The pivotal event that began to unravel the mystery of Mena was the death of Don Henry age 16, and Kevin Ives age 17. The story expanded to encompass the lies of the US Government concerning the Iran-Contra Affair. Two teenagers stumble upon a major drug smuggling operation. The boys are brutally murdered and their bodies are placed on railroad tracks to give the appearance of a train accident. Soon, crime scene eyewitnesses vanish and investigations are shut down.
The grieving parents are stunned. Corruption involving high-level officials from Arkansas to Washington is documented in this incredible true-life story. Why were numerous county, state, and federal government investigations blocked? Why was a thirty-month federal-grand-jury investigation abruptly shut down? Why did the FBI tell one boy’s grieving parents, “You should accept the fact that a crime has not been committed?” This story of murder, drugs, corruption, and cover-ups, involves high-ranking government officials, reaching up to the most powerful office in the world. It shows that interference from sinister political allies continues to protect these criminals from prosecution. (Source: The Michelle Moore Show/Rumble)
Released in 1996, this documentary made by Pat Matriciana of Integrity Films is an irrefutable account of a corrupted Arkansas under Governor Bill Clinton. The corruption was systemic throughout law enforcement as well as public and political officials at every level and from both political parties, enabling the immediate implementation of a cover-up of the murders of Kevin and Don and the perpetuation of outrageous lies at every turn. Linda and Jean had editorial control over the contents of the video, and they went to great lengths to be absolutely accurate. They got it right for the most part, but the passage of 23 years has uncovered events that are more disturbing but closer to accurate. After the release of the documentary, Saline County Deputy Sheriff John Brown (predominant in the last 3rd of the video), turned against Linda and Jean. They don’t know why. Was he threaten? Was he blackmailed? They don’t know. He never gave them an explanation. See John Brown’s page.
During the making of the video, the FBI opened its own two-year investigation during which time a great deal more was learned. The FBI has released 2,000+ documents under FOIA, but admit to having 15,000 more. Although many of the documents received are heavily redacted, one thing is clear, the FBI knows who killed the boys and law enforcement was involved in the cover-ups. Our researcher, Ron, created a one-page collage from the documents that speaks volumes. See FBI Collage.
This revealing documentary contains rare and unauthorized footage of a C-123 code-named “The Fat Lady” – The plane that nearly brought down the Reagan/Bush Administration when it was shot down in Nicaragua loaded with guns while piloted by an ex_air American crew. Her her astonishing life story. For the first time ever The Fat Lady sings….
The Mena Connection takes you into the dark history of CIA’s covert operations in Arkansas – Back to a time in which a young Governor, desperate to build power base from which to launch a bid for the Presidency, made a pact with the real power brokers behind America’s secret government.
All in the name of National Security, Bill Clinton ‘rented’ his state to CIA for covert arms manufacturing and shipment – at a time in which Congress had banned support for Nicaraguan Contras. The illegal activity led to subversion of our Judicial System, which then allowed drugs and drug profits to freely flow through America’s heartland.
Follow the trials and tribulations of former CIA asst Terry Reed and his family as they valiantly attempt to bring this saga to Federal Court. Told through a multitude of interviews and rare footage. The Mena Connection tells of those individuals whose lives have been changed forever as a result of the ongoing cover-up and containment of what is perhaps America’s darkest secret – the successful, silent coup that set up the unelected, elitist micro-government now firmly enriched in power.
(Timeline editor’s note: This entry takes us to the beginning of our timeline and still seems relevant today. Even in 1999, the media was unwilling to ask the Clintons tough questions and they were never held accountable for the Chinagate scandal. Our team appreciates Mr. Sperry’s fearless spirit and continued coverage of the Clintons through the years.)
President Clinton bans Investor’s Business Daily reporter Paul Sperry from the White House after an impromptu interview on the Chinagate scandal during a picnic for the press on the South Lawn in 1999.
WATCH: President Clinton bans Investor’s Business Daily Washington bureau chief Paul Sperry from White House after impromptu interview on CHINAGATE scandal during a picnic for the press on the South Lawn in 1999. Helen Thomas rebukes Joe Lockhart over ban.https://t.co/QfRYg0Men2
Paul Sperry wrote of his experience and his article was originally published as the cover story for WorldNet Magazine (later renamed Whistleblower) in February 2000:
(…) It was my turn to meet the celebrity president. As he approached me, I politely, if coolly, asked him when he would hold his next formal press conference. It had been several months since his last and he’s had fewer than any recent president. I admit I was trying to agitate the proper forum for questions about the FBI agents’ charges. But, to me, this was still a rather innocuous question, even within the supposedly neutral zone of a party. A relevant question, too, given the gathering. Other hard-nosed reporters surely were wondering when they’d get another crack at Clinton.
Or so I thought. My simple question was rewarded with boos and hisses from the adoring Clinton groupies around me. So much for the adversarial press.
But that was nothing compared with Clinton’s reaction to my inquiry about his next press confab. In an instant, his 100-watt charm shut off, replaced by a taunting belligerence. “Why?” he barked.
Bill Clinton spars with Paul Sperry at a White House picnic when asked about Chinagate. (Credit: Fox News)
“Because the American people have a lot of unanswered questions,” I replied, struggling to hold my bladder. At that point, he moved back down the rope, pulling up square in front of me, and demanded, “Like what?”
What happened over the next 10 minutes was nothing short of a “scene.” The party-goers collapsed in around us. I watched the blood rush to Clinton’s gargantuan face as he launched into a tirade against ex-Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, the FBI, Bob Dole and Republicans in general. All the while, he tried to belittle me by making faces (to get a rise out of his fans) and intimidate me by getting in my face.
And now I can see how he can do that to people. Clinton’s not just intellectually intimidating, he’s physically imposing. He’s tall (6-2) and big-boned.
Luckily, I’m the same height and was able to stand toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with him. I’ll never forget the maniacal look in his bloodshot eyes. There was a moment, fleeting, where I sensed he wanted to try to take a swipe at me. I was getting full frontal Clinton. His volcanic temper, hidden so well from the public by his handlers, erupted less than 12 inches from my eyes.
Clinton always is game for a debate. That I asked him hard questions at a party wasn’t what ticked him off. It’s what I asked him about. He clearly doesn’t want to talk about the mother of all scandals — Chinagate.
He also may have been thrown by my grasp of the facts. I’d been tracking the Beijing-tied Lippo Group’s influence in the Clinton White House since 1996 and have been suspicious of the probity of Attorney General Janet Reno’s special task force since she let John Keeney Sr. set it up — a month after the election — to look into Lippo’s influence.
Keeney’s son is none other than a defense attorney for John Huang, the former Lippo executive and convicted Clinton-Gore fund-raiser. Junior, who’s also a long-time Democratic National Committee lawyer, cut Huang a deal with daddy’s old task force that got him no jail time and immunity from prosecution for espionage.
Clinton also was unprepared for my tenacity. Other reporters may back down after he singes their eyebrows with a verbal fusillade. Dummy me, I hung in there for more abuse, challenging his answers, following up with more questions. Which only made him madder. (Read more: WND/Archive, 9/24/2000)
Clinton flew on a private jet owned by billionaire Ron Burkle with Maxwell as a passenger during a trip to India in November 2003. (Credit: AFP/Getty Images)
“Judicial Watch announced today that it received 4 pages of records from the Secret Service that reveal that Bill Clinton took a trip with Ghislaine Maxwell to India. Maxwell, a longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, is now on trial for sex trafficking and other charges.
The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Secret Service asking for information about any trips Bill Clinton took with Ghislaine Maxwell.
The records include exchanges between Secret Service officers about a trip that Maxwell went on with President Clinton. In a November 20, 2003, email exchange titled ‘requested info’, a Secret Service official advises a colleague, “The LA lead is [redacted]. Manifest to Osaka and LA (has not been confirmed but this should not deviate too much). FPOTUS Clinton [redacted] Ghislaine Maxwell [redacted]. Crew [redacted].”
The colleague replied, “Thanks [redacted] info helps. I’ll have the prelim sent to my office by this evening so the twx [teletype] can go out tomorrow [redacted].”
On November 22, 2003,a Secret Service agent responded to the same chain, writing, “[Redacted] I have just received an updated manifest for the trip to LA. The additional names are [redacted]. Hope this doesn’t create too many issues for you. I’ve attached the passport list. Thanks [redacted]; Agra, India to Los Angeles, CA (via Japan for fuel stop)”.
An official replies, “Thanks [redacted] I met with the [redacted] today and they had given me that info along with [redacted] (another addition), so we have 4 crew members and 12 staff and [redacted] USSS [redacted] total. Not sure if they are feeding our [redacted] USSS, so I’ll have food and drinks waiting for them. Cheers”.
Another agent responded, “as far as crew and usss are concerned then that is correct – staff/guest list could change – as you see [redacted] but I don’t think drastically. I just heard about [redacted] from my saic [Special Agent-in-Charge]. If you are able to get my guys food then it is greatly appreciated – evn [sic] an attempt. All you guys in Honolulu have made my job much less difficult. Thank you for all your help.”
Finally, an agent wrote “[Redacted] no problem. We’re here to help and happy to do so. I know your guys have been run through the ringer and I think everyone wants to see this trip get over, so if I can help make their trip a little nicer, that’s the least we can do. I heard that when they flew from Oslo to Hong Kong via Russia fuel stop, they had nothing to eat that entire trip, so I don’t want that to happen again.”
“This new information raises more questions about the extent and nature of the relationship between Bill Clinton, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
Peter Schweizer’s new book Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win tells the story of how Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) husband Richard Blum was part owner of a Chinese firm that allegedly sold computers with spyware chips to the U.S. military. The military has never been able to calculate how much sensitive data these computers allowed China to steal.
A hefty chapter of Red-Handed is devoted to tracking Feinstein’s long and expensive relationship with Communist China. The senator has made herself very, very useful to Beijing — so useful that she actually tried to excuse the Tiananmen Square massacre by suggesting China only called in combat troops to murder thousands of demonstrators because it ran out of cops.
Then-San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein meets with Chinese Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian at Diaoyutai State Guest House in Beijing on November 9, 1984. (Neal Ulevich/AP)
In a total coincidence that could not possibly have been related in any way to Feinstein’s friendship with the tyrants of Beijing, her husband did a great deal of lucrative business with Chinese companies, including entities run by the Communist government and linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
One of those deals saw Blum becoming a major investor in a computer company that was founded by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), an institution tied to both the Chinese government and the PLA. The company was originally called Legend, but is better known by its second name, Lenovo.
Lenovo grew into a major player in the worldwide computer marketplace after it acquired IBM’s line of personal computer products in 2005. Lenovo’s deal to buy IBM’s business included $350 million in investments from three American private equity firms. One of them was Richard Blum’s Newbridge Capital.
Some lawmakers worried Lenovo’s purchase of IBM’s personal computer line could jeopardize U.S. national security and transfer advanced American computer technology to China. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, was not one of them.
It did not take long for security agencies across the Western world — including the U.S., U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia — to discover security vulnerabilities in Lenovo products and ban them from sensitive operations. The U.S. State Department announced it would not allow Lenovo computers to connect to its classified networks in 2006, barely a year after the IBM acquisition.
Somehow Lenovo still managed to sell a large number of laptop computers to the U.S. military, which discovered that many of those machines included motherboard chips that “would record all the data that was being inputted into that laptop and send it back to China,” as a computer operations manager for the U.S. Marines in Iraq put it.
A year after that testimony was delivered, Blum sold his stake in Lenovo.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) with her husband Richard Blum at an election night event in San Francisco on November 6, 2018. (Credit: Jeff Chiu/AP)
The Pentagon released an audit in 2019 that found the Department of Defense (DoD) still has not formally banned computers from Lenovo, now the largest personal computer company in China, even though the Department of Homeland Security and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Intelligence Directorate have both identified the machines as cyberespionage risks. The U.S. Air Force purchased 1,378 Lenovo products worth $1.9 million as recently as 2018. (Breitbart, 1/26/2022)(Archive)
(…) At the beginning of Harris’s political career, in the run-up to her campaign to serve as California’s attorney general, she and co-author Joan O’C Hamilton published a small volume, entitled Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer. The book helped to establish her credibility on criminal-justice issues.
However, according to Stefan Weber, a famed Austrian “plagiarism hunter” who has taken down politicians in the German-speaking world, Harris’s book contains more than a dozen “vicious plagiarism fragments.” Some of the passages he highlighted appear to contain minor transgressions—reproducing small sections of text; insufficient paraphrasing—but others seem to reflect more serious infractions, similar in severity to those found in Harvard president Claudine Gay’s doctoral thesis. (Harris did not respond to a request for comment.)
Let’s consider a selection of these excerpts from Harris’s book, beginning with one in which Harris discusses high school graduation rates. Here, she lifted verbatim language from an uncited NBC News report, with the duplicated material marked in italics:
In Detroit’s public schools, only 25 percentof the students who enrolled in grade nine graduated from high school, while 30.5 percent graduated in Indianapolis public schools and 34 percent received diplomas in the Cleveland Municipal City School District. Overall, about 70 percent of the U.S. students graduate from public and private schools on time with a regular diploma, and about 1.2 million students drop out annually. Only about half of the students served by public school systems in the nation’s largest cities receive diplomas.
There’s more. In another section of the book, Harris, without proper attribution, reproduced extensive sections from a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release. She and her co-author passed off the language as their own, copying multiple paragraphs virtually verbatim. Here is the excerpt, with the airlifted material in italics and abbreviations, such as percentages and state names, treated as verbatim substitutions:
High Point had its first face-to-face meeting with drug dealers, from the city’s West End neighborhood, on May 18, 2004. The drug market shut down immediately and permanently, with a sustained 35 percent reduction in violent crime. High Point repeated the strategy in three additional markets over the next three years. There is virtually no remaining public drug dealing in the city, and serious crime has fallen 20 percent citywide.
The High Point Strategy has since been implemented in Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and Raleigh, North Carolina; in Providence, Rhode Island; and in Rockford, Illinois. The U.S. Department of Justice is launching a national program to replicate the strategy in ten additional cities.
In a section about a New York court program, Harris stole long passages directly from Wikipedia—long considered an unreliable source. She not only assumes the online encyclopedia’s accuracy, but copies its language nearly verbatim, without citing the source. Here is Harris’s language, with duplicated material in italics, based on the page as it appeared in December 2008, before she published the book:
The Mid-town [sic] Community Court was establishedas a collaboration between the New York State Unified Court System and the Center for Court Innovation. The court works in partnership with local residents, businesses, and social service agencies to organize community service projects and provide on-site social services, including drug treatment, mental health counseling, and job training. What was innovative about Midtown Court was that it required low-level offenders to pay back the neighborhood through community service, while at the same time it offered them help with problems that often underlie criminal behavior.
(…) “In the first year of his administration (December 29, 2009, to be exact), President Obama issued Executive Order 13526, entitled “Classified National Security Information.” It explains what information is deemed classified if its disclosure would cause “damage to the national security.” Beyond that, whether the classified information is categorized as “top secret,” “secret,” or “confidential” depends on how serious the damage would be.
With that as background, the order makes clear that there is one category of information that is automatically deemed classified: information from foreign governments. Section 1.1(d) of the executive order decrees: “The unauthorized disclosure of foreign government information is presumed to cause damage to the national security.”
The reason for this is plain: It is not just the often sensitive nature of diplomatic communications; it is the fact that, in order to protect our national security, the United States must rely on intelligence from foreign governments; if our government does not keep that information strictly confidential, the foreign governments will be unwilling to share it – endangering American lives. As Secretary of State, Clinton not only knew this elementary rule; it was her duty to ensure that the rule was followed throughout her department.
After an artist prints out 62,000 pages of Hillary Clinton’s emails as part of an art exhibition titled “HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails” in Venice, Italy, the former Democratic presidential nominee shows up and spends an hour reading them. She even poses for a picture that she posted on Twitter and jokes that someone should “alert the House GOP.” (Credit: Reuters)
As has been clear from the beginning, and is now patent after the latest disclosure of a subset of 6,000 of the emails Clinton deigned to preserve, at least 125 of which reportedly contain classified information, the emails Clinton sent, received and stored via her private server system were rife with information from foreign governments. This information was born classified. It makes no difference that these emails were not stamped “top secret”; all national security officials with security clearances know that foreign government information is deemed classified and must be handled as such. Period.
Indeed, since it is the State Department that deals most directly with foreign governments, the Secretary of State has the highest obligation and interest when it comes to assuring them that the information they share with the U.S. government is being handled with appropriate care.” (Read more: National Review, 9/01/2015)
“In mid-February, investigative journalist Michael Smith unearthed an episode that rubbishes the Clinton Foundation’s decades-long claim of being supportive towards women worldwide: the case of Nigerian national Mrs Folarin Oreka Maiya tells quite a different story.
Why Nigeria’s Legal System is Worth Its Salt
On 14 June 2010, Maiya, an employee of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAIN) in Nigeria with an impeccable work record was sacked after informing her immediate supervisor that she was 12 weeks pregnant.
CHAIN’s decision to fire the pregnant African woman with zero explanations was subsequently endorsed by US-based CHAI Inc and the William J Clinton Foundation Inc despite Maiya’s repeated “self-humiliating” pleas.
Perhaps, the story would have ended here, but Maiya wasn’t easily frightened. She filed a suit with the National Industrial Court of Nigeria in the Abuja Judicial Division which found that the woman’s rights to protection from discrimination and inhumane, malicious, oppressive, and degrading treatment were breached by the Clintons’ entity that discharged her due to her pregnancy.
The court decision contains a description of the litigation that clearly shows the Incorporated Trustees of CHAIN not only showed no regret over its decision to sack the pregnant woman but insisted that she was “only insinuating that her rights to human dignity and freedom from discrimination were breached”.
The defendant also tried to convince the judge that CHAIN is a separate legal entity distinct from the US-based CHAI and the William J Clinton Foundation Inc. However, after examining the facts the court came to the conclusion that CHAIN is a mere agent of the two other entities, which were well aware of what had been going on.
The judge eventually ruled in Mrs Folarin Oreka Maiya’s favour citing “gross violations” of her constitutional rights by the Clintons’ charity. Still, the Clinton Foundation failed to disclose this fact to the general public, and presumably did not brief the US and state government authorities on it while Hillary Clinton was serving as US secretary of state.
The case is especially interesting since it happened under the presidency of Barack Obama, the first African American to be elected to the office of president of the United States, with his wife Michelle known for decrying the kidnapping of Nigerian girls by Boko Haram extremists and campaigning against it in 2014.
The Obama Foundation did not respond to a request by a Sputnik journalist to comment on the Maiya vs The Incorporated Trustees of CHAIN case. Similarly, the William J Clinton Foundation Inc, Clinton Health Access Initiative, Chelsea Clinton, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, National Organisation for Women, Association for Women’s Rights in Development, International Alliance of Women, Women for Women International, and International Women’s Health Coalition – all those who claim to spearhead feminist values – did not provide any comment on the controversial 2010 episode.” (Read more: Sputnik News, 2/26/2020)(Archive)
****************
Michael Smith writes more about the legal case:
Dr. Owens Wiwa (Credit: public domain)
“On 11 November 2011 His Lordship the Honourable Justice BA Adejumo, President of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria delivered a scathing judgement against 3 Clinton Foundation entities.
It’s important to explain who and what those entities are.
Firstly the court found that The Incorporated Trustees of Clinton Health Access Initiative, Nigeria headed by Dr Owens Wiwa had committed a “gross violation of (Folarin’s) constitutional rights”.The CHAI Nigeria had “severely wounded her, with their assault on her womanhood”.The court found that the Nigerian entity had acted illegally and had tried to cover-up its unlawful actions by giving false evidence to the court.
But the court reserved its most scathing criticism for the US-based CHAI Inc and the William J Clinton Foundation Inc.
The court held that the Clinton Foundation’s Nigerian entity was a fully-controlled agent of the Clinton Foundation itself.His Honour Judge Adejumo said,
“It is on the record that (Folarin) made several self-humiliating entreaties to the US-based respondents (CHAI) to reconsider the decision to sack her which the respondents flagrantly rebuffed.It is on the record that she appealed to the US head office in the United States (William J Clinton Foundation Inc), which instead of calling the Nigerian office to order, decided to ratify its illegal act.It is equally on the record that the respondents have not shown any remorse, they have continued to justify the action.Considering this high-handedness and gross violation of the constitutional rights of the applicant, it is my considered opinion that the applicant is entitled to the award of aggravated damages”.
The Nigerian court’s decision is now on the record at the International Labour Organisation’s legal precedent database.
The FBI on Thursday defended its inclusion of a Chicago Muslim cleric tied in the past to the terrorist groups Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood in a group that recently visited the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and FBI headquarters.
Ross Rice announces his retirement from the FBI on September 27, 2012. (Credit: public domain)
Ross Rice, FBI spokesman in Chicago, acknowledged in an interview that Kifah Mustapha, imam of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, Ill., was named as an unindicted co-conspirator during a Hamas funding trial six years ago.
However, Mr. Mustapha “has never been convicted of a crime and never charged with a crime,” Mr. Rice said.
“If we thought he was a security risk, we wouldn’t have included him” in the FBI’s Citizens Academy program, Mr. Rice said.
Mr. Mustapha took part in the six-week program at the FBI’s Quantico, Va., facility, which included a three-day visit to Washington, where a group of 30 people, including the cleric, visited the NCTC and FBI headquarters, Mr. Rice said.
Mr. Mustapha is listed in court papers as one of more than 240 unindicted co-conspirators, including people and organizations, that were named in the 2004 terrorism-funding trial of the Dallas-based charity Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.
The Justice Department charged the group and its top officials with illegally funding the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which has carried out bombing attacks in Israel. The NCTC website states that Hamas was behind “high-profile terrorist attacks” against civilians in Israel.
The foundation and five former leaders were found guilty in November 2008 of giving more than $12 million to Hamas. The investigation and trial also produced large numbers of documents from the group and its affiliates that disclosed a covert plan by the Muslim Brotherhood to subvert the U.S. government and create an Islamic state.
The list of co-conspirators identified Mr. Mustapha as among 53 people who were members of the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, a group set up to funnel funds to Hamas. Another document identified him as the Holy Land Foundation’s agent in Illinois.
Mr. Mustapha was named a Muslim chaplain for the Illinois State Police in December, but was dismissed in June after failing a background check that disclosed his past ties to the Holy Land Foundation.
State police spokesman Sgt. Isaiah D. Vega confirmed that Mr. Mustapha is no longer a chaplain.
“Due to information revealed during the background investigation, Sheik Kifah Mustapha’s appointment as a volunteer ISP chaplain was denied,” he said, declining to comment further because the matter is the subject of a lawsuit.
The Muslim advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations, also identified as a co-conspirator.
Mr. Rice said Mr. Mustapha was “an employee” of the Holy Land Foundation, but that his participation in the FBI outreach program was welcome.
“His application was reviewed and vetted by our office,” Mr. Rice said. “He is a very influential leader of the Palestinian community here and imam of the largest mosque and was a welcome addition.”
Mr. Mustapha declined to comment on the visits or whether he has any link to Hamas.
An NCTC spokesman referred questions to the FBI, and an FBI headquarters’ spokesman referred questions to Mr. Rice.
The visits were first reported by Andrew Breitbart’s website Big Peace, which included a photograph of Mr. Mustapha and 18 other people inside the NCTC.
Sheikh Kifah Mustapha (third from left) as well as other top Muslim terrorist operatives tour the National Counterterrorism Center. A Department of Homeland Security official said Mustapha is on “the highest watch list they have.” (Photo Credit: Breitbart via FBI)
A video of Mustapha asking for donations:
Mr. Rice said that during the recent Washington visit, Mr. Mustapha was escorted the entire time as he visited the NCTC headquarters near Tysons Corner in Northern Virginia and the FBI headquarters building.
“He’s very sympathetic to the mission of the FBI and has pledged his support,” Mr. Rice said.
A former FBI agent said Mr. Mustapha several years ago was listed in the FBI’s database as a member of Hamas. “This is a known senior Hamas guy,” the former agent said of Mr. Mustapha.
Annie Medaglia (l) of the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, moderates a June 1 discussion with Todd Foley of the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE); Amos Hochstein of the US State Department; and Adnan Z. Amin of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). (Credit: Larry Luxner/Atlantic Council)
(…) Between his visits to Congress (and well-connected think tanks) to apprise decision makers of Putin’s energy antics, [Amos] Hochstein was Biden’s right-hand man meeting with numerous world leaders. He frequently flew to Ukraine (and other nations) with Biden to work out energy deals.
But Hochstein had a secret.
Time and again, Biden’s advisor failed to mention that he had witnessed Putin’s energy strategy firsthand. Hochstein communicated Putin’s energy dominance strategy in the oil and gas sectors very effectively, but he never mentioned Russia’s attempts to corner the global uranium market. It was something he had assisted personally.
Hochstein became a revolving door extraordinaire early in his Beltway career. As he weaved in and out of the private sector, his positions (and profits) rose substantially. From 2001 to 2007, Hochstein worked in various capacities at Washington lobbying powerhouse Cassidy & Associates. In 2006, then-Governor Mark Warner (D-Va.) hired Hochstein to serve as a senior policy advisor. Hochstein purportedly left Cassidy in January 2007 to join Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd’s presidential campaign, according to a press release by the firm. …
Yet, Hochstein continued to work for Cassidy’s deep-pocketed foreign clients, even while he was employed by Governor Warner and Senator Dodd’s presidential campaign. In 2006, Russian nuclear corporation Tenex asked Doug Campbell (unaware that he was an FBI operative) to find a Beltway lobbying powerhouse to help further their interests.
By March 2006, Campbell found himself meeting with Hochstein, who ensured that Tenex hired Cassidy & Associates. Cassidy claimed that Hochstein left the firm in January 2007, but Hochstein continued to meet with Putin’s top nuclear officials throughout 2007 and 2008 while he was working with powerful Democrats.
Did Warner and Dodd know that Hochstein was simultaneously serving Russian interests? Hochstein’s public bios make no mention of his work on behalf of Tenex, although he does acknowledge returning to Cassidy in August 2008 (and remaining there until 2011).
Before long, he was directly advising Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her successor John Kerry, and finally Vice President Biden (and even President Obama). His LinkedIn profile is meticulously manicured to show no overlap between his public and private sector gigs, but, in fact, Hochstein advised multiple public officials and simultaneously worked to advance foreign interests while on the payroll of Cassidy.
According to the Obama White House’s visitor records, Hochstein visited more than 150 times between December 2010 and September 2016, including several trips to the Situation Room. His first visits occurred while he was still working with Cassidy.” (Read more: Just the News, 7/13/2020)(Archive)
“My sources tell me President Trump is putting the finishing touches on a White House initiative to declassify documents that have remained hidden from the public for far too long.
This welcome effort to provide more public transparency and accountability almost certainly will focus early on the failings of the now-debunked Russia collusion probe. And I’m sure it will spread quickly toward other high-profile issues, such as the government’s UFO files that have been a focus of clamoring for decades.
But my reporting indicates three sets of documents from the Obama years should be declassified immediately, too, because they will fundamentally change the public’s understanding of history and identify ways to improve governance.
The first includes the national security assessments that the U.S. intelligence community conducted under President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton concerning the Russia nuclear giant Rosatom’s effort to acquire uranium business in the United States.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) – made up of Secretary Clinton and eight other senior federal officials – approved Rosatom’s purchase of mining company Uranium One’s U.S. assets in fall 2010, even as the FBI was gathering evidence that the Russian company’s American arm was engaged in bribery, kickbacks and extortion.
Sources who have seen these classified assessments tell me they debunk the last administration’s storyline that there were no national security reasons to oppose Rosatom’s Uranium One purchase or Vladimir Putin’s successful efforts to secure billions of dollars in new nuclear contracts with American utilities during the Obama years.
“There were red flags raised, and the assessments expose other weaknesses in how CFIUS goes about these approval processes,” one knowledgeable source told me.
Under Obama, sensitive foreign acquisitions almost routinely were rubber-stamped by CFIUS, and the approval process sometimes was delegated by Cabinet officials on the CFIUS committee to lower-ranking aides.
Clinton, for example, claims she allowed a deputy to decide the Uranium One purchase, even as her family foundation collected millions in donations from parties interested in the transaction and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, collected a $500,000 speech fee from Moscow.
Since Trump took office and Steve Mnuchin took over as Treasury secretary, laudable legislative and administrative changes have been designed to tighten up the CFIUS process, and the percentage of rejected foreign acquisitions has increased because of more aggressive national security vetting.
But sources say the release of the Rosatom intelligence assessments would identify additional steps that can improve the process, and finally would give Americans a complete picture of what happened during one of the most politically controversial CFIUS decisions in history.” (Read more: The Hill, 8/28/2019)
A March 27, 2011, intelligence brief on Libya, [archived here], sent by long-time close adviser to the Clintons and Hillary’s unofficial intelligence gatherer, Sidney Blumenthal, contains clear evidence of war crimes on the part of NATO-backed rebels. Citing a rebel commander source “speaking in strict confidence” Blumenthal reports to Hillary [emphasis mine]:
Under attack from allied Air and Naval forces, the Libyan Army troops have begun to desert to the rebel side in increasing numbers. The rebels are making an effort to greet these troops as fellow Libyans, in an effort to encourage additional defections.
(Source Comment: Speaking in strict confidence, one rebel commander stated that his troops continue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting…).
