton

May 17, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 2 – Rodney Joffe was a confidential informant for the FBI and was fired “for cause” in 2021

Rodney Joffe, John Durham and Michael Sussmann (Credit: public domain)

“The technology executive who was one of Michael Sussmann’s clients when Sussmann took sketchy claims to the U.S. government was terminated as a confidential informant by the FBI in 2021, prosecutors revealed during Sussmann’s trial on May 17.

Rodney Joffe, the executive, exploited his access to non-public data at multiple technology companies to conduct opposition research into then-presidential candidate Donald Trump ahead of the 2016 election, according to court filings. The firm Joffe worked for, Neustar Security Services, had a Domain Name System (DNS) contract with the office of the presidency in 2016.

Joffe was a confidential informant for the FBI but was terminated “for cause” in 2021, prosecutors said.

Brittain Shaw, one of the prosecutors on Special Counsel John Durham’s team, revealed the information during the questioning of FBI agent David Martin.

The termination was because of how Joffe was involved with the scheme to compile information on the alleged connection between Trump’s business and a Russian bank, Andrew DeFilippis, another prosecutor, said later.

Sean Berkowitz, an attorney for Sussmann, raised concerns during closed session, or without jurors in the room, with remarks about Joffe’s status, asserting they were “prejudicial,” Reuters reported.

U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper, the Obama appointee overseeing the trial, agreed.

Cooper, speaking while jurors weren’t in the room, ordered prosecutors not to discuss the topic again. He said how Joffe handled the information was not part of the trial, and noted the termination did not come for years after the events that are being explored during the trial. In 2016, Joffe was a respected expert, the judge said, echoing the defense. (Read more: The Epoch Times, 5/17/2022)  (Archive)

May 17, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 2 – Opening statements; testimonies of FBI Special Agents David Martin and Scott Hellmann

“It started with disclosure by Special Counsel DeFilippis informing the Court that government witness Dr. Manos Antonakakis (identified as Researcher-1 in the Sussmann indictment) “has decided to invoke his Fifth Amendment right.” He would not be called to the stand. More background on Manos here.

From there it was time for opening statements.

Special Counsel Brittain Shaw made clear that this case is “about privilege: the privilege of a well-connected D.C. lawyer with access to the highest levels of the FBI; the privilege of a lawyer who thought that he could lie to the FBI without consequences.” Using that privilege, Sussmann:

“went straight to the FBI general counsel’s office, the FBI’s top lawyer. He then sat across from that lawyer and lied to him. He told a lie that was designed to achieve a political end, a lie that was designed to inject the FBI into a presidential election.”

Circumventing the political leanings of the jury, the Special Counsel explained that “we are here because the FBI is our institution that should not be used as a political tool for anyone.” She elaborated that Joffe, on behalf of his clients – the Hillary Clinton Campaign and Rodney Joffe – planned to manipulate the FBI, and trigger negative news stories, “to create an October surprise on the eve of the presidential election.” As to the evidence:

You’re going to see emails and phone records that show that beginning in the summer of 2016 the defendant worked with Fusion GPS to develop the Trump/Alfa story and plant it in the press.

She also gave us this preview:

The attorney for Sussmann, in their opening, argued there was no lie. Instead, Sussmann “went to the FBI to help the FBI” – so they wouldn’t be “caught flat-footed” by a New York Times story discussing the purported Alfa Bank/Trump connections. Of course, they admitted as a result of the Sussmann/Baker meeting, the FBI decided it wanted “to investigate.” To condense Sussmann’s defense: no lie and no reason to lie.

More about:

FBI Supervisory Special Agent David Martin

Agent Martin was the first government witness to testify. He explained the technicalities of the DNS data which was alleged to have shown a secret back channel between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

FBI Special Agent Scott Hellman

Hellman was involved in investigating the Alfa Bank allegations. He testified that the evidence (data and white papers explaining the data) provided to then-FBI general counsel James Baker from Sussmann was passed off to none other than the infamous Peter Strzok. (Read more: Techno Fog, 5/17/2022)  (Archive)

Transcript review – Day 2 – Sussmann trial

Timecodes: 00:00:00 – Intro 00:01:25 – Durham & Sussmann Clip 00:02:00 – PM Transcript from yesterday 00:06:40 – Mindmap Update 00:12:03 – Court Transcript (Sussmann Trial Day 2) 00:13:01 – Preliminary Discussions 00:26:33 – Judge Intro 00:30:02 – Government Prosecutor’s Opening Argument 00:57:22 – Defense Team’s Opening Argument 01:25:33 – Witnesses on Mindmap 01:26:40 – Witness 1: David Martin (FBI Special Agent) 01:43:57 – Witness 2: Scott Hellman (FBI Special Agent) 02:11:08 – Quick Recap & Conclusion #Durham #Sussmann #HillaryClinton

May 17, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 2 – Two FBI special agents and a Neustar employee testify

“Two FBI agents and a Neustar employee testified after opening statements on Tuesday, the second day in the trial of 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann, with more witnesses for the prosecution expected to take the stand Wednesday.

David Martin (Credit: public domain)

(…) FBI Special Agents David Martin and Scott Hellman were the prosecution’s first two witnesses, followed by Neustar employee Steve DeJong.

Martin was the prosecution’s expert witness in cybersecurity and DNS data analysis and explained the basics of Domain Name System (DNS) data to the jury, saying that it is essentially maps of names of servers on the internet to numeric IP addresses — like a phonebook mapping someone’s name to a phone number.

The prosecution’s second witness, Hellman, examined the data on the thumb drives that Sussmann had given to Baker in their meeting weeks before the presidential election. One of the FBI agents whose signature was required for a chain of custody form for the drives was former FBI official Peter Strzok.

Scott Hellman (Credit: public domain)

(…) Hellman said the overall conclusion of a connection between Trump and Russia from the data didn’t make any sense because a presidential candidate would not likely put their own name in a domain name that was easily connected to their organization and Russia, if it’s supposedly for secret communication.

“Didn’t ring true at all,” Hellman said. He said the analysis of the data was done “inside of a day,” then given for further analysis to the FBI Chicago Division, which later agreed with his assessment.

Hellman added that he found it “conveniently coincidental” that someone was looking for suspicious activity between the Trump and Russian servers and found it just three weeks after it began.

(…) The third witness for the prosecution, DeJong, had pulled the data regarding the Trump email server and Alfa Bank for then-Neustar CTO Rodney Joffe at his request.

The request from Joffe came through Georgia Tech researcher Manos Antonakakis, which DeJong said was a little uncommon.

While DeJong said he eventually became curious as to why he was told by Joffe to search for DNS data regarding Trump and Alfa Bank, he never asked nor was he given a reason.” (Read more:  JusttheNews, 5/17/2022)  (Archive)

May 18, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 3 – Marc Elias testimony

Marc Elias of Perkins Coie, addressing media outside the U.S. Supreme Court after arguing two redistricting cases Dec. 5, 2016. (Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

(…) Now we get to Marc Elias.

Elias meets weekly with Fusion GPS at his office. Typically Peter Fritsch and Glenn Simpson would be in attendance. Generally, those meetings involved discussions of Elias’s “needs” and Fusion GPS’s “work” – which included what Elias described as the “unusual connections” the Trump Campaign had with Russia. They would also report to Elias on their findings related to Trump during the election.

Notably, Elias mentioned Jake Sullivan as someone at the Clinton Campaign who knew about the Trump/Russia research (though there is uncertainty as to whether Sullivan knew about Fusion’s activities). Elias would give the campaign these updates.

A brief aside: Jake Sullivan’s wife is Margaret Goodlander – who serves as counsel to Attorney General Merrick Garland. We understand that she has not recused herself from anything having to do with the Special Counsel’s investigation. We further understand that Goodlander is keeping close tabs on Durham’s investigation. We’ll report on that down the road…

Anyway, Elias also testified that the Clinton Campaign paid them (Perkins Coie) a “flat fee” for their legal services. Why is this important? Because it explains why Sussmann would block bill the Clinton Campaign (see tweet below). (“Block billing” is having a multi-hour entry with a generalized description. Example: “6.5 hours on confidential project.) For flat fee work, attorneys are generally allowed block billing because the client isn’t paying the hourly rate.

That concludes the morning session. We’ll update this post once we receive the afternoon transcript…

The Special Counsel then walked Elias through a number of billing entries/emails from and involving Sussmann. These included meetings with Elias, meetings with Joffe, and Fusion – and involved “the Alfa-Bank allegations.”

Then there’s the infamous Slate article on the Alfa Bank/Trump connections. Sussmann told Elias that the Alfa Bank data had been provided to the media. And after the Slate article was published, Elias forwarded it to the campaign:

Elias further offered that he would have briefed the Clinton Campaign about the Alfa Bank matter. He also admitted that he had discretion to instruct Fusion GPS to pursue leads and take investigative steps without checking with the Clinton Campaign.

Cross-Examination of Marc Elias:

Some notable moments of the Elias cross-examination included:

  • An e-mail from Robby Mook to Elias forwarding an article discussing that reporters at the New York Times are working on a Trump-Russia story (Alfa Bank).
  • Sussmann didn’t seek Elias’s authorization or permission to go to the FBI. He couldn’t recall anyone with the Clinton Campaign telling Sussmann to go to the FBI.
  • Elias was frustrated with the FBI for not doing anything “particularly helpful in investigating or doing anything to prevent the leaks of the [DNC] emails.”

Re-direct of Marc Elias

  • Fusion GPS did not need to consult with Elias before sharing info with the media.
  • Elias admitted the existence of an FBI investigation can prompt news stories. He also admitted that FBI investigations can speed up news stories. These questions attacked the heart of the Sussmann defense – and address how the New York Times article from Eric Lichtblau “got stuck” because his editors were reluctant to pursue the story.

(Read more: Techno Fog, 5/18/2022)  (Archive)

Day 3 of the Michael Sussmann Trial. Special Prosecutors called Democratic power lawyer Marc Elias, Former FBI General Counsel James Baker and FusionGPS’s Laura Seago.

Timecodes: 00:00:00 – Intro 00:00:58 – Mindmap Update 00:06:02 – Transcript of the Jury Trial (Sussmann Trial Day 3) 00:10:26 – Witness Deborah Fine (Direct Examination) 00:22:55 – Witness Deborah Fine (Cross-Examination) 00:30:11 – Witness Deborah Fine (Redirect Examination) 00:31:01 – Witness Laura Seago (Direct Examination) 00:52:00 – Witness Laura Seago (Cross-Examination) 01:06:52 – Witness Marc Elias (Direct Examination) 01:51:01 – Juror #8 Issue 01:54:38 – Recap & Conclusion 01:55:10 – YouTube Live Chats #Sussmann #Durham #WatchingtheWatchers

 

May 18, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 3 – James Baker testimony

The last witness – former FBI General Counsel James Baker

Recall that Baker was approached by Sussmann for a meeting in September 2016 regarding the Alfa Bank allegations. The lie told at that meeting – that Sussmann wasn’t there on behalf of a client – is at issue in this case.

Sussmann had scheduled the meeting via a text to Baker’s phone. It read:
Baker remarked he was surprised that Sussmann obtained his cell number. They agreed via text to meet at Baker’s FBI office the next day. (Read more: Techno Fog, 5/18/2022)  (Archive)

Here’s a more in-depth Transcript review of Day 3 – Sussmann Trial

This fellow will be reading pertinent parts from the Sussmann trial transcripts. Definitely one to follow:

May 18, 2022 – Sussman trial: Day 3 – Marc Elias testifies he kept Jake Sullivan in the loop on Trump-Alfa Bank hoax

May 18, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 3 – Laura Seago testimony

We start with the short testimony of Deborah Fine.

Testimony of Laura Seago

Laura Seago worked with Fusion GPS back in 2016, where she reported directly to Fritsch and Simpson. She has been granted immunity by the Special Counsel for her testimony. She understood Marc Elias to be the Fusion GPS contact for the Clinton Campaign.

Seago stated she was present at a summer 2016 meeting with “Mr. Elias, my colleague Peter Fritsch from Fusion GPS, Mr. Sussmann, and Mr. Sussmann’s client Rodney Joffe.” As to the nature of that meeting:

“The general purpose, to the best of my recollection, was to discuss allegations of communications between the Trump organization and Alfa-Bank.”

Once the Alfa Bank allegations were developed, Seago met with journalist Franklin Foer (who would write the October 31, 2016, Alfa Bank article in Slate). The purpose of that meeting was to discuss “the allegations of communication between the Trump Organization and Alfa-Bank.”

 

They sold Foer on the Alfa Bank data at that meeting, telling him there were “highly credible computer scientists who seemed to think that these allegations were credible.” These “credible computer scientists” would ultimately be cited in Foer’s article. She admitted that Fusion GPS did nothing to validate the DNS records – something she said was “beyond my capabilities.”

Seago was walked through a number of e-mails she had with Joffe and other members of Fusion GPS. Some of these were privileged (the Joffe e-mails) so the Special Counsel was unable to discuss with Seago the contents. However, she did know about contents of the Joffe e-mails generally:

Finally, she admitted to understanding whose interests were served by planting the Alfa Bank story.

(Read more: Techno Fog, 5/18/2022)  (Archive)

Here’s a more in-depth Transcript review of Day 3 – Sussmann Trial

May 19, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 4 – More from Marc Elias and James Baker

Day 4 of the Michael Sussmann trial is all Jim Baker, all day. The case against Hillary Clinton’s former lawyer continues with a deep examination of the former FBI agent.

Timecodes: 00:00:00 – Intro 00:00:34 – Mindmap Overview 00:10:08 – Afternoon Session Transcript (Sussmann Trial Day 3) 00:18:00 – Witness Marc Elias (Continued Direct Examination) 00:35:23 – Witness Marc Elias (Cross-Examination) 00:50:30 – Witness Marc Elias (Redirect Examination) 00:59:02 – Reading Superchats 01:00:07 – Did the juries all Hillary’s supporters? 01:05:07 – Morning Session Transcript (Sussmann Trial Day 4) 01:06:50 – Issue on DeFilippis’ Questions 01:10:18 – Witness James Baker (Direct Examination) 01:20:34 – The Proceedings (Sussmann Trial Day 4) 01:26:52 – Witness James Baker (Continued Direct Examination) 02:40:10 – RECAP on the Mindmap 02:40:29 – Reading Superchats & Conclusion #Sussmann #Durham #Trump

 

May 20, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 5 – Testimony of CIA employee “Kevin P” who was approached by Sussmann and given the Alfa Bank data

“Former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann denied he was “representing a client” when he gave the CIA faulty data linking Donald Trump to Russia — and appeared “frustrated” that officials weren’t taking the information seriously, two former agency employees testified Friday.