While the illegality of extra-judicial killings is easy to recognize (groups engaged in such are conventionally termed “death squads”), the sinister reality behind the “foreign mercenaries” reference might not be as immediately evident to most.
While over the decades Gaddafi was known to make use of European and other international security and infrastructural contractors, there is no evidence to suggest that these were targeted by the Libyan rebels.
There is, however, ample documentation by journalists, academics, and human rights groups demonstrating that black Libyan civilians and sub-Saharan contract workers, a population favored by Gaddafi in his pro-African Union policies, were targets of “racial cleansing” by rebels who saw black Libyans as tied closely with the regime.[1]
The 30,000 people living in a town in northern Libya have been driven out of their homes, in what appears to have been an act of revenge for their role in the three-month siege of the city of Misrata. (Credit: BBC)
Black Libyans were commonly branded as “foreign mercenaries” by the rebel opposition for their perceived general loyalty to Gaddafi as a community and subjected to torture, executions, and their towns “liberated” by ethnic cleansing. This is demonstrated in the most well-documented example of Tawergha, an entire town of 30,000 black and “dark-skinned” Libyans which vanished by August 2011 after its takeover by NATO-backed NTC Misratan brigades.
These attacks were well-known as late as 2012 and often filmed, as this report from The Telegraph confirms:
After Muammar Gaddafi was killed, hundreds of migrant workers from neighboring states were imprisoned by fighters allied to the new interim authorities. They accuse the black Africans of having been mercenaries for the late ruler. Thousands of sub-Saharan Africans have been rounded up since Gaddafi fell in August.
It appears that Clinton was getting personally briefed on the battlefield crimes of her beloved anti-Gaddafi fighters long before some of the worst of these genocidal crimes took place.
‘Al Qaeda Is on Our Side’: How Obama-Biden team empowered terrorists in Syria
Aaron Maté, 2/20/2022
“Hours after the Feb. 3 U.S. military raid in northern Syria that left the leader of ISIS and multiple family members dead, President Biden delivered a triumphant White House address.
The late-night Special Forces operation in Syria’s Idlib province, Biden proclaimed, was a “testament to America’s reach and capability to take out terrorist threats no matter where they hide around the world.”
Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi: Before he was killed by U.S. forces in February the ISIS leader operated from an Al Qaeda safe haven in Syria. (Credit: U.S. Government/Reuters)
Unmentioned by the president, and virtually all media accounts of the assassination, was the critical role that top members of his administration played during the Obama years in creating the Al Qaeda-controlled hideout where ISIS head Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi, as well as his slain predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, found their final refuge.
In waging a multi-billion dollar covert war in support of the insurgency against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, top Obama officials who now serve under Biden made it American policy to enable and arm terrorist groups that attracted jihadi fighters from across the globe. This regime change campaign, undertaken one decade after Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. on 9/11, helped a sworn U.S. enemy establish the Idlib safe haven that it still controls today.
A concise articulation came from Jake Sullivan to his then-State Department boss Hillary Clinton in a February 2012 email: “AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”
Jake Sullivan: “AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria,” the then-State Dept. official – and current national security adviser – told Hillary Clinton in a Feb. 2012 email. (Credit: The Associated Press)
Sullivan, the current national security adviser, is one of many officials who oversaw the Syria proxy war under Obama to now occupy a senior post under Biden. This group includes Secretary of State Antony Blinken, climate envoy John Kerry, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, NSC Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk, and State Department Counselor Derek Chollet.
Their efforts to remake the Middle East via regime change, not just in Syria but earlier in Libya, led to the deaths of Americans – including Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. officials in Benghazi in 2012; the slaughter of countless civilians; the creation of millions of refugees; and ultimately, Russia’s entry into the Syrian battlefield.
Contacted through their current U.S. government agencies, none of the Obama-Biden principals offered comment on their policy of supporting an Al Qaeda-dominated insurgency in Syria. (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 4/20/2022)(Archive)
(…) “Within the 99-page opinion from Judge Rosemary Collyer she noted none of this FISA-702 database abuse was accidental. In a key footnote on page 87: Collyer outlined the years of unlawful violations was the result of “deliberate decisionmaking“:
This specific footnote, is key to peeling back the onion.
Note the phrase: “([redacted] access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding entered into [redacted])”. This sentence exposes an internal decision; withheld from congress and the FISA court by the Obama administration; and outlines a process for access and distribution of surveillance data. Note: “no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016“.
We feel confident we’ve now found the source of the “memorandum of understanding” that lies at the heart of the issue.
Barack Obama and Eric Holder (Credit: Olivier Douliery/Getty Images)
In March 2012 the Obama administration through Attorney General Eric Holder made changes to the exploitation of intelligence databases as noted in this Wall Street Journal article later in the year:
(December 2012 – WSJ) Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens—even people suspected of no crime.
Not everyone was on board. “This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public,” Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security, argued in the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.
A week later, the attorney general signed the changes into effect.
The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.
Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans “reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information” may be permanently retained.
The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes. (more)
The 2012 changes, instituted by Eric Holder, permitted files of specific Americans to be generated under the auspices of potential terror threats. The NSA databases could be exploited by the National Counterterrorism Center to extract content that would be contained within these files on targeted Americans.
Keep in mind this is early 2012, John Brennan is Deputy National Security Advisor and Asst. to President Obama for Homeland Security.
When Attorney General Eric Holder empowered the National Counterterrorism Center with this new authority, the office assigned to the data-collection was the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC). The founder of the TTIC was John Brennan:
On 1 May 2003, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) opened its doors. Led by its first Director, John Brennan, TTIC filled its ranks with approximately three dozen detailees from across the US Government (USG) and was mandated to integrate CT capabilities and missions across the government. (link)
Also note the date of this DOJ Memorandum is March 2012:
Under the new rules issued in March, the National Counterterrorism Center, known as NCTC, can obtain almost any database the government collects that it says is “reasonably believed” to contain “terrorism information.” (link)
The March 2012 date is right before the IRS scandal hit the headlines.
The IRS targeting scandal is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:
The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)
Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in spring 2012.
Here’s how it looks:
♦ In 2010 Eric Holder asked the IRS to send him the records of 501(c) non profit groups and individuals representing conservative voters. [LINK] Lois Lerner sent the DOJ 1.1 million pages of 501(c)(4) tax filing data. Including a very specific set of “33 Schedule B attachment files”. The Schedule B’s were specific to Large Conservative 501(c)(4) groups operating and organized to oppose the agenda of President Obama. The Schedule B’s include the donor lists of specific people and sub-groups attached to the 501(c)(4).
The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)
♦ In 2012 Eric Holder authorizes the use of government databases to search records of Americans and assemble “files” on potential targets. [Link] “The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior.”
♦ In the period of 2012 through April 2016, According to FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer, there were tens of thousands of illegal (“non-compliant”) search queries of the NSA database targeting Americans. The search results were unlawfully “extracted” to unknown entities. Eighty-five out of every hundred searches were illegal (85% non-compliant rate).
Consider purposeful actions, as a political targeting operation, by weaponizing the systems of government. Steps:
Fourth use the files to leverage/destroy your opposition.
We now have evidence of the first three steps; and my hunch is if we apply hindsight a lot of unusual activity will now make sense. We have been living inside the fourth step for a few years. We noticed the consequences… but we only had suspicions, until now.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 5/28/2019)
***
On December 12, 2012, the Wall Street Journal publishes a timeline of events regarding the National Counterterrorism Center controversy:
Feb 24, 2011 – In February 2011, Homeland Security staffers began corresponding about their concerns about the proposed NCTC guidelines, including issues with “oversight/compliance” and difficulty stripping down “what you need to focus on as the problems.”
March 4, 2011 – By March, Justice Department was on its “third round of edits” with NCTC. DHS Associate General Counsel Matthew L. Kronisch encouraged Homeland Security colleagues to submit their comments soon.
March 7, 2011 – In a heated exchange, an official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – whose name was redacted – said that several Homeland Security comments “suggest a potential lack of understanding” and “would eviscerate the authorities” of the counterterrorism center.
March 11, 2011 – Homeland Security Associate General Counsel Matthew Kronisch expressed “little expectation of resolving our concerns” but requested a meeting with the Office of Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice.
June 17, 2011 – Ms. Callahan expressed frustration with the process, stating that she “non-concurred” on “operational examples,” and that the examples were “complete non-sequiturs” and “non-responsive.”
November 8, 2011 – “I’m not sure I’m totally prepared with the firestorm we’re about to create,” Margo Schlanger wrote in an e-mail to Mary Ellen Callahan in November, referring to the fact that the two wanted to push for further privacy protections in the guidelines. Others in the department were willing to agree to the counterterrorism proposal.
March 7, 2012 – Staffers for the Homeland Security Privacy and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties offices’ prepared talking points for the “Deputies Committee meeting” at the White House to discuss the guidelines.
March 22, 2012 – But right after the meeting the guidelines were finalized and quietly released with a statement from the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who cited the Abdullmutallub failures. “Following the failed terrorist attack in December 2009, representatives of the counterterrorism community concluded it is vital for NCTC to be provided with a variety of datasets from various agencies that contain terrorism information,” said Clapper, “The ability to search against these datasets for up to five years on a continuing basis as these updated Guidelines permit will enable NCTC to accomplish its mission more practically and effectively than the 2008 Guidelines allowed.”
An assembly of government reports and public records now indicates political exploitation of the NSA database, for weaponized intelligence surveillance of politicians, began mid-2012. After an initial attempt to exploit IRS records, the legal tool used to access the NSA database was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA.
With research files on the ’15, ’16 and ’17 political surveillance program; including information from the Mueller report and information from the IG Horowitz report; in combination with the Obama-era DOJ “secret research project” (their words, not mine); we are able to overlay the Obama-era domestic IC operations & gain a full understanding of how political surveillance was conducted over a period of four to six years.
The FISA-702 database extraction process, and utilization of the protections within the smaller intelligence community, became the primary process only after a previous DOJ effort ran into trouble. The established record from the 99-page FISC opinion rendered by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer on April 26, 2017, helps explain the details.
I would strongly urge everyone to read the FISC report because Judge Collyer outlines how the DOJ, which includes the FBI, had an “institutional lack of candor” in responses to the FISA court. Very specifically, the court outlined how the Obama administration was continually lying to the court about both their activity and the rate of fourth amendment violations for illegal searches and seizures of U.S. persons’ private information. These violations continued for multiple years throughout Obama’s terms.
Unfortunately, due to intelligence terminology, Judge Collyer’s brief and ruling is not an easy read for anyone unfamiliar with the FISA processes outlined. The complexity also helps the media avoid discussing, and as a result, most Americans have no idea the scale and scope of the issues. So we’ll try to break down the language.
For the sake of brevity and common understanding, CTH will highlight the most pertinent segments showing just how systemic and troublesome the unlawful electronic surveillance was.
Early in 2016, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) “About” queries using the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.
The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016, for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May 1st, 2016.
While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) “about query” option and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016 (keep these dates in mind).
Here are some significant segments:
The key takeaway from these first paragraphs is how the search query results were exported from the NSA database to users who were not authorized to see the material. The FBI contractors were conducting searches and then removing, or ‘exporting’, the results. Later on, the FBI said all of the exported material was deleted.
Searching the highly classified NSA database is essentially a function of filling out search boxes to identify the user-initiated search parameter and get a return on the search result.
FISA-702(16) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (“702”), and the “16” is a checkbox to initiate a search based on “To and From“. For example, if you put in a date and a phone number and check “16” as the search parameter the user will get the returns on everything “To and From” that identified phone number for the specific date. Calls, texts, contacts, etc. Including results for the inbound and outbound contacts.
FISA-702(17) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (702), and the “17” is a checkbox to initiate a search based on everything “About” the search qualifier. For example, if you put a date and a phone number and check “17” as the search parameter the user will get the returns of everything about that phone. Calls, texts, contacts, geolocation (or GPS results), account information, user, service provider, etc. As a result, 702(17) can actually be used to locate where the phone (and user) was located on a specific date or sequentially over a specific period of time which is simply a matter of changing the date parameters.
And that’s just from a phone number.
Search an IP address “about” and read all data into that server; put in an email address and gain everything about that account. Or use the electronic address of a GPS enabled vehicle (about) and you can withdraw more electronic data and monitor in real-time. Search a credit card number and get everything about the account including what was purchased, where, when, etc. Search a bank account number, get everything about transactions and electronic records, etc. Just about anything and everything can be electronically searched; everything has an electronic ‘identifier’.
The search parameter is only limited by the originating field filled out. Names, places, numbers, addresses, etc. By using the “About” parameter there may be thousands or millions of returns. Imagine if you put “@realdonaldtrump” into the search parameter? You could extract all following accounts who interacted on Twitter, or Facebook, etc. You are only limited by your imagination and the scale of the electronic connectivity.
As you can see below, on March 9th, 2016, internal auditors noted the FBI was sharing “raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information”.
In plain English, the raw search returns were being shared with unknown entities without any attempt to “minimize” or redact the results. The person(s) attached to the results were named and obvious. There was no effort to hide their identity or protect their 4th amendment rights of privacy:
But what’s the scale here? This is where the story really lies.
Read this next excerpt carefully.
The operators were searching “U.S Persons”. The review of November 1, 2015, to May 1, 2016, showed “eighty-five percent of those queries” were unlawful or “non-compliant.”
85% !! “representing [redacted number].”
We can tell from the space of the redaction the number of searches was between 1,000 and 9,999 [five digits]. If we take the middle number of 5,000 – that means 4,250 unlawful searches out of 5,000.
The [five digit] amount (more than 1,000, less than 10,000), and 85% error rate, was captured in a six month period, November 2015 to April 2016.
Also, notice this very important quote:
”many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.”
This tells us the system users were searching the same phone number, email address, electronic “identifier”, or people, repeatedly over different dates.
Specific people were being tracked/monitored.
Additionally, notice the last quote: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of” these non-lawful searches “since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 coincided with an unusually high error rate”.
That means the 85% rate of unlawful FISA-702(16)(17) database abuse has likely been happening since 2012.
2012 is an important date in this database abuse because a network of specific interests is assembled that also shows up in 2016/2017:
Who was the 2012 FBI Director? Robert Mueller. The same Mueller selected by the FBI group to become a special prosecutor in 2017.
Who was Robert Mueller’s chief-of-staff? Aaron Zebley. The same Aaron Zebley, who became one of the lead lawyers on the Mueller special counsel.
Who was the 2012 CIA Director? John Brennan.
Who was the 2012 ODNI? James Clapper.
Remember, the NSA is inside the Pentagon (Defense Dept) command structure. Who was Defense Secretary? Ash Carter.
Now it becomes important to remember in 2016:
Who wanted NSA Director Mike Rogers fired? Brennan, Clapper, and Carter.
And finally, who wrote and signed-off-on the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment and then lied about the use of the Steele Dossier? John Brennan, James Clapper
Tens of thousands of searches over four years (since 2012), and 85% of them are illegal. The results were extracted for?…. (I believe this is all political opposition use, and I’ll explain why momentarily.)
OK, that’s the stunning scale; but who was involved?
Private contractors with access to “raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI’s requests“:
And as noted, the contractor access was finally halted on April 18th, 2016.
[Coincidentally (or not), the wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, goes to the White House the next day on April 19th, 2016.]
None of this is a conspiracy theory.
All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87: “deliberate decisionmaking“:
This specific footnote, if declassified, would be 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 also: “no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016“, that is important.
Important summary of this aspect: •The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system dating back to around 2012. •The NSA 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 same people had multiple searches performed against their private information from November of 2015 to May of 2016, the exact time of the Republican presidential primary.
The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation, and we are not the only one to think that’s what this system is being used for.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 3/09/2020)(Archive)
An email made public through the organization WikiLeaks suggests that a company controlled in part by the family of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons mastermind donated to the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative before a different company controlled by the same family was awarded a 35-year no-bid lease to Port Canaveral’s cargo container terminal.
The Treasury Department declined to perform a mandatory national security check before awarding a 35-year lease at the port to Gulftainer’s GT USA. That the company, linked to the family of Dr. Jafar Dhia Jafar, now controls Port Canaveral’s cargo container terminal operations presents a significant national security risk, observers note.
On October 24, 2016, WikiLeaks released an email, dated August 18, 2012, from the Clinton Foundation to former President Bill Clinton, advising the former President that “new sponsor” The Abraaj Capital Group agreed to support the 2012 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting with a $550,000 donation.
The Abraaj Group is a UAE private equity company co-founded by Hamid Jafar, the Iraqi business partner and brother of Dr. Jafar Dhia Jafar. Hamid Jafar’s son, Badr Jafar, is currently listed as a member of Abraaj’s board of directors.
The same year as the donation revealed in the Wikileaks email, the State Department’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) awarded The Abraaj Group with the first of hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and investment management contracts.
Another corporation, Crescent Petroleum, also appears to have financially supported an educational campaign co-chaired by former President Bill Clinton and Dr. Jafar’s nephew Majid Jafar, CEO of Crescent Petroleum. Gulftainer is a subsidiary of Crescent.
Shortly before the signing ceremony for Gulftainer’s new Port Canaveral cargo container terminal, Bill Clinton flew to Dubai to attend one of the educational campaign’s events with Majid Jafar.
The timeline surrounding the Port Canaveral deal, known as “Project Pelican,” suggests the Abraaj dealings are not unrelated. (Read more: American Report, 12/08/2016)(Archive) h/t @seacaptim
Gehad El Haddad, spokesperson of the Muslim Brotherhood (Credit: Aaron T. Rose/DNE)
A fugitive Muslim Brotherhood leader and Clinton operative has been arrested by Egyptian authorities in an ongoing roundup of seditious Islamist militants.
The arrest of Gehad el-Haddad for inciting violence is a sobering reminder not just of how close Hillary Clinton’s network is to the brutal Muslim Brotherhood, the Left’s favorite Islamofascist cell, but also of the extent to which Islamist enemies of the United States have infiltrated the American political establishment.
And it is yet another vindication for Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) who has been viciously attacked by left-wingers and leaders of her own party for having the courage to sound the alarm about radical Islam’s penetration of the U.S. government.
A mere month after Haddad quit his Clinton Foundation job for full-time employment with the Brotherhood a year ago, now-deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi received an invitation to deliver a major address at the Clinton Global Initiative, a high-profile project of the foundation. Morsi calls Jews “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.”
“It was only a matter of time before Gehad el-Haddad was arrested,” said Eric Trager who was characterized by the Washington Free Beacon as an Egypt expert.
“Many of the other Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen have been apprehended, and in addition to decapitating the organization, the military-backed government has been specifically targeting the Brotherhood’s media wing, including by shutting down its TV stations at the time of Morsi’s ouster on July 3.”
“It has also gone after those connected to Morsi’s presidential office, and Gehad’s father is Morsi adviser and Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Office member Essam el-Haddad,” said Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
As the Washington Free Beacon reports, Gehad el-Haddad’s tenure at the Clinton Foundation “overlapped with his official work for the Muslim Brotherhood, which began in Cairo in February 2011 when he assumed control of the Renaissance Project, a Brotherhood-backed economic recovery program.”
Although the Renaissance Project has been described as a long-term economic recovery program, Egyptian media say it is actually a program designed to implement the radical Islamization of Egyptian society.
“Renaissance is far more than the electoral program of President Mohamed Morsi or the Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party,” the Egypt Independent reported last year. “It is a 25-year project to reform state, business and civil society, rooted in the Brotherhood’s Islamic values but conditioned by the experiences of the project’s founders in the modern economy.”
“You can’t come up with concrete solutions unless you have a compass to tell you what’s right or wrong,” Haddad told the Egypt Independent. “For us, that compass is Islam. We believe its mission is to change people’s lives.”
It is unclear if Clinton Foundation donors are aware that their donations have been used to train Islamic terrorists determined to snuff out individual rights and civil society.
Those who support the Global War on Terror should bear in mind that Haddad’s experience at the Clinton Foundation gave him the know-how to help build the terror apparatus, police state, and other oppressive institutions that would be required to turn Egypt into a totalitarian theocracy, which is the Brotherhood’s goal.
The Clinton Foundation’s Climate Initiative, which he worked on in Egypt, “taught Haddad about managing [a nongovernmental organization] and the role that civil society takes between the state and private sector, lessons he is applying to the Renaissance Project,” according to the Egypt Independent.
Haddad “officially became a senior adviser for foreign affairs in Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party in May 2011, when he was still claiming to be employed by the Clinton Foundation,” the news website reports.
In Egyptian media, Haddad was a frequent apologist for the Brotherhood’s violent crackdowns on civil liberties in the Arab republic. He put his spin doctoring skills to use last December to downplay Brotherhood supporters’ attacks on women and children.
When pro-democracy protests swept Egypt on June 30, Hadded called the demonstrators violent thugs. “The anti-Morsi camp are providing a political endorsement to the violence,” he told the Washington Free Beacon at that time. “Some have resorted to violence because they didn’t do well at the ballot box.”
Evidence abounds of the Clinton political network’s close ties to totalitarian Islam.
While Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, Huma Abedin was her Deputy Chief of Staff. The wife of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), Abedin worked from 1996 to 2003 at the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA), a journal of Islamic supremacism founded by al-Qaeda financier, Abdullah Omar Naseef. At the same time Abedin also worked for Hillary Clinton in different capacities.
Naseef hired Abedin’s father, the late Dr. Zyed Abedin, to oversee the JMMA in Saudi Arabia. As Andrew McCarthy notes:
“[t]he journal was operated under the management of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, a virulently anti-Semitic and sharia-supremacist organization. When Dr. Abedin died, editorial control of the journal passed to his wife, Dr. Saleha Mahmood Abedin — Huma’s mother.”
Abedin’s mother was also active in the women’s division of the Muslim Brotherhood.
During Hillary Clinton’s tenure in the objectively pro-terrorist Obama administration, the entry ban applying to Islamic scholar, stealth jihadist, terrorism funder, and grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Tariq Ramadan, was lifted.
Radical imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, claimed to have ties to the Clinton administration. “I had dinner with [then-] Secretary of State [Madeleine] Albright — after the list” of unindicted co-conspirators was released. Albright refused to comment. Wahhaj is also involved the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is the Muslim Brotherhood’s front group in the U.S.
Abdurahman Alamoudi helped President Clinton and the American Civil Liberties Union develop a presidential document called “Religious Expression in Public School,” which established a legal justification upon the ACLU could use to sue public schools to force them to remove Nativity scenes and curtail Christmas celebrations. Alamoudi is a former director of CAIR and founder of CAIR ally, American Muslim Council.
Haddad, a top Brotherhood communications official and adviser to Morsi when he was Egypt’s president, was “city director,” a senior communications position, at Clinton’s charity, the former William J. Clinton Foundation, from August 2007 to August 2012. As of 2008, the Wahhabist kingdom of Saudi Arabia was one of the largest donors to the Clinton Foundation.
Incidentally, it needs to be noted that the Bill Clinton-founded philanthropy may yet regret a name change earlier this year. After Hillary Clinton left her Foggy Bottom perch behind, the foundation was renamed the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation so she could share in its glory, past and future.
Frank Gaffney has written a full-length pamphlet for the David Horowitz Freedom Center about the Muslim Brotherhood’s connections to Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration. After the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11 last year, David Horowitz previewed the pamphlet, writing:
“If anyone needed evidence that Hillary Clinton is in the pocket of the Muslim Brotherhood, the events of the last few days should be more than sufficient. On the anniversary of 9/11, on what should be a day of shame for the Muslim world, the US Embassy in Cairo issued a statement condemning critics of Islamofascism in language appropriate to the office of propaganda for the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamofascists launched violent attacks on Americans, repeating the outrages in miniature of the World Trade Center attacks 11 years ago. In the face of these outrages the posture of the U.S. government is one that would make Neville Chamberlain blush.”
It’s unlikely that Hillary Clinton will blush. After all, she’s shameless.
(…) “…one place where any serious probe can start is with a story we wrote in March 2014, when citing a local media report, we shone light on a mysterious operation in which a substantial portion of Ukraine’s gold reserves were loaded onboard an unmarked plane, and flown to the US, just weeks after the February 2014 revolution. From the source, March 7, 2014:
Tonight, around at 2:00 am, an unregistered transport plane took off took off from Boryspil airport.
According to Boryspil staff, prior to the plane’s appearance, four trucks and two cargo minibuses arrived at the airport all with their license plates missing. Fifteen people in black uniforms, masks and body armor stepped out, some armed with machine guns. These people loaded the plane with more than forty heavy boxes.
After this, several mysterious men arrived and also entered the plane. The loading was carried out in a hurry. After unloading, the plateless cars immediately left the runway, and the plane took off on an emergency basis.
Airport officials who saw this mysterious “special operation” immediately notified the administration of the airport, which however strongly advised them “not to meddle in other people’s business.”
Later, the editors were called by one of the senior officials of the former Ministry of Income and Fees, who reported that, according to him, tonight on the orders of one of the “new leaders” of Ukraine, all the gold reserves of the Ukraine were taken to the United States.
Needless to say, there was no official confirmation of any of this taking place, and in fact, our report in which we mused if the “price of Ukraine’s liberation” was the handover of Ukraine’s gold to the Fed at a time when Germany was actively seeking to repatriate its own physical gold located at the bedrock of the NY Fed, led to the usual mainstream media mockery.
But then everything changed in November 2014, when in an interview on Ukraine TV, none other than the then-head of the Ukraine Central Bank, Valeriya Gontareva (who became head of the Ukraine central bank in June 2014 when she replaced Stepan Kubiv and also presided over the nationalization of Kolomoiski’s PrivateBank in December 2016), made the stunning admission that “in the vaults of the central bank there is almost no gold left. There is a small amount of gold bullion left, but it’s just 1% of reserves.”
As Ukrainareported at the time, this stunning revelation means that not only has Ukraine been quietly depleting its gold throughout the year, but that the latest official number, according to which Ukraine gold was 8 times greater than the reported 1%, was fabricated, and that the real number is about 90% lower.
According to official statistics the NBU, the amount of gold in the vaults should be eight times more than is actually in stock. At the beginning of this month, the volume of gold was about $ 1 billion, or 8% of the total gold reserves. Now this is just one percent.
Assuming Gonaterva’s admission was true, it would imply that the official reserve data at the Central Bank was clearly fabricated, prompting questions about just how long ago the actual gold “displacement” took place. Could it have been during a cold night in March when “more than 40 heavy boxes” full of gold were loaded up on the plane and flown off to an unknown destination in the US?
To help out in this puzzle, we got some additional information from Rusila, which in Nov 2014 reported that “Ukraine’s gold reserves disappeared.”
According to recent data, the value of Ukraine gold should be $988.7 million. That is the value of gold proportion of gold in gold reserves is 8%. If you believe Gontareva, it turns out there is a mere $123.6 million in gold remaining. The figure is fantastic, considering that the amount of gold at the end of February (when the new authorities have already taken key positions) was $1.8 billion or 12% of the reserves.
In other words, since the beginning of the year gold reserves dropped almost 16 times. Gold stock in February were approximately 21 tons of gold, the presence of which was once proudly reported by Sergei Arbuzov, who led the NBU in 2010-2012. So what happened to 20.8 tons of gold?
Explaining the dramatic reduction in the context of the hryvnia devaluation through gold sales is impossible. After all, 92% of the reserves of the National Bank is in the form of a foreign currency that is much easier to use to maintain hryvnia levels and cover current liabilities. Besides since March the international price of gold has plummeted. Selling gold under such circumstances is a crime. In fact it would be more expedient to increase gold reserves through currency conversion in precious metals.
But apparently the result is not due to someone’s negligence or carelessness. The gold reserve has been actively carted out of the country, as a result of the very vague economic and political prospects of Ukraine. Something similar happened to the gold reserves of the USSR – when the Gorbachev elite realized that perestroika is leading the country to the abyss, gold simply disappeared in an unknown direction.
Oddly enough there was no official gold reduction just prior to the time when Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland was planning Yanukovich’s ouster, and as shown above, quite the contrary: Ukraine’s gold pile was increasing with every passing year… until it collapsed in early 2014. It is a little odder that it was during the period when Ukraine was “supported” by its western allies that several billion dollars worth of physical gold – the people’s gold – just “vaporized.”
Which brings us to the $1.8 billion question: what happened to Ukraine’s gold, because if the now-former central banker’s story is accurate, that’s roughly the amount of gold that quietly left the country just days after the US-backed presidential coup. And, it is also roughly how much taxpayer-funded Ukraine aid, procured by Joe Biden while his son was working at Burisma, is now missing.
At this point, there are certainly many pressing questions but one stands out: was the real “quid pro quo” not one of Trump holding up payments to Kiev in exchange for a probe of Biden – which after reading all of the above is more than warranted – but if the quo, namely US support for regime change in Ukraine and almost two billion in now missing taxpayer funds which ended up in an oligarch’s bank and mysteriously “vaporized” but not before said oligarch hired the son of the US vice president, wasn’t the quid to some 40 tons of Ukraine leaving forever to an unknown destination in the US.
We hope that Trump’s second term will provide ample time and opportunity to answer this critical question, and just to set off investigators on the right track, we believe that any investigation should begin with the former central bank head, Gontareva, who he also fled to London where she now lives in self-appointed exile and where she now “fears for her life” after one of her homes near Kiev was badly damaged in an arson attack and was also injured in August when she was knocked down by a car in London. Failing that, one can always check the flight manifests and the cargo contents of all planes that left Ukraine and arrived in the US on March 7, 2014, with a cargo consisting of billions of dollars in gold…” (Read more: Zero Hedge, 2/08/2020) (Archive)
“Previously unseen e-mails on Hunter Biden’s “Hard Drive from Hell” point to never-before-seen evidence of involvement by Joe Biden in his son’s lucrative business dealings in Ukraine with natural gas conglomerate Burisma Holdings, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.
In a previously unreported email reviewed by The National Pulse, Rosemont Seneca Partners employee Joan K. Peugh advises Hunter Biden – who is addressed by his given name, Robert – that he is scheduled for a White House meeting on April 16th, 2014.
Prior to today, it was known that Devon Archer had attended the meeting in the West Wing, and corporate media outlets excused the matter as an “art project” discussion. Today, that version of events ends.
Just days after this meeting, then Vice President Joe Biden visited Ukraine, and both Hunter and Archer would start receiving whopping checks from energy company Burisma, an industry in which they had zero experience.
The line item of the e-mail, itself dated April 15th 2014, reads: “1115AM- Meet Devon and Luke @ Peet’s Coffee and head to WH (Jamie Lyons is ####### if anything comes up).”
Lyons, at the time, was an assistant to Joe Biden’s chief of staff Steve Richetti, which indicates attention by the Vice President himself into the visit of the two soon-to-be Burisma board members.
Significantly, this April 16th meeting occurred only five days before Joe Biden took his second vice presidential trip to Ukraine to deliver a substantial package of assistance to Ukraine, including energy security, some of which directly benefitted the company – Burisma – which would simultaneously start fattening his son’s wallet.” (Read more: The National Pulse, 4/07/2021)(Archive)
Kendra Barkoff as press secretary to VP Joe Biden (Credit: Twitter)
“Then-second son Hunter Biden coached then-Vice President Joe Biden’s press secretary on how to respond to media questions about him joining the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, emails reviewed by The Post show.
The May 13, 2014, exchanges between Hunter and Kendra Barkoff, which have not been previously reported, form the basis of a complaint sent to the Justice Department on Friday alleging that the Biden scion, now 53, violated federal law by failing to register as a foreign agent.
“In advising the Office of the Vice President how to respond to press inquiries about his appointment, Hunter Biden ‘represent[ed] the interests of [a] foreign principal before any agency or official of the Government of the United States,’” America First Legal Foundation general counsel Gene Hamilton wrote to the assistant attorney general for national security, Matthew Olsen, quoting the relevant statute.
Burisma announced Hunter Biden’s appointment to its board of directors on May 12, 2014. The following day, according to the complaint, Barkoff sent Hunter an email saying: “Thanks for talking to me. [L]et me know who I should refer folks to.”
“What exactly are they asking?” Hunter responded. “For the time being I’d just refer them to my office. FYI I joined the board of Burisma Holdings Ltd. (Burisma.com) an independent/private natural gas producer in Ukraine along with the former president of Poland. I think the press release is on their website.”
Barkoff then forwarded Hunter an email from Max Seddon, then a foreign correspondent at BuzzFeed News.
“Russian state media is loving this press release, supposedly from a Cypriot-held Ukrainian natural gas company, claiming that the Vice President’s son has joined its board of directors,” Seddon wrote, addressing then-National Security Council spokesperson Laura Lucas Magnuson, who had forwarded it to Barkoff.
“The news seems rather odd on its face and, if true, would present a fairly glaring conflict of interest given the VP’s role on Ukraine policy – particularly since the company is controlled by Nikolai Zlochevsky, who was energy minister and deputy NSC chief under [former pro-Moscow Ukrainian President Viktor] Yanukovych,” the reporter added. “Is this true? What exactly is going on here?”
“Interesting,” Hunter wrote back. “Burisma is completely independent of the Ukrainian government with an independent board of directors. [Zlochevsky] served as Minister of Ecology and resigned in 2010. I joined the board as legal adviser and Burisma also engaged the law firm I am of counsel to Boies Schiller Flexner on matters pertaining to corporate governance, transparency, and expansion. Alana Apter former head of Morgan Stanley Europe is chairman of the board.”
In addition to forwarding Seddon’s questions, Barkoff told Hunter: “Let me know who in your office” to refer media to.
“Eric‐ he’s cc’d here,” Hunter answered, referring to one of his business partners, Eric Schwerin — who chimed in: “Kendra, I am around the next few days if you need me.”
“If anything beyond referring questions to my office is required from you or counsel you can contact Heather King at Boise Schiller,” Hunter directed Barkoff, who later sent him the statement her office was putting out to the press. (Read more: New York Post, 3/03/2023)(Archive)
Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Hunter Biden, a member of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC) Board, attend the USGLC awards dinner at the Grand Hyatt Washington on December 12, 2017, where Biden, along with Reps. Kay Granger (R-Texas) and Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), were honored for their long-standing commitment to America’s global leadership through strong U.S. development and diplomacy programs. (Credit: U. S. Global Leadership Coalition)
“Hunter Biden was on the board of a trade coalition that lobbied the Obama administration in 2014 on foreign assistance to Ukraine and appears to have set up a State Department meeting for the group’s president.
Biden’s links to the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC) and its affiliate, the Center for U.S. Global Leadership, have gone largely unreported in the coverage of his various business dealings, which have caused a headache for his father as he runs for president.
(…) USGLC, which lobbies and advocates for increased spending in the State Department’s International Affairs Budget, added a series of Ukraine-related bills to its lobbying portfolio at around the same time, lobbying disclosures show.
Biden’s private equity firm, Rosemont Seneca, was by far the smallest company of any of the directors on USGLC or the Center for U.S. Global Leadership.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 2/17/2020)(Archive)
Last week Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer wrote to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) requesting unredacted copies of all Joe’s vice presidential communications using pseudonyms, including ‘Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware’.
(…) Joe and Hunter appeared to use the then-VP’s secret email to discuss government business in another incident in June 2014.
Hunter used his Rosemont Seneca consultancy email address to write to his father on June 23, 2014 about the employment of then-deputy White House counsel John McGrail.
‘Before you fill position pls talk to me — J. McGrail very much wants to serve as detail fr treasury,’ Hunter wrote.
‘Re Johnny call me right away Dad,’ Joe wrote back from the email robinware456@gmail.com.
McGrail was promoted to VP’s counsel the following year, then got his desired move to the Treasury as Senior Counsel in January 2017. He is currently Counselor to the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the department, according to his LinkedIn account.
Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson have been asking for unredacted records from NARA regarding Joe’s alias emails since 2021. (Read more: Daily Mail, 8/23/2023)(Archive)
“Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post.
The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email reads.
An earlier email from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burisma’s No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.
Marc Holtzman, former CEO, JSC Kazkommertsbank (Credit: public domain)
Hunter Biden hosted a breakfast meeting between his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, his then-business partner Devon Archer, a prospective international business client — in the vice president’s mansion in Washington, D.C., in 2015, according to a report.
Just the Newsreported Thursday the prospective business client was international banker Marc Holtzman, who Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were courting for business in Kazakhstan. Holtzman in turn was advocating for former Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov — who is currently imprisoned for treason — to become the next United Nations Secretary General, according to the report.
The meeting was recently disclosed by Archer in congressional testimony, the report said.
Archer’s testimony contradicts President Joe Biden, who has repeatedly denied ever speaking to his son about his business dealings.
Although it is not the first time the then-vice president had met with his son and his son’s business partners, this meeting occurred in the then-vice president’s mansion at the Naval Observatory, and could be of interest to House investigators as they begin their impeachment inquiry that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced on Tuesday.
A view of the security around the Vice President’s residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, Jan. 17, 2021. (Credit: Susan Walsh/AP)
The meeting was reportedly not registered in official entry logs released by the Obama administration.
According to a transcript of Archer’s testimony, Hunter Biden and Archer had hoped that Holtzman, who was then the top official at Kazakhstan’s largest bank, could help deliver an energy deal for their Burisma client in Ukraine with Kazakhstan, which he and Hunter Biden called the “Burisma Eurasia” deal.
Associated Press “journalist” Eric Tucker coordinated a media hoax with Hillary Clinton’s longtime lawyer, David E. Kendall.
Hillary kept her emails on two thumb drives – one with the missing 33,000 emails was never recovered. Another one was turned into the FBI. Eric Tucker was supposed to report on this story, but rather than do aggressive journalism, he was willing to let a Clinton surrogate “steer us away” from the story.
We have been told, and we are preparing to report, that the FBI has taken possession of the thumb drive that was once in your possession. This is what we have been informed, and we wanted to see whether there was any sort of comment that could be provided. If you wanted to steer us away and say that we are misinformed, then I would gladly accept that as well. But we have solid reason to believe this. We’d welcome any comment you can offer. Thanks very much.
This latest email confirms what we’ve long known. There is no “free press” in America. The hoaxing media is owned by the DNC and Clinton machine. (Danger and Play, August 11, 2015)(Archive)
Bill Clinton (l) and Gareth Williams (Credit: public domain)
(…) Gareth Williams, 31, dug out the guestlist for an event the former American president was going to as a favour for a pal.
The codebreaker — who had breached his security clearance — handed the list to the friend, who was also to be a guest.
MI6 bosses raged over the data breach amid growing tensions with US security services over Mr Williams’s transatlantic work.
Today, just over five years since his body was found inside a padlocked bag, his death remains one of Britain’s most mysterious unsolved cases.
The Sun on Sunday can reveal that voicemail messages Mr Williams left for family and pals were deleted in the days after his death. And a rival agent may also have broken into the flat to destroy or remove evidence.
The inquest was barred from discussing Mr Williams’s work in public. But sources say he was helping on the joint monitoring network Echelon, which uses sophisticated programs to eavesdrop on terrorists and criminal gangs, particularly those in Russia.
Echelon is used by Britain, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
A source said: “The Clinton diary hack came at a time when Williams’s work with America was of the most sensitive nature.
“It was a diplomatic nightmare for Sir John Sawers, the new director of MI6 at the time.”
Insiders claim Mr Williams, who had been given a second passport with a fresh identity, was also getting fed up with living a secret life. He is said to have loathed his spy training after having his wrist broken during one hardcore session.
One insider said: “Williams’s state of mind in the months before his death was worrying those closest to him.
“He found the training so stressful and his mood blackened even talking about it.
“Typically he’d be asked to learn a new identity then report to a country hotel to meet an interrogation team. There he would be grilled about his new ID for 48 hours without sleep.
“His wrist was broken once after he was handcuffed to a metal bar inside a van that was driven around the country for several hours while he faced a barrage of questions.”
His sister Ceri Subbe also told the inquest he did not enjoy the “flash car competition and post-work drinking culture” of MI6.
He had applied to return to GCHQ, in Cheltenham, but bosses were slow in approving this.
Mr Williams, a keen cyclist originally from Anglesey, North Wales, died shortly after returning from a hacking conference in America.
Gareth Williams was found dead in a duffel bag. (Credit: London Media Press)
He had been to see a drag queen show by himself two days before he was last seen alive, on August 15, 2010.
Eight days later his naked body was found folded into the 32in by 19in bag placed in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, central London.
His mobile phone and sim cards were laid out on a table. The last computer evidence of him being alive showed him looking at a cycling website.
Detectives are still baffled as to how the maths genius and expert cryptographer died.
(…) The nature of Mr Williams’s work remains a secret, but sources claim he dealt with equipment that tracked the flow of cash from Russia to Europe. The technology let MI6 follow money trails from accounts in Russia to criminal gangs.
(…) Coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox, who heard the 2012 inquest into his death, criticised MI6 for failing to report Mr Williams missing for a week. The delay meant a Home Office pathologist was unable to find a cause of death.
UnCommon Core: The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science and Co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, assesses the causes of the present Ukraine crisis, the best way to end it, and its consequences for all of the main actors. A key assumption is that in order to come up with the optimum plan for ending the crisis, it is essential to know what caused the crisis. Regarding the all-important question of causes, the key issue is whether Russia or the West bears primary responsibility.
Mykola Zlochevsky, founder of Burisma Holdings, hired U.S. consultants to help boost his company’s image. (Credit: Pavlo Gonchar/Zuma Press)
“An adviser to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma suggested in an email in 2015 that Hunter Biden was expected to provide “deliverables” for the company, including the “ultimate purpose” of stopping “cases/pursuits into the company’s founder.
The email, contained in a batch published by Ken LaCorte at the Media Action Network, is reportedly from the same laptop that has been the source for a recent series of articles in the New York Post purportedly about Hunter Biden’s business dealings. The authenticity of the emails has not been verified.
The batch includes an email in November 2015 from Burisma adviser Vadim Pozharskyi to Hunter Biden’s business partners (on which Hunter Biden was cc’ed), outlining a set of “deliverables.”
The emails make clear that Biden and his partners were expected to arrange meetings with U.S. and Ukrainian officials with the goal of “improving Nikolay’s case and his situation in Ukraine.”
“Nikolay” appears to refer to Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky, according to the Post.
Pozharskyi wrote that the “list of deliverables” included “the ultimate purpose” of stopping “cases/pursuits against Nikolay”:
Timeline editor’s note: When looking for a pic of Eric D. Schwerin who was cc’d in the letter, I found this pic and an interesting Twitter thread with more information about him:
Hunter Biden’s associate in his business with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings discussed expectations of “high-ranking US officials in Ukraine” one month before then-Vice President Joe Biden visited Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to demand the firing of a prosecutor investigating the company.
Joe Biden, who bragged in 2018 about the firing of prosecutor Viktor Shokin by Poroshenko, was on an official visit to Ukraine in 2015. During the visit, he met with Poroshenko in Kiev about Ukraine’s corruption. But four months after the meeting, Poroshenko fired Shokin, a prosecutor investigating Burisma, which paid Hunter Biden $83,000 a month to sit on its board.
Vadym Pozharski (l) and Hunter Biden (Credit: public domain)
On November 2, 2015, one month before Joe Biden visited Ukraine, Hunter Biden received an email from Vadym Pozharskyi, a Burisma executive, about his “ultimate purpose” of working with Hunter Biden and his associates, Eric Schwerin and Devon Archer, a fellow Burisma board member.
Pozharskyi wrote the email with the subject line: “Re: Revised Burisma Proposal, Contract and Invoice.” The email outlines the scope of work he expected from Hunter Biden and his associates regarding a new project. It detailed the “ultimate purpose” of an agreement with Blue Star Strategies to shut down “any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine,” referring to Mykola Zlochevsky, who also went by Nikolay.
Blue Star Strategies is a Washington, DC, PR firm that worked for Burisma. Hunter Biden connected the firm to Burisma through Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s wife, according to emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“Dear colleagues, Hope you are well. Thank you for the docs provided. I have analyzed them most carefully and came up with a few of the following observations…” Pozharskyi wrote to Hunter and his associates:
My only concern is for us to be on the same page re our final goals. With this in mind, I would like us to formulate a list of deliverables, including, but not limited to: a concrete course of actions, incl. meetings/communications resulting in high-ranking US officials in Ukraine (US Ambassador) and in US publicly or in private communication/comment expressing their ‘positive opinion’ and support of Nikolay/Burisma to the highest level of decision makers here in Ukraine: President of Ukraine, president Chief of staff, Prosecutor General, etc.
The scope of work should also include organization of a visit of a number of widely recognized and influential current and/or former US policy-makers to Ukraine in November aiming to conduct meetings with and bring positive signal/message and support on Nikolay’s issue to the Ukrainian top officials above with the ultimate purpose to close down for any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine.
Schwerin forwarded Pozharskyi’s message to Hunter Biden and Archer the same day and suggested how
Hunter Biden could placate Pozharskyi’s objections to the pitch as Hunter Biden’s initial pitch to Pozharskyi lacked specific names of officials who would visit the Ukrainian president:
I would tell Vadym that this is definitely done deliberately to be on the safe and cautious side and that Sally and company understand the scope and deliverables. And that we will be having regular (daily, weekly, monthly) opportunities be in through conference calls or memos to be continually refining and updating the scope.
Hunter Biden replied to Pozharskyi’s email, assuring him he could deliver. “You should go ahead and sign,” he wrote on Nov. 5, 2015. “Looking forward to getting started on this,” Hunter Biden added.
One month later, Joe Biden arrived in Ukraine to speak with the president of Ukraine. Soon afterward in March 2016, the president of Ukraine fired the prosecutor who was looking into Burisma. (Read more: Breitbart, 7/16/2023)(Archive)
“An email previously released by WikiLeaks reveals that a Dominion Voting advisor met with John Podesta during Hillary Clinton’s campaign to discuss ways that they could help to defeat Donald Trump.
In 2018, Dominion Voting announced that it had been acquired by its management team and Staple Street Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, who was being advised by Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
During Clinton’s campaign, according to an email chain released by WikiLeaks, Kirkland & Ellis LLP partner Kamran S. Bajwa met with John Podesta while offering “anything” to help defeat Donald Trump.
Podesta, at the time, was chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
On Saturday, December 19, 2015, Bajwa wrote to Podesta:
The first AP1000 nuclear power plant in Sanmen, China, gets approval to load nuclear fuel in April 2018. (Credit: public domain)
(…) Lawmakers told Just the News that the story of CEFC fits a pattern that Hunter Biden was willing to take money from countries or companies adversarial to the United States, including helping them try to acquire prize assets like the Michigan-based Heninges firm that Just the Newsreported Hunter Biden helped sell to a Chinese firm tied to the People’s Liberation Army.
(…) House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, who is leading the impeachment inquiry with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, said Wednesday that the Biden family’s close and lucrative relationship with China leaves Americans wondering whether foreign policy decisions today are being influenced today by business ties from the past.
“We’re very concerned. And when you look at the Biden administration, there’s no question in my mind that they’ve had a soft on China policy,” Comer said on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. “And there are certain policy decisions that this administration has made that are counter to what any American would want with respect to foreign policy relating to China.”
Some of the evidence about CEFC’s pursuit of Westinghouse was secured from the laptop that Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop and was later seized by the FBI in December 2019. The FBI shortly thereafter authenticated the laptop.
Gilliar and his partners, Hunter Biden and Walker, discussed in one email a “CEFC / [Westinghouse]” deal, though the contours of the proposed agreement were unclear in that correspondence.
“Good to see a couple of weeks ago, further to our discussions we have prepared a deck for my visit to CEFC board on Monday in Beijing, It has been made clear to me that CEFC wish to engage in further business relations with our group and we will present a few projects to them,” Gilliar wrote to Jim Bernhard of Bernhard Capital in February 2016.
“I attach [sic] the decks and a covering [sic] letter that lay out the principals as I see of a Westinghouse play, we have been a little presumptuous that you wish to be included, but we hope so ?” he added.
Gilliar also made clear that Hunter Biden was intimately familiar with the proposed deal. “P.S Im [sic] sure H can give you the heads up on the play if you need more details,” Gilliar wrote.
Attached to the email were two documents. One was a signed cover letter marked to be sent to CEFC China Energy, the energy conglomerate that began courting Hunter Biden while his father was finishing his last term as vice president. Some of the earliest communications with CEFC uncovered by the House Oversight Committee date to late 2015.
The cover letter mentioned by Gilliar, obtained by Just the News, sheds light on the extent of the planned deal, clearly detailing the scope of the team’s plan for helping CEFC acquire Westinghouse. This included facilitating CEFC’s dominance of the Chinese and global nuclear energy market and masking the acquisition behind firms that wouldn’t raise alarms in western capitals.
The letter shows Gilliar and team believed CEFC was uniquely positioned to acquire from Toshiba an ownership stake in the American nuclear company due to the Japanese conglomerate’s “market weakness” and the “indecision of the Japanese Nuclear industry.”
Gilliar highlighted how the Chinese market was highly dependent on international support by companies that use Westinghouse technologies. Additionally, China still had restrictions on the technologies that it could export. “The original license agreement with Westinghouse was only domestic,” Gilliar pointed out.
Yet, Gilliar and his team saw an opportunity for CEFC to fill an important role in the Chinese domestic nuclear market and around the world through the acquisition, and in the process, liberate China from its dependence on foreign nuclear technology.
(…) The documents make clear the team’s ambitions were nothing short of achieving a commanding influence for CEFC over the global nuclear power plant sector. “In summary, utilizing the U.S. face of Westinghouse, combined with the economic power of CEFC (China) is the perfect solution to control this global sector,” Gilliar wrote CEFC.
You can read the signed letter and the confidential report (parts 1 & 2) below:
There was just one problem: “It would be highly unlikely that Toshiba would sell Westinghouse to Chinese or Korean interests, certainly not for an attractive price,” one memo stated.
But Gilliar proposed a solution for CEFC: his company—the European Energy and Infrastructure Group—and Bernhard Capital Partners would “implement an acquisition structure” that would “create the correct support in Washington that guarantees CEFC to receive the right support and U.S. promotes for its operations.”
This plan would place the appearance of a layer between CEFC—a China-based company with close connections to the ruling Chinese Communist Party and component of its national energy strategy—and the iconic U.S.-based energy company. (Read more: Just the News, 3/13/2024)(Archive)
Hillary Clinton and Jennifer Palmieri on the 2016 campaign trail. (Credit: public domain)
“The Clinton campaign discussed assembling a “swift boat project” earlier this year to undermine Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to newly released emails from WikiLeaks.
In a Feb. 26, 2016, exchange involving Democratic strategist Joel Johnson, as well as Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri and chairman John Podesta, assembling a group to destroy Trump was discussed.
Swift-boating refers to the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that accused John Kerry of fabricating his exploits to win decorations during his military service in Vietnam when he ran for president in 2004.
(…) Archer was scheduled to meet with Kerry on March 2, 2016, weeks before the Ukrainian parliament removed Shokin from his position, a redacted State Department email reported on byFox News shows.
The new evidence that Hunter’s partner Devin Archer met with then Secretary of State John Kerry is particularly concerning due to the date after Biden forcing the Ukrainians to fire Shokin. https://t.co/enxG83BvLr It also again raises the continued absence of FARA charges.…
“Devon Archer coming to see S today at 3:00pm – need someone to meet/greet him at C Street,” the March 2, 2016, email says, according to a screenshot shared by Fox. The “S” referred to in the email is a shorthand for Kerry, the outlet concluded based on additional email communications.
The email was first released in 2019 and it resulted in a records request from Republican Sens. Grassley of Iowa and Johnson of Wisconsin, sent to Trump administration Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Ukrainian parliament relieved Shokin of his duties in March 2016, a month after Shokin filed his letter of resignation at the request of then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Then-Vice President Joe Biden bragged in September 2016 about how he used a $1 billion loan guarantee to pressure Ukraine into firing Shokin.
“You remember last year I was authorized to say we’d do the second tranche of a billion dollars,” Joe Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations. “And [Poroshenko] didn’t fire his chief prosecutor. And because I have the confidence of the president, I was there, and I said: ‘I’m not signing it. Until you fire him, we’re not signing, man. Get it straight. We’re not doing it.’”
Archer testified before the House Oversight Committee in July, saying the Biden family “brand” protected Burisma and kept the firm in business. He said Joe Biden spoke with his son’s business associates over 20 times and specifically recalled a spring 2014 dinner with Russian oligarch Elena Baturina, as well as a spring 2015 dinner with Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi.
Archer also testified that Hunter Biden “called D.C.” in December 2015 because of pressure from Pozharskyi and Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky. It’s unclear if Joe Biden was on the other end of the phone call.
Devon Archer to Tucker Carlson: “Shokin was considered a threat to the business…. I think anyone in government is always a threat and always trying to shake down these businesses that were highly successful…And so at the end of the day, Shokin was taking a look” @DailyCallerhttps://t.co/LNhZnzMwAO
(…) In 2013, Archer exchanged emails with Kerry’s then-chief of staff at the State Department, David Wade, organizing a call between Kerry and then-Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Yerlan Idrisov.
“Devon: understand you spoke to the Secretary re having him call Foreign Minister Idrisov today, can you let me know topics Idrisov wants to talk about/any requests he’ll have of the boss, so we can get paper prepared for a call,” Wade wrote.
Archer told Wade that Idrisov wanted to speak with Kerry about keeping open a direct line of communication between the two of them as well as brief him on a “subject as it relates to Afghanistan.”
Wade went on to advise Hunter on rapid response related to Burisma after leaving the State Department in June 2015, Fox News Digital previously reported.
Archer exchanged emails with Kerry’s then-chief of staff to organize a call between Kerry and then-Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Yerlan Idrisov. (Credit: Fox News)
Archer co-founded Rosemont Seneca Partners with Hunter and Kerry’s stepson, Christopher Heinz, his Yale roommate, in 2009.
In a 2012 email chain, when then-Sen. Kerry was serving as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Archer listed him as one of his top references for Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP) after one of the firm’s partners told Archer and Hunter they needed their “bazooka references.”
An individual with knowledge of the reference list told Fox News Digital they were not aware of Kerry ever vouching for RSTP or its clients. The individual, who requested anonymity, went on to say that Hunter and Archer’s role was to help navigate Washington but also said they would sever ties with Hunter after he was kicked out of the Navy Reserve for cocaine in late 2014 and that Archer’s position was cut the following year because he wasn’t doing any work for RSTP.
The State Department and Archer’s lawyer did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment. (Fox News, 8/28/2023)
(Timeline editor’s note: According to our timeline, Shokin turned in his resignation to Poroshenko on February 19, 2016 and he was officially removed by the Ukrainian Parliament on March 29, 2016. The meeting between John Kerry and Devon Archer occurred after Shokin had resigned and before Hunter Biden friendly Yuriy Lutsenko replaces Shokin .)
“Should the American public be allowed to view the draft indictment of Hillary Clinton over the Whitewater case? Judicial Watch, the organization founded to promote transparency in government, has sued to make the allegations against her public.
According to Judicial Watch:
The draft indictments relate to allegations that Clinton provided false information and withheld evidence from federal investigators to conceal her involvement with the defunct Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan, the collapse of which lead to multiple criminal convictions. Clinton provided legal representation to Madison Guaranty as an attorney at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas. Clinton’s Rose Law Firm billing records, long sought by prosecutors, were found in the private quarters of the White House shortly after an important statute of limitations had expired.
But the National Archives argues that Clinton’s privacy must be protected in this instance.
“While there may be a scintilla of public interest in these documents since Mrs. Clinton is presently a Democratic presidential candidate, that fact alone is not a cognizable public interest under FOIA, as disclosure of the draft indictments would not shed light on what the government is up to,” a statement from the organization read.
The draft indictment would open up new questions about the Whitewater case, which dogged the Clintons in the 1990’s and again remind the public of Hillary’s scandalous efforts to cover up politically damaging stories. Judicial Watch has sued the National Archives for the documents, filing a brief in February. The organization has already forced the release 246 pages of previously undisclosed Office of Independent Counsel internal memos related to the case.
“It is absurd for the Obama administration to argue that Hillary Clinton’s privacy would keep a draft indictment from the American public,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. “One can’t help but conclude that the Obama administration is doing a political favor for Hillary Clinton at the expense of the public’s right to know about whether prosecutors believed she may have committed federal crimes.” (Breitbart, 3/28/2016)(Archive)
“Rep. Nunes is not the first Republican to question what role the Shearer memo may have played in the FBI’s investigation into the Trump team and its possible role in securing the warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Chairman Charles Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham of the Senate Judiciary Committee alluded to the Shearer document in a memorandum attached to a Jan. 4, 2018 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein referring Steele to the Department of Justice for a criminal inquiry. In their redacted classified memorandum, the two Republican senators hint at the possibility that the FBI’s probe into the Trump team’s possible ties to Russia is the result of an operation managed by the Clinton inner circle.
“One memorandum by Mr. Steele that was not published by BuzzFeed is dated October 19, 2016,” write Grassley and Graham. “Mr. Steele’s memorandum states that his company ‘received this report from [REDACTED] US State Department,’ that the report was second in a series, and that the report was information that came from a foreign sub-source who ‘is in touch with [REDACTED], a contact of [REDACTED], a friend of the Clintons, who passed it to [REDACTED].’ It is troubling enough that the Clinton campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele’s allegations raises additional concerns about his credibility.”
Writing in his Feb. 8Washington Post op-ed about getting the Shearer memo from Sidney Blumenthal in September 2016, Obama State Department official Winer explained that soon after the Blumenthal meeting, he met with Christopher Steele. Winer had known Steele, a longtime associate who often used Winer as his point of contact at the State Department. Steele had shown Winer the memos he’d written on Trump’s possible ties to Russia.
Winer asserted that in reading Shearer’s memo, he was “struck … how some of the material echoed Steele’s but appeared to involve different sources.” He shared Shearer’s memo with Steele, who described it as “potentially ‘collateral’ information,” presumably to buttress his own findings. The FBI, as Winer explained, had asked Steele to provide any supporting information. From the Grassley-Graham letter, it appears that Steele gave the FBI the Shearer report titled “FSB Interview,” “the second in a series.” He either withheld the first, “The Compromised Candidate” report, or Winer never gave it to him.
During the same period, late summer and early fall, the FBI was seeking a FISA warrant on Carter Page. A Department of Justice spokesperson declined comment when RCI emailed to ask if the Shearer memo was used as part of the Steele dossier to secure the warrant on Page’s communications that was granted Oct. 21, 2016.
When news of the Shearer memo broke more than a year later, the Guardianreported in a Jan. 30, 2018 article that the FBI “is still assessing details in the ‘Shearer memo’ and is pursuing intriguing leads.” The memo, the Guardian explained, “was initially viewed with skepticism, not least because he had shared it with select media organizations before the election.”