One ex-spy — identified in court only as “Kevin P.” —  recalled that he and a colleague met with Sussmann at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., in February 2017, shortly after Trump took office.

Sussmann gave the men two thumb drives that he said came from unidentified “contacts” and showed a secret, cyber backchannel between a Trump Organization server and Russia’s Alfa Bank, Kevin P. said.

“He said he was not representing a client,” the witness testified, adding that Sussmann also said he’d previously given “similar but unrelated” information to the FBI.

Mark Chadason (Credit: Twitter)

(…) Following the meeting at CIA headquarters, Kevin P.’s colleague — identified as “Steve M.” — drafted a memo summarizing what took place and noting that Sussmann had been there on behalf of a client, according to evidence shown to jurors.

But Kevin P. edited the memo to take out the word “client” and replaced it with “contacts,” another exhibit showed.

Sussmann’s meeting in Langley appeared to be the result of an earlier sit-down with retired CIA official Mark Chadason, a former station chief in both Europe and North Africa, who testified that he met with a Sussmann at a hotel in northern Virginia on Jan. 31, 2017, at the request of a mutual friend.

Sussmann told Chadason that he wanted to give the CIA information about a national security issue and had previously reached out to the agency’s general counsel in an attempt to do so, Chadason said.

Sussmann said he got the information from a Republican client but added that he wasn’t “sure if he would reveal himself to the CIA,” the former spook said. (Read more: New York Post, 5/2o/2022)  (Archive)

Michael Sussman trial day Day 5-afternoon transcripts are in and we review two ex-CIA officials, Kevin P. and Mark Chadason, involved in the Hillary Clinton orchestrated Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Timecodes: 00:00:00 – Intro 00:00:50 – Mindmap Overview 00:07:22 – Superchats 00:08:49 – Afternoon Session Transcript (Sussmann Trial Day 5) 00:11:12 – Witness Mark Chadason (Direct Examination) 00:28:05 – Witness Mark Chadason (Cross-Examination) 00:49:41 – Witness Mark Chadason (Redirect Examination) 00:54:15 – Witness Kevin P. (Direct Examination) 01:12:17 – Witness Kevin P. (Cross-Examination) 01:26:30 – Witness Kevin P. (Redirect Examination) 01:32:26 – Conclusion 01:36:19 – Superchats & Locals Community

#Sussmann #Durham #HillaryForPrison

 

May 20, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 5 – Robby Mook testifies Hillary approved Trump Russian bank allegations to the media

An ecstatic Hillary Clinton celebrates at the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention where she accepted the nomination on Thursday, July 28, 2016. (Credit: Ben Lowy/ Time)

“Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton approved a plan during the 2016 campaign to feed false allegations of Trump-Russia collusion to the media, her campaign manager said Friday.

Testifying to a federal court in the trial of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, Robby Mook noted that Clinton signed off on a scheme to send journalists data about possible links between Donald Trump and Russia’s Alfa Bank. The effort was successful, as a news outlet just days before the election published a story that alleged covert connections between Trump and the bank. The allegation has since been debunked, with the FBI finding there was not a nefarious link between Trump and Alfa Bank.

Mook’s testimony is the first confirmation that Clinton was involved in the decision to give the Trump-Alfa Bank story to journalists. Mook said that campaign leaders “weren’t totally confident in” the allegations and wanted to share them with reporters to investigate further. Mook said he discussed the strategy with Clinton, who okayed the plan.

Slate on Oct. 31, 2016, published a report that said a team of anonymous computer researchers had discovered that Trump’s real estate company, the Trump Organization, had a secret communications channel with Alfa Bank. Unmentioned in the story was that the computer researchers were collaborating with Sussmann and other political operatives working for the Clinton campaign.

Mook was asked at the trial to read a statement Clinton released that touted the Slate story. Clinton wrote that “computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.” She linked to a statement from Jake Sullivan, her foreign policy adviser, that said the story “could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow.” (Read more: Washington Free Beacon, 5/20/2022)  (Archive)

UPDATE May 21, 2022

Techno Fog includes a transcript of Mook’s testimony. Dates are put in bold by the timeline editor.

The Robby Mook testimony.

Robert Mook, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, also testified before the jury Friday. In his testimony, he stated that Hillary Clinton personally approved a plan to spread the lie that Trump was colluding with Russia via secret servers to the media. He also admitted to being briefed on the conspiracy.

Q: Okay. In connection with the general focus on Mr. Trump and Russia, did there come a time when you learned of potential links between the Trump organization, Mr. Trump’s business, and a Russian bank called Alfa-bank?

A: I did. Yes, I was briefed on that.

Q: Approximately when were you first briefed on that, if you remember?

A: I honestly can’t recall.

Q: Who participated in the briefing, if you remember?

A: Myself, Marc Elias, Jen Palmieri, Jake Sullivan, John Podesta. There might have been others, but those are the ones I definitely recall being there.

Mook also admitted that the Clinton campaign was focused on Trump’s relationship with Russia before Summer of 2016.

Q: In the Summer of 2016, was Mr. Trump’s relationship with Russia something that the campaign focused on?

A: Yes. I mean, it was frankly something we were focused on before that time. But absolutely.

Mook however did deny that the Clinton campaign directed Sussman to go to the FBI, despite admitting that Clinton approved the Trump-Russia allegations to be shared with the media.

Q: Were you aware that Mr. Sussman went to the FBI in September of 2016 to give them a heads-up about a New York Times story about Trump and Alfa-Bank?

A: No.

Q: Do you have any recollection of anyone talking to you about going to the FBI on behalf of the campaign on the Trump/Alfa-Bank issue?

A: No.

Q: Did you direct Mr. Sussman to go to the FBI on behalf of the campaign?

A: Absolutely not.

Q: Did you authorize Mr. Sussman to go to the FBI on behalf of the campaign?

A: No.

Q: Did anyone else from the campaign, to your knowledge, direct or authorize Mr. Sussman to go to the FBI on behalf of the campaign?

A: To my knowledge, no.

Mook also said the decision to push the debunked Russia conspiracy to the media was made by him, Sussman, John Podesta, and Palmeri, and that Hillary Clinton agreed with the decision.

Q: And once you learned about it [the Trump-Russia allegations], you started discussing with the campaign whether the campaign should affirmatively push it in the media, right?

A: Correct.

Q: And you had that discussion with Mr. Sullivan?

A: Correct.

Q: With Mr. Podesta?

A: Just to be clear. This is what – I recall those people, correct.

Q: Okay. You had a discussion with Mr. Sullivan?

A: Yes, I recall, yes.

Q: Whether to push it in the media right?

A: Correct.

Q: With Ms. Palmieri?

A: Correct.

Q: With Mr. Podesta?

A: Correct.

Q: But in any event, the decision to provide this to the media was authorized by the campaign, correct?

A: We authorized a staff member of the campaign to provide it to the media.

Regarding Hillary Clinton, Mook said:

Q: Mr. Mook, before the break you had testified that there was a conversation in which you told Ms. Clinton about the proposed plan to provide the Alfa-Bank allegations to the media; is that correct?

A: Correct.

Q: And what was her response?

A: All I remember is that she agreed with the decision.

Some final thoughts: while this trial is about Sussmann’s false statements to the FBI, it’s also more than that.

This is Special Counsel John Durham telling the public the story of the Clinton opposition research machine, and how the campaign, through their lawyers and contractors (Fusion GPS), developed and spread lies to the media to influence the election. It’s the story of Clinton Campaign lawyers to using the FBI to further that strategy of deception. (Read more: Techno Fog, 5/21/2022)  (Archive)

Day 5 of the Durham Prosecution against Hillary Clinton’s former campaign lawyer, Michael Sussmann continues with two witnesses: former FBI General Counsel James Baker and Hillary Clinton Campaign Manager Robbie Mook.

Timecodes: 00:00:00 – Intro 00:00:54 – Mindmap Overview 00:05:00 – Elon Musk Tweets 00:07:59 – Afternoon Session Transcript (Sussmann Trial Day 4) 00:10:01 – Witness James Baker (Direct Examination Continued) 00:40:55 – Witness James Baker (Cross-Examination) 01:24:20 – Superchats 01:28:23 – Morning Session Transcript (Sussmann Trial Day 5) 01:29:20 – Witness James Baker (Cross-Examination Continued) 01:41:54 – Witness James Baker (Redirect Examination) 01:44:47 – Defense Witness Robbie Mook (Direct Examination) 02:03:20 – Defense Witness Robbie Mook (Cross-Examination) 02:45:16 – Defense Witness Robbie Mook (Redirect Examination) 02:52:45 – Recap & Conclusion (Sussmann Trial Day 5)

#Sussmann #Durham #Trump

May 23, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 6 – FBI leadership kept Chicago field agents in the dark about Clinton as source of Trump-Alfa Bank claims

“In the final weeks leading up to the 2016 election, FBI agents were sent down a rabbit hole of chasing supposed secret communications between then-candidate Donald Trump and a Russia-linked bank. They ultimately found the claim bogus, but not before launching a full investigation and employing both internal and outside experts. The allegation fueled the FBI’s broader probe of alleged Trump–Russia collusion, which also came out empty-handed, but successfully cast a shadow on the first years of Trump’s presidency.

Things might have gone differently on the FBI’s part if the bureau hadn’t kept its agents in the dark about the fact that the secret communications claim came from a lawyer, Michael Sussmann, on the payroll of the Democratic Party, FBI agent Ryan Gaynor testified during Sussmann’s trial in the District of Columbia on May 23.

(…) While the FBI Cyber Division dismissed the allegation within a day, the FBI Chicago Field Office opened a full investigation—as opposed to a preliminary one—noting that this might have informed the broader FBI Trump–Russia probe launched by the FBI headquarters in July 2016.

FBI Field Office (Credit: FBI.gov)

Gaynor said that knowing that Sussmann was being paid to provide the info would have affected the decision on whether to open the Chicago investigation and the decision to designate the investigation as “close hold,” which means filed agents aren’t informed of sources’ identities. In this case, it meant agents in the Chicago office didn’t know the allegation came from somebody on the Clinton campaign’s payroll.

Gaynor was asked by another agent working on the case to find out the source of the claim, which he did. After he learned it was Sussmann and that he was working for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), he ultimately decided, he said, that it wasn’t necessary to lift the “close hold” designation since the FBI couldn’t get close to the DNC anyway due to its policy of not interfering in elections.

On a cross-examination, Sussmann’s lawyers noted that it was Gaynor alone claiming the investigation was “close-hold,” suggesting it was he himself who was withholding Sussmann’s identity from the field agents.

Gaynor responded by saying he thought the field agents would be biased against Sussmann if he disclosed to them his DNC ties.

It appears Gaynor was himself a target of the Durham investigation before being reverted back to his status as a witness. (Read more: The Epoch Times, 5/23/2022)  (Archive)

The criminal case against Hillary Clinton’s former campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann continues, with Durham prosecutors calling two former FBI agents to testify about their involvement in the Russia Collusion hoax.

Timecodes: 00:00:00 – Intro 00:00:48 – Mindmap Overview 00:07:14 – Morning Session Transcript (Sussmann Trial Day 6) 00:19:17 – Witness Bill Priestap (Direct Examination) 00:43:03 – Witness Bill Priestap (Cross-Examination) 01:13:36 – Witness Bill Priestap (Redirect Examination) 01:15:24 – Witness Ryan Gaynor (Direct Examination) 02:01:35 – Witness Ryan Gaynor (Cross-Examination) 02:18:14 – Conclusion 02:18:33 – Superchats & Locals Community #Sussmann #Durham #HillaryforPrison

May 23, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 6 – FBI Chicago field office wrongly investigated the Trump-Alfa Bank claims on basis of DOJ’s ‘referral”

Allison Sands (Credit: public domain)

“FBI agents probing since-debunked claims of a secret back channel between Donald Trump and a Russian bank believed that the allegations had originated with the Department of Justice — when in fact they came from Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann, who had shopped them to the bureau’s then-general counsel days earlier.

In the latest revelation to emerge from Sussmann’s trial in DC federal court on a count of lying to the FBI, special counsel John Durham’s prosecutors revealed that investigators had received an electronic communication citing a referral from the DOJ “on or about” Sept. 19, 2016, the same day Sussmann met with James Baker, then the FBI’s top lawyer.

The document, a record of the investigation being opened by agents Curtis Heide and Allison Sands and dated Sept. 23, 2016, did not mention Sussmann as the source of the allegations.

“In that referral, the DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE provided the FBI with a white paper that was produced by an anonymous third party,” the communication said, before adding: “According to the white paper, a U.S.-based server that is owned by the TRUMP ORGANIZATION has been communicating with the Russian-based ALFA BANK organization in Moscow, Russia.”

The document was circulated to several top FBI officials — including Peter Strzok, who oversaw the probe of Clinton’s email server as well as the Trump-Russia investigation, and was famously fired from the bureau in 2018 after the emergence of text messages he sent to his colleague and mistress Lisa Page in which he vowed to help “stop” Trump from winning the White House.” (Read more: New York Post, 5/23/2022)  (Archive)

Timeline editor’s note: Perhaps this timeline entry explains why the investigation suddenly moved to Chicago:
September 23, 2016 – The Crossfire Hurricane team knows by this date that Steele is running an “influence” operation and coordinating with the Clinton campaign

May 24, 2022 – Sussman trial: Day 7 – Trisha Anderson testimony; an email is discussed that proves she did know Sussmann was working for the DNC

(Credit: The Epoch Times)

“Today in the Michael Sussmann trial, we received additional information regarding the FBI leadership’s involvement in the opening – and execution – of the Alfa Bank/Trump investigation. This included FBI Headquarters not approving an FBI agent’s repeated requests to interview the sources of the Alfa Bank “materials.”