Even as his FSB memo was provided to the FBI before the election, it appears that Shearer was shopping his information to press outfits while also comparing rumors with leading journalists. Shearer’s first report, “The Compromised Candidate,” is a record of various journalists and media personalities explaining how they’ve heard the same rumors, and even tried, unsuccessfully, to report the story that Shearer is pushing in the second report.
Robert Baer (Credit: CNN)
(…) In the same report, Shearer quotes a conversation with former CIA officer Robert Baer, again hinting at another intermediary between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Shearer writes that Baer told him “the Russians had established an encrypted communication system with a cut out between the Trump campaign and Putin.”
Baer told RCI that “he’d heard that story from acquaintances at the New York Times who were trying to run the story down.”
Baer said he remembered speaking with Shearer about Trump and Russia in “March or April” of 2016. If Baer’s memory is correct then Shearer was investigating the Trump story at around the same time the Clinton campaign and the DNC hired Fusion GPS to compile opposition research on the Trump campaign.
Shearer writes in his first report that he was told by Alan Cullison of the Wall Street Journal that Fusion GPS principals and former Journal reporters, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch (Shearer misspells both names in the memo) had been hired by the DNC to “rack [sic] down Trump compromised story.”
(…) The inaccuracies in Shearer’s account fuel suspicions that he misidentified the source of the information on who was funding the Steele dossier. What matters is that Shearer knew who was paying for Fusion GPS’s work on Trump. More important, if Steele received both of Shearer’s reports in September 2016, that would contradict the information in the FBI’s warrant application that said Steele didn’t know who was paying for his work. The source of the funding was right there in Shearer’s first memo. The FBI’s warrant application, however, says Simpson “never advised Source No. 1 [Mr. Steele] as to the motivation behind the research into candidate’s #1 [Mr. Trump’s] ties to Russia.” If Steele had both of Shearer’s reports, he knew he was being paid by the DNC.
This Washington Post Steele dossier timeline indicates Steele’s memo dated September 14, 2016, sounds very similar to Shearer’s FSB “pee-pee” memo that Jonathan Winer gave to Steele in the same month. (Credit: Washington Post)
The members of the press corps whom Simpson and Steele were briefing during that period almost certainly knew who was paying. Shearer’s notes, according to the Feb. 9, 2018Journal article, “circulated in political and journalistic circles in Washington in late 2016.” Whoever saw both of Shearer’s reports would have known that the DNC was paying for the Fusion GPS campaign—long before the information became public a year later, in October 2017.
Cullison, who declined to comment for this story, was the Wall Street Journal’s Moscow correspondent for 20 years. The memo has him telling Shearer that since May 2016 he, too, had been looking into rumors of Trump’s activities in Moscow, including allegations of his sexual activities.
“Our reporter was unable to corroborate these allegations,” WSJ spokesperson Severinghaus said in the FebruaryJournal article, “and determined the information provided by Mr. Shearer did not meet our high standards for fair and accurate reporting.”
To this date, no journalist has been able to confirm on its own any of the incendiary allegations of Trump-Russia collusion story since the rumors surfaced during the 2016 presidential campaign. The first accounts of the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia were published by Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News (Sept. 23, 2016) and David Corn of Mother Jones (Oct. 31). Both were sourced to Steele’s research.
Shearer’s first report shows that the story was circulating through the press corps for months, and no one was able to confirm it.
Shearer tried to drum up interest in the collusion narrative but no one in the press was biting. No one was willing to sink time and prestige on material sourced to unnamed Russian intelligence officials that was provided by a Clinton political operative whose partner, Sidney Blumenthal, had an even more controversial reputation.
But it would be different if it came from someone else, an intelligence operative whose American handlers worked up a suitable legend of his exploits in a glamorous, allied clandestine service, and his deep knowledge of all things Russian. So what did it matter if Steele had become an executive in a corporate intelligence firm whose official cover had been blown a decade before and who hadn’t been to Russia in years? The byline of a former MI6 agent could credential a compendium of unsubstantiated rumors when the names of Clinton confederates Cody Shearer and Sidney Blumenthal could not.” (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 4/26/2018)(Archive)
“Barack Obama’s spy chiefs never believed that Donald Trump was a Russian spy. The Trump-Russia collusion narrative originated as a diversionary tactic in the event emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server went public. FBI Headquarters attached itself to the project, devoting manpower and resources to investigating Trump, when the Bureau learned that foreign intelligence services had her correspondence.
U.S. Attorney John Durham’s nearly two-year-long investigation into the origins of the FBI’s probe of the 2016 Trump campaign is, according to news reports, making “excellent progress” and expanding. The shape of the case has been clear for some time, as I reported in my 2019 book, “The Plot Against the President”: the Clinton campaign was worried about the candidate’s emails going public. The decision to protect her could not possibly be made by mid-level FBI field agents and lawyers but only by senior U.S. officials.
(…) The FBI seemed to have become aware several months earlier that her emails had been compromised and was already planning the second leg of its cover-up before it had concluded the first. On May 4, FBI agent Peter Strzok texted FBI lawyer Lisa Page “Now the pressure really starts to finish [Midyear Exam].” Page texted back: “It sure does.”
I asked the former Obama official why the FBI’s interests dovetailed with those of the Clinton campaign. Was the Bureau concerned that its counterintelligence mission would be tarnished with Clinton’s emails in possession of a foreign spy service? “They were on Team Hillary,” says the former Obama official. “They didn’t care about their mission. According to John Brennan’s handwritten notes, Russia knew what the Clinton campaign was doing with its Russia collusion plan. The FBI must have also known Russia knew and went ahead with it anyway. And then Brennan used it as the basis of the January 2017 intelligence community assessment, even though the Russians knew it was based on a fabrication.”
Government documents further substantiate the assessment that the purpose of Crossfire Hurricane was to defend against the potential release of Clinton’s emails and protect her candidacy.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 12/17/2020)(Archive)
“Guccifer2.0 stated in an interview with Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai (for Motherboard / Vice News) on June 21, 2016, that he breached the server using a “0-day exploit of NGP-Van”.
ThreatConnect, although still apparently unswayed from their assessment that Guccifer2.0 is a collective of Russians did report some very useful facts that serve to debunk Guccifer2.0’s claims.
(…) “Russia-Tainted Metadata” Reportage Mostly Ignored A Key Piece of Metadata
Warren Flood (Credit: LinkedIn)
There is a key fact about some non-Russian metadata that nobody seems to have reported and it certainly seems to be of critical importance – and that is the document creation timestamps…
There were multiple documents shared with TheSmokingGun, Gawker, ArsTechnica and others.
The first document, “1.doc” (mirror), was given considerable coverage, while the name “Warren Flood” was reported, the date in the report (rather than in the metadata) was reported and so it was attributed to Warren Flood on December 19, 2015.
Gawker incorrectly claimed the metadata showed the document was created in 2015 when it actually indicated the document was created by Warren Flood at a much later date.
The truth is that the metadata shows the document being created 30 minutes before Guccifer2.0 appears to have gotten his hands on it:
Created by Warren Flood on 15th of June at 13:38
Modified by Феликс Эдмундович on 15th of June at 14:08
The other document, “2.doc” (mirror) was not mentioned so much, but it too had interesting metadata:
Created by Warren Flood on 15th of June at 13:38
Modified by Феликс Эдмундович on 15th of June at 14:11
How did this get missed? – My guess is that people who investigated were using MS-Word. Recent versions of MS-Word tend to show limited metadata from RTF1 format files, for example, MS-Word 2010 shows:
If you open “2.doc” in OpenOffice though, you will spot what first alerted me to the timestamp correlations in the first place:
If you look at the raw data of “1.doc” you can see an ever closer correlation:
UPDATE (18 Feb 2017)
It was pointed out to me that I’d only focused on 2 documents and that there were more released by Guccifer2.0. – He had actually released a set of 5 RTF1-format documents, all had creation/modification dates as 15th of June and another one of them had Flood listed as it’s creator:
MD5 sums and mirror links are provided below in case the originals are altered or removed in future:
(Live links at source link)
A more detailed look at the actual contents of documents (eg. RSIDs of different changes and correlations across files) gives further clues about the procedures used to intentionally stick “Russian fingerprints” on some of the files.
Who is Warren Flood? (UPDATED June 3rd, 2018)
Warren Flood was Biden’s former IT director at the White House.
A document that Flood authored in 2008 and that was attached to one of John Podesta’s emails, was used by Guccifer 2.0 as a template into which he then copied the contents of the Trump Opposition Research, copied from this file(which is also attached to this leaked email). It is Flood’s document that the “CONFIDENTIAL” text in the background derives from.
The copy of the Trump research Guccifer 2.0 had was actually a document originally authored by Lauren Dillon (DNC research director) and modified (and sent to John Podesta) by Tony Carrk (Research Director at Hillary for America). (Read more: Adam Carter/g-2.space, 2/18/2017)(Archive)
“Deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe and his legal counsel Lisa Page were in possession of the key Steele dossier allegations on Sat Jul 30 2016, one day BEFORE the FBI opened an investigation into Trump on Sun Jul 31 2016.
(…) Ohr’s testimony: “I wanted to provide the information he [Steele] had given me to the FBI”
And “I reached out to McCabe”
Page/McCabe/Ohr met on a Saturday at the office at very short notice, with Ohr coming almost straight from the Steele meeting to meet with the Deputy Director of the FBI and his legal counsel.
Sounds…unusual/urgent?
(…) Ohr’s testimony: “I went to his [McCabe’s] office to provide the information”
“Lisa Page was there”
“So I provided the information to them”
(After that Ohr is put in touch with Strzok, running the Trump/Russia case.)
The investigation was opened the next day, July 31, 2016.
Or at least it was *marked* July 31. Here’s Strzok texting to Page about exactly what “good faith date” they can put on the “LHM” (Letter Head Memo) for the opening case file for the Trump/Russia case.
Peter Strzok testifies on FBI and Department of Justice actions during the 2016 Presidential election in a House Joint committee hearing on Capitol Hill July 12, 2018. (Credit: Chip Somodavilla/Getty Images)
“Late last week the FBI document that started the Trump-Russia collusion fiasco was publicly released. It hasn’t received a lot of attention but it should, because not too long from now this document likely will be blown up and placed on an easel as Exhibit A in a federal courtroom.
(…) To the untrained eye, the FBI document that launched Crossfire Hurricane can be confusing, and it may be difficult to discern how it might be inadequate. To the trained eye, however, it is a train wreck. There are a number of reasons why it is so bad. Two main ones are offered below (if you would like to follow along, the document is here):
First, the document is oddly constructed. In a normal, legitimate FBI Electronic Communication, or EC, there would be a “To” and a “From” line. The Crossfire Hurricane EC has only a “From” line; it is from a part of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division whose contact is listed as Peter Strzok. The EC was drafted also by Peter Strzok. And, finally, it was approved by Peter Strzok. Essentially, it is a document created by Peter Strzok, approved by Peter Strzok, and sent from Peter Strzok to Peter Strzok.
On that basis alone, the document is an absurdity, violative of all FBI protocols and, therefore, invalid on its face. An agent cannot approve his or her own case; that would make a mockery of the oversight designed to protect Americans. Yet, for this document, Peter Strzok was pitcher, catcher, batter and umpire.
In addition, several names are listed in a “cc” or copy line; all are redacted, save Strzok’s, who, for some reason, felt it necessary to copy himself on a document he sent from himself to himself.
(…) Second, the Crossfire Hurricane case was opened as a Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) investigation. A FARA investigation involves a criminal violation of the law – in this case, a negligent or intentional failure to register with the U.S. government after being engaged by a foreign country to perform services on its behalf – that is punishable by fines and imprisonment. It is rarely investigated.
(…) Ultimately, there was no attempt by Strzok to articulate any factors that address the elements of FARA. He couldn’t, because there are none. Instead, there was a weak attempt to allege some kind of cooperation with Russians by unknown individuals affiliated with the Trump campaign, again, with no supporting facts listed.
What this FBI document clearly establishes is that Crossfire Hurricane was an illicit, made-up investigation lacking a shred of justifying predication, sprung from the mind of someone who despised Donald Trump, and then blessed by inexperienced leadership at the highest levels who harbored their own now well-established biases.” (Read more: The Hill, 5/27/2020)(Archive)
This is the only known photo of Joseph Pientka (far left) found in the Washingtonian and dated in 2007. (Credit: Vincent Ricard)
(…) In a report released in December by Horowitz on the FBI’s FISA abuse during its investigation into the Trump campaign, the role of an unidentified FBI supervisory special agent (SSA)—described in Horowitz’s report as “SSA 1”—was featured prominently throughout. The description of events and dates match the public information on Pientka’s actions, and on Dec. 13, Pientka was confirmed by Fox News as being “SSA 1.”
The inspector general report noted that all the participating members of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team were selected by Strzok, Pientka, and “the Intel Section chief,” who is almost certainly intelligence analyst Jonathan Moffa, who, according to July 16, 2018, testimony from Lisa Page, worked on both the Clinton and Trump investigations with Strzok.
On page xviii of the inspector general report, it was disclosed that Pientka was running the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign as its supervisor. Pientka also was the agent who provided defensive briefings to the Trump and Clinton campaigns in August 2016.
“We learned during the course of our review that in August 2016, the supervisor of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, SSA 1 [Pientka], participated on behalf of the FBI in a strategic intelligence briefing given by Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to candidate Trump and his national security advisors, including Michael Flynn, and in a separate strategic intelligence briefing given to candidate Clinton and her national security advisors,” the report states.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), during congressional testimony given by Horowitz, noted that the FBI used this meeting as an opportunity to effectively spy on the Trump campaign and gather further information—a characterization that Horowitz agreed with. Horowitz also said in his testimony he was concerned about this practice:
Sen. Graham: “So when we get defensively briefed tomorrow, would it be okay for FBI agents to open up 302s on what we said?”
Mr. Horowitz: “We have very significant concerns about that.”
Horowitz noted in his report that Pientka was specifically selected to “provide the FBI briefings, in part, because Flynn, who was a subject in the ongoing Crossfire Hurricane investigation, would be attending the Trump campaign briefing.”
Just prior to this defensive briefing, on Aug. 1, 2016, Strzok and Pientka “traveled to the European city to interview the FFG [Friendly Foreign Government] officials who met with Papadopoulos in May 2016.” The IG report noted that “during the interview they learned that Papadopoulos did not say that he had direct contact with the Russians.”
It also appears that Pientka was in charge of selecting the Confidential Human Sources (CHS) that were used against George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, and Flynn:
“In determining how to use CHSs in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, SSA 1 and the case agents told the OIG that they focused their CHS operations on the predicating information and the four named subjects,” the inspector general report states.
The report describes “a consensually recorded meeting in August 2016 between Carter Page and an FBI CHS.” The IG noted that Pientka and “Case Agent 1 told the OIG that this meeting was important for the investigation.” But it appears that important information from this meeting was left out of the Page FISA application.
In footnote 197, the IG noted that “Page’s comment about his lack of a relationship with Manafort was relevant to one of the allegations in the Steele reporting that was relied upon in the Carter Page FISA applications, but information about the August 2016 CHS meeting was not shared with the OI attorneys handling the FISA applications until June 2017.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 12/30/2019)(Archive)
Avril Haines appears on MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell in August, 2018, to discuss President Trump’s abuse of power after removing former CIA director Brennan’s security clearance. (Credit: MSNBC screenshot)
“Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.
But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objects — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.” —The Washington Post
As a result of this, Director Brennan created a secret task force at the Central Intelligence Agency’s Headquarters, which was composed of several dozen analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Working Group reported to two different groups.
President Barack Obama and less than 14 senior United States Government officials.
A team of operations specialists at the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Also in early August 2016 — presumably the same week — agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, where they questioned her about a letter they had received in early March 2016 from a foreign source, supposedly written by Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz to Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundations regarding the Midyear Exam investigation.
During this meeting, the agents offered to give Attorney General Lynch a “defensive briefing”. Shortly after this, the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded that the Benardo letter was an unreliable document.
President Obama ordered his aides to determine ways to retaliate or deter against the Russian Government through three steps:
Gain a high-confidence assessment from the United States intelligence agencies on Russia’s role and intent.
Check vulnerabilities in state-run election systems.
Seek bipartisan support from Congressional leaders for a statement condemning Moscow and urging states to accept federal assistance.
Obama meets with Kathryn Ruemmler (l), Lisa Monaco (c), and Susan Rice. (Credit: White House Flickr photo by Pete Souza)
The same week, Rice, Haines and Lisa Monaco convened meetings in the White House Situation Room, which would later be referred to as “Deputies Meetings”. These meetings were initially attended by:
Director John Brennan, Central Intelligence Agency
Director James Clapper, Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Director James Comey, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, United States Department of Justice
As time passed, another Cabinet member joined the Deputies Meetings: Vice President Joe Biden.
The Deputies Meetings needed to defend against any potential leaks, and therefore followed the same protocols taken during the planning stages of the raid of Osama bin Laden.
At a later time, agendas were directly sent to Cabinet secretaries, including Secretary John Kerry and Secretary Ashton Carter. When an agenda was received, their subordinates were ordered never to open the envelopes. Further to this, some agendas were withheld until the participants had arrived in the Situation Room and sat down.
Ordinarily, a video feed from the White House Situation Room is fed into various National Security Council offices to allow senior aides to view the events with zero sound. However, during the Deputies Meetings, the video feeds were switched off.
One of these Deputies Meetings was hosted by Haines, where the attendees of the meetings argued that any deliberative attempt to strike back against Russia would become a tool of propaganda for President Vladimir Putin, while another was concerned about the potential effect any action may have on Election Day 2016.
Haines would later note she was “very concerned” during this time about the potential of Russians gaining influence within the Trump campaign, although she apparently remained unaware of the existence of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 4/29/2019)
Seth Rich (l) and Julian Assange (Credit: public domain)
“A persistent American lawyer has uncovered the undeniable fact that the FBI has been continuously lying, including giving false testimony in court, in response to Freedom of Information requests for its records on Seth Rich. The FBI has previously given affidavits that it has no records regarding Seth Rich.
A Freedom of Information request to the FBI which did not mention Seth Rich, but asked for all email correspondence between FBI Head of Counterterrorism Peter Strzok, who headed the investigation into the DNC leaks and Wikileaks, and FBI attorney Lisa Page, has revealed two pages of emails which do not merely mention Seth Rich but have “Seth Rich” as their heading. The emails were provided in, to say the least, heavily redacted form.
Before I analyse these particular emails, I should make plain that they are not the major point. The major point is that the FBI claimed it had no records mentioning Seth Rich, and these have come to light in response to a different FOIA request that was not about him. What other falsely denied documents does the FBI hold about Rich, that were not fortuitously picked up by a search for correspondence between two named individuals?
To look at the documents themselves, they have to be read from the bottom up, and they consist of a series of emails between members of the Washington Field Office of the FBI (WF in the telegrams) into which Strzok was copied in, and which he ultimately forwarded on to the lawyer Lisa Page.” (Read much more: Craig Murray, 1/28/2020)(Archive)
(…) “As most people outside of solitary confinement know, the whole “Russian collusion” investigation began with the premise that Russia hacked the DNC, but considerable evidence suggests that the DNC emails were downloaded by someone inside the DNC — like Mr. Rich — and then provided to Wikileaks.
Rather than re-invent the wheel, I’ve copied and pasted my letter to U.S. Attorney John Durham, U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue, and Inspector General Michael Horowitz:
Mr. Durham, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Horowitz:
I wish to file a criminal complaint regarding false statements made by FBI Section Chief David M. Hardy in two affidavits [click here and here] filed in the FOIA case identified above [i.e., Ty Clevenger v. U.S. Department of Justice, et al., Civil Action No. 18-CV-01568]. I requested FBI records pertaining to Seth Rich, who allegedly was the source of Democratic National Committee emails published by Wikileaks in 2016 (rather than Russian hackers). In the affidavits (attached to the email version of this letter), Mr. Hardy testified that his office conducted a reasonable search, and it found no responsive records.
New evidence proves otherwise, and it appears that Mr. Hardy has perpetrated a fraud on the court. Judicial Watch recently published documents that it obtained in response to a FOIA request for communications between former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page and I would direct your attention to pages 123-125. In those pages, you will find a heavily-redacted email discussion regarding Mr. Rich. Note that the header on those emails is “Seth Rich.” (Read more: Ty Clevenger/Lawflog, 1/27/2020)(Archive)
(…) Among the most significant of the newly declassified documents is a memorandum written by FBI agent Joe Pientka III, the case agent on Trump-Russia. It was Pientka who, at the FBI’s New York City headquarters on August 17, 2016, purported to brief Trump and two top campaign surrogates — the aforementioned General Flynn and then–New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who was slated to run the transition if Trump won.
In reality, Pientka and the FBI regarded the occasion not as a briefing for the Republican presidential nominee but as an opportunity to interact with Donald Trump for investigative purposes. Clearly, the Bureau did that because Trump was the main subject of the investigation. The hope was that he’d blurt things out that would help the FBI prove he was an agent of Russia.
The Obama administration and the FBI knew that it was they who were meddling in a presidential campaign — using executive intelligence powers to monitor the president’s political opposition. This, they also knew, would rightly be regarded as a scandalous abuse of power if it ever became public. There was no rational or good-faith evidentiary basis to believe that Trump was in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin or that he’d had any role in Russian intelligence’s suspected hacking of Democratic Party email accounts.
You didn’t have to believe Trump was a savory man to know that. His top advisers were Flynn, a decorated combat veteran; Christie, a former U.S. attorney who vigorously investigated national-security cases; Rudy Giuliani, a legendary former U.S. attorney and New York City mayor who’d rallied the country against anti-American terrorism; and Jeff Sessions, a longtime U.S. senator with a strong national-defense track record. To believe Trump was unfit for the presidency on temperamental or policy grounds was a perfectly reasonable position for Obama officials to take — though an irrelevant one, since it’s up to the voters to decide who is suitable. But to claim to suspect that Trump was in a cyberespionage conspiracy with the Kremlin was inane . . . except as a subterfuge to conduct political spying, which Obama officials well knew was an abuse of power.
So they concealed it. They structured the investigation on the fiction that there was a principled distinction between Trump himself and the Trump campaign. In truth, the animating assumption of the probe was that Trump himself was acting on Russia’s behalf, either willfully or under the duress of blackmail. By purporting to focus on the campaign, investigators had the fig leaf of deniability they needed to monitor the candidate.
Just two weeks before Pientka’s August 17 “briefing” of Trump, the FBI formally opened “Crossfire Hurricane,” the codename for the Trump-Russia investigation. The Bureau also opened four Trump-Russia subfiles, related to Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Flynn.
There was no case file called “Donald Trump” because Trump was “Crossfire Hurricane.” The theory of Crossfire Hurricane was that Russia had blackmail information on Trump, which it could use to extort Trump into doing Putin’s bidding if Trump were elected. It was further alleged that Russia had been cultivating Trump for years and was helping Trump’s election bid in exchange for future considerations. Investigators surmised that Trump had recruited Paul Manafort (who had connections to Russian oligarchs and pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs) as his campaign manager, enabling Manafort to use such emissaries as Page to carry out furtive communications between Trump and the Kremlin. If elected, the theory went, Trump would steer American policy in Russia’s favor, just as the Bureau speculated that Trump was already corruptly steering the Republican party into a more pro-Moscow posture.” (Read more: National Review, 8/01/2020)(Archive)
“Newly declassified internal Federal Bureau of Investigation documents prove the top U.S. law enforcement agency used a so-called defensive briefing of the Trump campaign in 2016 to spy on and collect information about Donald Trump himself. The new documents, which are just the latest in a string of declassifications regarding the FBI operation to spy on the Trump campaign and later the Trump administration, detail the FBI’s attempts to use a briefing ostensibly meant to warn the Trump campaign about foreign intelligence threats to spy on the Trump campaign itself.
(…) In one of the documents declassified and released on Wednesday, FBI supervisory Special Agent Joe Pientka wrote that he deliberately used the briefing to “actively listen for topics or questions” from Trump “regarding the Russian Federation.” Rather than provide the Trump campaign a specific warning that certain campaign principals were being targeted by Russian intelligence, the FBI instead gave a general, non-specific warning that foreign intelligence services might eventually target the campaign.
Pientka’s written summary of the briefing noted that Trump, Michael Flynn, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were the only three Trump campaign members in attendance. Christie’s attendance had not previously been disclosed. The August 17, 2016 meeting came the day after the FBI opened a formal counterintelligence investigation against Flynn and just two days after FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok texted his former lover, FBI attorney Lisa Page, about an “insurance policy” he had designed to keep Trump from becoming president.
(…) Pientka was excoriated in a report from the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Inspector General (OIG) for his behavior during the FBI’s spy operation against the Trump campaign. Pientka told the OIG that he designed the August 17 meeting to “gain assessment and possibly have some level of familiarity with [Flynn].”
According to the OIG report, Pientka “was selected to provide the FBI briefings, in part, because Flynn, who was a subject in the ongoing Crossfire Hurricane investigation, would be attending the Trump campaign briefing.”
Pientka told the OIG that he was selected to attend on behalf of the FBI so he could “record” or “overhear” from Trump, Flynn, or Christie “any kind of admission” that they were colluding with the Russian government to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. Pientka also added that he wanted to get a baseline impression of Flynn’s “overall mannerisms” in case he needed to later use that information against him.” (Read more: The Federalist, 7/23/2020)(Archive)
“We received 38 pages of records from the State Department revealing that Ukraine Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko was offered “high-level” access to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by the same lobbying firm that represented Burisma Holdings.
This came to light in an email from George Kent, then-U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission to Ukraine and current Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. The email was to then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
The offer was made by Karen Tramontano, who was an assistant to President Clinton and deputy White House Chief of Staff. She is the CEO of Blue Star Strategies, a Democrat lobbying firm that was hired by Burisma Holdings to combat corruption allegations.
In the same 2016 email, Kent stated that he responded to Lutsenko by recommending that he not take the offer due to corruption concerns with Burisma and the Clinton Foundation.
(…) The records include a September 3, 2016, email from Kent to Yovanovitch and other colleagues which details that Lutsenko informed him that he was pitched high-level access to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign by Blue Star Strategies. The email’s subject line is “Lutsenko now likely not to go to DC with Blue Star, other Ukr issue comments.” The email says:
[Lutsenko] confirmed he had been pitched by Blue Star, not sought them out. He said he honestly didn’t know how Blue Star was to get paid – he didn’t have funds – and that some BPP MP [Petro Poroshenko’s Solidarity Party member of Parliament] that we probably didn’t know “and that’s good” ([redacted]??) had introduced them to him. Blue Star CEO Tramontano’s pitch was that she could gain him access to high levels of the Clinton campaign (GPK note: she was Podesta’s deputy as deputy COS the last year of Bill Clinton’s tenure), and that was appealing – to meet the possible next Presidential Chief of Staff.
Later in the same email, Kent added that he suggested that Lutsenko not take that offer because Blue Star represented Burisma. Kent also mentioned corruption concerns related to the Clinton Foundation and Podesta:
In connection to Blue Star, I noted their representation of Burisma/Zlochevsky, mentioned the various money flows from Ukraine to lobbyists that had been prominently int he news this past month, whether Manafort/Klueyev via Brussels to Podesta Group and Weber/Mercury, Yanu’s Justice Minister Lavrynovych to Skaden/arps-and Greg Craig – and Pinchuk to Clinton Foundation, and the media attention being paid at present to the Kyiv/Washington gravy train….
…and he got the drift. Not ideal timing, little receptive audience, and wrong facilitator. He said he’d figure out a better time when there would be more traction/better audience.
This email is inconsistent with Yovanovitch’s October 2019testimony under oath before the U.S. House of Representatives in the Trump impeachment inquiry that she knew very little about Burisma Holdings and the long-running corruption investigation against it stating, “it just wasn’t a big issue.”
This smoking gun email ties Hunter Biden’s Burisma’s lobbying operation to an influence-peddling operation involving the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election. This further confirms the Obama-Biden-Deep State targeting of President Trump was to cover-up and distract from their own corruption. (Read more: Judicial Watch, 12/17/2020)(Archive)
Documents obtained by this website suggest that the Directors of the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Foundation HIV/Aids Initiative Inc may have falsified a merger agreement and backdated documents by more than 12 months to deceive the IRS, donors and others about the Foundation’s HIV activities.
In 2005 ,the William J. Clinton Foundation (31-1580204) and the Clinton Foundation HIV Aids Initiative Inc (20-0921629) (CHAI) were separate legal entities and thus required to lodge individual IRS returns. Each operated as a 501(c)(3) charitable tax exempt foundation.
The CHAI was incorporated as a non-profit in Arkansas on 24 March 2004. It applied on that same day for a licence to operate in the State of Massachusetts from its head office at 225 Water Street Quincy. It was registered as a corporation licensed to operate in Massachusetts on 4 May 2004.
CHAI was granted 501(c)(3) tax exempt status and its 2004 and 2005 IRS Form 990 annual returns quoted the exempt purpose
THE ORGANIZATION IS A SUPPORTING ORGANIZATION OF THE WILLIAM J. CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL FOUNDATION, AND WILL CARRY OUT ONE OF THE FOUNDATION’S PROGRAMS TO BRING HIGH QUALITY MEDICAL CARE AND TREATMENT TO PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS AND TO IMPROVE HEALTH SYSTEMS IN RESOURCE POOR AREAS AND COUNTRIES .
To bring care and treatment and improve systems.
The distribution of pharmaceuticals was not an approved tax exempt purpose, there is a stated specific prohibition against a grant of tax exemption for pharmaceutical distribution published at the IRS website here:
IRC 501(c)(3) requires an organization to be both “organized” and “operated” exclusively for one or more IRC 501(c)(3) purposes. If the organization fails either the organizational test or the operational test, it is not exempt. Reg. 1.501(c)(3)–1(a)(1).
The organizational test concerns the organization’s articles of organization or comparable governing document. The operational test concerns the organization’s activities. A deficiency in an organization’s governing document cannot be cured by the organization’s actual operations. Likewise, an organization whose activities are not within the statute will not qualify for exemption by virtue of a well written charter. Reg. 1.501(c)(3)–1(b)(1)(iv).
In Federation Pharmacy Services, Inc. v. Commissioner, 625 F.2d 804 (8th Cir. 1980), aff’g 72 T.C. 687 (1979), the appellate court held that a nonprofit pharmaceutical service was not exempt as a charitable organization because it was operated for the substantial commercial purpose of providing pharmacy services to the general public. Although it provided special discount rates for handicapped and senior citizens in its area, it was not committed to providing any drugs below cost or free to indigent persons. Therefore, although its services did improve health in the area, it was primarily a commercial venture operated in competition with other area pharmacies.
The Clinton Foundation, if it admits to the CHAI Inc at all, purports to have merged the 1st CHAI entity into the Clinton Foundation effective at 31 December 2005.
If it had done so, the CHAI Inc would have ceased on that day to exist. As the non-surviving entity in a merger it would have been dissolved and prohibited from further trading.
On 22 February 2006 Bill Clinton signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Australian Government as signatory for the Clinton Foundation HIV Aids Initiative Inc.
On 9 June 2006 Auditors BKD LLP wrote to the directors of the Clinton Foundation:
On the same date it wrote a further letter to include within its audit any and all available supplementary information.
The Clinton Foundation lodged its IRS 990 return electronically shortly after the Audit Report.
Nowhere did it mention any intention to merge, nor were any articles or agreements to effect a merger at 31 December referred to.
It noted that the Clinton HIV/Aids Initiative Inc was related to the Foundation, as it had done in the previous year, it also told the IRS there had been no dissolutions or terminations etc during the 2005 year.
Worryingly for the CHAI, the Foundation provided commentary about CHAI operations that should have immediately triggered a tax audit and recision of tax exemption.
THE CLINTON FOUNDATION HIV/AIDS INITIATIVE (CHAI) EXPANDED ITS PROCUREMENT CONSORTIUM, WHICH OBTAINS LIFE-SAVING AIDS MEDICINES FOR OVER 50 DEVELOPING NATIONS AT A SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCED PRICE.
There are no CHAI Inc’s 2004 or 2005 year returns filed at the Clinton Foundation. There is no merger agreement exhibited. Until today, I am not aware of any public commentary or publication of the agreement or the 990 CHAI return. The files had been successfully disappeared.
I now have a copy of all of that material from the filing at the time.
Around the time the Clinton Foundation audit report and 990 filing were completed, the CHAI Inc asked for an extension of time to lodge its IRS 990 return – to 15 August 2006. That extension is automatically approved as a right.
On 31 July 2006 the CHAI Inc was still operating as a separate legal entity. It held itself out as a legal contracting entity to the Australian Government which entered into these contracts with it on the following dates.
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade – Australian Aid Program
Category:
Health administration services
Contract Period:
14-Aug-2006 to 31-Dec-2010
Contract Value (AUD):
$15,127,586.10
Supplier Name:
CLINTON FOUNDATION HIV/AIDS INITIATIVE
Supplier Details
Name:
CLINTON FOUNDATION HIV/AIDS INITIATIVE
Postal Address:
225 WATER STREET
On 8 July 2006 the CHAI asked for its second extension of time to get its financial house in order for the IRS, this time seeking an extension out to 15 November 2006.
The Clinton Foundation HIV/Aids Initiative Inc was active in Papua New Guinea immediately after the contract with the Australian Government was executed.
The PNG Clinton operations sought the incorporation of a legal entity in Papua New Guinea styled after the CHAI Inc in the US.
Almost 9 months after the Clinton Foundation now tries to have us believe the CHAI Inc was merged out of existence, here it is incorporating a new corporate entity in Papua New Guinea.
If that entity had in fact ceased to operate upon the effective date the Clinton Foundation gives for the merger, 31 December 2005, almost 9 months previous, why wouldn’t the Clinton Foundation name alone be the only logical choice for the corporate person in PNG.
On 23 August 2006 this advertisement appeared in the PNG newspaper.
On 24 August 2006 the Clinton Foundation HIV/Aids Initiative – PNG Inc was incorporated.
Meanwhile, plans were apparently being made for the time machine that would take the directors of the Clinton Foundation and the CHAI back to the last recorded board meetings in 2005 where their due diligence and other conditions precedent to the merger were given the due consideration.
Notwithstanding the absence of any corresponding material in the Clinton Foundation’s 2005 filing which had already been locked in after the 9 June 2006 Audit Report, the CHAI filed its 2005 IRS 990 on 13 November 2006 and it wasn’t quite in sync with the 2005 merger-free head Foundation. That uncomfortable fact for the crooks might help explain the disappearance of these papers until now.
Here’s the date stamp for the avoidance of doubt and establishment of provenance.
Ira and the boys had some sort of problem in 2006 that apparently made it desirable for the CHAI Inc and its 501(c)(3) details to disappear.
But to do that effective 31 December 2005, Ira would have to find the agreements they signed at the time. Or someone would have to forge them. And if they did that, they should also go to jail, go directly to jail, not pass go and not collect several hundred million drug dollars.
I know that our expert readers will pore over these papers. Our readers amaze me with the details they pick up and pass on.
It’s the little things like any subscript writing in the bottom left hand corner leaving a tell tale trace from the word processor that might just establish the exact time the paper met the printer.
Here’s the freshly emerged Merger Agreement purportedly signed pre the merger date during 2005.
The Australians were still dealing with the entity they’d contracted with, the CHAI Inc. With that being the case, it’d make sense for Bill and Ira not to make waves. Not to do the right thing as required under the law and dissolve the non-surviving entity, the CHAI Inc.
Cause that’s what happened. Ira and Bill’s slush funds never die, they just fade away.
The CHAI Inc had this bank account in Massachusetts, along with its head office.
And the CHAI in its headquarter state of Massachusetts didn’t have the good manners to advise its headquarters regulator about the merger.
Because eventually Secretary Galvin and the crew got sick and tired of no returns, no information and no word about the fading jaded CHAI In and its problems.
When I was in the Mergers and Acquisitions caper it was a truism that there are no mergers, there’s only acquisitions – ie there’s a surviving party and the non-surviving party is consumed into it.
When a corporate entity is being merged it’s like being pregnant. A corporation can’t be a little bit merged, that would be an asset sale or an asset contribution from the balance sheet of a surviving entity.
That’s what Clinton and the boys did. Stripped the CHAI Inc bare, disadvantaged its creditors and any contracting party like the Australian Government that looked to it for performance and left it to wallow dead in the water.
In 2008 Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative Inc was dissolved by regulators for failure to comply with financial reporting legislation
The entity’s license to operate was revoked by authorities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by an order published on 31 March 2008, taking operative effect from 31 December 2007.
Here is a copy of the extract:
I wrote to the Massachusetts authorities in February, 2016
I am an Australian Journalist reporting on our government’s contributions to certain charitable entities in the United States.
I am interested in the revocation of the certificate of incorporation issued to Clinton Foundation HIV/Aids Initiative Incorporated.
ENDS
Later that day an officer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Mr Howard Cutter replied, stating:
The entity was dissolved by our office for failure to file annual reports in consecutive years.
While memories of the CHAI lingered it was useful to get some value out of that brand.
Apparently the Clinton Foundation doesn’t care about passing off or misleading or deceptive conduct, because it now tells all and sundry that the CHAI, the Clinton Health Access Initiative was the real deal all along.
Its history goes back to 2002. Even though in its 2009 incorporation it was presented to the authorities as a cleanskin, avoiding all the messy shit that a successor organisation in a Magaziner/Clinton transmission of business see popping up like ticking bombs left to surprise the unwary.
You can see what they were up to in this MOU executed in PNG.
Bill Clinton and Australian officials in CHAI multi-million $$$ fraud and coverup
CHAI is the acronym used by the Clinton Foundation and its supporters in the Australian Government to describe the Clinton Health Access Initiative.
Bill Clinton and the Australian Government don’t like to be reminded about the CHAI’s predecessor, also known as the CHAI. That’s because CHAI #1 flouted the law to such an egregious extent that it was deregistered by US authorities.
Clinton’s criminal conduct in CHAI #1 didn’t stop the Australian Government from sending him money. Individuals within the Australian Government even rewrote publications and changed records to help Clinton during his coverup.
Here’s what the Clinton Foundation says about the CHAI on its website today – note the first line “The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc”.
The Clinton Health Access Initiative Inc was not founded in 2002. That claim is false and misleading in a material sense in that it conceals the existence of a predecessor organisation which Clinton called the CHAI.
Here are the CHAI’s biggest donors. Note the “Cumulative Donations by Donor” and “Donor’s Name”. Let there be no mistake, our government is donating our money into a slush fund operated by Bill and Hillary.
Here is a screen shot from the Clinton Foundation’s 2009 website about the CHAI
This wasn’t just a name, the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative Inc was a US incorporated entity with employees and trading operations and some very illegal conduct awaiting explanation.
I’ll come back to the Clinton HIV/Aids Initiative Inc and the cover up later.
In 2006 the Australian Government’s Foreign Minister Alexander Downer signed an MOU with Clinton as detailed in this screen grab from a 2007 DFAT website.
By the latter half of 2010 someone in the Gillard Government saw fit to change the record as detailed in this screen grab from the AUSAID website from 2010/11. Where the original wording recorded a partnership with the William J Clinton Foundation, the revised 2010 version restated it as a partnership with the Clinton Health Access Initiative.
This matters because beyond the direct contracts we were buying drugs from Clinton’s operating company. Those drug dealings involved illegal activities. The new Clinton Health Access Initiative Inc had no involvement in the dealings that brought Clinton, Ranbaxy and their criminal cohort unstuck. Australia is reported to have purchased in excess of $100M in pharmaceuticals under the partnership with the William J. Clinton Foundation. Someone has gone to some length to clean out the records of those transactions but we will find them, it’s just a matter of when.
(note my request to DFAT re the $100M in pharmaceutical purchases under the agreement, I have been told I’ll have a response by COB Thursday)
Here is the signature block for Clinton’s signature on the 2006 MOU
He signed only for the HIV/Aids Initiative and as you’ll see in the next part of this report it was a separate entity and there have been considerable efforts to conceal its existence – some of those cover-up attempts will no doubt expose certain individuals to criminal prosecutions.
Here are the DFAT reported contracts with the Clinton Foundation HIV/Aids Initiative Inc.
2008/2009 contracts
2009/10 contracts
2010-2011
Note that by 2011 the Clinton Health Access Initiative was recorded as the contracting party for the Indonesian contract. (Michael Smith News, 9/06/2016)(Archive) h/t @seacaptim
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is introduced during a campaign stop Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, in Rochester, N.H. ((Credit: /Matt Rourke/The Associated Press))
(…) “Hillary compromised classified materials representing the full range of American espionage: human intelligence or HUMINT from CIA, signals intelligence or SIGINT from NSA, and imagery intelligence or IMINT from NGA.
Of those 81 classified email chains, the FBI assessed that 37 of them included Secret information while eight included Top Secret information. Worse, seven email chains included Special Access Program or SAP information, which is tightly protected by the Intelligence Community and shared on a restricted, need-to-know basis only.
Three more email chains contained Sensitive Compartmented Information or SCI, which was almost certainly SIGINT from NSA. SCI always requires special protection and handling. In fact, you’re only allowed to access it inside a specially-built Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, a SCIF (pronounced “skiff”) in spy-speak. Any exposure of SCI brings severe penalties—at least if you’re not named Clinton.
It’s nice to see the FBI finally confirm just how much highly classified information got exposed here, but I reported this many months ago from Intelligence Community sources, including that Hillary’s “unclassified” emails included Top Secret SAP information from CIA and Top Secret SCI information from NSA.
Which leads to a troubling matter: What the FBI did not mention in its big data dump on EmailGate.
As I told you in this column back in January, Hillary emails included very highly classified intelligence from NSA. In early June 2011, the secretary of state received a long email from her longtime friend and factotum Sid Blumenthal regarding Sudan. This was an astonishingly detailed assessment of high-level political and military machinations in that country, specifically inside information about coup plotting.
This explosive information was timely and deep in the weeds on Sudanese happenings. It’s difficult to see how Blumenthal—a lawyer and Washington fixer, no sort of Africa hand or James Bond—got his hands on such juicy intelligence. As I’ve noted, “Blumenthal’s information came from a top-ranking source with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials, and recounted a high-level meeting that had taken place only 24 hours before.” How did Sid obtain this amazing scoop for Hillary?
If Hillary Clinton becomes our next president, we can be certain that her trusty sidekick Sid Blumenthal will have an important role in her White House.
Not to mention that, in terms of verbiage and format, Blumenthal’s email read exactly like classified NSA reporting, as anybody acquainted with our SIGINT would immediately recognize. As one veteran agency official told me back in January, Blumenthal’s email was NSA information with “at least 90 percent confidence.”
Which was no coincidence, since an NSA investigation subsequently determined that Blumenthal’s Sudan assessment was derived from their reporting—in some cases, verbatim. As I reported in March, NSA concluded that Blumenthal’s Sudan report came from four different agency SIGINT reports, all classified Top Secret/SCI. Then it got worse:
At least one of those reports was issued under the GAMMA compartment, which is an NSA handling caveat that is applied to extraordinarily sensitive information (for instance, decrypted conversations between top foreign leadership, as this was). GAMMA is properly viewed as a SIGINT Special Access Program, or SAP, several of which Clinton compromised in another series of her “unclassified” emails.
NSA had no doubt that Blumenthal somehow got his hands on some of their “crown jewels” information. “It’s word-for-word, verbatim copying,” an agency official of them explained. “In one case, an entire paragraph was lifted from an NSA report” that was classified Top Secret/SCI. To add to the mystery, Sid emailed Hillary his “personal” assessment on Sudan only hours after some of those classified NSA reports were issued.
Somehow Sid Blumenthal—who in 2011 was not working for the U.S. government in any capacity and had not held security clearances in a decade—was reading above-top-secret NSA reports just hours after they appeared in tightly restricted GAMMA channels.” (Read more: The Observer, 9/06/16)
Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, writes a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, with the following declassified information:
DNI releases a copy of the intelligence referral to Comey and Strzok on October 6, 2020:
(…) The declassification comes after Ratcliffe, last week, shared newly-declassified information with the Senate Judiciary Committee which revealed that in September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral on Hillary Clinton purportedly approving “a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections” in order to distract the public from her email scandal.
That referral was sent to Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok.
“The following information is provided for the exclusive use of your bureau for background investigative action or lead purposes as appropriate,” the CIA memo to Comey and Strzok stated.
“This memorandum contains sensitive information that could be source revealing. It should be handled with particular attention to compartmentation and need-to-know. To avoid the possible compromise of the source, any investigative action taken in response to the information below should be coordinated in advance with Chief Counterintelligence Mission Center, Legal,” the memo, which was sent to Comey and Strzok, read. “It may not be used in any legal proceeding—including FISA applications—without prior approval…”
“Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date,” the memo continued. ““An exchange [REDACTED] discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”
Victoria Nuland and Jonathan Winer (Credit: public domain)
“Judicial Watch and The Daily Caller News Foundation today released 84 pages of documents, including a September 2016 email exchange between then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer, a close associate of dossier author Christopher Steele, discussing a “face-to-face” meeting on a “Russian matter.”
(In June 2016 Nuland permitted a meeting between Steele and the FBI’s legal attaché in Rome. Nuland told CBS News that the State Department knew about the Steele dossier by July 2016.)
According to an op-ed Winer wrote for The Washington Post in 2018, also in September 2016, “Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the “dossier… I prepared a two-page summary and shared it with Nuland, who indicated that, like me, she felt that the secretary of state needed to be made aware of this material.”
A September 17, 2016, email exchange between Nuland and Winer – that was classified in the interest of national defense or foreign policy – discusses the political situation in Libya, but also brings up a “Russian matter:”
From: Nuland, Victoria J Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2016 1:31 PM To: Winer, Jonathan Subject: Re. Libya Update
In ny face to face?
From: Winer, Jonathan Sent: September 17, 2016 at 1:56:05 PM EDT To: Nuland, Victoria J Subject: Re: Libya Update
Yes that was [sic] be good.
From: Nuland, Victoria J Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2016 1:58 PM To: Winer, Jonathan Subject: Re. Libya Update
Good. I’ll reach out when im there Sunday. [Redacted]
Other emails show senior State Department personnel using unsecure BlackBerrys to transmit classified information even after the Clinton email scandal became public.” (Read more: Judicial Watch 7/18/2019)
Researcher, @MonsieursGhost, raises some very interesting points about when Peter Strzok and Lisa Page could clearly see Alfa Bank, Carter Page, and the dossier unfold into a Steele “influence” operation that was coordinating with the Clinton campaign.
Something has always bothered me about FBI’s treatment of Alfa-Fraud. Here is a short thread (developing) on irregularities and weirdness:
1) Horowitz reports FBI receives Alfa-related memo 112 on 11/6. Where does he get this date? FBI internal memo says it received 10/26… pic.twitter.com/0JJyBDEVKG
On same day Strzok learns Sussman AlfaBank info is
dodgy, @Isikoff story about @carterwpage breaks.
Small Team *knows* source is Steele, causing @petestrzok to admit that Dossier is an “influence” operation (!!) …”as well as” something that might have information value .😬 pic.twitter.com/QTftOJLAwV
“Daniel Silverberg, then-House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer’s national security adviser, coordinated “work on Russia dossier materials provided by Christopher Steele” with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Envoy for Libya Jonathan Winer, according to newly released documents made public June 12 by Judicial Watch.
A series of emails between Sept. 26, 2016, and Dec. 10, 2016, demonstrate that Winer shared “Russia-related information” he obtained from Steele—whom he described as his “old O friend”—with Nuland, who then shared it with Silverberg.
Winer delayed a previously scheduled meeting with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) in order to share the information with Nuland, according to Judicial Watch.
Multiple references in the emails to additional telephone calls and other contacts with unnamed or redacted parties, as well as discussion of “a possible working group meeting,” suggest an active response by Silverberg to the Steele dossier information he was provided by Nuland and Winer.”
FBI Director James Comey testifies to House Oversight Committee about the FBI’s handling of the investigation of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of private email servers while serving as secretary of state.
Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Ranking Member Rep. Devin Nunes listen to Gordon Sondland, the U.S ambassador to the European Union, testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill November 20, 2019. (Credit: Doug Mills/Getty Images)
“The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, Adam Schiff (Calif.), said Sunday it was “deeply disturbing” that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) received classified information about Hillary Clinton’s emails from FBI field agents in 2016.
“This is the first that we’ve heard about it, and it is deeply disturbing because if this was shared by New York field agents with Devin Nunes, was it also shared with Rudy Giuliani? Or did Devin Nunes do something, which we have seen subsequently, which is coordinated with the Trump team?” Schiff said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“Was this information shared by the committee with Rudy Giuliani or shared directly with them? We don’t know the answer but we hope the inspector general will find out,” Schiff added.
Nunes said last week that FBI agents gave him information about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails, which were contained on former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D) laptop, in late September 2016.
“We had whistleblowers that came to us in late September of 2016 who talked to us about this laptop sitting up in New York that had additional emails on it. The House Intelligence Committee, we had that, but we couldn’t do anything with it,” Nunes told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Thursday.
In light of IG’s failure to look at leaking/anti-Clinton bias among agents in NYC field office, this seems quite relevant. Nunes says “good FBI agents” told him about Weiner laptop in late September 2016. pic.twitter.com/BU6ysY7Xwn
Nunes said that, because the information was classified, he could not say anything about it until the Justice Department’s (DOJ) internal watchdog released its report… (Read more: The Hill, 6/17/2018)(Archive)
“Just before Thanksgiving, House Republicans amended the list of documents they’d like President Trump to declassify in the Russia investigation. With little fanfare or explanation, the lawmakers, led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), added a string of emails between the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to their wish list.
Sources tell me the targeted documents may provide the most damning evidence to date of potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), evidence that has been kept from the majority of members of Congress for more than two years.<
The email exchanges included then-FBI Director James Comey, key FBI investigators in the Russia probe and lawyers in the DOJ’s national security division, and they occurred in early to mid-October, before the FBI successfully secured a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The email exchanges show the FBI was aware — before it secured the now-infamous warrant — that there were intelligence community concerns about the reliability of the main evidence used to support it: the Christopher Steele dossier.
The exchanges also indicate FBI officials were aware that Steele, the former MI6 British intelligence operative then working as a confidential human source for the bureau, had contacts with news media reporters before the FISA warrant was secured.” (Read more: The Hill, 12/05/2018)
“A failed state, a terrorist haven, four dead Americans – this is the Hillary Clinton record in Libya we know about.
But new evidence — and a review of the public record — reveals that Hillary Clinton’s actions in Libya were not just disastrous policy, but a violation of U.S. anti-terrorism law.
A recent report to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the British House of Commons concluded that Western intervention in Libya was based on “inaccurate intelligence” and “erroneous assumptions.” Advocates failed to recognize that “the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element,” and the failure to plan for a post-Qaddafi Libya led to the “growth of ISIL” in North Africa.
However, “inaccurate intelligence” doesn’t fully describe the whole story. A closer examination of the run-up to the Libya debacle on September 11, 2012, leads to the irrefutable conclusion that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knowingly armed radical Islamist terrorists in Libya.
False pretenses
The American public was told that the intervention in Libya was necessary to prevent a humanitarian crisis. But just as Hillary Clinton would describe the attack on our Benghazi diplomats as a spontaneous protest over a video, the military intervention that led inexorably to the debacle in Benghazi was sold on false pretenses: to prevent an imminent massacre of civilians engaged in a pro-democracy uprising.
Clinton with Libyan rebels upon her departure from Tripoli in Libya on October 18, 2011. (Credit: Reuters)
Hillary Clinton described the 2011 Arab Spring rebellion in eastern Libya as a spontaneous pro-democracy uprising, but the Libyan connection to radical Islamic extremist groups was well known long before 2011.
The region where the rebellion began was a fervid recruiting ground for jihadis who killed American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The leaders of the “civilian uprising” that Hillary Clinton supported were members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who had pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda. They refused to take orders from non-Islamist commanders and assassinated the then leader of the rebel army, Abdel Fattah Younes.
The LIFG had been jailed under Qaddafi until hundreds of their members were released through a de-radicalization program. That program was spearheaded by an exiled Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Libyan cleric based in Qatar named Ali al-Sallabi. The jihadis pledged they would never use violence against Gaddafi again.
But nearly as soon as the LIFG was released they took up arms against the Qaddafi regime.
Libyan doctors told United Nations investigators that, of the more than 200 corpses in Tripoli’s morgues following fighting in late February 2011, only two were female. This indicates Qaddafi’s forces targeted male combatants and did not indiscriminately attack civilians. Nor had Qaddafi forces attacked civilians after retaking towns from the rebels in early February 2011.
While Muammar Qaddafi had a 40-year record of appalling human rights violations, his abuses did not include large-scale attacks on Libyan civilians. We restored full diplomatic relations with Qaddafi in 2007 and he was a key partner in counter-terrorism efforts.
LIFG and affiliated jihadis received at least 18 shipments of arms from Qatar with the blessing of the U.S., the Wall Street Journalreports. The arms shipments were funneled through none other than Ali al-Sallabi, the Qatar cleric who brokered their release from prison.
The Islamists were able to pay for the weapons because Clinton had convinced Obama to grant full diplomatic recognition to the rebels, against the advice of State Department lawyers and the Secretary of Defense.
As the Washington Postreported, this move “allowed the Libyans access to billions of dollars from Qaddafi’s frozen accounts.”
These arms shipments are significant for several reasons. It led to the indictment of American arms dealer Marc Turi who was charged with selling weapons to Islamist militants in Libya through Qatar. The charges were dropped this week after Turi threatened to reveal emails showing Clinton had approved the sales.
Here’s where it gets very sticky for Secretary Clinton. The rebel leaders were on the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list. It is a direct violation of the law to provide material support for terrorist organizations under 18 U.S. Code 2339A & 2339B. Penalties for providing or attempting to provide material support to terrorism include imprisonment from 15 years to life.
Nor is the Qatar connection insignificant. Qatar has donated anywhere from $1 to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, and emails reveal members of the Qatari royal family were privileged with back channel meetings with Secretary Clinton at the State Department. While whipping up support for the Libya military campaign, Clinton told Arab leaders, “it’s important to me personally,” the Washington Postreported.
Hillary Clinton’s prosecution of foreign policy in Libya crossed several lines: she showed extremely bad judgment by ignoring military and intelligence officials, she let personal interests conflict with U.S. foreign policy, and, most importantly, she may have broken the law — again.
Any one of these transgressions should disqualify her from holding any kind of leadership role in our government, let alone president of the United States. The last one qualifies Hillary Clinton for government housing, though not in the White House.” (Fox News, 10/06/2021)(Archive)
(Timeline editor’s note: General Flynn’s OpEd was published just a month before the 2016 election and perfectly describes the war between white hats in the military and the corrupt political establishment. It is no surprise Obama asked Trump not to hire General Flynn.)
President Barack Obama speaks alongside Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson (R) following the Presidential Daily Briefing in the Oval Office on October 7, 2016. (Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
“President Barack Obama approved a statement by the U.S. intelligence community in October 2016 accusing Russia of stealing emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), despite the U.S. government not having obtained the DNC server images crucial to ascertaining whether Moscow was involved in the theft.
FBI emails recently made public during the trial against now-acquitted DNC attorney Michael Sussmann show the bureau was still in the process of requesting images of the DNC servers on Oct. 13, 2016. The server images, which are equivalent to a virtual copy of the alleged crime scene, were taken by private cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
On Oct. 7, six days before CrowdStrike agreed to mail the server images to the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a statement accusing Russia of hacking U.S. political organizations and disseminating emails allegedly stolen through the hack. The statement was approved and encouraged by Obama, according to then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson.
“The president approved the statement. I know he wanted us to make the statement. So that was very definitely a statement by the United States government, not just Jim Clapper and me,” Johnson told the House Intelligence Committee in June 2017, referring to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 6/07/2022)(Archive)
1. OIG BOMBSHELL!! Hidden within the OIG report on McCabe’s leak to Barrett of the WSJ, is an astronomically damning correlation between Loretta Lynch, the NY Field Office of the FBI, McCabe, and the NYPD. PLEASE SHARE
4. On 10/24/16, AG Loretta Lynch swaps out the federal investigative team looking into the officers responsible for the Eric Garner case. Loretta Lynch swaps out the original team investigating the Eric Garner case with a new team https://t.co/chMpLYVZ16pic.twitter.com/uC1q7oGu9n
6. Now, in the OIG report on McCabe’s leaks to the WSJ, it states that on 10/26/16 McCabe and NY_ADIC of the FBI participate in a “hastily convened conference call- with LL who delivers the same message about leaks with a focus on leaks in the Eric Garner case” Huh? Why? pic.twitter.com/IanSWgpMNv
8. The same day as that phone call, 10/26/16, Rudy Giuliani is on all of the MSM floating some “big surprises” in the coming days. Watch this clip: https://t.co/PjK9WOx2Ixpic.twitter.com/TNJZkVUYP4
12. Here is the link: https://t.co/vZDTIlCqBT THIS IS MAJOR. Why? Because now we have both the OIG report confirming they spoke with FBI in NY about the Garner case, AND we have Prince confirming they were threatened with the case. pic.twitter.com/5c2dl3Pejr
14. This call was relegated to “conspiracy” land because it spoke of Epstein Island, and the MSM will not touch that with a 10ft pole. The OIG report confirms that Prine was, in fact, telling the truth.
15. In essence, it appears that the AG of the USA, used the Justice Department to threaten the FBI and NYPD into SITTING on evidence of DISGUSTING criminality to protect Hillary Clinton, et al. This is a STRIKING ABUSE of power and it truly makes me sick. RAISE AWARENESS.
They stated: The decision announced Tuesday means that Pantaleo will not face any criminal charges related to Garner’s death. Federal investigators have been examining the circumstances of Garner’s death since 2014 (cont)
(…) On November 3rd, 2016, this author made a post to Reddit containing preliminary research and information on the above story. The post was made to the pro-Trump subreddit r/the_donald due to the forum’s reputation as the only outlet on Reddit where news was not being censored during the U.S. Presidential Election. The same day, Wikileaks tweeted a link to the Reddit post labeling it as a “significant, if partisan, find.”