But first, we’ll start with the examination of Trisha Anderson.

Anderson is currently the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel. Back in 2016, she was an FBI deputy general counsel and reported directly to then-FBI general counsel James Baker.

The purpose of her testimony was to prove-up her notes from a September 19, 2016 meeting she had with Baker, where Baker discussed his meeting with Michael Sussmann. (The notebook was necessary because Anderson didn’t recall the meeting itself.)

Anderson stated she knew of Sussmann prior to September 2016 but denied knowing he was an attorney for the DNC. In response, she was presented with an interesting e-mail discussing an FBI meeting with Sussmann, the DNC CEO, Shawn Henry of Crowdstrike, and another FBI official (Cyber Division’s James Trainor) to take place on June 16, 2016:

For reference, that meeting took place two days after the DNC announced on June 14, 2016, that it had been a victim of Russian hacking and over a month before the DCCC said it had been hacked by the Russians. (Read more: Techno Fog, 5/24/2022)  (Archive)

May 24, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 7 – Testimony of FBI special agent Curtis Heide; FBI HQ rebuffs his request to interview source of Alfa Bank white papers

(…) Back in September 2016, FBI Special Agent Curtis Heide was assigned to the Alfa Bank “investigation in a co-case-agent capacity.” His trainee, FBI Agent Allison Sands, was the lead investigator on the case. The case came from FBI Headquarters in DC – specifically from Joe Pientka. While Heide understood the Alfa Bank allegations came from an “anonymous source,” Heide never learned the identity of that source:

The Alfa Bank opening communication drafted by Heide said it was opened as a “Full Field Investigation.” He was “ordered” to open the investigation by FBI headquarters:

Pientka made clear that the opening of the investigation was demanded by the FBI’s 7th Floor – including Director Comey – at the behest of Bill Priestap.

This is the type of investigation, as Heide said, that “employs all of our resources.” As Agent Heide explained:

“In order to open a full field investigation, we would need specific and articulable facts that a threat to U.S. national security has occurred or there’s been a violation of federal law.”

This is in contrast to lower investigative levels – those for which the Alfa Bank allegations would be more appropriate – which “allows limited investigative techniques to see if an allegation or an investigation is warranted.”

As to some of the Alfa Bank allegations brought by Sussmann?

Q: Now, Agent Heide, what, if anything, did you find regarding these allegations and the purported findings in this white paper?

Heide: We were not able to substantiate any of the allegations in the white paper.

The FBI’s Cyber Division also discounted the Sussmann white paper:

Heide: The cyber division “were also unable to substantiate any of the allegations in the white paper, and they deemed that the information provided was not in accordance with how the Russians would conduct cyber activities.”

In fact, Agent Pientka (whom we have long-criticized) relayed the Cyber Division’s conclusions to Heide, stating:


Relatively early on in the investigation – on September 26, 2016 – Agent Heide sent a message to Pientka, requesting an interview of the source of the Alfa Bank white papers. By that time, Heide knew the white paper was bunk. He received no response from Pientka. He repeated this request on October 3, 2016. Agent Heide’s requests were rebuffed by his liaison at FBI headquarters:

Regarding Heide’s background – he supported “the initial efforts of Crossfire Hurricane” and was involved in the George Papadopoulos case. He said he is currently under an administrative investigation by the FBI for intentionally withholding classified information in a Carter Page FISA warrant.

When asked about the details of his involvement in the FISA applications, Heide said he “didn’t author any of the affidavits or any of the materials related to the applications in question.” (Read more: Techno Fog, 5/24/2022)  (Archive)

Day 7 of the Michael Sussman trial continues with the Defense shifting blame to FBI agents who they claim failed to properly investigate the case.

Timecodes: 00:00:00 – Intro 00:00:25 – Mindmap Overview 00:03:03 – Early Superchats 00:03:44 – Afternoon Session Transcript (Sussmann Trial Day 6) 00:04:04 – Witness Ryan Gaynor (Cross-Examination Continued) 00:29:18 – Witness Ryan Gaynor (Redirect Examination) 00:29:30 – Witness Allison Sands (Direct Examination) 00:58:50 – Witness Allison Sands (Cross-Examination) 01:12:49 – Morning Session Transcript (Sussmann Trial Day 7) 01:13:51 – Mindmap Update 01:16:12 – Witness Trisha Anderson (Direct Examination) 01:22:52 – Witness Trisha Anderson (Cross-Examination) 01:32:02 – Witness Trisha Anderson (Redirect Examination) 01:34:26 – Witness Curtis Heide (Direct Examination) 01:54:11 – Witness Curtis Heide (Cross-Examination) 02:17:48 – Recap & Conclusion 02:19:54 – Superchats & Locals Community #Sussmann #Durham #FBI

May 24, 2022 – Sussmann trial Day 7: Testimony of Jared Novick, former CEO of BitVoyant

(…) Novick was a former business partner of Rodney Joffe at BitVoyant, a company that focused on private sector cybersecurity. He reported directly to a board on which Rodney Joffe was a member. In August of 2016, Joffe gave Novick a task to dig up data “related to Donald Trump and Russia”:

Jared Novick

Jared Novick (Credit: PRNewsFoto/BitVoyant)

Who did Joffe target? According to Novick:

Rodney tasked me, and I received a PDF document. And in that PDF document, there were, you know, a handful — five, seven names — of individuals, their home addresses, if they had a spouse, their spouse name and companies related to their spouse, their personal email addresses. So everything about the document was — it was very personal.

This list included Carter Page, Sergei Millian, and Richard Burt. The name of this project? They called it “Crimson Rhino.” Novick stated he complied with Joffe’s request and “cast a large net” on these individuals using “a 90-day history of data.”

On cross-examination, counsel for Sussmann attempted to play-up Joffe’s qualifications and reputation. Novick had this response:

Q: Are you aware of the respect that Mr. Joffe had in the government communities in 2016?

Novick: It’s an interesting question because I do know some government agencies were suspect of Rodney.

(Read more: Techno Fog, 5/24/2022)  (Archive)

May 24, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 7 – The ‘Crimson Rhino’ File

FBI Chicago Office (Credit: public domain)

“More FBI agents took the stand at the Sussmann trial and confirmed they were led astray from the very start of their investigation into claims of Russia collusion with former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The link between the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Russia collusion narrative got clearer on day seven of the trial. Taking the limelight in the courtroom was a file titled ‘Crimson Rhino.’ This file was reportedly the basis for the investigation into the 2016 campaign and was provided to former top FBI lawyer James Baker from Sussmann.

Its origins come from tech executive Rodney Joffe who was tied to the Hillary Clinton campaign and was a confidential human source for the FBI. He ordered client Jared Novick who ran a data analysis firm to do research on several people tied to then-candidate Trump. He also said he felt uncomfortable doing the work because he knew it was opposition research for a political campaign.

Meanwhile, a mid-level FBI agent from the Chicago field office Kurt Hydie took the stand. Hydie reportedly wrote a memo that formally kicked off his office’s investigation. He admitted to writing a typographical error when he said the information came from the Department of Justice, not Sussmann. That caused confusion within the FBI where officers thought they were doing research for the federal government not a political actor.

“That created a lot of confusion,” Hydie said. “May not have had otherwise.” (Read more: OneAmericaNewsNetwork, 5/25/2022)  (Archive)

May 24, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 7 – Defense points out an FBI Confidential Human Source who did a technical analysis of the Alfa Bank white paper and believed it was credible

(…) Then there’s the testimony regarding another FBI confidential human source. According to today’s transcripts, another person provided information to the FBI regarding the Alfa Bank allegations:

Who is this CHS? Someone with media connections (or someone in the media) close to the Joffe researchers with a political interest in the Alfa Bank allegations.

The significance of this is two-fold. First, we have another source that needs to be identified. A source that is seemingly close to the Joffe “researchers” with politics that likely lean left.

Second, not interviewing sources – and not providing information of the sources to the investigating agents – is part of Sussmann’s defense. Agent Heide admitted they didn’t interview Dagon. During their case in chief, and during closing, Sussmann’s attorneys will argue that it was the FBI, and not Sussmann, who prevented inquiry into Sussmann’s sources.

Edit: Last thoughts about the latest CHS. “He” was close with the Alfa Bank researchers. He had an agenda. He was interviewed by the Washington Post. He spoke with Hope Hicks. He seems to be in the media.

Is the CHS David Corn? A discussion:  (Read more: Techno Fog, 5/24/2022)  (Archive)

Between FY 2012 and FY 2018 the FBI spent an average of $42 million annually in payments to its CHSs. As of May 2019, nearly 20 percent of the FBI’s CHS base met its definition of a long-term CHS. As we conducted our audit, of particular concern was the FBI’s management of these long-term CHSs. The FBI Did Not Comply with the AG Guidelines and Faces Ongoing Challenges in Overseeing Long-Term CHSs. (Credit: DOJOIG)

May 25, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 8 – Prosecution rests, defense witnesses testify

The Prosecution RESTS on Day 8 of the Michael Sussmann trial as defense attorneys call their first witnesses.

Timecodes: 00:00:00 – Intro 00:00:39 – Mindmap Overview 00:06:08 – Early Superchats 00:06:59 – Afternoon Session Transcript (Sussmann Trial Day 7) 00:12:17 – Witness Curtis Heide (Redirect Examination) 00:16:47 – Witness Jared Novick (Direct Examination) 00:41:38 – Witness Jared Novick (Cross-Examination) 00:56:15 – Witness Jared Novick (Redirect Examination) 01:01:10 – Morning Session Transcript (Sussmann Trial Day 8) 01:08:48 – Government Final Witness Kori Arsenault (Direct Examination) 01:32:32 – Government Final Witness Kori Arsenault (Cross-Examination) 01:40:57 – Government Rest/ Bench Conference 01:45:51 – Defense Witness Tashina Gauhar (Direct Examination) 01:53:04 – Defense Witness Tashina Gauhar (Cross-Examination) 01:54:07 – Defense Witness Mary McCord (Direct Examination) 01:57:52 – Defense Witness Mary McCord (Cross-Examination) 01:59:24 – Defense Witness Thomas Grasso, Jr. (Direct Examination) 02:03:28 – Defense Witness Thomas Grasso, Jr. (Cross-Examination) 01:59:24 – Defense Witness Thomas Grasso, Jr. (Direct Examination) 02:03:28 – Defense Witness Thomas Grasso, Jr. (Cross-Examination) 02:06:42 – Defense Witness Thomas Grasso, Jr. (Redirect Examination) 02:08:08 – Recap & Conclusion 02:09:56 – Superchats & Locals Community #Sussmann #Durham #Trump

May 25, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 8 – Retired FBI Agent Tom Grasso testifies of his connection with Joffe re Alfa Bank and Trump Russia

Tom Grasso (Credit: public domain)

“Grasso, a witness for Sussmann, was a Special Agent with the FBI whose “primary responsibility involved investigating cyber crimes.” He was part of a unit detailed to the National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The NCFTA, as Grasso explained, “is a nonprofit entity where nonprofit entity where private sector and law enforcement can come together to collaborate on cyber crime matters; and the FBI unit that I was a part of was detailed to be the FBI component of that project.”

Grasso met Rodney Joffe through the NCFTA. I’ll let Grasso explain the connection:

Q. Do you know a gentleman named Rodney Joffe?

Grasso: I did.

Q. How do you know him?

Grasso: Rodney Joffe is a private sector partner and a friend of mine who I initially met in — somewhere between 2005 and 2010, as I recall.

Q. Did he, from time to time, provide you information or interact with you in assisting on the investigation of FBI investigations?

Grasso: Yes, sir, on a regular basis.

In fact, Grasso had nominated Joffe and others for an FBI award for cyber crime investigation back in 2013 relating to “Butterfly Botnet” (malware described to have reached about four million infected computers).

Overall, Joffe and Agent Grasso had a good personal and professional relationship. And Joffe exploited that relationship to further the Alfa Bank hoax.

In early October 2016 (on or before 10/2/16), Joffe called Agent Grasso and provided some information on the purported ties between the Alfa Bank/Trump Organization. Joffe further informed Agent Grasso that there was an ongoing investigation on this matter – something Agent Grasso had been unaware of up until that point. According to Grasso:

Q. How, if you recall, did Mr. Joffe provide this information to you?

Grasso: I recall that he provided the information to me verbally over the phone.

…

Q. And when he provided the information to you, without getting into great detail, what did he describe the information as relating to?

Grasso: As I recall, he described the information relating to communications between the Trump Campaign and some entity in Russia.

Q. And coming out of your conversation with Mr. Joffe, did you understand that there was any ongoing investigation into those issues?

Grasso: My recollection is that at the time he advised me that there was an open FBI investigation on the matter.

After that conversation, Agent Grasso sent this e-mail to the FBI Agents handling the Alfa Bank investigation:

Agent Grasso took this information from Joffe despite knowing that Joffe was a confidential human source (CHS) with the FBI – and despite the fact that Joffe didn’t go through his handler to relay this information.

(Read more: Techno Fog, 5/25/2022)  (Archive)

May 25, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Day 8 – The cross-examination of former FBI agent Grasso

“We’ll start with some important questions posed by Special Counsel DeFilippis on Joffe’s background.

Tom Grasso (Credit: public domain)

Q. And so Mr. Joffe worked on a number of investigations involving foreign cyber threats; is that right?

Grasso: I would say all a matter of cyber threats, yes.

Q. Okay. So does that include nation state threats? Would he be, you know, working with the Bureau on nation state threats?

Grasso: I believe so, yes.

Q. And so that includes some of the big cyber threat countries, like Russia?

Grasso: Yes. At the time Russia was one of our top threats in the FBI for cyber crime.

…

Q: And so Mr. Joffe would work on Russian-related cyber matters?

Grasso: I believe so. He — I don’t think he was specifically tasked with doing that, but I’m sure the work that he did touched on matters having to do with Russia due to the prevalence of cyber crime activity that comes out of Russia.

There’s our confirmation that Joffe worked on “Russian-related cyber matters.” This line of questioning suggests (but doesn’t outright prove) that Joffe may have had some type of involvement in the biggest cyber security matter of 2016: the “Russian” hack of the DNC.

Of course, these questions could have been the Special Counsel trying to discredit Joffe’s claim (see below) that he wanted to remain anonymous because he was relaying risky information.

Anyway, assuming Joffe was involved in the Trump/Russia investigation, then we are presented with some important questions. Did Joffe inform the FBI’s understanding of the DNC/DCCC hacks? If so, what did Joffe contribute?

Then there’s Joffe’s close relationship with Sussmann and his support for the Clinton Campaign. Ask whether the Alfa Bank hoax was the first time Joffe colluded with Michael Sussmann. After all, it was Sussmann who “scrubbed” the CrowdStrike report that attributed the DNC hack to Russia. As Aaron Mate explained in this crucial article:

According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, CrowdStrike delivered a draft report to the FBI on Aug. 31, 2016 that an unidentified FBI official described as “heavily redacted.” James Trainor, then-assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, told the committee that he was “frustrated” with the CrowdStrike report and “doubted its completeness” because “outside counsel” – i.e. Sussmann – “had reviewed it.” According to Trainor, the DNC’s cooperation was “moderate” overall and “slow and laborious in many respects.” Trainor singled out the fact that Perkins Coie – and specifically, Sussmann – “scrubbed” the CrowdStrike information before it was delivered to the FBI, resulting in a “stripped-down version” that was “not optimal.” (Emphasis ours.)

The DOJ and FBI essentially allowed Sussmann “to decide what it could and could not see in CrowdStrike’s reports on Russian hacking.” Did Joffe have a role in that?

Consider something else. What if Crowdstrike was a patsy, there to unknowingly reach false conclusions of a “Russian hack” based on information provided to them, in part, by Rodney Joffe?

Back to Agent Grasso’s testimony. Here he explains Joffe’s demands that Grasso not disclose his identity:

Q. In the case of the Alfa-Bank-related information that you just described, Mr. Joffe specifically asked you not to disclose his identity to other people in the Bureau; is that right?

A. That is correct, yes.

Q. He didn’t want you to tell even the people at the FBI you were talking to that this was coming from Rodney Joffe, right?

A. Yes, that is correct. He wanted his identity protected, yes.

Grasso paraphrased (on redirect) Joffe’s reasoning to stay anonymous: “This is very sensitive information. People’s safety could be at risk.”

And here is Grasso testifying to the significance of Joffe’s motivations in reaching out:

Grasso explained that these omissions were material because the motivation of a source’s political agenda is relevant to the type of cases they “can open.” (Read more: Techno Fog, 5/25/2022)  (Archive)

May 26, 2022 – Sussmann Trial: Day 9 – Defense Rests, Jury Charged

The Michael Sussman defense team RESTS after their final character witnesses are called to the stand. Judge Cooper reads the jury instructions in preparation for closing arguments on the final day of trial.

Timecodes: 00:00:00 – Intro 00:00:50 – Mindmap Overview 00:08:28 – Afternoon Session Transcript (Sussmann Trial Day 8) 00:12:24 – Defense Witness Brandon Charnov (Direct Examination) 00:29:19 – Defense Witness Brandon Charnov (Cross-Examination) 00:41:06 – Defense Character Witness Jimma Elliott-Stevens (Direct Examination) 00:46:26 – Defense Character Witness Jimma Elliott-Stevens (Cross-Examination) 00:48:35 – Defense Character Witness Marty Stansell-Gamm (Direct Examination) 00:53:12 – Defense Character Witness Marty Stansell-Gamm (Cross-Examination) 00:53:42 – Conclusion for Sussmann Trial Day 8 Afternoon Session 00:56:04 – Morning Session Transcript (Sussmann Trial Day 9) 00:57:06 – Judge Cooper Asked Sussmann Whether To Testify or Not 00:59:43 – Discussion of Preliminary Issues 01:04:52 – Judge Cooper Reads Jury Instructions 01:30:07 – Recap & Conclusion 01:32:05 – Superchats & Locals Community #Sussmann #Durham #Trump

May 26, 2022 – Former AG Bill Barr calls Russiagate ‘seditious’

(Credit: Amazon)

“Bill Barr, former U.S. attorney general and author of the new book, “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General,” says that the Russian collusion allegations leveled against former President Donald Trump by Democrats were a “seditious” attempt to undermine his presidency and a “grave injustice.”

Barr made those comments on an upcoming episode of BlazeTV host Glenn Beck’s podcast, where he explained why he joined the Trump administration and eventually appointed special prosecutor John Durham to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe.

“I thought we were heading into a constitutional crisis. I think whatever you think of Trump, the fact is that the whole Russiagate thing was a grave injustice. It appears to be a dirty political trick that was used first to hobble him and then potentially to drive him from office,” Barr told Beck.

“I believe it is seditious,” he added, clarifying that whether that could be proved in court as a crime is another issue.

“It was a gross injustice, and it hurt the United States in many ways, including what we’re seeing in Ukraine these days. It distorted our foreign policy, and so forth,” Barr said.

(…)Former Attorney General Barr, who served under President Donald Trump, believes Durham has made progress in his investigation and that more damning information may come out soon.

Barr said that Durham has “dug very deep” into the origins of the FBI’s investigation into disproven claims that then-candidate Trump was colluding with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election and has uncovered “good information.”

“I think the question all along … has been that this was a campaign-dirty-trick to get the government to investigate allegations — scurrilous allegations — about Donald Trump and then leak that right before the election,” Barr said.

“And so that raises two questions: Was the Clinton campaign developing this false information and feeding it in for that purpose? And what was the FBI’s role on this?”

“It tells me that he [has] dug very deep and he has developed some good information and he thinks he can make a criminal case here,” Barr said. (Read more: The Blaze, 5/26/2022)  (Archive)

May 26, 2022 – Sussmann Trial Exhibits courtesy of Epoch Times

Link: Sussmann Trial Exhibits

May 31, 2022 – Grassley writes to Wray and Garland about Timothy Thibault and his public political bias against Trump

(…) on May 31, Grassley sent the first of four letters to FBI Director Wray and AG Garland.

Grassley leveled a very serious allegation, noting that “while serving in a highly sensitive role that includes threshold decision-making over which Federal public corruption matters are opened for investigation,” the Assistant Special Agent in Charge at the Washington Field Office, Timothy Thibault, violated federal regulations and Department guidelines designed to prevent political bias from infecting FBI matters. Grassley told Wray and Garland that actions by Thibault undermine “both the FBI and DOJ because, at minimum, it creates the perception of unequal application of the law.”

(Read more: The Epoch Times, 8/20/2022)  (Archive)

May 31, 2022 – July 25, 2022: Whistleblowers reveal widespread DOJ/FBI misconduct

“Prior to the FBI’s raid Monday on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, a string of whistleblower reports alleged that senior officials at the FBI exhibited a pattern of bias in their handling of politically sensitive investigations and also reclassified cases without justification to substantiate the White House’s public narratives on crime and extremism.

Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault discusses the sentencing of Julian Velasquez who distributed fentanyl resulting in a woman’s death. (Credit: FBI Washington Field Office/Twitter)

Beginning in late May, Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley called attention to then-Washington Field Office Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault over political bias concerns. Thibault expressed support for several “highly partisan” opinion articles on LinkedIn and made a series of politically charged social media posts, according to Grassley, who referred Thibault to the Office of Special Counsel to address the federal agent’s potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government officials from partisan political activity.

Concerns surrounding Thibault escalated in July, as whistleblowers came forward claiming Thibault’s partisan persuasion directly impacted his work at the bureau. While seeking approval from FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland to open an investigation into Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, Thibault withheld from them that his predicating evidence was based in “substantial part” on information from a “left-aligned organization,” according to Grassley’s office.

In a separate instance, whistleblowers claim Thibault worked to falsely discredit evidence against President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and prevent the bureau from investigating him.

Richard Pilger leaves the DOJ’s election crimes branch in November 2020 after Barr authorizes a fraud investigation. He stayed with the DOJ in a non-supervisory post. (Credit: public domain)

“Whistleblowers have told my office that the FBI maintains many sources that have provided extensive information on Hunter Biden,” Grassley said in August. “That information allegedly involves potential criminal activity such as money laundering. According to allegations, the underlying information was verified and verifiable. However, instead of green-lighting investigative activity, the FBI shut it down.”

Grassley also pointed to Robert [Richard] Pilger of the Election Crimes Branch, who he alleges was of vital aid to Thibault in his efforts to open the investigation into Trump. Former Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, the Iowa Republican noted, testified that “Pilger’s conduct frustrated the department’s ability to properly operate the Election Crimes Branch.”

Thibault, Grassley confirmed, was reassigned to an unspecified posting prior to the bureau securing a warrant to raid Trump’s estate. Sources briefed on the raid confirmed to Just the News that the agents came from the Washington Field Office, in which Thibault was serving until just days prior.

In late July, whistleblower reports emerged that bureau supervisors were pressuring agents to reclassify cases under the label of “domestic violent extremism” (DVE) without substantive justification in order to support White House narratives.” (Read more: JusttheNews, 8/11/2022)  (Archive)

May 31, 2022 – The FBI maintains a workspace, including computer portal, inside the law firm of Perkins Coie

 

“There is very little that surprises me, but this is completely stunning. An FBI whistleblower came forth to inform Rep Jim Jordan and Rep Matt Gaetz that the FBI maintains a workspace inside the law firm of Perkins Coie. {Direct Rumble Link}

In response to a letter sent by Rep. Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan, Perkins Coie, the legal arm of the DNC and Hillary Clinton, admitted they have been operating an FBI workspace in their Washington D.C. office since 2012. Pay attention to that date, it matters. WATCH:

This is a huge development. Essentially, what is being admitted in this claim is that a portal existed into FBI databases within the law firm that represents democrats. This means access to FBI database searches exists inside the office of the DNC and Clinton legal group. Think about the ramifications here.

CTH[Conservative Treehouse] has long claimed there was some kind of direct portal link between the Clinton campaign team and the FBI databases. There were too many trails of extracted non-minimized research evidence in the hands of the Clinton team that CTH could not trace to a transferring FBI official. If Perkins Coie operated a portal in their office that allowed them to conduct search queries of American citizens, then everything would make sense. That access portal is exactly what is being claimed and admitted in this report.

The start date of 2012 is important for several reasons, not the least of which is FISA presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer criticizing the scale and scope of unlawful FBI database access going back to exactly 2012. Keep in mind a FISA-702 search, is simply an unlawful FBI warrantless electronic search of an American (“702” represents the American citizen) into the central database -maintained by the NSA- that contains all electronic data and communication.

I have been in the deep hole of the FISA-702 database search query violations for so long I don’t even need a flashlight.

The report from Matt Gaetz about Perkins Coie access to FBI databases, is in direct alignment with Rosemary Collyer’s prior report on FBI abuses of the database, 702 violations. Notice the dates and scope Judge Collyer references [Source Link].

Non-compliant queries since 2012.

85% of the FBI and contractor searches are unlawful.

Many of those searches involved the use of the “same identifiers over different data ranges.”  Put in plain terms, the same people were continually being tracked, searched and surveilled by querying the FBI database over time.

The non-compliant searches go back to 2012.  The same date mentioned for the FBI portal to begin operating inside the Perkins Coie office.

This specific footnote is a key.  Note the phrase: “([redacted] access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding entered into [redacted])”, this sentence has the potential to expose an internal decision; withheld from congress and the FISA court by the Obama administration; that outlines a process for access and distribution of surveillance data.

Note: “no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016“, which is important.

♦Summary: The FISA court identified and quantified tens of thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.

The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation.  When the DOJ use of the IRS for political information on their opposition became problematic, the Obama administration needed another tool.  It was in 2012 when they switched to using the FBI databases for targeted search queries.

This information from Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz has the potential to be extremely explosive.

It will be interesting to see how the domestic intelligence community media (NYT, Politico, WaPo – in that order) respond to this Matt Gaetz report.

I wrote about these suspicions in-depth throughout 2017, 2018 and eventually summarized in 2019:

SEE HERE

(Conservative Treehouse, 5/31/2022)  (Archive)

May 31, 2022 – Sussmann trial: Sussmann edited FBI press release about DNC hack because it ‘undermined’ the DNC’s narrative

Documents released during Michael Sussmann’s federal trial show the FBI solicited advice from Hillary Clinton’s lawyer on a press release describing the intelligence agency’s awareness of the Democratic National Committee hack in 2016.

James Trainor (Credit: public domain)

The original press release sent over to Sussmann by Jim Trainor, the assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, noted that the FBI was aware of “a possible cyber intrusion involving the DCCC,” or the Democratic National Campaign Committee, via “recent media reporting.”

“Michael – our press office is once again getting a ton of calls on the DCCC matter. A draft response is provided below. Wanted to get your thoughts on this prior to sending out,” Trainor wrote.

In his reply, Sussmann asked the FBI to change the first line of the press release to reflect the DNC’s messaging on the hack. He explained that he preferred a more definitive statement that made clear “the FBI is aware of the cyber intrusion involving the DCCC that has been reported in the media.”

Trainor accepted the suggestions with minor protest and agreed to send out Sussmann’s manipulated version of the press release soon.

“Mike – I am fine with the below suggestions. We try to really limit what we see and not acknowledging too much but the below edits are fine and we will send out,” Trainor wrote. (Read more: The Federalist, 5/31/2022)  (Archive)

May 31, 2022 – Michael Sussmann has been acquitted

“The acquittal is no surprise. This is a DC jury, after all. In the Roger Stone case, for example, we documented how a juror lied to get on the panel. (That judge didn’t care.) Making matters worse, the Sussmann judge wrongly allowed a woman to remain on the jury, despite the fact that her daughter and Sussmann’s are on the same high school crew team. One can’t help but think that juror had her own daughter’s interests in mind – the cohesion of the crew team – when she reached a decision.

D.C. Wards – Jury Pool

After the verdict was announced, the jury’s forewoman held court before the media and expressed her displeasure that the Special Counsel prosecute a false statement case:

“There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI.”