On November 4th, 2016The Daily Beast wrote a non-factual and intentionally misleading article covering the Clinton-Silsby scandal. They accused Wikileaks of publicizing a “Reddit conspiracy theory” which was “riddled with incorrect information.” The author, Ben Collins neglected to do basic research on the totality of the links presented in the post as evidence. Mr. Collins attacked the policies of r/the_donald towards freedom of speech and accused the forum of being racist without citing extensive or definitive proof. At no point did The Daily Beast provide proof that the allegations were not true, and did not disprove any of the evidence submitted. A link to an extensive study of the case by the Harvard Human Rights Journal which clearly linked Bill Clinton to the scandal was totally ignored. They similarly failed to acknowledge or address emails published by Wikileaks between Hillary Clinton and her legal counsel which may potentially indicate that she violated State Department policy for the treatment of U.S. citizens arrested or detained abroad.
The Daily Beast is a holding of American media conglomerate InterActiveCorp. Chelsea Clinton, Vice President of the Clinton Foundation and daughter of Hillary and Bill Clinton, sits on InterActiveCorp’s Board of Directors. The proximity of the Clinton family to the organization responsible for oversight and direction of The Daily Beast raises questions about the publication’s journalistic independence and their commitment to factual and ethical reporting on current events and topics of public interest. Given their slanderous and incorrect reporting on the Clinton-Silsby scandal, it seems clear that they do not hold these values in high regard.
“Wall Street investment analyst Charles Ortel called the Clinton Foundation “the largest unprosecuted charity fraud ever attempted” before all the newly-exposed emails from campaign chairman John Podesta’s account were released from WikiLeaks.
The leaks have fortified his findings. The Wall Street investment analyst, who retired at 46 and prides himself on researching complex problems like General Electric and the credit crisis, has been fly-specking the Clinton Foundation since the spring of 2015.
Ortel explains why he believes the Clinton Foundation is a “crooked charity cooking the books” with over $2 billion dollars in revenue, in this exclusive video interview for The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Clintons, according to Ortel, have figured out how to turn their public service into a business. This charity is “a perfect gathering place and a front” to act as if you are helping others, when in fact they bring powerful people together, concocting deals and making people rich, including the Clintons, Ortel says.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 11/05/2016)
Part of a letter from FBI director James Comey to Congress on Nov. 6, 2016. Comey tells Congress that a review of the Clinton emails on Weiner’s laptop, “has not changed our conclusions” from earlier this year. (Credit: Jon Elswick/The Associated Press)
“When then-FBI Director James Comey announced he was closing the Hillary Clinton email investigation for a second time just days before the 2016 election, he certified to Congress that his agency had “reviewed all of the communications” discovered on a personal laptop used by Clinton’s closest aide, Huma Abedin, and her husband, Anthony Weiner.
At the time, many wondered how investigators managed over the course of one week to read the “hundreds of thousands” of emails residing on the machine, which had been a focus of a sex-crimes investigation of Weiner, a former Congressman.
Comey testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2017. (Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press)
Comey later told Congress that “thanks to the wizardry of our technology,” the FBI was able to eliminate the vast majority of messages as “duplicates” of emails they’d previously seen. Tireless agents, he claimed, then worked “night after night after night” to scrutinize the remaining material.
But virtually none of his account was true, a growing body of evidence reveals.
In fact, a technical glitch prevented FBI technicians from accurately comparing the new emails with the old emails.
Only 3,077 of the 694,000 emails were directly reviewed for classified or incriminating information.
Three FBI officials completed that work in a single 12-hour spurt the day before Comey again cleared Clinton of criminal charges.
“Most of the emails were never examined, even though they made up potentially 10 times the evidence” of what was reviewed in the original year-long case that Comey closed in July 2016, said a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation.
Yet even the “extremely narrow” search that was finally conducted, after more than a month of delay, uncovered more classified material sent and/or received by Clinton through her unauthorized basement server, the official said. Contradicting Comey’s testimony, this included highly sensitive information dealing with Israel and the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas. The former secretary of state, however, was never confronted with the sensitive new information and it was never analyzed for damage to national security.
Even though the unique classified material was improperly stored and transmitted on an unsecured device, the FBI did not refer the matter to U.S. intelligence agencies to determine if national security had been compromised, as required under a federally mandated “damage assessment” directive.
The newly discovered classified material “was never previously sent out to the relevant original classification authorities for security review,” the official, who spoke to RealClearInvestigations on the condition of anonymity, said.
(…) “Alexandra “Ali” Chalupa is a Democratic National Committee operative linked to Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and fake “whistleblower” / CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella.
…Chalupa admits she was involved in a plot to scan a number of state’s voting systems with Obama’s Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security [teamed up with a group] in what Chalupa says is a DC unit of the hacktivist group “Anonymous.”
The Chalupa confession that the DOJ and DHS were hacking into state’s voting systems without the state’s permission is troubling enough, but the added detail about federal agencies working with an unknown independent hacking group raises serious national and cybersecurity issues.
(…) That’s because the unauthorized intrusions into a number of state voting systems on Election Day were admitted to in a Facebook post by Alexandra Chalupa and then appears to be corroborated by reporting months later that shows a number of states seem to have had their voting system scanned by computers at the Department of Homeland Security.
(…) “On the day after the election, November 9th, 2016 Chalupa wrote a Facebook post that claims the vote was stolen by Trump and Russians.
Judicial Watch released 34 pages of “302” report material from FBI interviews with Bruce Ohr on August 8, 2019.
In a FBI 302 report dated November 22, 2016, Bruce Ohr states, “reporting on Trump’s ties to Russia were going to the Clinton Campaign, Jon Winer at the U.S. State Department and the FBI.”
TLDR: Poroshenko is the Ukrainian president whom Biden extorted. Right after Trump won in 2016, a Poroshenko aide offered to give DOJ incriminating information about Biden’s calls with Poroshenko. As fate would have it the aide’s info went to Weissmann who probably buried it all. https://t.co/NFvIpKJBhwpic.twitter.com/3vmcy3q0vm
Strangely, the official readout of Biden’s call with Poroshenko doesn’t mention anything about Biden’s assurances that the FBI won’t pursue the whistleblower complaint. pic.twitter.com/93rOaBSQw8
in contrast to Weissman’s dogged investigation of any potential Trump misdeed, Peter Carr of DOJ announced two weeks later (Dec 16) that had “no plans to have furthr meetings or communications with Onyshchenko” pic.twitter.com/tgBUUMndBO
Biden re-assured Poroshenko that the FBI had “stopped” and there was “no reason [for FBI] to talk to him again”. Biden undertook to “check that [with FBI] and confirm that with you”. pic.twitter.com/2Q4tz3EJp7
on same day that Biden was re-assuring Poroshenko he wouldn’t be troubled by FBI about tapes showing actual corruption, the FBI was insisting that [fabricated] Steele dossier allegations be included the ICA, then being drafted as a departing sabotage of incoming administration
four months before Telizhenko was sanctioned, Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian parliamentarian who opposed the Biden-Poroshenko regime in Ukraine in 2014-2016, was sanctioned by Mnuchin’s Treasury. His social media accounts were cancelled and his website taken offline.
the erasure of Derkach’s Biden-Poroshenko tapes and information took place only three weeks before the cancellation of Hunter Biden laptop and was even more thorough.
one obvious question: the Hunter Biden laptop story was cancelled because 51 or so intel “professionals” said it was “Russian disinformation”. But that was untrue. Was deprecation of Derkach as “Russian disinformation” any better founded? I don’t know, but surely a dig-here
“Documents declassified on Tuesday detail an intense debate between the CIA and FBI in late 2016 over the handling of information from Christopher Steele, with one CIA official telling the Senate Intelligence Committee that the former British spy’s allegations about Trump-Russia collusion were “very unvetted.”
Despite the CIA’s concerns about Steele’s allegations, the FBI successfully lobbied to include his information in an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. The bureau also continued using information from Steele to conduct surveillance against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Investigators have since debunked several of Steele’s allegations.
The newly declassified information is from a Senate Intelligence Committee report released on April 21 that detailed the creation of an ICA released on Jan. 6, 2017.
According to the Senate report, FBI investigators informed CIA analysts on Dec. 20, 2016 that the bureau wanted to include information from Steele in the ICA.
James Comey and Andrew McCabe, the FBI director and deputy director, respectively, negotiated with their counterparts at the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to include Steele’s information, saying that it was relevant to the question of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
But CIA officials and analysts told the Senate panel that they had deep reservations about the dossier, according to the newly declassified materials.
“We would have never included that report in a CIA-only assessment because the source was so indirect. And we made sure we indicated we didn’t use it in our analysis, and if it had been a CIA-only product we wouldn’t have included it at all,” the CIA’s deputy director of analysis told the Senate panel.” (The Daily Caller, 7/28/2020) (Archive)
“The Ministry of Truth was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” ~George Orwell
Late on Friday, with the US population embracing the upcoming holidays and oblivious of most news emerging from the administration, Obama quietly signed into law the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which authorizes $611 billion for the military in 2017.
“Today, I have signed into law S. 2943, the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017.” This Act authorizes fiscal year 2017 appropriations principally for the Department of Defense and for Department of Energy national security programs, provides vital benefits for military personnel and their families, and includes authorities to facilitate ongoing operations around the globe. It continues many critical authorizations necessary to ensure that we are able to sustain our momentum in countering the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and to reassure our European allies, as well as many new authorizations that, among other things, provide the Departments of Defense and Energy more flexibility in countering cyber-attacks and our adversaries’ use of unmanned aerial vehicles.”
Much of the balance of Obama’s statement blamed the GOP for Guantanamo’s continued operation and warned that “unless the Congress changes course, it will be judged harshly by history,” Obama said. Obama also said Congress failed to use the bill to reduce wasteful overhead (like perhaps massive F-35 cost overruns?) or modernize military health care, which he said would exacerbate budget pressures facing the military in the years ahead.
But while the passage of the NDAA – and the funding of the US military – was hardly a surprise, the biggest news is what was buried deep inside the provisions of the Defense Authortization Act.
Congressman Adam Kinzinger (Credit: public domain)
Congressman Ted Liu (Credit: public domain)
Recall that as we reported in early June, “a bill to implement the U.S.’ very own de facto Ministry of Truth had been quietly introduced in Congress. As with any legislation attempting to dodge the public spotlight the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 marks a further curtailment of press freedom and another avenue to stultify avenues of accurate information. Introduced by Congressmen Adam Kinzinger and Ted Lieu, H.R. 5181 seeks a “whole-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions” to counter “foreign disinformation and manipulation,” which they believe threaten the world’s “security and stability.”
Also called the Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016 (S. 2692), when introduced in March by Sen. Rob Portman, the legislation represents a dramatic return to Cold War-era government propaganda battles.“These countries spend vast sums of money on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities, targeted campaigns, funding of foreign political movements, and other efforts to influence key audiences and populations,” Portman explained, adding that while the U.S. spends a relatively small amount on its Voice of America, the Kremlin provides enormous funding for its news organization, RT.
“Surprisingly,” Portman continued, “there is currently no single U.S. governmental agency or department charged with the national level development, integration and synchronization of whole-of-government strategies to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.”
Long before the “fake news” meme became a daily topic of extensive conversation on such discredited mainstream portals as CNN and WaPo, H.R. 5181 would task the Secretary of State with coordinating the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to “establish a Center for Information Analysis and Response,” which will pinpoint sources of disinformation, analyze data, and — in true dystopic manner — ‘develop and disseminate’ “fact-based narratives” to counter effrontery propaganda.
In short, long before “fake news” became a major media topic, the US government was already planning its legally-backed crackdown on anything it would eventually label “fake news.”
* * *
Fast forward to December 8, when the “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” passed in the Senate, quietly inserted inside the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report.
And now, following Friday’s Obama signing of the NDAA on Friday evening, the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act is now law.
* * *
Here is the full statement issued by the generously funded Senator Rob Portman (R- Ohio) on the signing into law of a bill that further chips away at press liberties in the US, and which sets the stage for future witch hunts and website shutdowns, purely as a result of an accusation that any one media outlet or site is considered as a source of “disinformation and propaganda” and is shut down by the government.
Portman-Murphy Bill Promotes Coordinated Strategy to Defend America, Allies Against Propaganda and Disinformation from Russia, China & Others
Rob Portman (Credit: public domain)
U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) today announced that their Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act – legislation designed to help American allies counter foreign government propaganda from Russia, China, and other nations– has been signed into law as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report. The bipartisan bill, which was introduced by Senators Portman and Murphy in March, will improve the ability of the United States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation from our enemies by establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts
Senator Chris Murphy (Credit: public domain)
throughout the U.S. government. To support these efforts, the bill also creates a grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society and other experts outside government who are engaged in counter-propaganda related work. This will better leverage existing expertise and empower our allies overseas to defend themselves from foreign manipulation. It will also help foster a free and vibrant press and civil society overseas, which is critical to ensuring our allies have access to truthful information and inoculating people against foreign propaganda campaigns.
“Our enemies are using foreign propaganda and disinformation against us and our allies, and so far the U.S. government has been asleep at the wheel,” Portman said. “But today, the United States has taken a critical step towards confronting the extensive, and destabilizing, foreign propaganda and disinformation operations being waged against us by our enemies overseas. With this bill now law, we are finally signaling that enough is enough; the United States will no longer sit on the sidelines. We are going to confront this threat head-on. I am confident that, with the help of this bipartisan bill, the disinformation and propaganda used against us, our allies, and our interests will fail.”
“The use of propaganda to undermine democracy has hit a new low. But now we are finally in a position to confront this threat head on and get out the truth. By building up independent, objective journalism in places like eastern Europe, we can start to fight back by exposing these fake narratives and empowering local communities to protect themselves,” said Murphy. “I’m proud that our bill was signed into law, and I look forward to working with Senator Portman to make sure these tools and new resources are effectively used to get out the truth.”
NOTE: The bipartisan Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act is organized around two main priorities to help achieve the goal of combatting the constantly evolving threat of foreign disinformation from our enemies…
The first priority is developing a whole-of-government strategy for countering THE foreign propaganda and disinformation being wages against us and our allies by our enemies. The bill would increase the authority, resources, and mandate of the Global Engagement Center to include state actors like Russia and China as well as non-state actors. The Center will be led by the State Department, but with the active senior level participation of the Department of Defense, USAID, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the Intelligence Community, and other relevant agencies. The Center will develop, integrate, and synchronize whole-of-government initiatives to expose and counter foreign disinformation operations by our enemies and proactively advance fact-based narratives that support U.S. allies and interests.
Second, the legislation seeks to leverage expertise from outside government to create more adaptive and responsive U.S. strategy options. The legislation establishes a fund to help train local journalists and provide grants and contracts to NGOs, civil society organizations, think tanks, private sector companies, media organizations, and other experts outside the U.S. government with experience in identifying and analyzing the latest trends in foreign government disinformation techniques. This fund will complement and support the Center’s role by integrating capabilities and expertise available outside the U.S. government into the strategy-making process. It will also empower a decentralized network of private sector experts and integrate their expertise into the strategy-making process.
And so, with the likes of WaPo having already primed the general public to equate “Russian Propaganda” with “fake news” (despite admitting after the fact their own report was essentially “fake“), while the US media has indoctrinated the public to assume that any information which is not in compliance with the official government narrative, or dares to criticize the establishment, is also “fake news” and thus falls under the “Russian propaganda” umbrella, the scene is now set for the US government to legally crack down on every media outlet that the government deems to be “foreign propaganda.”
Just like that, the US Ministry of Truth is officially born.
“FBI employees discussed the January 5, 2017, briefing of Obama: “What’s the word on how O’s briefing went”? asked one employee, to which the other replied,
“Don’t know but people here are scrambling for info to support certain things and it’s a mad house.” “Trump was right. Still not put together…why do we do this to ourselves. What is wrong with these people.”
“Fiona Hill, who served as a top Russia adviser to President Donald Trump, testified at an impeachment hearing Thursday that a longtime Clinton insider showed her a copy of the Steele dossier a day before it was published by BuzzFeed News.
Hill testified that Strobe Talbott, the former president of the Brookings Institution, shared the salacious document with her on Jan. 9, 2017. At the time, Hill was a director at Brookings, a left-of-center foreign policy think tank. She joined the Trump White House in early 2017 as senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council.
A day after Hill’s exchange with Talbott, BuzzFeed published the dossier, which was authored by former British spy Christopher Steele and funded by the Clinton campaign and DNC.
Hillary Clinton and Strobe Talbott (Credit: Getty Images)
Hill’s testimony establishes yet another link between Steele’s dossier work and Clinton world. Talbott is a longtime Clinton associate who served in the Bill Clinton administration in the1990s. His brother-in-law is Cody Shearer, a Clinton-linked operative who is the author of a Trump dossier of his own that closely mirrors allegations made by Steele.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 11/21/2019)(Archive)
In an October 24, 2019 court filing by Flynn attorney Sidney Powell, on page 15 she requests the phone records of James Clapper to confirm his contacts with Washington Post reporter, David Ignatius. In particular, she’s interested in getting a copy of a letter that Clapper sent to Ignatius, dated January 10, 2017, where Clapper asks that he “take the kill shot” on Lt. General Michael Flynn.
Two days later, an article by Ignatius appears in the WaPo, dated January 12, 2017, titled “Why Did Obama Dawdle on Russia’s Hacking?” In it he writes the possible “kill shot” and keep in mind, Ignatius allegedly had the transcripts of Flynn’s calls with Kislyak, thanks to the possible leak by ONA Director, Col. James H. Baker (see below).
Ignatius writes with attached links:
“Question 3: What discussions has the Trump team had with Russian officials about future relations? Trump said Wednesday that his relationship with President Vladimir Putin is “an asset, not a liability.” Fair enough, but until he’s president, Trump needs to let Obama manage U.S.-Russia policy.
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s choice for national security adviser, cultivates close Russian contacts. He has appeared on Russia Today and received a speaking fee from the cable network, which was described in last week’s unclassified intelligence briefing on Russian hacking as “the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet.”
According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking. What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about “disputes” with the United States. Was its spirit violated?
The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
If the Trump team’s contacts helped discourage the Russians from a counter-retaliation, maybe that’s a good thing. But we ought to know the facts.”(Read more: The Washington Post, 1/12/2017)
James Clapper, now a CNN contributor and outspoken critic of President Trump, is known for falsely testifying in front of Congress in March 2013 that the National Security Agency does not collect data from millions of Americans. (Credit: Graeme Jennings/Getty Images)
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius listens to introductions before his interview with Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, hosted by the Center on International Cooperation, at New York University, April 29, 2015. (Credit: Richard Drew/The Associated Press)
Within the small group conducting the 2016 FBI investigation of the Trump campaign, the Steele Dossier was called “Crown Material“. A name relating to Christopher Steele’s British intelligence position. [James Comey testimony to congress]
The “Crown Material” has become more interesting recently against the backdrop of U.S. Attorney John Durham seeking the documents and communication from former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey [SEE HERE] where John Brennan wanted the Crown Material (Steele Dossier) included the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment.
However, there’s a coded email from Lisa Page, on January 10th, 2017, that might prove to be even more valuable for Mr. Durham as he investigates a possible conspiracy therein:
Note the highlighted box text in the email from Peter Strzok to members of the small group.
“CNN update – Per Rich, CNN to publish C material today betweeen 4 and 5″
The “C material” is a reference to “Crown Material”, and when put into context of the date and email participants this tells a remarkably explosive story.
FBI lawyer Lisa Page is forwarding an origination email from Peter Strzok and informing the FBI small group: Peter Strzok, Bill Priestap, Jonathan Moffa and Jennifer Boone, that “We have lots of details from [Mike] Kortan” for a briefing at 3:45 pm on January 10th.
“Kortan” is FBI Asst. Director of Media Comms Michael Kortan, who appears in multiple emails and text messages coordinating communication with the small group media allies.
However, for the context of this specific email, Peter Strzok has initiated contact with CNN to leak a story… and Strzok is informing the group that CNN will publish the “C Material”, or a story predicated on the Steele Dossier, on January 10th, 2017, between 4 and 5 pm. That is Jake Tappers’ hour for broadcast.
What “C Material” did FBI Agent Peter Strzok leak to CNN, that FBI Spokesperson Mike Kortan confirmed for the FBI?
Here’s the January 10th, 2017, story from Tapper. WATCH:
There is no doubt the FBI small group shared the information about the Steele Dossier with the CNN stenographers in a collaborative effort to generate the illusion of enhanced credibility for the Steele Dossier; a document they knew was demonstrably fraudulent, yet they relied upon it for the Carter Page FISA application.
That would be a clear “conspiracy”.
I find it curious that IG Horowitz could not find this email in his latest investigation.
Additionally, the Lisa Page FBI email, highlighting an internal “conspiracy”, becomes even more interesting when overlaying the third conspiracy referral previously mentioned by Devin Nunes:
The third conspiracy referral is less specific and pertains to evidence collected that shows a small group of government officials engaged in “global classified intelligence leaks” to the U.S. media and other entities and/or persons. (link)
My hunch is that email from Lisa Page is part of the evidence Nunes collected to show how the FBI manufactured “global classified intelligence leaks” to U.S. media.
Sir Mark Lyall Grant resigns as UK’s National Security Advisor in February 2017. (Credit: Reuters)
On page 30 of Sidney Powell’s most recent court filing on behalf of Lt. General Flynn, she states there is a letter written by the UK’s National Security Advisor, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, that questions Christopher Steele’s credibility, undermines Russiagate, and it is being suppressed. The letter was hand-delivered to the incoming National Security team in New York. Powell writes:
(…) The FBI had been warned the previous summer that Hillary Clinton’s campaign may have planted the false Russia collusion story as a way to “vilify” Trump and distract from her email scandal, and agents were about to interview Steele’s primary sub-source, who would discount much of the information in the dossier attributed to him as bar talk and unconfirmed rumor not worthy of official intelligence.
And the larger intelligence community had decided it did not want to vouch for the Steele dossier in its official Intelligence Community Assessment about Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
It was in that environment in the final days of the Obama administration that Clapper had written Comey earlier on Jan. 11, 2017 to inform the FBI that Clapper had decided to release a public statement declaring that the Steele dossier was only mentioned in an appendix to the intel community’s report because the “IC has not made any judgment that the information in the document is reliable.”
Comey tried to push back, suggesting Steele was deemed reliable (he actually had been terminated by the FBI for leaking by that time) and that his network included sources that might be in a position to know things (although the key source had already disavowed the information attributed to him in the dossier).
Then Comey added the line that undercut his argument: “That said, we are not able to sufficiently corroborate the reporting to include it in the body of the report.”
(…) The FBI’s probe of the Clinton Foundation is actually a compartmentalized investigation. Field offices in Los Angeles and New York are spearheading the case but other offices are involved and contributing, sources said.
According to federal sources, transactions linked to Clinton corporate holdings have raised several regulatory eyebrows even beyond of the Justice Department, specifically in the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury that reports to the Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. FinCEN’s mission is to combat and pinpoint money laundering for personal profit or underwriting terrorism through the collection, analysis, and dissemination of financial intelligence and strategic use of financial authorities, namely banks and investment houses.
According to federal sources, FinCEN is warehousing numerous Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) forwarded to Treasury from financial institutions for transactions from Clinton-owned entities, both in the United States and globally, all triggered by anti-money laundering safeguards. These reports are confidential but federal agents are using these filings as key pieces to the Clinton Foundation financial puzzle.
According to details gleaned from FinCEN, federal agents acknowledge the Clinton Foundation operates a menagerie of subsidiaries and corporate structures beyond the parent charity. According to law enforcement sources, the FinCEN revelations coupled with the emails recovered by the NYPD detail a complex myriad of shell corporations linked to the Clintons and their charity. FBI sources describe these financial entanglements as vast and global. And many defy normal operating procedures of legitimate charities, officials said.
Has the Clinton Foundation underwritten or profited from linked terror groups per the intelligence warehoused in FinCEN’s vast Treasury database? It is distinctly possible the Clinton Foundation has conducted business — knowingly or not — with terror-backed financial concerns or groups, federal agents said, especially because these are the exact suspicious transactions the U.S. Treasury mandates compliance and security officials in U.S. financial institutions to report to FinCEN under threat of hefty fines and imprisonment.
Triggered by such anti-money laundering controls, federal investigators, for example, said they have examined a Clinton-affiliated offshore entity that essentially is a multi-million dollar private for-profit equity firm operated like an unsanctioned U.S. hedge fund outside the regulatory reach of the Securities and Exchange Commission. That for-profit business however, is controlled by New York-based Clinton Foundation, a not-for-profit registered charity. Also, while the profits of the offshore company are taxable in its foreign domicile, the parent company — the Clinton Foundation — is exempt from the same annual taxes in the United States.
Likewise, because the affiliate of the Clinton Foundation operates as a private offshore company, no one — including regulators in the United States — is privy to its clients, its investments or whether it perhaps served as a front company to secretly commission pay-for-play political schemes and favors during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
The challenge for the investigators? The Clinton Foundation and family have dozens of such affiliates and companies, an intricate corporate tapestry confusing to outsiders and intentionally complex by design.That’s why FBI agents in more than five separate field offices are working this case, federal sources said.” (Read more: The True Pundit, 1/15/2017)(Archive)
Obama hugs Hillary Clinton after speaking at the Democratic National Convention in July 2016. (Credit: CNN)
In 2022, Bloomberg’s Jason Leopold obtained a transcript of a secret briefing that Barack Obama held with a group referred to in the transcript as “progressive journalists.” The meeting took place during the final days of the Obama administration on January 17, 2017.
A Bloombergarticle regarding the secret meeting focused on the part of the briefing in which Obama alleviated the journalist’s concerns about a potential Trump presidency. Obama stated that a one-term Trump presidency was no big deal because Trump’s breach of the “norms” could be remedied, whereas eight years of norm breaking posed a genuine threat.
Leopold later sent out a tweet promoting the Bloomberg article. It mentioned that he would post the transcript; however, it was only posted a few days ago. Many thanks to our friend Stephen McIntyre for bringing it to our attention.
The transcript, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, spans 21 pages. The most intriguing revelations have, to date, remained unreported. In particular, the transcript reveals a strategy employed by Obama to repeatedly implant the Russia collusion narrative in the minds of the attending journalists. In fact, Obama addressed the Russia collusion hoax on four distinct occasions during the meeting.
Obama blames media for not embracing Russia collusion narrative
Obama suggests that Trump uses third parties to communicate with Putin
Obama implies that Trump received payoffs from Russia
Obama insinuates that Putin has influence over Trump
On June 21, 2013, Obama and Comey applaud outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller after Obama announces his nomination of Mr. Comey to the same office. (Credit: Michael Reynolds/EU Press)
Recent revelations reveal that Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s team was out to “get Trump”:
An FBI agent who played a lead role investigating Michael Flynn told the Justice Department there was never evidence of wrongdoing by the retired general or Russian collusion by President Trump, but the probe was kept open by Special Counsel Robert Mueller because his team had a “get Trump” goal, according to an explosive interview released Friday.
(…) In spite of the Left and Deep State efforts to distance and isolate the Obama-Biden White House from James Comey, Andy McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bob Mueller’s phony investigation meant to “get Trump,” we have seen a steady stream of stories and information tying the Obama-Biden White House to the scheme. One of those stories, that Mueller’s team accidentally wiped their phones, prompted the ACLJ to submit yet another FOIA request just last week.
Yet now we know and can report that new documents turned over to the ACLJ through our FOIA litigation over Comey’s spies placed in the White House show that President Obama’s White House Counsel emailed Comey and McCabe the day before Inauguration Day, and attached a letter. The FBI has withheld the actual letter from us, and we will be challenging that in court. Here is what the records we obtained actually show:
On January 19, 2017 (the night before the President Trump’s Inauguration) at 9:52 PM, James Comey emails his General Counsel James Baker an “FYI” and an attached pdf “Letter.” The email is marked TOP SECRET. The email is a forwarded email that Neil Eggleston, President Obama’s White House Counsel, had sent to Comey and McCabe earlier that day, with the subject line “[TOP SECRET, Record],” and an attached Letter, and says, “Director and Deputy Director – Please see the attached letter.”
Another FBI record the ACLJ obtained in this FOIA lawsuit shows that a meeting was organized by James Comey with a participant whose name has been redacted. That meeting was set for April 10, 2017, at 1:00 pm, in Room 7062 (the 7th floor). The redacted name of the person with whom Comey set the meeting notice could only be a communication with or about, or regarding Anthony Ferrante, Jordan Rae Kelly, or Tashina Gauhar, in order for it to be responsive to the ACLJ’s request.”
(…) “Two U.S. officials briefed on the inspector general’s investigation of possible FBI misconduct said Comey was essentially “running a covert operation against” the president, starting with a private “defensive briefing” he gave Trump just weeks before his inauguration. They said Horowitz has examined high-level FBI text messages and other communications indicating Comey was actually conducting a “counterintelligence assessment” of Trump during that meeting in New York.
Anthony Ferrante speaks at the International Conference on Cyber Security at Fordham College, August 2019. (Credit: Chris Taggart)
In addition to adding notes of his meetings and phone calls with Trump to the official FBI case file, Comey had an agent inside the White House who reported back to FBI headquarters about Trump and his aides, according to other officials familiar with the matter.
Although Comey took many actions on his own, he was not working in isolation. One focus of Horowitz’s inquiry is the private Jan. 6, 2017, briefing Comey gave the president-elect in New York about material in the Democratic-commissioned dossier compiled by ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Reports of that meeting were used days later by BuzzFeed, CNN, and other outlets as a news hook for reporting on the dossier’s lascivious and unsubstantiated claims.