On the facts, there was more than sufficient evidence to prove Sussmann’s guilt. Sussmann lied to then-FBI general counsel James Baker in order to get a meeting to pass the Alfa Bank hoax materials to the FBI. Sussmann lied again during the meeting – stating he was not there on behalf of a client – in order to get the FBI to open an investigation into the Trump Organization’s purported ties with Alfa Bank. Later, during testimony to Congress, Sussmann admitted he met with Baker on behalf of a client. Billing records proved he had been working on the Alfa Bank project on behalf of the Clinton Campaign.

(…) That’s not to say the public hasn’t benefited from the trial. The information disclosed during the trial was important to understand the broader Clinton/Fusion GPS/Perkins Coie effort to poison the public, the press, and the FBI with their Trump/Russia lies. This included:

  • Data from the Executive Office of the President of the United States, including data from the Transition period, was exploited by Sussmann and Rodney Joffe and then passed to the CIA.
  • Rodney Joffe was a longtime Confidential Human Source (CHS) – and generally a resource – for the FBI. Joffe worked with the FBI on cyber threats from countries like Russia. From former FBI Agent Grasso: “I’m sure the work that [Joffe] did touched on matters having to do with Russia.”
  • Joffe went to great lengths to make sure the Alfa Bank information he provided to the FBI did not go through his official FBI handler.

  • The decision to open the investigation came from FBI Leadership. According to one FBI Agent, “People on the 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this server.”
  • Perkins Coie partner Marc Elias provided updates on the Fusion GPS “research” to the Clinton Campaign.
  • After reviewing the evidence, the FBI leaned “towards this being a false server not attributed to the trump organization.”

An unbelievable confirmation of the shoddy FBI investigation into the Russian “hacking” of our election. As of October 13, 2016, the FBI did not have the Crowdstrike images relating to the purported DNC/DCCC hack. Message from FBI agent via their internal messaging system: “really, I just want images of what crowdstrike has.”

Q: Mr. Mook, before the break you had testified that there was a conversation in which you told Ms. Clinton about the proposed plan to provide the Alfa-Bank allegations to the media; is that correct?

A: Correct.

Q: And what was her response?

A: All I remember is that she agreed with the decision.

Then there are the trial exhibits, which The Epoch Times has posted here. As Aaron Maté observed, Sussmann edited an FBI press release on the DNC hacking because the FBI’s proposed statement “undermines” the DNC hacking narrative:

(Read more: Techno Fog, 5/31/2022)  (Archive)

June 3, 2022 – Trump receives grand jury subpoena for documents, turns them over and allows agents to search storage locker at Mar-a-Lago

“Two months before his Florida home was raided by the FBI, former President Donald Trump secretly received a grand jury subpoena for classified documents belonging to the National Archives, and voluntarily cooperated by turning over responsive evidence, surrendering security surveillance footage and allowing federal agents and a senior Justice Department lawyer to tour his private storage locker, according to a half dozen people familiar with the incident.

Assistant Attorney General for DOJ National Security Division Matthew Olsen, seen from a video monitor before a Senate Judiciary Committee virtual hearing on domestic terrorism, Jan. 11, 2022. (Credit: VOA)

While the cooperation was mostly arranged by his lawyers, Trump personally surprised the DOJ National Security Division prosecutor and three FBI agents who came to his Mar-a-Lago compound on June 3, greeting them as they came to pick up a small number of documents compliant with the subpoena, the sources told Just the News, speaking only on condition of anonymity because the visit was covered by grand jury secrecy.

The subpoena requested any remaining documents Trump possessed with any classification markings, even if they involved photos of foreign leaders, correspondence or mementos from his presidency.

Secret Service agents were also present and facilitated the visit, officials said.

Trump signaled his full cooperation, telling the agents and prosecutor, “Look, whatever you need let us know,” according to two eyewitnesses. The federal team was surprised by the president’s invitation and asked for an immediate favor: to see the 6-foot-by-10-foot storage locker where his clothes, shoes, documents and mementos from his presidency were stored at the compound.

Given Trump’s instruction, the president’s lawyers complied and allowed the search by the FBI before the entourage left cordially. Five days later, DOJ officials sent a letter to Trump’s lawyers asking them to secure the storage locker with more than the lock they had seen. The Secret Service installed a more robust security lock to comply.

Around the same time, the Trump Organization, which owns Mar-a-Lago, received a request for surveillance video footage covering the locker and volunteered the footage to federal authorities, sources disclosed.

The disclosure Wednesday to Just the News raised immediate new questions in legal and congressional circles about the necessity for the subsequent raid, including whether the judge who approved the warrant knew of the earlier cooperation.”  (Read more: Just The News, 8/11/2022)  (Archive)

June 7, 2022 – Jim Jordan: Multiple whistleblowers claim the FBI is ‘purging’ employees with conservative viewpoints

WATCH: (Jordan segment begins at 2:20)

“Multiple former FBI officials are coming forward with information suggesting the bureau is “purging” employees with conservative viewpoints, according to House Judiciary Committee Republicans.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the ranking member of the panel, sent a letter to Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday outlining new allegations that relate to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

“In one such example, the FBI targeted and suspended the security clearance of a retired war servicemember who had disclosed personal views that the FBI was not being entirely forthcoming about the events of January 6. The FBI questioned the whistleblower’s allegiance to the United States despite the fact that the whistleblower honorably served in the United States military for several years — including deployments in Kuwait and Iraq — valiantly earning multiple military commendation medals,” a press release for the letter states.

“In addition, another whistleblower, who has since left the FBI, has informed us that faced retaliation for criticizing the FBI in an anonymous survey circulated by the [REDACTED] to employees following January 6. The FBI allegedly escalated an adverse personnel action against this employee after [REDACTED] commented on the survey, which sought feedback about the [REDACTED] actions ‘during the recent crisis/command post’ event. The employee, too, was never disciplined or reprimanded until after [REDACTED] criticized the FBI,” the letter reads.

The names of the former officials do not appear, as the letter features several redactions, but Jordan stressed multiple “whistleblowers have called it a ‘purge’ of FBI employees holding conservative views.” He reminded Wray that “whistleblower disclosures to Congress are protected by law and that we will not tolerate any effort to retaliate against whistleblowers for their disclosures.”

Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz were sent a copy.

Jordan also said a prior letter, sent May 6, details allegations of the FBI suspending the security clearances of bureau employees for their participation in protected First Amendment activity, and he claimed the FBI failed to respond or provide a requested briefing. (Read more: Washington Examiner, 6/07/2022)  (Archive)

June 9, 2022 – David Weiss collaborates with DOJ to ‘subvert’ House probe into Hunter Biden case

The Department of Justice (DOJ) intervened on behalf of Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss to respond to congressional inquiries related to its probe into the Biden family business, emails unearthed from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit show.

The collaboration raises questions about if Weiss’ responses to congressional investigators were under the direction of the DOJ and if Weiss and the DOJ colluded to mislead Congress.

The Federalist reported:

Did the DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs respond to Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson’s May 9, 2022, letter seeking information concerning the Hunter Biden investigation? Weiss posed that question to one of his lead assistant U.S. attorneys, Shannon Hanson.

“Not to my knowledge,” Hanson replied, followed soon after with a second email noting that Joe Gaeta, the then-deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legislative Affairs, was working on a response. And although Grassley and Johnson had addressed their May 9, 2022, inquiry solely to Weiss, DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs would intercede on his behalf, responding in a letter dated June 9, 2022, that the DOJ would not respond to the questions posed.

The following month, Grassley and Johnson dispatched another letter requesting information related to the Hunter Biden investigation, addressing this letter to Weiss, as well as Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray. Again, the Office of Legal Counsel intervened, telling Weiss’s office in an email reviewed by The Federalist that it would “take the lead on drafting a response” to Grassley and Johnson’s letter.

WATCH — CNN’s Honig: DOJ Repeatedly Took “Very Lenient” Stance on Hunter, Only Changed After Public Pressure, Whistleblowers:

CNN’s “The Lead” interviews CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig. (Credit: video clipping/Breitbart)

“It is standard procedure for congressional inquiries to be routed through the agency’s legislative affairs shop,” Kash Patel, a former federal public defender and House Intelligence Committee aide, told Breitbart News.

“What is not standard,” Patel continued, is for the DOJ to create “conspiratorial schemes concocted to subvert valid constitutional oversight and stonewall documentation production.”

“It also shows how Republicans allow themselves to be dominated by DOJ’s criminal conduct by flailing about with another strongly worded letter,” Patel added. “Impeach them for breaking the law, or stop complaining when you get punched in the face.”

Weiss told House investigators on June 7 that he had “ultimate authority” in whether to charge Hunter Biden with potential wrongdoing.

However, FOIA emails show that while Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed Weiss was the sole authority to bring charges against Hunter Biden, Garland was also controlling the flow of responses back to House investigators. (Read more: Breitbart, 8/28/2023)  (Archive)

June 12, 2022 – Retired four-star general John R. Allen facing FBI probe, resigns from Brookings Institution

General John Allen commanded forces in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013. (Credit: Michael Reynolds/EPA)

“General John R. Allen has stepped down as president of the Brookings Institution after he was accused of lying and obstructing an FBI probe connected to an illegal lobbying campaign for Qatar.

The retired four-star Marine, who became Brookings president in 2017, said in his resignation letter that he leaves the research institute with a “heavy heart,” according to Responsible Statecraft.

“I know it is best for all concerned in this moment,” he said in his resignation letter that was obtained and posted by the online magazine of the Quincy Institute, which advocates for diplomacy and military restraint.

The departure comes after he was placed on leave by Brookings Wednesday following explosive allegations that he made false statements and withheld “incriminating” documents from the FBI during its investigation into whether he worked behind the scenes to influence US foreign policy in favor of the small Persian Gulf nation, according to court documents.” (Read more: New York Post, 6/12/2022)  (Archive)

June 13, 2022 – The release of 150 suspicious activity reports on Hunter and Jim Biden’s business dealings have been blocked by the Biden Treasury Department

Clipping from Congressman James Comer’s letter to Janet Yellen.

“Kentucky congressman James Comer (R) joined “Fox & Friends First” Thursday to address his efforts to obtain suspicious foreign business transactions on Hunter Biden and slams the White House and Democrats for refusing to release the information.

JAMES COMER: To put this into perspective, a suspicious activity report was put into place when George Bush was president after September 11th to try to catch money laundering into terrorist cells in the United States. A suspicious activity report is a very serious banking violation. Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s brother, Jim, have had over 150 suspicious activity reports when Bush was president and through Obama, Clinton, Bush, any member of Congress could request from Treasury a list of suspicious activity reports in their congressional districts and in their states. When Joe Biden became president and this is before it became public knowledge that Hunter had these suspicious activity reports, he, in the dark of night, changed it to where Congress could no longer access that from Treasury. Now, we have formally requested the suspicious activity report on Hunter Biden and the White House will not allow us to have it unless the Democrats sign on to the request.

(Fox News, 7/7/2022) (Archive)

June 14, 2022 – Ex-FBI senior official Michael Steinbach had numerous contacts with media: DOJ OIG report

“A top FBI official repeatedly violated bureau policy by hobnobbing with journalists while overseeing the controversial investigation into Donald Trump’s suspected ties to Russia — and then retired before he could be interviewed by ethics probers, a newly released Justice Department report revealed.

Michael Steinbach “had numerous unauthorized contacts with the media” that began when he was the bureau’s assistant counterterrorism director and continued after he was named executive assistant director of its National Security Bureau in February 2016, according to the heavily redacted DOJ Inspector General report obtained by The Post through a freedom of information act request.

The “hundreds of contacts” included “soliciting” an unidentified reporter for a $300 ticket to the 2016 White House Correspondents’ Association gala after earlier getting invited by a different reporter to the 2015 Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner.

“Lots of [redacted] reporters here. May have to branch out!” Steinbach wrote to the unidentified reporter in a text message on the night of the 2015 dinner.

“Absolutely not!!! But curious to know who you’ve met so far?” the reporter responded, adding: “well they will never be as good as me! and don’t you get the big head! ;)”

“But they are promising the WH Correspondents dinner,” Steinbach responded.

The following year, Steinbach attended the White House Correspondents’ dinner and a reception party as a guest of a reporter — and boasted about it in a text to an unidentified CNN reporter.

“I put you on the map and now you’re cheating on me with [redacted],” the CNN reporter wrote in a text message to Steinbach.

“I kept waiting for my invite from you,” Steinbach responded.

After the $300-a-ticket event, Steinbach sent an email to a reporter with the subject “Great Night” that included a photo of an unidentified person standing with the journalist in front of the White House Correspondents’ Association banner.

“Thanks for hanging out with us last night [redacted] and I had a great time. And also thank you for giving us a lift. That was nice. I know it has been [sic] very busy year but when it slows down and as the weather gets nicer, we would love to grab [sic] or drinks with you and [redacted] either in the city somewhere or at our house,” the email read, in part.

In addition to the dinners, Steinbach had numerous lunches with journalists in Washington from 2014 to 2017, including at restaurants Asia Nine, Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse, Elephant & Castle and Oyamel Cocina Mexicana.

“The OIG notes that it was unable to determine who paid for the drinks or meals during these social engagements,” the report states.

(…) The report notes the watchdog concluded that Steinbach violated federal regulations and FBI protocol and its findings would be delivered to the FBI.

“Prosecution was declined,” the report adds.” (Read more: New York Post, 6/14/2022)  (Archive) 

December 3, 2018 – A laptop audio recording of Hunter Biden boasting his father will adopt political positions at his command

“It seems like every few weeks we’re reminded of why Twitter, Facebook, Democrats and the media worked so hard to keep the Hunter Biden laptop out of the news before the 2020 election.

The latest example is an audio file that’s rather revealing.

Andrew Kerr and Jerry Dunleavy report at the Washington Examiner:

Hunter Biden recorded himself boasting that his father will adopt political positions at his command, footage obtained from a copy of his abandoned laptop shows.

“He’ll talk about anything that I want him to, that he believes in,” Biden said in reference to his father, Joe Biden, in the Dec. 3, 2018, recording. “If I say it’s important to me, then he will work a way in which to make it a part of his platform. My dad respects me more than he respects anyone in the world, and I know that to be certain, so it’s not going to be about whether it affects his politics.”

“All those fears you think that I have of people not liking me or that I don’t love myself … I don’t fear that. You know why I don’t fear that? Because the man I most admire in the world, that god to me, thinks I’m a god,” Hunter Biden added in the 77-minute recording, which was taped about five months before Joe Biden launched his successful 2020 presidential campaign in late April 2019. “And my brother did, too. And the three of us, it was literally — I had the support to know I can do anything.”

The president’s son even mused about his cocaine addiction:

The conversation was taped at a house in Plum Island, Massachusetts, amid the throes of Hunter Biden’s addiction to crack cocaine.

“Have you ever thought about this: Maybe this is the greatest thing that f***ing ever happened to me,” Hunter Biden mused to Horan about his addiction to the Schedule II narcotic. “Maybe this is literally the continuation and the continuum of what is going to be the thing that makes me the person that my father believes I am.”

(Read more: Legal Insurrection, 6/15/2022)  (Archive)

June 17, 2022 – Trump: “Hillary has to pay for what’s she’s done.”

Source video: President Donald J. Trump delivers remarks in Nashville, Tennessee, on Friday, June 17, 2022. He comments about the ongoing RICO lawsuit filed against Hillary Clinton and others.

June 17, 2022 – Hillary Clinton calls Trump supporters a “clear and present danger to American democracy”

“Twice-failed presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton on Friday said Trump supporters are a “clear and present danger to American democracy.” Clinton responded to a judge who lashed out at Trump supporters during Thursday’s January 6 show trial.

“Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” former circuit judge (George H. W. Bush appointee) Michael Luttig said to the J-6 panel. WATCH:

Hillary Clinton agreed with the former federal judge. Hillary Clinton went from calling Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables” to a “clear and present danger” in a matter of just a few years. “Louder, for those in the back: Donald Trump, his allies, and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy.” Hillary Clinton said in a tweet on Friday.

(Read more: Conspatriot News, 6/17/2022) (Archive)

(…) Judge Luttig never notes that the president specifically said to the crowd to go and “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

In fact, not only did that part of the president’s speech not make Judge Luttig’s statement, it was, as Ohio’s Republican Congressman Jim Jordan has noted, also edited out of the committee’s video of that event. Imagine that. (The American Spectator, 6/16/2022)

June 17, 2022 – Hillary Clinton plays the victim and calls out Republicans for painting her as “a murderer or a child trafficker”

Clipping of a New York Times article published May 29, 2016.

(…) In an interview with the Financial Times (paywall), Clinton was asked if she has considered another possible run for president in 2024, to which she shut down saying, “out of the question,” adding “first of all, I expect Biden to run. He certainly intends to run. It would be very disruptive to challenge that.”

(…) Clinton continued to say she believes President Trump will run again, claiming only if he thought it would benefit him financially.

Describing herself as the “most investigated innocent person in America,” Clinton portrayed herself as a victim, calling out Republicans for painting her as a “murderer or a child trafficker.”

Clinton called the thought of a Republican president “frightening,” adding “we are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy, and everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window.” (Read more: Town Hall, 6/18/2022)  (Archive)

June 21, 2022 – Trump files an amended RICO suit against Hillary Clinton and others; Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart recuses the next day

Trump and Clinton during a 2016 election debate. (Credit: Rick Wilking/Reuters)

(…) On June 21, 2022, Trump filed an amended RICO suit against Clinton and a large number of other DNC-related individuals who were involved in the RussiaGate hoax.

The new suit, at 193 pages in length, was significantly more robust and detailed than Trump’s original March 24 RICO suit and included additional defendants. On the very same day, Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official who’s worked diligently to get Trump’s declassified documents released, announced on a podcast that he was officially a representative for Trump at the National Archives. Patel said it was his intention to “identify every single document that they blocked from being declassified.” Patel stated that he “would start putting that information out next week.”

[A sample of the many appearances Patel has made about the declassified documents.]

The following day, June 22, Magistrate Bruce Reinhart suddenly recused himself from Trump’s suit against Clinton & Company. Just 44 days later, after his unexpected recusal from Trump’s RICO case against Clinton, Reinhart personally signed the search warrant to raid Mar-a-Lago. (Read more: The Epoch Times, 8/19/2022)  (Archive)

June 21, 2022 – Twitter is hiring an alarming number of FBI agents

Twitter has been on a recruitment drive of late, hiring a host of former feds and spies. Studying a number of employment and recruitment websites, MintPress has ascertained that the social media giant has, in recent years, recruited dozens of individuals from the national security state to work in the fields of security, trust, safety, and content.

Chief amongst these is the Federal Bureau of Investigations. The FBI is generally known as a domestic security and intelligence force. However, it has recently expanded its remit into cyberspace. “The FBI’s investigative authority is the broadest of all federal law enforcement agencies,” the “About” section of its website informs readers. “The FBI has divided its investigations into a number of programs, such as domestic and international terrorism, foreign counterintelligence [and] cyber crime,” it adds.

For example, in 2019, Dawn Burton (the former director of Washington operations for Lockheed Martin) was poached from her job as senior innovation advisor to the director at the FBI to become senior director of strategy and operations for legal, public policy, trust and safety at Twitter. The following year, Karen Walsh went straight from 21 years at the bureau to become director of corporate resilience at the silicon valley giant. Twitter’s deputy general counsel and vice president of legal, Jim Baker, also spent four years at the FBI between 2014 and 2018, where his resumé notes he rose to the role of senior strategic advisor.

Mark Jaroszewski (Credit: FBI Event Flyer, May 2018)

Meanwhile, Mark Jaroszewski ended his 21-year posting as a supervisory special agent in the Bay Area to take up a position at Twitter, rising to become director of corporate security and risk. And Douglas Turner spent 14 years as a senior special agent and SWAT Team leader before being recruited to serve in Twitter’s corporate and executive security services. Previously, Turner had also spent seven years as a secret service special agent with the Department of Homeland Security.

When asked to comment by MintPress, former FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley said that she was “not surprised at all” to see FBI agents now working for the very tech companies the agency polices, stating that there now exists a “revolving door” between the FBI and the areas they are trying to regulate. This created a serious conflict of interests in her mind, as many agents have one eye on post-retirement jobs. “The truth is that at the FBI 50% of all the normal conversations that people had were about how you were going to make money after retirement,” she said.

Many former FBI officials hold influential roles within Twitter. For instance, in 2020, Matthew W. left a 15-year career as an intelligence program manager at the FBI to take up the post of senior director of product trust at Twitter. Patrick G., a 23-year FBI supervisory special agent, is now head of corporate security. And Twitter’s director of insider risk and security investigations, Bruce A., was headhunted from his role as a supervisory special agent at the bureau. His resumé notes that at the FBI he held “[v]arious intelligence and law enforcement roles in the US, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East” and was a “human intelligence and counterintelligence regional specialist.” (On employment sites such as LinkedIn, many users choose not to reveal their full names.)

Meanwhile, between 2007 and 2021 Jeff Carlton built up a distinguished career in the United States Marine Corps, rising to become a senior intelligence analyst. Between 2014 and 2017, his LinkedIn profile notes, he worked for both the CIA and FBI, authored dozens of official reports, some of which were read by President Barack Obama. Carlton describes his role as a “problem-solver” and claims to have worked in many “dynamic, high-pressure environments” such as Iraq and Korea. In May 2021, he left official service to become a senior program manager at Twitter, responsible for dealing with the company’s “highest-profile trust and safety escalations.”

Other former FBI staff are employed by Twitter, such as Cherrelle Y. as a policy domain specialist and Laura D. as a senior analyst in global risk intelligence.

Many of those listed above were active in the FBI’s public outreach programs, a practice sold as a community trust-building initiative. According to Rowley, however, these also function as “ways for officials to meet the important people that would give them jobs after retirement.” “It basically inserts a huge conflict of interest,” she told MintPress. “It warps and perverts the criminal investigative work that agents do when they are still working as agents because they anticipate getting lucrative jobs after retiring or leaving the FBI.”

Rowley – who in 2002 was named, along with two other whistleblowers, as Time magazine’s Person of the Year – was skeptical that there was anything seriously nefarious about the hiring of so many FBI agents, suggesting that Twitter could be using them as sources of information and intelligence. She stated:

Retired agents often maintained good relationships and networks with current agents. So they can call up their old buddy and find out stuff… There were certainly instances of retired agents for example trying to find out if there was an investigation of so and so. And if you are working for a company, that company is going to like that influence.”

Rowley also suggested that hiring people from various three-letter agencies gave them a credibility boost. “These [tech] companies are using the mythical aura of the FBI. They can point to somebody and say ‘oh, you can trust us; our CEO or CFO is FBI,’” she explained.

Twitter certainly has endorsed the FBI as a credible actor, allowing the organization to play a part in regulating the global dissemination of information on its platform. In September 2020, it put out a statement thanking the federal agency. “We wish to express our gratitude to the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force for their close collaboration and continued support of our work to protect the public conversation at this critical time,” the statement read.

One month later, the company announced that the FBI was feeding it intelligence and that it was complying with their requests for deletion of accounts. “Based on intel provided by the FBI, last night we removed approximately 130 accounts that appeared to originate in Iran. They were attempting to disrupt the public conversation during the first 2020 U.S. Presidential Debate,” Twitter’s safety team wrote.

Yet the evidence they supplied of this supposed threat to American democracy was notably weak. All four of the messages from this Iranian operation that Twitter itself shared showed that none of them garnered any likes or retweets whatsoever, meaning that essentially nobody saw them. This was, in other words, a completely routine cleanup operation of insignificant troll accounts. Yet the announcement allowed Twitter to present the FBI as on the side of democracy and place the idea into the public psyche that the election was under threat from foreign actors.

Iran has been a favorite Twitter target in the past. In 2009, at the behest of the US government, it postponed routine maintenance of the site, which would have required taking it offline. This was because an anti-government protest movement in Tehran was using the app to communicate and the US did not want the demonstrations’ regime-change potential to be stymied.

A CARNIVAL OF SPOOKS

The FBI is far from the only state security agency filling Twitter’s ranks. Shortly after leaving a 10-year career as a CIA analyst, Michael Scott Robinson was hired to become a senior policy manager for site integrity, trust and safety.

The California-based app has also recruited heavily from the Atlantic Council, a NATO cutout organization that serves as the military alliance’s think tank. The council is sponsored by NATO, led by senior NATO generals and regularly plays out regime-change scenarios in enemy states, such as China.

The Atlantic Council has been associated with many of the most egregious fake news plants of the last few years. It published a series of lurid reports alleging that virtually every political group in Europe challenging the status quo – from the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and UKIP in Great Britain to PODEMOS and Vox in Spain and Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece – were all secretly “the Kremlin’s Trojan Horses.” Atlantic Council employee Michael Weiss was also very likely the creator of the shadowy organization PropOrNot, a group that anonymously published a list of fake-news websites that regularly peddled Kremlin disinformation. Included in this list was virtually every anti-war alternative media outlet one could think of – from MintPress to Truthout, TruthDig and The Black Agenda Report. Also included were pro-Trump websites like The Drudge Report, and liberatarian ventures like Antiwar.com and The Ron Paul Institute.

PropOrNot’s list was immediately heralded in the corporate press, and was the basis for a wholescale algorithm shift at Google and other big tech platforms, a shift that saw traffic to alternative media sites crash overnight, never to recover. Thus, the allegation of a huge (Russian) state-sponsored attempt to influence the media was itself an intelligence op by the U.S. national security state.

In 2020, Kanishk Karan left his job as a research associate at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research (DFR) Lab to join Twitter as information integrity and safety specialist – essentially helping to control what Twitter sees as legitimate information and nefarious disinformation. Another DFR Lab graduate turned Twitter employee is Daniel Weimert, who is now a senior public policy associate for Russia – a key target of the Atlantic Council. Meanwhile, Sarah Oh is simultaneously an Atlantic Council DFR Lab non-resident senior fellow and a Twitter advisor, her social media bio noting she works on “high risk trust and safety issues.”

In 2019, Twitter also hired Greg Andersen straight from NATO to work on cybercrime policy. There is sparse information on what Andersen did at NATO, but, alarmingly, his own LinkedIn profile stated simply that he worked on “psychological operations” for the military alliance. After MintPress highlighted this fact in an article in April, he removed all mention of “psychological operations” from his profile, claiming now to have merely worked as a NATO “researcher.” Andersen left Twitter in the summer of last year to work as a product policy manager for the popular video platform TikTok.

Twitter also directly employs active army officers. In 2019, Gordon Macmillan, the head of editorial for the entire Europe, Middle East and Africa region was revealed to be an officer in the British Army’s notorious 77th Brigade – a unit dedicated to online warfare and psychological operations. This bombshell news was steadfastly ignored across the media.

POSITIONS OF POWER AND CONTROL

With nearly 400 million global users, there is no doubt that Twitter has grown to become a platform large and influential enough to necessitate extensive security measures, as actors of all stripes attempt to use the service to influence public opinion and political actions. There is also no doubt that there is a limited pool of people qualified in these sorts of fields.

Few are even acknowledging that there is anything wrong with moving from big government to big tech, as if the US national security state and the fourth estate are allies, rather than adversaries.

But recruiting largely from the US national security state fundamentally undermines claims Twitter makes about its neutrality. The US government is the source of some of the largest and most extensive influence operations in the world. As far back as 2011, The Guardian reported on the existence of a massive, worldwide US military online influence campaign in which it had designed software that allowed its personnel to “secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.” The program boasts that the background of these personas is so convincing that psychological operations soldiers can be sure to work “without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries.” Yet Twitter appears to be recruiting from the source of the problem.

These former national security state officials are not being employed in politically neutral departments such as sales or customer service, but in security, trust and content, meaning that some hold considerable sway over what messages and information are promoted, and what is suppressed, demoted or deleted.