Comey’s meeting with Trump took place one day after the FBI director met in the Oval Office with President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to discuss how to brief Trump — a meeting attended by National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who would soon go to work for CNN.
Jordan Rae Kelly and Robert Mueller (Credit: public domain)
At the same time Comey was personally scrutinizing the president during meetings in the White House and phone conversations from the FBI, he had an agent inside the White House working on the Russia investigation, where he reported back to FBI headquarters about Trump and his aides, according to officials familiar with the matter. The agent, Anthony Ferrante, who specialized in cybercrime, left the White House around the same time Comey was fired and soon joined a security consulting firm, where he contracted with BuzzFeed to lead the news site’s efforts to verify the Steele dossier, in connection with a defamation lawsuit.
Knowledgeable sources inside the Trump White House say Comey carved out an extraordinary new position for Ferrante, which allowed him to remain on reserve status at the FBI while working in the White House as a cybersecurity adviser.
“In an unprecedented action, Comey created a new FBI reserve position for Ferrante, enabling him to have an ongoing relationship with the agency, retaining his clearances and enabling him to come back in [to bureau headquarters],” said a former National Security Council official who requested anonymity.
“Between the election and April 2017, when Ferrante finally left the White House, the Trump NSC division supervisor was not allowed to get rid of Ferrante,” he added, “and Ferrante continued working — in direct conflict with the no-contact policy between the White House and the Department of Justice.”
Through a spokeswoman at FTI Consulting, which maintains the BuzzFeedcontract, Ferrante declined to comment.
Another FBI official, Jordan Rae Kelly, who worked closely with Mueller when he headed the bureau, replaced Ferrante upon his White House exit (though she signed security logs for him to continue entering the White House as a visitor while he was working for BuzzFeed). Kelly left the White House last year and joined Ferrante at FTI Consulting.
Working with Comey liaison Ferrante at the NSC in early 2017 was another Obama holdover — Tashina Gauhar, who remains a top national security adviser at the Justice Department.
In January 2017, Gauhar assisted former acting Attorney General Sally Yates in the Flynn investigation. Later, she helped Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein resist, initially, Trump’s order to fire Comey. Gauhar also took copious notes during her meetings with White House lawyers, which were cited by Mueller in the section of his report dealing with obstruction of justice.” (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 7/22/2019)
“Former FBI Director James Comey had an inside man at the White House, feeding the bureau information about President Trump and his aides in 2017.
Now this individual, who after leaving the government was hired by BuzzFeed to verify parts of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier, may be tied to an investigation into alleged surveillance abuses by the DOJ and the FBI being conducted by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
This previously unreported mole in the White House appears in a new report by RealClearInvestigations that explored possible misconduct by Comey for what two U.S. officials described as essentially “running a covert operation against” the president even as he was assuring Trump he was not the subject of any investigation.
Anthony Ferrante, a longtime FBI official, worked as a cybersecurity adviser on the National Security Council. Officials said Ferrante was working in the White House even while the FBI held him on reserve status. All the while, he was sharing information about Trump and his aides back to FBI headquarters.
One former National Security Council official said Ferrante’s unique position was highly irregular.
“In an unprecedented action, Comey created a new FBI reserve position for Ferrante, enabling him to have an ongoing relationship with the agency, retaining his clearances and enabling him to come back in [to bureau headquarters],” the official said, adding that the NSC division supervisor was “not allowed to get rid of Ferrante” and that the arrangement appeared to be “in direct conflict with the no-contact policy between the White House and the Department of Justice.”
“FBI Agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka interviewed National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on January 24, 2017. According to documents presented in the court case, agent Peter Strzok did the questioning and agent Joe Pientka took most of the notes.
Following the interview agent Pientka then took his hand-written notes and generated an official FD-302; an FBI report of the interview itself. There has been a great deal of debate over the first draft, the original FD-302 as it was written by Joe Pientka. In the case against Flynn the DOJ prosecutors never presented the original Pientka 302.
On May 2, 2017, the DOJ, using new information gathered by U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, declassified and released a segment of James Comey testimony that was previously hidden. Within the transcript Comey says Pientka wrote the Flynn 302 on January 24th immediately following the interview. Screengrab below – (pdf here).
That January 24, 2017, version of the 302 is the one that has gone missing.
(Timeline editor’s note: I’m including recently released text messages between Strzok and Page that may have relevance to this time)
People defending the FBI have even said it never existed. However, the testimony of FBI Director James Comey proves the 302 was drafted on January 24th.
Additionally, recent evidence from Brady material turned over to the defense by auditing attorney Jeff Jensen showed FBI lawyer Lisa Page and FBI Agent Peter Strzok rewriting, editing and shaping the 302 on February 10, 2017, more than two weeks later:
Lisa Page is “pissed off” because Peter Strzok previously edited the 302 and she says he “didn’t even attempt to make this cogent and readable.”
Peter Strzok replies back to Lisa Page that he was “trying to completely re-write the thing so as to save Joe’s voice” because Joe Pientka was the actual author.
Peter Strzok is re-writing the interview notes of Pientka in order to construct the framework to accuse Flynn of lying. Lisa Page is editing the re-write to make it more cogent and readable.
The question has remained: Where is the original 302 report as written by Pientka?
While the question(s) around the missing original 302 have yet to be reconciled, one possible path to discover its location and a copy of its original content lies in the testimony of Sally Yates. Former DAG Sally Yates testified to Congress that after the Flynn interview DOJ-National Security Division:
“The DOJ-National Security Division received a detailed readout from the FBI agents who had interviewed Flynn.” Yates said she felt “it was important to get this information to the White House as quickly as possible.”
Yates is describing the Pientka 302. The Pientka 302 could have been received at the DOJ-NSD later in the evening of January 24th, or perhaps the morning of the 25th. Either is possible because Yates was having meetings about the topic.
The calendar of DOJ-NSD Associate Deputy AG Tashina Gauhar shows meetings with Sally Yates which align with the discussions of the Flynn interview and Yates receiving a summary on the 24th and the detail on the 25th:
In the DOJ motion to dismiss the case against Flynn, the records indicate Yates received a summary of the interview the night of the 24th, and the full detailed record came on the morning of January 25th:
Aligning with what Sally Yates previously described, James Comey admits the FD-302 draft was written on January 24th, exactly as Sally Yates is describing:
Together with DOJ-NSD head Mary McCord, Sally Yates used the 302 from Joe Pientka to travel to the White House on January 26th and brief White House counsel Don McGahn about the Flynn interview contrast against the content of the previously captured call between Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Lt. Gen Mike Flynn.
If the FBI search for the original Pientka 302 is mysteriously impossible, perhaps the DOJ should go and get the version that was received by the DOJ-NSD on the evening of January 24th, or the morning of January 25th, 2017.
Sally Yates had the original Pientka FD-302 report
Yates testimony below:
•WednesdayJanuary 25th, 2017, – The Department of Justice, National Security Division, (at this timeframe Mary McCord was head of the DOJ-NSD) – received a detailed readout from the FBI agents who had interviewed Flynn. Yates said she felt “it was important to get this information to the White House as quickly as possible.”
•ThursdayJanuary 26th – (morning) Sally Yates called White House Counsel Don McGahn first thing that morning to tell him she had “a very sensitive matter” that had to be discussed face to face. McGahn agreed to meet with Yates later that afternoon.
•Thursday January 26th – (afternoon) Sally Yates traveled to the White House along with a senior member of the DOJ’s National Security Division, “who was overseeing the matter”, that is Mary McCord. This was Yates’ first meeting with McGahn in his office, which also acts as a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF).
Yates said she began their meeting by laying out the media accounts and media statements made by Vice President Mike Pence and other high-ranking White House officials about General Flynn’s activity “that we knew not to be the truth.”
According to Sally Yates testimony, she and Mary McCord presented all the information to McGahn so the White House could take action that they deemed appropriate. When asked by McGahn if Flynn should be fired, Yates answered, “that really wasn’t our call.”
Yates also said her decision to notify the White House counsel had been discussed “at great length.” According to her testimony: “Certainly leading up to our notification on the 26th, it was a topic of a whole lot of discussion in DOJ and with other members of the intel community.”
•Friday January 27th – (morning) White House Counsel Don McGahn called Yates in the morning and asked if she could come back to his office.
•Friday January 27th – (late afternoon) According to her testimony, Sally Yates returned to the White House late that afternoon. One of McGahn’s topics discussed was whether Flynn could be prosecuted for his conduct.
Specifically, according to Yates, one of the questions *McGahn asked Yates: “Why does it matter to DOJ if one White House official lies to another?” She explained that it “was a whole lot more than that,” and reviewed the same issues outlined the prior day.
McGahn then expressed his concern that taking any action might interfere with the FBI investigation of Flynn, and Yates said it wouldn’t: “It wouldn’t really be fair of us to tell you this and then expect you to sit on your hands,” Yates claims to have told McGahn.
McGahn asked if he could look at the underlying evidence of Flynn’s conduct, and she said they would work with the FBI over the weekend and “get back with him on Monday morning.”
•Friday January 27th, 2017 – (evening) In what appears to be only a few hours later, President Trump is having dinner with FBI Director James Comey where President Trump asked if he was under investigation. Trump was, but to continue the auspices of the ongoing investigation, Comey lied and told him he wasn’t.
Sally Yates received the original Flynn 302 (January 25th) and then went to the White House and informed Don McGahn (January 26th) about the nature of the interview.
The Flynn 302 was edited by Page and Strzok on February 10th. The 302 was changed and altered to match the FBI claims of a discrepancy. Flynn was fired on Feb 13th. The Flynn 302 was debated again on Feb 14th and entered into the record on February 15th.
Sally Yates was fired, and later testified to congress on May 8, 2017. She modified her testimony to avoid an admission that she held the original 302; likely because she knew the 302 was rewritten in February.
Christopher Steele leaves the High Court in London following a hearing in the libel case brought against him by Russian businessman Aleksej Gubarev, July 22, 2020. A key sub-source for material in the Steele dossier has been unmasked: Igor Danchenko, a Ukraine-born think-tank analyst. (Credit: Victoria Jones/PA/AP)
(…) Danchenko was another matter. The FBI first interviewed him in late January 2017 after he was identified as Steele’s subsource. His interview was documented on an electronic communication, or EC, an internal FBI communication, and not on an FD-302, which is used to document interviews of witnesses. Nor was it logged on a specific source report form. Since it was made under a proffer agreement with his attorney present — meaning nothing he said could be used directly against him in court — Danchenko must have believed he was in legal jeopardy. This would make him not a traditional source, and certainly not someone who would be promised confidentiality indefinitely. If he continued cooperating with the FBI after the initial interview, he would have been considered a cooperating witness. Yes, the FBI would try to protect his identity, but no promises would be made — and not forever.
Critics who claim that Attorney General William Barr has recklessly declassified this FBI electronic communication, putting Danchenko and other sources — and future source operations — in peril are wrong. Steele was a “non-U.S. Person,” and not an FBI source when he was de facto working for the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign to develop opposition research against Donald Trump. Steele subcontracted this work to Danchenko, also not a government agent or source, who, by his own admission during the FBI interview, provided what he categorized as “bar talk over beers” back to Steele. The fact that this kind of information in an FBI communication was classified as “secret” in the first place is unexplainable. How is bar talk by a collection of drinking friends a threat to the national security of the United States, the very description of what constitutes “secret” information?
The information that Danchenko provided was the last nail in the coffin of the Steele dossier, and it created a serious dilemma for the FBI. A substantial portion of the Russia collusion narrative, and all of the evidence used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, was no longer viable.” (Read more: The Hill, 8/01/2020)(Archive)
Barely two weeks after Donald Trump took office, Eric Ciaramella – the CIA analyst whose name was recently linked in a tweet by the president and mentioned by lawmakers as the anonymous “whistleblower” who touched off Trump’s impeachment – was overheard in the White House discussing with another staffer how to remove the newly elected president from office, according to former colleagues.
Sources told RealClearInvestigations the staffer with whom Ciaramella was speaking was Sean Misko. Both were Obama administration holdovers working in the Trump White House on foreign policy and national security issues. And both expressed anger over Trump’s new “America First” foreign policy, a sea change from President Obama’s approach to international affairs.
“Just days after he was sworn in they were already talking about trying to get rid of him,” said a White House colleague who overheard their conversation.
“They weren’t just bent on subverting his agenda,” the former official added. “They were plotting to actually have him removed from office.”
Sean Misko (Credit: Center For a New American Century)
Misko left the White House last summer to join House impeachment manager Adam Schiff’s committee, where sources say he offered “guidance” to the whistleblower, who has been officially identified only as an intelligence officer in a complaint against Trump filed under whistleblower laws. Misko then helped run the impeachment inquiry based on that complaint as a top investigator for congressional Democrats.
(…) Two former co-workers said they overheard Ciaramella and Misko, close friends and Democrats held over from the Obama administration, discussing how to “take out,” or remove, the new president from office within days of Trump’s inauguration. These co-workers said the president’s controversial Ukraine phone call in July 2019 provided the pretext they and their Democratic allies had been looking for.
“They didn’t like his policies,” another former White House official said. “They had a political vendetta against him from Day One.”
Their efforts were part of a larger pattern of coordination to build a case for impeachment, involving Democratic leaders as well as anti-Trump figures both inside and outside of government.
All unnamed sources for this article spoke only on the condition that they not be further identified or described. Although strong evidence points to Ciaramella as the government employee who lodged the whistleblower complaint, he has not been officially identified as such. As a result, this article makes a distinction between public information released about the unnamed whistleblower/CIA analyst and specific information about Ciaramella.” (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 1/22/2020)(Archive)
“The piecemeal release of FBI files in the Russia collusion investigation has masked an essential fact: James Comey’s G-men had substantially debunked the theory that Donald Trump’s campaign conspired with Moscow by the time the 45th president was settling into the Oval Office, according to declassified memos, court filings, and interviews.
And that means a nascent presidency and an entire nation were put through two more years of lacerating debate over an issue that was mostly resolved in January 2017 inside the bureau’s own evidence files. The proof is now sitting in plain view.
In rapid-fire sequence in January 2017, U.S. officials:
received multiple warnings about the credibility of informant Christopher Steele and his dossier;
affirmed key targets of the FBI counterintelligence investigation made exculpatory statements denying collusion to undercover sources;
concluded retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, was not engaged in collusion with the Russians.
The latter revelation has mostly escaped much notice, contained in a single sentence in a once-sealed court motion filed by Flynn defense attorney Sidney Powell that requested what is known as Brady material, or evidence of innocence.
Sidney Powell appears on Fox News on November 6, 2019 to discuss the FBI admission that it has for years misattributed authorship of the notes used in preparing the FBI 302 interview summaries that were themselves altered to incriminate Flynn. (Credit: Fox News)
That motion dated Sept. 11, 2019 requested access to “an internal DOJ document dated January 30, 2017, in which the FBI exonerated Mr. Flynn of being ‘an agent of Russia.’”
Flynn’s motion is confirmed by a 2018 letter obtained by Just the News between Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office and defense lawyers. It shows the DOJ exoneration memo was written after Flynn had been interviewed by FBI agents in January 2017 and after the government learned the former Defense Intelligence Agency chief had kept his old agency briefed on his contacts with Russia, something that weighed heavily against the notion he was aiding Moscow.
“According to an internal DOJ memo dated January 30, 2017, after the Jan. 24 interview, the FBI advised that based on the interview the FBI did not believe Flynn was acting as an agent of Russia,” Mueller’s team wrote in the letter.” (Read more: Just the News, 3/11/2020)(Archive)
“A few people have started looking at the connections behind Mark Zaid, the attorney for CIA “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella. What is starting to emerge is evidence of what CTH outlined yesterday; the current impeachment process is part of a coup continuum, and everything around the whistleblower is part of a long-ago planned and pre-constructed operation.
This 2017 tweet by the whistleblowers’ attorney is evidence of what we were sharing yesterday. A point that almost everyone is missing…what is happening now with Adam Schiff and his Lawfare-contracted legal aide, Daniel Goldman, was designed last year. The current HPSCI legislative impeachment process and every little aspect within it is the execution of a plan, just like the DOJ/FBI plan was before it in 2016, 2017, and 2018.
Mark Zaid (Credit: MSNBC)
The use of a ‘whistle-blower’ was pre-planned long ago. The agreements between Schiff, Lawfare and the CIA ‘whistle-blower’ were pre-planned. The changing of whistle-blower rules to assist the plan was designed long ago.
Adam Schiff and Daniel Goldman are executing a plan concocted long ago. None of the testimony is organic; all of it was planned a long time ago, long before anyone knew the names Marie Yovanovitch, Kurt Volker, Gordon Sondland or Bill Taylor. All of this is the coordinated execution of a plan.
“The anti-Trump members of the National Security Council and U.S. State Department were always going to be used. Throughout 2018 and 2019 embeds in the ‘resistance’ network were awaiting instructions and seeding evidence, useful information, to construct an impeachment narrative that was designed to detonate later.
When Bill Taylor is texting Gordon Sondland about a quid-pro-quo, and Sondland is reacting with ‘wtf are you talking about’, Taylor was texting by design. He was manufacturing evidence for the narrative. This was all a set-up. All planned.
When Marie Yovanovitch shows up to give her HPSCI deposition to Daniel Goldman with three high-priced DC lawyers: Lawrence Robbins, Laurie Rubenstein and Rachel Li Wai Suen, having just sent her statements to the Washington Post for deployment immediately prior to her appearance, Yovanovitch is doing so by design. All planned.
Here is another example from Mark Zaid, attorney for the “Whistleblower”, just ten days after the inauguration of President Trump where he directly calls out an ongoing “coup“:
This mention of the “coup has started” is even more nefarious, and even more specific to a CTH warning, because Zaid is specifically noting that Dana Boente was/is part of the effort.
Why is that name important? Because Dana Boente is currently FBI chief legal counsel, hired into the FBI in January 2018. Boente is dirty.
In April of this year we outlined the evidence to show how Dana Boente was a dirty cop [SEE HERE]; and then in June of this year HPSCI ranking member Devin Nunes threatened to send criminal referrals for FBI Director Christopher Wray and FBI counsel Dana Boente [SEE HERE].
“Former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was one of Fusion GPS’s “most helpful” resources in an effort to raise money after the 2016 election to continue investigating President Donald Trump, the co-founders of the opposition research firm revealed in a book released on Nov. 26.
Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, the co-founders of Fusion GPS, wrote in “Crime in Progress” that Podesta provided welcome support in early 2017 for an effort to raise money to fund The Democracy Integrity Project (TDIP), a nonprofit group former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer Daniel Jones created on Jan. 31, 2017.
Podesta agreed during a meeting with Simpson in early 2017 to contact potential donors to help arrange meetings with Fusion GPS and Jones, according to the book.
“In mid-February [2017] and then again in early March, Jones — supported by Fritsch and Simpson — took prospecting trips in the West. They didn’t know the tech community well, so before heading out, they sought some door openers and validators from the world they knew best,” the authors wrote.
“One of the most helpful” resources turned out to be Podesta, according to Simpson and Fritsch.
“Podesta agreed to contact some friends out west on Jones’s behalf and told him to drop his name in talks with other potential supporters,” they said. “It was a brave gesture: He could have easily chosen to stay out of it altogether, given the fact that he had served as Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 12/02/2019)(Archive)
“Last month the DOJ admitted to the FISA court that two of the four FISA warrants used against Carter Page were fraudulently obtained.
However, what the DOJ did not admit publicly was how the current FBI Chief Legal Counsel, Dana Boente, participated in obtaining the April 2017 warrant. In hindsight, this story explains the ongoing issues within the FBI.
The original FISA application was October 21st, 2016. The first FISA renewal was January 12, 2017 (84 days from origination) and prior to the inauguration of President Trump. The second renewal was April 7, 2017 (85 days from prior renewal). The third renewal was on June 29th, 2017 (83 days from prior renewal).
The originating FISA and first renewal were authorized by the Obama administration officials. However, it was the second renewal -now identified as fraudulent- on April 7th 2017, under the Trump administration, when the conniving FBI ran into a problem.
Here’s what happened.
On January 30th, 2017, Sally Yates was fired for refusing to defend the Trump travel ban from extremist countries. Yates was replaced on January 31st by the U.S. Attorney from the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA), Dana Boente. There wasn’t an existing AG because Loretta Lynch had left.
As a result of Yates exit and Dana Boente’s entry, Boente was Acting Deputy Attorney General, and in charge until Jeff Sessions was confirmed on February 8th, 2017.
On February 9th, 2017, President Trump issued executive order 13775 changing the line of DOJ succession, moving the EDVA up, and granting Boente the full legal authority to carry out the duties of the Deputy AG until a permanent replacement was confirmed.
When Jeff Sessions became Attorney General, Dana Boente became Acting Deputy AG, a role Boente would retain until Rod Rosenstein was confirmed on April 25th, 2017. (Note: Boente also remained EDVA U.S. Attorney)
On March 2nd, 2017, Dana Boente was one of a small group who participated in a conversation that led to the recusal of Jeff Sessions from anything related to the 2016 election. This recusal included the ongoing FBI counterintelligence investigation known as Crossfire Hurricane, which was later picked up by Robert Mueller.
The other attendees for the recusal decision-making meeting (see above schedule) included Sessions’ chief of staff Jody Hunt; Criminal Chief in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland, Jim Crowell; Deputy Assistant Attorney General (DAAG) in the Department of Justice National Security Division Tash Gauhar (FISA lawyer); and Associate Deputy Attorney General Scott Schools. [Note: Tash Gauhar was lawyer for FBI Clinton case; and Scott Schools was part of drafting Clinton exoneration letter.]
Boente, Crowell, Gauhar and Schools convinced AG Jeff Sessions he must recuse himself. In hindsight each of the people giving Sessions advice was connected to previously corrupt activity within Main Justice that included the Clinton and Spygate operations. Not knowing the conflict each advisor was carrying Sessions took their advice and recused himself; a big mistake.
With AG Jeff Sessions recused from anything involving the 2016 election; which included the Russia investigation; effective the evening of March 2, 2017, FBI Director James Comey now reported to Acting Deputy AG Dana Boente.
Technically, as this point in March 2017 Boente is still U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) and is only ‘acting’ as Deputy AG. With Sessions recused Boente would be needed when the Carter Page FISA would be up for renewal (April, 2017).
With Sessions recused from the Russia investigation, and without a confirmed Deputy AG able to authorize, all of the material the FBI investigators needed from Main Justice would have to flow through Dana Boente. [Note: Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein was not confirmed until April 25th.]
The January 12th FISA renewal was going to expire on April 12th, 2017 (90-days). FBI Director James Comey had to work with and brief Dana Boente on the sensitive issues around the Russia investigation; including discussions with Boente about President Trump as a target of that investigation, and surveillance issues; if he was going to extend the FISA warrant with DOJ approval.
Toward the end of March 2017 FBI Director Comey was in discussions with Dana Boente about the issue.
We discover the hand-written notes later on as they were leaked toMSNBC, almost certainly leaked by the people within the Mueller investigation in April 2018. [You’ll see how we know in a minute] However, at the time of the 2018 leak there was no context for the notes that Boente was taking.
It was only after the FISA application was declassified in July 2018 that Boente’s hand-written notes and the topic therein made sense. To date no-one has connected this issue… until now. (Pay attention to the date, ComeyMarch 30th, 2017)
Obviously these notes are from a conversation between then Acting AG Dana Boente and FBI Director James Comey on March 30th, 2017. It appears to be a phone call.
In hindsight the subject matter almost certainly relates to the issue of the Russia investigation, the sensitivity of administration being under that investigation, and James Comey sharing his interactions with President Trump with Dana Boente.
With Jeff Sessions recused, it is now Acting AG Dana Boente approving whatever James Comey needs from Main Justice. James Comey wants the Carter Page FISA extended.
AG Jeff Sessions is recused (incapable); there is no Deputy AG in position; therefore the U.S. Attorney for the EDVA holds the authority to perform the duties of the office. Dana Boente is the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
After the February 9th executive order initiating the change of DOJ succession was signed Dana Boente can now officially sign the Carter Page FISA application renewal. Which is exactly what happens a week after their March 30th call when James Comey and Dana Boente sign the admittedly fraudulent FISA renewal – April 7th, 2017:
Do you see what just happened here? President Trump signed an executive order that facilitated the FBI continuing to spying on his administration.
(…) So when FBI Director James Comey is making contact with Acting DAG Dana Boente on March 30th, 2017, for issues relating to the need for a FISA renewal in April 2017, the FBI was absolutely certain there was no validity to the underlying evidence within the FISA application.
Yet the FBI team was so determined to get the fraudulent FISA reauthorized, they ignored all of the evidence that undermined their objective.
Think about the scale of deceit and corruption involved.
But it doesn’t end…. it gets worse.
On April 25th, 2017, Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein is confirmed. Rosenstein now takes over the responsibilities held by Acting DAG Dana Boente; this includes the FBI counterintelligence probe.
On May 9th, 2017, FBI Director James Comey is fired.
On May 10th, 2017, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe opens a criminal ‘obstruction of justice investigation’ of President Trump to parallel the ongoing counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign and administration.
(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)
Dana Boente now becomes the Asst. Attorney General and head of the DOJ National Security Division (DOJ-NSD). Simultaneously retaining role as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of VA. At that moment, guess who is Dana Boente’s legal counsel – Michael Atkinson.
Yes, that’s the same Michael Atkinson who is the current ICIG who facilitated the Whistle-blower complaint; was senior legal counsel to Dana Boente while he headed the DOJ-NSD.
On May 16th, 2017, Rosenstein takes Robert Mueller to the White House to meet President Trump. On May 17th, 2017, Rosenstein appoints the Robert Mueller special counsel probe. And we’re off to the Trump-Russia-Collusion-Obstruction races…
On June 29th, 2017, Rod Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe reauthorize that same fraudulent FISA application for Robert Mueller and his corrupt team of 19 special prosecutors and now 40 FBI agents to continue to exploit.
Dana Boente is still head of DOJ-NSD from May 11th, 2017 through the end of October 2017 when he officially announced his intent to retire. But wait,… On January 23rd, 2018, FBI Director Christopher Wray announces Dana Boente has shifted over to the FBI to be Chief Legal Counsel (replacing James Baker).
Yes, that is correct. As Mueller is using 19 lawyers, and 40 FBI investigators, Boente now becomes a legal adviser to Christopher Wray, inside the FBI, while the Mueller probe is ongoing….. Oh, and as you can see from his participation with Mueller, Dana Boente is also now a fact witness within the Mueller investigation.
It gets better, who do you think is in charge of the 40 FBI agents now conducting the third year of that fraudulent Mueller investigation?
Yup, the very same Dana Boente!
This is staggeringly unreal. It’s no wonder FBI Director Christopher Wray appears detached, disconnected and completely unfazed by the scale and scope of the corrupt enterprise he is in charge of. His own chief legal counsel was a key player in the operation to remove the president.
It always seemed odd that White House Counsel Don McGahn left in 2018; until you look at the bigger picture. The Carter Page FISA Application was officially declassified and made public in late July 2018. No doubt as McGahn looked at the FISA issues from his unique perspective, he likely realized in hindsight how the FISA issues crossed-over two administrations and what the executive orders on DOJ succession were really all about.
In his position as White House Counsel, Don McGahn would now be a fact witness if anyone started investigating. Approximately two weeks after the FISA applications were declassified and made public, in August 2018, Don McGahn submitted his resignation.
PS. The deadline for the FBI and DOJ to inform the FISA Court about their sequestration and recovery effort (ie. a proverbial search for the fruit of a poisonous tree. Where is it?), was February 5th. (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 2/13/2020)(Archive)
Peter Strzok testifies to the Judiciary Committee on July 12, 2018. (Credit: Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
“Peter Strzok, former FBI head of counterintelligence operations, significantly changed an early draft of the official FBI report from its questioning of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, newly released text messages indicate.
To this day, the FBI hasn’t shown the early draft to Flynn. An eye-witness said the draft included exculpatory information, which was removed in the final version, Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, previously said.
(…) Agents are supposed to memorialize their interviews in an FD-302 form within five days, but the earliest 302 draft Flynn was provided was dated Feb. 10, 2017.
The new text messages suggest that an earlier version of the draft existed, either produced on Feb. 10 or earlier.
“Lisa you didn’t see it before my edits that went into what I sent you,” Strzok texted after 10 p.m. on Feb. 10, 2017, to Lisa Page, his mistress and then-special counsel to FBI’s then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Strzok said he was “trying to not completely rewrite” the document “so as to save [redacted] voice.”
According to Powell, Strzok and Page were editing the Flynn 302 and Strzok was referring to the Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) who co-conducted the interview with him. The Epoch Times and other media have identified the agent as Joe Pientka.
The texts show “that there, in fact, exists an original 302 document created by SSA,” Powell said in an April 30 statement.
(…) “I’ve now found a witness who says the original 302 did in fact say that Flynn was honest with the agents and did not lie,” she told Larry O’Connor on his WMAL radio show. “So for somebody to delete that from the 302 is just beyond outrageous.”
The new text messages are among a number of documents recently handed over to Flynn as a result of an ongoing review of his case by Jeffrey Jensen, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, who was directed in January to perform the review by Attorney General William Barr.
On February 14, 2017, former-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, Kathleen Kavalec forwarded Ohr a Huffington Post article touting the Steele Dossier’s claim that an alleged deal between Russian oil company Rosneft and Trump supporter Steve Schwarzman constituted a “high crime of treason worthy of impeachment.” Ohr forwarded the article to the FBI’s Washington Field Office the same day.