It could be said that poachers-turned-gamekeepers often play a crucial role in safety and protection, as they know how bad actors think and operate. But there exists little evidence that any of these national security state operatives have changed their stances. Twitter is not hiring whistleblowers or dissidents. It appears, then, that some of these people are essentially doing the same job they were doing before, but now in the private sector. And few are even acknowledging that there is anything wrong with moving from big government to big tech, as if the US national security state and the fourth estate are allies, rather than adversaries.

That Twitter is already working so closely with the FBI and other agencies makes it easy for them to recruit from the federal pool. As Rowley said, “over a period of time these people will be totally in sync with the mindset of Twitter and other social media platforms. So from the company’s standpoint, they are not hiring somebody new. They already know this person. They know where they stand on things.”

IS THERE A PROBLEM?

Some might ask “What is the problem with Twitter actively recruiting from the FBI, CIA and other three-letter agencies?” They, after all, are experts in studying online disinformation and propaganda. One is optical. If a Russian-owned social media app’s trust, security and content moderation was run by former KGB or FSB agents and still insisted it was a politically neutral platform, the entire world would laugh.

The huge influx of security state personnel into Twitter’s decision-making ranks means that the company will start to view every problem in the same manner as the US government does – and act accordingly.

But apart from this, the huge influx of security state personnel into Twitter’s decision-making ranks means that the company will start to view every problem in the same manner as the US government does – and act accordingly. “In terms of their outlooks on the world and on the question of misinformation and internet security, you couldn’t get a better field of professionals who are almost inherently going to be more in tune with the government’s perspective,” Rowley said.

Thus, when policing the platform for disinformation and influence campaigns, the former FBI and CIA agents and Atlantic Council fellows only ever seem to find them emanating from enemy states and never from the US government itself. This is because their backgrounds and outlooks condition them to consider Washington to be a unique force for good.

This one-sided view of disinformation can be seen by studying the reports Twitter has published on state-linked information operations. The entire list of countries it has identified as engaging in these campaigns are as follows: Russia (in 7 reports), Iran (in 5 reports), China (4 reports), Saudi Arabia (4 reports), Venezuela (3 reports), Egypt (2 reports), Cuba, Serbia, Bangladesh, the UAE, Ecuador, Ghana, Nigeria, Honduras, Indonesia, Turkey, Thailand, Armenia, Spain, Tanzania, Mexico and Uganda.

One cannot help noticing that this list correlates quite closely to a hit list of US government adversaries. All countries carry out disinfo campaigns to a certain extent. But these “former” spooks and feds are unlikely to point the finger at their former colleagues or sister organizations or investigate their operations.

THE COLD (CYBER)WAR

Twitter has mirrored US hostility towards states like Russia, China, Iran and Cuba, attempting to suppress the reach and influence of their state media by adding warning messages to the tweets of journalists and accounts affiliated with those governments. “State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution,” it noted.

In a rather bizarre addendum, it explained that it would not be doing the same to state-affiliated media or personalities from other countries, least of all the US “State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the U.K. or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy,” it wrote. It did not explain how it decided that Cuban, Russian, Chinese or Iranian journalists did not have editorial independence, but British and American ones did – this was taken for granted. The effect of the action has been a throttling of ideas and narratives from enemy states and an amplification of those coming from Western state media.

As the US ramps up tensions with Beijing, so too has Twitter aggressively shut down pro-China voices on its platform. In 2020, it banned 170,000 accounts it said were “spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to the Communist Party of China,” such as praising its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic or expressing opposition to the Hong Kong protests, both of which are majority views in China. Importantly, the Silicon Valley company did not claim that these accounts were controlled by the government; merely sharing these opinions was grounds enough for deletion.

The group behind Twitter’s decision to ban those Chinese accounts was the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a deeply controversial think tank funded by the Pentagon, the State Department and a host of weapons manufacturers. ASPI has constantly peddled conspiracy theories about China and called for ramping up tensions with the Asian nation.

Perhaps most notable, however, was Twitter’s announcement last year that it was deleting dozens of accounts for the new violation of “undermining faith in the NATO alliance.” The statement was widely ridiculed online by users. But few noted that the decision was based upon a partnership with the  a counter-disinformation think tank filled with former spooks and state officials and headed by an individual who is on the advisory board of NATO’s Collective Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. That Twitter is working so closely with organizations that are clearly intelligence industry catspaws should concern all users.

NOT JUST TWITTER

While some might be alarmed that Twitter is cultivating such an intimate relationship with the FBI and other groups belonging to the secret state, it is perhaps unfair to single it out, as many social media platforms are doing the same. Facebook, for example, has entered into a formal partnership with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, whereby the latter holds significant influence over 2.9 billion users’ news feeds, helping to decide what content to promote and what content to suppress. The NATO cutout organization now serves as Facebook’s “eyes and ears,” according to a Facebook press release. Anti-war and anti-establishment voices across the world have reported massive drops in traffic on the platform.

One of media’s primary functions is to serve as a fourth estate; a force that works to hold the government and its agencies to account. Yet instead of doing that, increasingly it is collaborating with them.

The social media giant also hired former NATO Press Secretary Ben Nimmo to be its head of intelligence. Nimmo subsequently used his power to attempt to swing the election in Nicaragua away from the leftist Sandinista Party and towards the far-right, pro-US candidate, deleting hundreds of left-wing voices in the week of the election, claiming they were engaging in “inauthentic behavior.” When these individuals (including some well-known personalities) poured onto Twitter, recording video messages proving they were not bots, Twitter deleted those accounts too, in what one commentator called a Silicon Valley “double tap strike.”

An April MintPress study revealed how TikTok, too, has been filling its organization with alumni of the Atlantic Council, NATO, the CIA and the State Department. As with Twitter, these new TikTok employees largely work in highly politically sensitive fields such as trust, safety, security and content moderation, meaning these state operatives hold influence over the direction of the company and what content is promoted and what is demoted.

Likewise, in 2017, content aggregation site Reddit plucked Jessica Ashooh from the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Strategy Task Force to become its new director of policy, despite the fact that she had few relevant qualifications or experience in the field.

In corporate media too, we have seen a widespread infiltration of former security officials into the upper echelons of news organizations. So normalized is the penetration of the national security state into the media that is supposed to be holding it to account, that few reacted in 2015 when Dawn Scalici left her job as national intelligence manager for the Western hemisphere at the Director of National Intelligence to become the global business director of international news conglomerate Thomson Reuters. Scalici, a 33-year CIA veteran who had worked her way up to become a director in the organization, was open about what her role was. In a blog post on the Reuters website, she wrote that she was there to “meet the disparate needs of the US Government” – a statement that is at odds with even the most basic journalistic concepts of impartiality and holding the powerful to account.

Meanwhile, cable news outlets routinely employ a wide range of “former” agents and mandarins as trusted personalities and experts. These include former CIA Directors John Brennan (NBC, MSNBC) and Michael Hayden (CNN), ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (CNN), and former Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend (CBS). And news for so many Americans comes delivered through ex-CIA interns like Anderson Cooper (CNN), CIA-applicants like Tucker Carlson (Fox), or by Mika Brzezinski (MSNBC), the daughter of a powerful national security advisor. The FBI has its own former agents on TV as well, with talking heads such as James Gagliano (Fox), Asha Rangappa (CNN) and Frank Figliuzzi (NBC, MSNBC) becoming household names. In short, then, the national security state once used to infiltrate the media. Today, however, the national security state is the media.

Social media holds enormous influence in today’s society. While this article is not alleging that anyone mentioned is a bad actor or does not genuinely care about the spread of disinformation, it is highlighting a glaring conflict of interest. Through its agencies, the US government regularly plants fake news and false information. Therefore, social media hiring individuals straight from the FBI, CIA, NATO and other groups to work on regulating disinformation is a fundamentally flawed practice. One of media’s primary functions is to serve as a fourth estate; a force that works to hold the government and its agencies to account. Yet instead of doing that, increasingly it is collaborating with them. Such are these increasing interlocking connections that it is becoming increasingly difficult to see where big government ends and big media begins.

(MintPress News, 6/21/2022)  (Archive)

(MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.)

June 22, 2022 – Durham gets protective order for classified documents related to upcoming Danchenko trial

From @Kash: “This means Durham filed a bunch of classified documents, that [are] being declassified, and will unveil at trial. Gangster move, what I used to do to put down terrorists”…

Date: 06/23/22
US v Danchanko
Document 54
Notes: Protective Order Granted in US v Danchenko

US v. Danchenko (Protective… by FightWithKash

(FightWithKash/Durham Watch, 6/22/2022)  (Archive)

June 23, 2022 – FOIA request gains access to unredacted copies of invoices paid by Georgia Institute of Technology

(Credit: fightwithkash.com/Kash Patel)

#DurhamWatch

First off, hats off to the legend @UndeadFoia for gaining access to unredacted copies of the invoices paid by Georgia Tech. We hope you move over to Truth Social soon, but thanks for holding down on that other platform. He did some incredible work to obtain this source documentation via a FOIA request.

Second, @ProfMJCleveland had an absolutely hilarious observation and reaction to the newly released documents…

New: I have obtained unreda… by FightWithKash

 

(Read more: FightWithKash/DurhamWatch, 6/24/2022)  (Archive)

June 27, 2022 – In at least a dozen cases, DOJ OIG made criminal referrals against DOJ employees, but no legal action was taken

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is demanding answers from Attorney General Merrick Garland on the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) repeated failure to prosecute employees after they are caught making materially false statements during internal investigations. In at least a dozen cases, Grassley lays out instances where the DOJ Office of Inspector General (OIG) made criminal referrals against DOJ employees, but DOJ never took legal action – despite the same charges being frequently prosecuted when they are made against the American public.

One of the cases occurred recently when DOJ refused to prosecute two Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agents in the Larry Nassar case, after it was discovered that these agents made several false statements.

“The supervisory agent was fired by the FBI for ‘violating the FBI’s policies by making false statements and failing to properly document complaints by the accusers.’ Yet, despite a criminal referral from the OIG, the DOJ refused to prosecute the two agents for the same crime that they routinely prosecute hundreds of American people for each year,” Grassley wrote.

Matthew Graves was confirmed by the United States Senate on October 28, 2021, and sworn in on November 5, 2021, as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. (Credit: public domain)

Grassley then dives into 12 cases where DOJ has not held its own employees to the same standard that they would apply to all other Americans. In one case, the OIG substantiated allegations that an employee received $350,000 in excess worker’s compensation payments because they did not accurately report their outside earnings. In another, the OIG substantiated allegations that the employee made false statements during a mortgage fraud investigation. In all cases, the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) declined to prosecute.

“Laws are meant to deter criminal activity, but when DOJ does not enforce those laws but rather shields their employees from consequences, it has the opposite effect. It creates a sense of entitlement and signals that DOJ employees are beyond reproach. DOJ employees should be held to a higher standard for making materially false statements to the OIG, not a lower one. DOJ must hold itself to the highest possible standard or else it risks losing the credibility and trust of the American people,” Grassley continued.

Grassley concludes by demanding answers to several questions, including a full list of how many DOJ employees have been prosecuted for making false statements in the last five years and how many criminal referrals have been made by the OIG in that time frame. He also asks DOJ for a more detailed explanation behind their decision not to prosecute the FBI agents involved in the Nassar investigation.

The full letter is available HERE.

(Grassley News release, 6/27/2022)  (Archive)

June 28, 2022 – SCOTUS defeats Marc Elias attempt to change the congressional district lines and voting map in Louisiana

“Hillary’s attorney Marc Elias was handed another defeat from the Supreme Court. The court agreed with the Congressional district lines drawn by Louisiana Republicans for the upcoming election.

(…) Recently, Elias was reportedly receiving “rebukes from judges, prosecutors, and even fellow Democrats”. Elias’s aggressive stance on elections was praised by Democrats but when he was tied to actions with the Russia collusion scandal he was shunned.

(Credit: Gateway Pundit)

(Credit: Gateway Pundit)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(…) The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday to restore Republican-drawn lines in Louisiana ahead of the midterms as Democrats pushed to create a second black-majority district. The court issued an order that restored a congressional voting map that a federal judge said, disenfranchised black voters. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan would have denied the application for stay.

The case was brought by Elias who reportedly represented a group of individuals in Louisiana.” (Read more: Gateway Pundit, 6/29/2022)  (Archive)

June 28, 2022 – Ghislaine Maxwell is sentenced to 20 years in prison

“Judge Nathan has sentenced Ghislaine Maxwell to 20 years in prison. “A sentence of 240 months is sufficient and no graver than necessary.”

The sentence is less than the 30-50 years prosecutors asked for, but more than the 6 year sentence the defense thought was appropriate.

While preparing to deliver the sentence, Nathan said that “Ms Maxwell directly and repeatedly and over the course of many years participated in a horrific scheme” to traffic and abuse girls, and that “Ms Maxwell worked with Epstein to select young victims who were vulnerable.

As such, a “substantial sentence” is warranted, which – if not released early, means Maxwell will be 80 years old when she gets out.

And somehow not a single Epstein client was named…

Judge Alison J Nathan said on Tuesday that Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal activity was “extensive,” and that she’s enhancing her sentence due to the fact that she was at least 10 years older than her victims, and exercised “undue influence” on them.” (Read more: Zero Hedge, 6/28/2022) (Archive)

June 30, 2022 – DOJ FOIA releases 455 new documents; searches find Nuland, Vindman, Kyiv, Hunter, and other familiar names

(Link)

(Note: FoiaFan did searches for several people and linked to results on Twitter. Also, William Nuland is Victoria Nuland’s half-brother. @Larry_Beech comments, “William Peterson Nuland. Victoria’s 20 year younger half brother, who worked for secureworks, prior VeriSign, possibly involved with Facebook too.”)

July 2, 2022 – Clinton Foundation Whistleblowers return to Twitter and give an update on their case vs the IRS; includes partially unsealed docs

July 2, 2022 – Clinton Foundation whistleblower Nate Cain reveals new information about government coverup of 2020 election fraud

Nate Cain bravely blew the whistle on Hillary Clinton and her foundation while working as a contractor for the FBI. He’s still working in the field of cybersecurity and offers new insights into Benghazi, Hillary Clinton’s illegal gun-running in Africa and the Middle East; personal knowledge and evidence of the 2020 election fraud, and Bill Barr participating in a cover-up; many, many other topics we have been chronicling.

We include tags reflecting some of the people and topics that are discussed.

July 7, 2022 – Richard Grenell and Mark Meadows links to the Epstein-led, CCP-tied Humpty Dumpty Institute

HDI Logo

“Richard Grenell was closely linked to the globalist Humpty Dumpty Institute during his time working at the Bush Administration’s US Mission to the United Nations. A non-profit tied to a laundry list of uni-party establishment members, the Humpty Dumpty Institute has been led by Mark Epstein, the brother of notorious child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The organization has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the Taihe Institute, a think tank that is directly led by high-ranking CCP officials.

(…) Before he was a purported member of the America First movement, Richard Grenell spent years working for the administration of President George W. Bush, serving at a high level in the US Mission to the United Nations from 2001 to 2008. During that time, Grenell worked in a number of globalist “policy making” roles related to the UN’s notorious “peacekeeping” operations as well as the Global War on Terror.

According to photographs and logs detailing the Humpty Dumpty Institute’s (HDI) relationship with the US Mission to the UN, Grenell was deeply tied to the globalist, Epstein-led non-profit during his time in the Bush Administration and appeared as a speaker at HDI’s “Staff Delegation to the United Nations” at least twice, in 2005.

Mark Epstein (Credit: Shaun Mader/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

In June of that year, Grenell joined a group of “senior US diplomats, high-level UN officials, and spokesmen from a number of UN agencies and departments,” to address HDI’s 15th Staff Delegation to the United Nations. According to an HDI webpage memorializing the event, “the intent of this program was to give congressional spokesmen an opportunity to view first-hand the inner workings of the UN while providing them with a network of capable counterparts throughout the UN system.” According to the webpage profiling HDI’s delegation, Grenell addressed the group as part of a “breakfast briefing,” offering a “description of his own background and specific duties.” Grenell, the HDI’s summary goes on to explain, urged attendees to work through him while dealing with both the US Mission to the UN and the UN as a whole.

Grenell “emphasized his intermediary role between the US Congress, the US Mission, and the United Nations, and urged future dialogue through his office,” HDI’s webpage reads.

Attendees at the 15th Delegation included the staff members of several uni-party Congressmen and Senators, including Rebecca Kutler, who at the time was Press Secretary to far-left California Rep. Adam Schiff. HDI leadership was also present at the event. Also present were members of Senator John Cornyn and Rep. James Clyburn’s respective staffs.

Among Grenell’s fellow speakers was American UN Ambassador Anne Patterson. Patterson went on to serve in a number of capacities in the Bush and Obama Administrations, including as Obama’s Ambassador to Egypt, where she was closely tied to the terror-connected Muslim Brotherhood, which itself is designated as a terror group by a number of Muslim nations and others.

A few months later, in October of 2005, Grenell joined HDI and several big names within globalism once more for yet another Staff Delegation, this time marking the event’s 16th incarnation. As part of the delegation, congressional offices had the “unprecedented opportunity to meet with senior decision-makers at the US Mission and at the United Nations to discuss issues critical to the US-UN relationship behind closed doors.”

HDI’s 16th Staff Delegation to the United Nations included then-Senator Barack Obama staffer Samantha Power. Power, who went on to serve in the Obama Administration at the UN and in other roles, is a key figure in globalist foreign policy-making circles. During Obama’s presidency, she was at the forefront of calling for America to employ the type of disastrous “humanitarian intervention” used in Libya and other troubled nations. Currently, Power sits as Joe Biden’s Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development.

Photographs posted by HDI online of the delegation events show Grenell playing a key role and sitting alongside senior HDI members. In one photo attributed by HDI to their 15th Delegation, Grenell himself can be seen in attendance.

Richard Grenell, seen at the left of the photo, sitting back from the table, alongside HDI President Ralph Cwerman. (Credit: Humpty Dumpty Institute)

In another, a portion of what appears to be his place tag is visible, displaying “Ric Gre,” and what appears to be a portion of the word “spokesman” in the photograph.

Seated next to Grenell and his place at the table are big pharma executive Debra DeShong and Humpty Dumpty Institute President Ralph Cwerman. Also pictured is Muslim Brotherhood-tied Ambassador Anne Patterson. (Credit: Humpty Dumpty Institute)

(…) According to public records, it appears HDI has not made its filings available since fiscal year 2018, when Mark Epstein was still listed as a Director and financier. Epstein’s name was recently been removed from the website’s board of directors, however, through an internet archive, National File has discovered that Epstein was listed on the site as recently as December 20, 2020. It is unclear if Epstein is still involved in HDI.

Interestingly, it appears that Meadows was the only Republican member of Congress to have served on the board during this period. In 2018, Meadows was the sole Republican listed alongside 28 Democrat Representatives, including Reps. Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Al Green, Bennie Thompson, Jim Himes, Frederica Wilson, Hank Johnson, and others.

(Read more: National File, 7/7/2022)  (Archive)

Timeline note: According to the Humpty Dumpty Institute website, its current mission is the following:

  • HDI engages critical stakeholders through its programs with the U.S. Congress and the United Nations, including organizing visits of Congressional delegations overseas and to the U.N., and through its engagement with business and cultural leaders around the world .
  •  HDI collaborates with partner organizations to engage young people on global issues e.g. HDI’s annual United Nations Boot Camp bringing students from around the world to the United Nations.
  •  HDI supports cultural diplomacy. HDI has worked with U.S. embassies and international cultural organizations worldwide to engage people through music, arts, and sports e.g. its training program for young filmmakers from crisis countries in partnership with the UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television.
  •  HDI conceives, develops and facilitates humanitarian programs with partners, e.g. supporting the removal of landmines and unexploded bombs in Sri Lanka, distribution of footwear to vulnerable communities in Vietnam, support for mobile medical vehicles in Lesotho.

HDI’s 50th U.S. Congressional program To the United Nations (December 2015) HDI Chairman Al Khalafalla (far left) with Members of Congress (left to right) Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Janice Schakowsky (D-IL), Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Marc Pocan (D-WI), Charlie Rangel (D-NY)

July 11, 2022 – Kash Patel is hosting Durham Watch – The Home of the Durham Investigation

Fight With Kash/Durham Watch/sign up

July 13, 2022 – Durham requests 30 subpoenas for testimony in trial against Steele source Igor Danchenko

“Special counsel John Durham requested a federal court to issue 30 subpoenas for testimony in the trial against Igor Danchenko, British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s alleged main source for his discredited dossier.

The FBI secretly recorded their interviews with Danchenko.

Danchenko was charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI, which Durham says he made about the information he provided to Steele for the dossier. His trial is scheduled for October. The DOJ’s watchdog said FBI interviews with Danchenko “raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting” and concluded Danchenko “contradicted the allegations of a ‘well-developed conspiracy’ in” Steele’s dossier. He has pleaded not guilty.

Durham’s brief court filing on Wednesday requested the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to issue “thirty subpoenas” for an “appearance before said Court at Alexandria, Virginia,” starting on Oct. 11 “to testify on behalf of the United States.” The potential witnesses are not named, but a copy of the blank subpoena reads that “YOU ARE COMMANDED to appear.” (Read more: Washington Examiner, 7/14/2022)  (Archive)

July 13, 2022 – Ex-CIA engineer who leaked “Vault 7” tools convicted of biggest theft in agency history

“A former CIA software engineer who leaked the so-called “Vault 7” tools was convicted Wednesday of causing the largest theft of classified information in the history of the agency.

Joshua Schulte, who has been sitting behind bars without bail since 2018 and chose to defend himself at trial, told the jury that the CIA and FBI made him a scapegoat for the 2017 WikiLeaks release of up to 34 terabytes of information.

Joshua Schulte (Credit: Zero Hedge)

Separately, Schulte awaits trial on possession of child pornography and transport charges, which he has pleaded not guilty to, according to Military.com.

As part of his defense, Schulte claimed he was singled out because “hundreds of people had access to (the information),” adding “Hundreds of people could have stolen it.”

“The government’s case is riddled with reasonable doubt,” he said. “There’s simply no motive here.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Denton countered that there was plenty of proof that Schulte pilfered a sensitive backup computer file.

“He’s the one who broke into that system,” Denton said. “He’s the one who took that backup, the backup he sent to WikiLeaks.”

The prosecutor also encouraged jurors to consider evidence of an attempted cover-up, including a list of chores Schulte drew up that had an entry reading, “Delete suspicious emails.”

“This is someone who’s hiding the things that he’s done wrong,” Denton said.

Once the jury got the case, Furman complimented Schulte on his closing argument. -Military.com

The judge complimented Schulte on his defense, saying “that was impressively done.”

In March of 2020, the trial of former CIA computer engineer Joshua Schulte ended in a hung jury on eight counts, including illegal gathering and transmission of national defense information, according to the New York Times.

As we noted two years ago, according to a 2017 report created by the CIA’s WikiLeaks Task Force and released in June 2020, there were major security lapses at the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), which made cyber weapons – including tools to crack into smartphones, hijack smart TVs, or make it look like a foreign adversary hacked someone.

“In a press to meet the growing and critical mission needs, CCI had prioritized building cyber weapons at the expense of securing their own systems,” reads the report. “Day-to-day security practices had become woefully lax.”

“CCI focused on building cyber weapons and neglected to also prepare mitigation packages if those tools were exposed. These shortcomings were emblematic of a culture that evolved over years that too often prioritized creativity and collaboration at the expense of security,” the report continues.

The leak marked the largest data breach in the CIA’s history and included information on hacking tools used by the agency to break into smartphones and other internet-connected devices.

The task force noted that due to failures to address vulnerabilities in IT systems, if WikiLeaks had not published the stolen information, the CIA “might still be unaware of the loss — as would be true for the vast majority of data on Agency mission systems.”

In a letter to Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday, Wyden criticized the intelligence community for its “widespread cybersecurity problems.” –The Hill

The Vault 7 release – a series of 24 documents which began to publish on March 7, 2017 – reveals that the CIA has a giant arsenal of tools to use against adversaries, including the ability to “spoof” its malware to appear as though it was created by a foreign intelligence agency, as well as the ability to take control of Samsung Smart TV’s and surveil a target using a “Fake Off” mode in which they appear to be powered down while eavesdropping. (Read more: Zero Hedge, 7/13/2022)  (Archive)

July 14, 2022 – Hillary and Chelsea announce their new 8 part docuseries “Gutsy” scheduled to debut September 9th on Apple TV

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are coming out with their own docuseries on Apple TV+ based on their book The Book of Gutsy Women that will feature talks with ‘trailblazing women’ like Kim Kardashian and Megan Thee Stallion.

The eight-part docuseries series will debut September 9 on Apple’s streaming platform.

Hillary posted an image in a red convertible with her daughter in the driver’s seat as they two looked back for an image previewing the upcoming series.

‘We’ve got a premiere date! ‘Gutsy,’ our new eight-episode documentary series, will premiere on @appletvplus on September 9,’ Clinton posted on Instagram Thursday morning.

(…) The Clinton sphere is getting a good bit of Hollywood treatment recently, with Hillary’s longtime aide Huma Abedin getting a television adaptation of her memoir.

Episodes will include talks with reality TV star Kim Kardashian (pictured left on July 13 in New York City) and rapper Megan Thee Stallion (pictured right performing in London on July 8)

(Read more: The Daily Mail, 7/15/2022)  (Archive)

July 14, 2022 – DOJ files motion and successfully inserts itself as “the party defendant” in Trump’s RICO lawsuit

Juan Gonzales (Credit: law.com)

(…) In a motion put forth by Juan Gonzalez, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, it was requested that “the United States shall be substituted as the party defendant.” In other words, the DOJ wanted to “substitute itself as the defendant for James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Kevin Clinesmith.”

The motion claimed that Trump’s RICO claims were “based upon conduct within the scope of these former FBI employees’ employment with the government,” and stated that “the United States is the sole and exclusive defendant for those claims.” The motion also requested that if the substitution was accepted, “the Court should dismiss the United States for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.”

The motion noted that since Trump had not exhausted his administrative remedies, the Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction and should therefore dismiss the case after substituting the United States as the defendant. The DOJ was maneuvering to place itself into Trump’s RICO suit—and then have Trump’s suit dismissed. This tactic was actually successful—at least in part.

Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks (Credit: public domain)

On July 22, trial judge Donald Middlebrooks granted the motion to substitute, replacing Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, and Clinesmith with the United States as defendant.

Middlebrooks cited the Westfall Act, which “accords federal employees absolute immunity from common-law tort claims arising out of acts they undertake in the course of their official duties.” Middlebrook deferred ruling on dismissal and noted that Trump was entitled to “litigate the question of whether the employees were acting within the scope of their employment when the challenged conduct occurred.”

The DOJ had successfully inserted itself into Trump’s RICO suit, bringing with it all the legal weight and firepower held by the U.S. government. It’s worth noting that the information previously declassified by Trump is directly relevant to his suit. And the DOJ, which has stalled its release, is now in the official legal position of fighting against its release in court. (Read more: The Epoch Times, 8/19/2022)  (Archive)

On Aug. 4, Trump filed in opposition to Judge Middlebrook’s ruling to substitute the United States—in other words, the DOJ—for Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, and Clinesmith. Trump also filed in opposition to Clinton’s earlier motion to dismiss the entirety of the RICO complaint against her and her fellow defendants, which included the DNC, and familiar names such as lawyers Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), former journalist Glenn Simpson, former DOJ official Bruce Ohr, and his wife, Nellie Ohr.  (Epoch Times)

July 18, 2022 – Grassley sends a second letter to Wray and Garland re allegations from “highly credible whistleblowers”

(…) Grassley sent a second letter to Wray and Garland on July 18. Grassley told both men that allegations by a number of “highly credible whistleblowers” have prompted “fundamental questions about whether the Justice Department and FBI are properly fulfilling their combined law enforcement mission with impartiality and without fraud, abuse, and gross mismanagement.”

Page 2 of 4, Grassley letter, 7/18/2022

(Read more: The Epoch Times, 8/19/2022)  (Archive)