(A snippet from the Huffington Post article)
Four months prior to this exchange, Kavalec had found Christopher Steele not credible because of factual inaccuracies that he had relayed to her in October 2016, as uncovered by Judicial Watch.
The Penn Biden Center, located in Washington, DC, opened its doors in February 2018. (Credit: New York Post)
“A government watchdog is demanding the US attorney probing Hunter Biden in Delaware investigate tens of millions in anonymous donations from China to the University of Pennsylvania, where an academic center is named for his father, President Biden.
The Ivy League college raked in a total of $54.6 million from 2014 through June 2019 in donations from China, including $23.1 million in anonymous gifts starting in 2016, according to public records.
Most of the anonymous donations came after the university announced in February 2017 that it would create the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Joe Biden, whose term as vice president had just ended, was to lead the center and was also named a professor at the university.
The center, which is located in Washington, DC, opened its doors in February 2018. Antony Blinken, whom Biden named as secretary of state, briefly served as its managing director.
The Ivy League university received $15.8 million in anonymous Chinese gifts that year, including one eye-popping $14.5 million donation in May 2018, records show.
The flurry of donations may be related to first son Hunter Biden’s business interests in China, the National Legal and Policy Center, a Virginia-based watchdog, alleged in complaints sent in May and October 2020 to the Departments of Education and Justice.”
Last week, the group asked US Attorney David Weiss to step in and investigate the Chinese largesse to the school as part of his federal tax probe of Hunter Biden.
“We’ve asked … Weiss to pursue the larger network of individuals and institutions who benefited from millions doled out by foreign interests connected to Hunter Biden’s work in China and Ukraine,” said Tom Anderson, director of the NLPC’s Government Integrity Project.
President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, served alongside the president’s son Hunter on a national security think tank board for two years before joining the Biden 2020 presidential campaign, an archived web page shows.
Both Sullivan and Hunter Biden served on the board of the Truman National Security Project between 2017 and 2019, according to an archived version of the organization’s website. Hunter, who served on the board starting in 2012, was on the board of Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, at the same time.
The Truman National Security Project exists to train and organize left-of-center professionals in the defense and foreign policy space. It was founded in 2004 by Democratic activist Rachel Kleinfeld and Matthew Spence, who went on to serve in multiple defense roles in the Obama administration. The organization still lists Sullivan as an emeritus member.
(…) Before 2017, Sullivan served in the Obama administration as then-Vice President Biden’s National Security Adviser. He was present on a trip to Asia during which Hunter Biden and his wife also traveled with Joe Biden. (Read more: The Daily Caller, 5/22/2023)(Archive)
James Comey testifies before Congress in March 2017 after his misleading “Gang of Eight” private briefing for top lawmakers. (Credit: AP)
“The FBI deceived the House, Senate and the Justice Department about the substance and strength of evidence undergirding its counterintelligence investigation of President Trump, according to a recently declassified document and other material.
A seven-page internal FBI memo dated March 8, 2017, shows that “talking points” prepared for then-FBI Director James Comey for his meeting the next day with the congressional leadership were riddled with half-truths, outright falsehoods, and critical omissions. Both the Senate and the House opened investigations and held hearings based in part on the misrepresentations made in those FBI briefings, one of which was held in the Senate that morning and the other in the House later that afternoon. RealClearInvestigations reached out to every member of the leadership, sometimes known as the “Gang of Eight.” Some declined to comment, while others did not respond to queries.
The talking points were prepared by Lisa Page, a senior FBI lawyer who later resigned from the bureau amid accusations of anti-Trump bias, and were used by Comey in his meeting with Hill leaders. They described reports the FBI received in 2016 from “a former FBI CHS,” or confidential human source, about former Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort and Carter Page (no relation to Lisa Page) allegedly conspiring with the Kremlin to hack the election.
Paul Manafort was falsely alleged to have “managed” Trump-Russia collusion. (Credit: The Associated Press)
Quoting from the reports, Comey told congressional leaders that the unidentified informant told the FBI that Manafort “initially ‘managed’ the relationship between Russian government officials and the Trump campaign, using Carter Page as an intermediary.” He also told them that “Page was reported to have had ‘secret meetings’ in early July 2016 with a named individual in Russia’s presidential administration during which they discussed Russia’s release of damaging information on Hillary Clinton in exchange for alterations to the GOP platform regarding U.S. policy towards Ukraine.”
Carter Page was allegedly an intermediary. (Credit: AP)
But previous FBI interviews with Carter Page and other key sources indicated that none of that was true – and the FBI knew it at the time of the congressional briefings.
The Lisa Page memo anticipated concerns about the quality of information Comey was relaying to Congress and suggested he preempt any concerns with another untruth. The memo advised Comey to tell lawmakers that “some” of the reporting “has been corroborated,” and to point out that the informant’s “reporting in this matter is derived primarily from a Russian-based source,” which made it sound more credible.
Igor Danchenko: American-based, not Russian-based. (Credit: AP)
By this point, however, the FBI knew that the main source feeding unsubstantiated rumors to the informant, Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to dig up dirt on Trump, was American-based.
The FBI first interviewed that source – a Russian national named Igor Danchenko who was living in the U.S. and had worked at the Brookings Institution – in January 2017. Danchenko had told them that the anti-Trump dirt he funneled to Steele was dubious hearsay passed along over drinks with his high school buddies and an old girlfriend named Olga Galkina, who had made up the accusations about Carter Page and Manafort that the FBI relayed to Congress.
Christopher Steele: Dubious hearsay from Danchenko’s drinking buddies and an old girlfriend became part of the dossier. (Credit: AP)
Danchenko is now under criminal indictment in Special Counsel John Durham’s ongoing investigation for lying about the sourcing for his information. The source to whom he attributed spurious charges against Trump – including his being compromised by a sex tape held by the Kremlin – was a fabrication, according to the indictment. He never spoke with the person as he claimed. Another source turned out to be a longtime Hillary Clinton campaign adviser.
The FBI did not tell the Gang of Eight that Danchenko was working for Steele and did not really have any sources inside the Kremlin, according to the script prepared for Comey, which was recently declassified as part of pre-trial discovery in Special Counsel John Durham’s probe. The FBI also concealed Steele’s identity and the fact he was working for the Clinton campaign.
From FBI lawyer Lisa Page’s misleading memo prepping Director Comey to brief Congress. (Credit: Department of Justice/Sussmann trial)
‘Crowning’ Deception
Adding to the deception, Comey referred to the unnamed informant by the codename “CROWN,” making it appear as if Steele’s dossier was a product of British intelligence, although Steele had not worked for the British government for several years and was reporting entirely in a private capacity. According to the talking-points memo, Comey also withheld from Congress the fact that Steele had been fired by the FBI for leaking information to the media. Instead of sharing that critical information about his reliability and credibility – to say nothing of his political and financial motivations – Comey hid the truth about his star informant from the nation’s top lawmakers.
“If asked about CROWN/Steele” during the briefing, the memo anticipated, Comey was to tell lawmakers only that “CROWN, a former FBI CHS, is a former friendly foreign intelligence service employee who reported for about three years, and some of whose reporting has been corroborated.”
Meanwhile, FBI headquarters officials were duping the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court in similar fashion in order to continue to obtain warrants to spy on Carter Page. They led judges on the secret surveillance court to believe Danchenko was “Russian-based” – and therefore presumably more credible.
Brian Auten: Let a false claim influence spy warrants. (Credit: Patrick Henry College)
The official in charge of vetting the Steele dossier at the time – and interviewing him and his primary source Danchenko to corroborate their allegations – was FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten. By March 2017, Auten knew the “Russian-based” claim was untrue, and yet he let case agents slip it into two FISA renewal requests targeting Page.
Auten seemed to become concerned about the falsehood only when the Senate Judiciary Committee asked to see the Page spy warrants. He then reviewed the FISA applications in advance of Comey briefing the panel on March 15 and raised concerns with then-FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who was assisting with redactions to the documents before sharing them with Congress. Auten wondered in text messages whether a correction should be reported to the court. But no amendment was ever made.
Kevin Clinesmith falsified evidence for spy warrants.
Years later, in a closed-door 2020 hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee investigators finally caught up with Auten and asked him about it.
“The FISA applications all say that he’s Russian-based,” then-chief Senate Judiciary Committee investigative counsel Zach Somers pressed Auten. “Do you think that should have been corrected with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court?”
Auten said he raised the issue with Clinesmith, who was convicted last year by Durham on charges related to falsifying evidence in the FISA application process. “And what response did you get back?” Somers asked. “I did not get a response back,” Auten replied.
Fraud and More Fraud
And so the “Russian-based” fraud lived on through the FISA renewals, which also swore to the court that Danchenko was “truthful and cooperative.” (Attempts to reach Auten for comment were unsuccessful. The FBI declined comment.)
The five-year statute of limitations for criminal liability related to the invalid FISA applications expires at the end of this month. It has already expired regarding false statement offenses that may have been committed during the March 2017 Gang of Eight briefings.
However, legal experts say Durham could bypass the statute by filing conspiracy charges. Some former FBI attorneys and prosecutors believe the special counsel is building a “conspiracy to defraud the government” case against former FBI officials and others. (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 6/09/2022)(Archive)
On Page 7 of the “Deputy Director McCabe Office of Professional Responsibility Investigation, Part 1 of 2”, there was a complaint received by the Inspection Division’s Internal Investigations Section on March 15, 2017.
The day before the complaint was received, True Pundit published the article “EXCLUSIVE: FBI’s Own Political Terror Plot; Deputy Director and FBI Brass Secretly Conspired to Wage Coup Against Flynn & Trump.” It regards a media leak involving a statement overheard in early February 2017, allegedly made by FBI EM [Executive Management]. Specifically, the alleged comments were made by DD A. G. McCabe and pertained to General Michael T. Flynn and the POTUS.”
(Public Meme)
True Pundit:
“Mere days before Gen. Michael Flynn was sacked…” [Before February 13, 2017].
IE. “Early February 2017“.
“FBI DD McCabe gathered more than a dozen of his top FBI disciples”
I.E. “FBI EM [Executive Management]
“McCabe emphatically declared at the invite-only gathering with raised voice: Fuck Flynn and then we Fuck Trump”.
“Specifically, the alleged comments were made by DD A. G. McCabe and pertained to General Michael T. Flynn and the POTUS.”
On March 6, 2009 in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presents Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a red “reset” button. (Credit: public domain)
Starting in May 2010, The Washington Examinerreported, 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.”
Viktor Vekselbert (Credit: Dmitry Lovetsky/The Associated Press)
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 a 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 Examinerreported 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 industial 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.
The Army report continues:
Implicit in Russia’s development of Skolkovo is a critical question—a question that Russia may be asking itself—why bother spying on foreign companies and government laboratories if they will voluntarily hand over all the expertise Russia seeks? Since multinational institutions hire talent worldwide and seek access to foreign markets without regard for national interest, only the U.S. government would be in a position to persuade them to scale back their commitments in Skolkovo if U.S. relations with Russia continue to deteriorate.
However, given the global dimensions of Skolkovo’s technology transfer program, it is not clear how much leverage U.S. industry has. Therefore, the key issue for U.S. policymakers is balancing the benefits of constructive technological engagement with Russia against the risks that Russia could leverage transferred scientific knowledge to modernize and strengthen its military.
Whether that is the key issue for U.S. policymakers, circa 2017, one thing seems clear. They haven’t heard of it, and they don’t care.
More proof that the hysteria over “Russian influence” on Donald Trump has nothing whatsoever to do with official Washington’s (read: the Swamp) concern about the national security of the American people. They are concerned about protecting the Swamp they live in and profit from, and that is all. (The Daily Caller, 3/21/2017)(Archive)
“On April 3, 2017, a redacted official in the FBI Washington Field Office emails Strzok a link to a Guardian article titled “Michael Flynn: New Evidence Spy Chiefs Had Concerns about Russia Ties,” saying, “Im [sic] sure you are tracking, but this has gotten too deep.” Strzok replies, “I wasn’t. WTF is this…” Strzok then forwards the exchange to Page, saying “Not great.”
“On September 26, 2021, Yahoo News published an extensive article about the CIA targeting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2017 and the extreme conversations that were taking place at the highest levels of the U.S. government about how to control him. There is a much bigger story transparently obvious when overlapped with CTH research files on the Intelligence Branch of government; specifically the motive missed by Yahoo News for the stunning activity they outline.
What I am going to outline below, is a deep dive using the resources and timeline from within that article and the specific details we have assembled that paints a clear picture about what interests existed for the Deep State, the Intelligence apparatus and what I call the Fourth Branch of Government.
This fully cited review is not for the faint of heart. This is a journey that could shock many; could alarm more, and will likely force more than a few to reevaluate just what the purpose was for Mike Pompeo within the Donald Trump administration.
As the Yahoo Newsarticle begins, they outline how those within the Trump administration viewed Assange as a risk in 2017. Here it is critical to accept that many people inside the Trump administration were there to control events, not to facilitate a policy agenda from a political outsider. In the example of Assange, the information he carried was a risk to those who attempted and failed to stop Trump from winning the 2016 election.
Julian Assange was not a threat to Donald Trump, but he was a threat to those who attempted to stop Donald Trump. In 2017, the DC system was reacting to a presidency they did not control. As an outcome, the Office of the President was being managed and influenced by some with ulterior motives.
Yahoo, via Michael Isikoff, puts it this way: “Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request “sketches” or “options” for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. “There seemed to be no boundaries.”
As we overlay the timeline, it is prudent to pause and remember some hindsight details. According to reports in November of 2019, U.S. Attorney John Durham and U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr were spending time looking carefully at CIA activity in the 2016 presidential election. One quote from a media-voice increasingly sympathetic to a political deep-state noted:
“One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish list presented to London commented that, “It is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services””. (Link)
It is interesting that quote came from a British intelligence official as there was extensive pre-2016 election evidence of an FBI/CIA counterintelligence operation that also involved U.K. intelligence services. There was an aspect to the FBI/CIA operation that overlaps with both a U.S. and U.K. need to keep Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under tight control.
To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to FBI/CIA interests, and effectively the Fourth Branch of Government, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the FBI/CIA were in 2016. It is within this network of foreign and domestic operations where FBI Agent Peter Strzok was clearly working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI operations.
By now, people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor generally identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the FBI/CIA to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. {Go Deep}
In a similar fashion, the FBI tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor, Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent, under the false name Azra Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos.
The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets legal and much easier.
One of the more interesting aspects to the unfinished Durham probe is the possibility of a paper trail created as a result of the intelligence community tasking operations. If Durham has indeed gone into this intelligence rabbit hole, we could see evidence of a paper trail.
Personally, I am doubtful Durham will put what you are reading into any actionable scenario. Nor do I anticipate a report that could outline the risk of Julian Assange to the activities that took place within the political weaponization of the intelligence apparatus.
HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes has outlined how very specific exculpatory evidence was known to the FBI and yet withheld from the FISA application used against Carter Page that also mentions George Papadopoulos. The FBI also fabricated information in the FISA and removed evidence that Carter Page was previously working for the CIA. This is what FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was convicted for doing.
One week after the FBI and DOJ filed the second renewal for the Carter Page FISA [April 7, 2017], Yahoo News notes how Mike Pompeo delivered his first remarks as CIA Director:
(…) On April 13, 2017, wearing a U.S. flag pin on the left lapel of his dark gray suit, Pompeo strode to the podium at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank, to deliver to a standing-room-only crowd his first public remarks as Trump’s CIA director.
Rather than use the platform to give an overview of global challenges or to lay out any bureaucratic changes he was planning to make at the agency, Pompeo devoted much of his speech to the threat posed by WikiLeaks. (link)
Why would CIA Director Mike Pompeo be so concerned about Julian Assange and Wikileaks in April 2017?
In April of 2017 Pompeo’s boss, President Donald Trump, was under assault from the intelligence community writ large, and every deep state actor was leaking to media in a frenzied effort to continue the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy. The effort was so all-consuming that FBI Director James Comey was even keeping a diary of engagement with President Trump in order to support an ongoing investigation built on fraud… yet, Mike Pompeo is worried about Julian Assange?
Again, here it is important to put yourself back into the time of reference. Remember, it’s clear in the text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that Strzok had a working relationship with what he called their “sister agency”, the CIA.
Additionally, former CIA Director John Brennan has admitted Strzok helped write the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which outlines the Russia narrative; and it was also Peter Strzok who authored the July 31st, 2016, “Electronic Communication” from the CIA to the FBI that originated FBI operation “Crossfire Hurricane.” Strzok immediately used that EC to travel to London to debrief intelligence officials around Australian Ambassador to the U.K. Alexander Downer.
In short, Peter Strzok was a profoundly overzealous James Bond wannabe, who acted as a bridge between the CIA and the FBI. The perfect type of FBI career agent for 2016’s CIA Director John Brennan to utilize.
Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson hired CIA Open Source analyst Nellie Ohr toward the end of 2015; at appropriately the same time as “FBI Contractors” were identified exploiting the NSA database and extracting information on a specific set of U.S. persons. One, if not the primary extractors, has now been identified as Rodney Joffe at Neustar. “The campaign plot was outlined by Durham last month in a 27-page indictment charging former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann with making a false report to the FBI. The document cites eight individuals who allegedly conspired with Sussmann but does not identify them by name. The sources familiar with the probe have confirmed that the leader of the team of contractors was Rodney L. Joffe.” {Go Deep}
It was also Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson who was domestically tasked with a Russian lobbyist named Natalia Veselnitskaya. A little-reported Russian Deputy Attorney General named Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was working as a double-agent for the CIA and Kremlin. Karapetyan was directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Glenn Simpson was organizing her inside the U.S as part of his Trump-Russia creation.
Glenn Simpson managed Veselnitskaya through the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. However, once the CIA/Fusion GPS operation using Veselnitskaya started to unravel with public reporting…. back in Russia Deputy AG Karapetyan died in a helicopter crash.
Simultaneously timed in late 2015 through mid-2016, there was a domestic FBI operation using a young Russian named Maria Butina tasked to run up against Republican presidential candidates. According to Patrick Byrne, Butina’s handler, was FBI agent Peter Strzok who was giving Byrne the instructions on where to send her. {Go Deep}
All of this context outlines the extent to which the FBI/CIA was openly involved in constructing a political operation that settled upon anyone in candidate Donald Trump’s orbit. A large international operation directed by the FBI/CIA, and domestic operations seemingly directed by Peter Strzok operating with a foot in both agencies. [Strzok gets CIA service coin]
Recap: ♦Mifsud tasked against Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Halper tasked against Flynn (CIA), Page (CIA), and Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Azra Turk, pretending to be Halper asst, tasked against Papadopoulos (FBI). ♦Veselnitskaya tasked against Donald Trump Jr (CIA, Fusion GPS). ♦Butina tasked against Trump, and Donald Trump Jr (FBI).
Additionally, Christopher Steele was a British intelligence officer, hired by Fusion GPS to assemble and launder fraudulent intelligence information within his dossier. And we cannot forget Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, who was recruited by Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to participate in running an operation against the Trump campaign and create the impression of Russian involvement. Deripaska refused to participate.
All of this engagement directly controlled by U.S. intelligence; and all of this intended to give a specific Russia impression. This predicate was presumably what John Durham was reviewing in November of 2019.
The key point of all that contextual background is to see how committed the CIA and FBI were to the constructed narrative of Russia interfering with the 2016 election. The CIA, FBI, and by extension the DOJ and a multitude of political operatives put a hell of a lot of work into it.
We also know that John Durham was looking at the construct of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA); and talking to CIA analysts who participated in the construct of the January 2017 report that bolstered the false appearance of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This context is important because it ties in to the next part that involves Julian Assange and Wikileaks. This is where the motives of Mike Pompeo in mid/late 2017 come into play.
[…] By the summer of 2017, the CIA’s proposals were setting off alarm bells at the National Security Council. “WikiLeaks was a complete obsession of Pompeo’s,” said a former Trump administration national security official. (link)
On April 11th, 2019, the Julian Assange indictment was unsealed in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA). From the indictment we discover it was under seal since March 6th, 2018:
On Tuesday, April 15, 2019, more investigative material was released. Again, note the dates: Grand Jury, *December of 2017* This means FBI investigation prior to….
The FBI investigation took place prior toDecember 2017, it was coordinated through the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) where Dana Boente was U.S. Attorney at the time. The grand jury indictment was sealed from March of 2018 until after Mueller completed his investigation, April 2019.
What exactly was the DOJ waiting for from March 2018 to April 2019? This timeframe is the peak of the Robert Mueller/Andrew Weissmann special counsel investigation.
Here’s where it gets interesting….
The Yahoo article outlines, “there was an inappropriate level of attention to Assange“, by the CIA according to a national security council official. However, if you consider the larger ramifications of what Julian Assange represented to all of those people inside and outside government interests who created the Trump-Russia collusion/conspiracy, well, there was actually a serious risk.
Remember why in May 2017 Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann effectively took over the DOJ. The entire purpose of the Mueller investigation was to cover up the illegal operation that took place in the preceding year. The people exposed to the risk included all of those intelligence operatives previously outlined in the CIA, FBI, and DOJ operations.
The FBI submission to the Eastern District of Virginia Grand Jury in December of 2017 was four months after congressman Dana Rohrabacher talked to Julian Assange in August of 2017: “Assange told a U.S. congressman … he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents … did not come from Russia.”
(August 2017, The Hill Via John Solomon) Julian Assange told a U.S. congressman on Tuesday he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year’s election did not come from Russia and promised additional helpful information about the leaks in the near future.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is friendly to Russia and chairs an important House subcommittee on Eurasia policy, became the first American congressman to meet with Assange during a three-hour private gathering at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up for years.
Rohrabacher recounted his conversation with Assange to The Hill.
“Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year’s presidential election,” Rohrabacher said, “Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.”
Pressed for more detail on the source of the documents, Rohrabacher said he had information to share privately with President Trump. (read more)
Knowing how much effort the CIA and FBI put into the Russia collusion-conspiracy narrative, and knowing that Assange could essentially destroy the baseline predicate for the entire Trump-Russia investigation – which included the use of Robert Mueller, it would make sense for corrupt government officials to take keen interest after this August 2017 meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange. And that would explain why those same government officials, willfully or by direction, would quickly gather specific evidence (related to Wikileaks and Bradley Manning) for a grand jury by December 2017.
Within three months of the grand jury seating (Nov/Dec 2017), the DOJ generated an indictment and sealed it in March 2018. The EDVA then sat on the indictment while the Mueller/Weissman probe was ongoing.
As soon as the Mueller probe ended, on April 11th, 2019, a planned and coordinated effort between the U.K. and U.S. was executed; Julian Assange was forcibly arrested and removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and the EDVA indictment was unsealed (link).
As a person who has researched this three-year fiasco; including the ridiculously false 2016 Russian hacking/interference narrative: “17 intelligence agencies”, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) needed for Obama’s anti-Russia narrative in December ’16; and then a month later the ridiculously political Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January ’17; this timing against Assange is too coincidental.
It doesn’t take a deep researcher to see the aligned Deep State motive to control Julian Assange because the Mueller report was dependent on Russia cybercrimes, and that narrative is contingent on the Russia DNC hack story which Julian Assange disputes.
♦ This is critical. The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election. This claim is the fulcrum point that structurally underpins the entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative. However, this important claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian Assange’s on-the-record statements.
The predicate for Robert Mueller’s investigation was specifically due to Russian interference in the 2016 election. The fulcrum for this Russia interference claim is the intelligence community assessment (Peter Strzok), and the only factual evidence claimed within the ICA is that Russia hacked the DNC servers; a claim only made possible by relying on forensic computer analysis from another Michael Sussmann partner, Shawn Henry at Crowdstrike, yes another DNC contractor and collaborator with the Clinton campaign.
The CIA always held a massive conflict of self-interest problem surrounding the Russian hacking claim as it pertains to their own activity in 2016. The FBI and DOJ always held a massive interest in maintaining that claim. Robert Mueller and Andrew Weismann did everything they could to support that predicate; all of those foreign countries whose intelligence apparatus participated with Brennan and Strzok also carried a self-interest in maintaining that Russia hacking and interference narrative.
Julian Assange was/is the only person with direct knowledge of how Wikileaks gained custody of the DNC emails; and Assange has claimed he has evidence it was not from a hack.
This Russian “hacking” claim was ultimately so important to the CIA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI and U.K Intelligence apparatus…. Well, right there is the obvious motive to shut Assange down as soon as intelligence officials knew the Mueller report was going to be public.
And that is exactly what the Fourth Branch of Government did.
The Yahooarticle does a great job outlining who, how, when, and where the CIA and intelligence community were targeting Julian Assange. However, what they did not connect -and ideologically they would not want to connect- was exactly WHY the U.S. government, not Trump, was targeting Assange.
“Former U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia, Joe diGenova, discusses the declassification of intelligence documents relating to political surveillance; and the origin of the database abuses outlined by FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer.
Given last weeks visit to Main Justice by congressman Mark Meadows; and considering the visit was specifically to review unredacted Page-Strzok-McCabe messages; it could be surmised the first series of declassified documents might be those communiques. Additionally, John Solomon has stated “Bucket Five” is likely the first release prior to the IG report:
Bucket Five – Intelligence documents that were presented to the Gang of Eight in 2016 that pertain to the FISA application used against U.S. person Carter Page; including all exculpatory intelligence documents that may not have been presented to the FISA Court. Presumably this would include the recently revealed State Dept Kavalac email; and the FBI transcripts from wiretaps of George Papadopoulos (also listed in Carter Page FISA).
Now that we have significant research files on the 2015 and 2016 political surveillance program; which includes the trail evident within the Weissmann/Mueller report; in combination with the Obama-era DOJ “secret research project” (their words, not mine); we are able to overlay the entire objective and gain a full understanding of how political surveillance was conducted over a period of approximately four to six years.
This is why there’s panic.
Working with a timeline, but also referencing origination material in 2015/2016 – CTH hopes to show how the program operated. This explains an evolution from The IRS Files in 2010 to the FISA Files in 2016.
More importantly, research indicates the modern political exploitation of the NSA database, for weaponized intelligence surveillance of politicians, began mid-2012.
The FISA-702 database extraction process, and utilization of the protections within the smaller intelligence community, was the primary process. We start by reviewing the established record from the 99-page FISC opinion rendered by presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer on; and explain the details within the FISC opinion.
I would strongly urge everyone to read the FISC report (full pdf below) because Judge Collyer outlines how the DOJ, which includes the FBI, had an “institutional lack of candor” in responses to the FISA court. In essence, the Obama administration was continually lying to the court about their activity, and the rate of fourth amendment violations for illegal searches and seizures of U.S. persons’ private information for multiple years.
Unfortunately, due to intelligence terminology Judge Collyer’s brief and ruling is not an easy read for anyone unfamiliar with the FISA processes outlined. The complexity also helps the media avoid discussing, and as a result most Americans have no idea the scale and scope of the issues. So we’ll try to break down the language. View this document on Scribd
For the sake of brevity and common understanding CTH will highlight the most pertinent segments showing just how systemic and troublesome the unlawful electronic surveillance was.
Early in 2016 NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) “About” queries using the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.
The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016, for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May 1st, 2016.
While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) “about query” option, and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016 (keep these dates in mind).
Here are some significant segments:
The key takeaway from these first paragraphs is how the search query results were exported from the NSA database to users who were not authorized to see the material. The FBI contractors were conducting searches and then removing, or ‘exporting’, the results. Later on, the FBI said all of the exported material was deleted.
Searching the highly classified NSA database is essentially a function of filling out search boxes to identify the user-initiated search parameter and get a return on the search result.
(…) Search an ip address “about” and read all data into that server; put in an email address and gain everything about that account. Or use the electronic address of a GPS enabled vehicle (about) and you can withdraw more electronic data and monitor in real time. Search a credit card number and get everything about the account including what was purchased, where, when, etc. Search a bank account number, get everything about transactions and electronic records etc. Just about anything and everything can be electronically searched; everything has an electronic ‘identifier’.
The search parameter is only limited by the originating field filled out. Names, places, numbers, addresses, etc. By using the “About” parameter there may be thousands or millions of returns. Imagine if you put “@realdonaldtrump” into the search parameter? You could extract all following accounts who interacted on Twitter, or Facebook etc. You are only limited by your imagination and the scale of the electronic connectivity.
As you can see below, on March 9th, 2016, internal auditors noted the FBI was sharing “raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information”.
In plain English the raw search returns were being shared with unknown entities without any attempt to “minimize” or redact the results. The person(s) attached to the results were named and obvious. There was no effort to hide their identity or protect their 4th amendment rights of privacy:
But what’s the scale here? This is where the story really lies.
Read this next excerpt carefully.
The operators were searching “U.S Persons”. The review of November 1, 2015, to May 1, 2016, showed “eighty-five percent of those queries” were unlawful or “non compliant”.
85% !! “representing [redacted number].”
We can tell from the space of the redaction the number of searches were between 1,000 and 9,999 [five digits]. If we take the middle number of 5,000 – that means 4,250 unlawful searches out of 5,000.
The [five digit] amount (more than 1,000, less than 10,000), and 85% error rate, was captured in a six month period.
Also notice this very important quote: “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” So they were searching the same phone number, email address, electronic “identifier”, or people, repeatedly over different dates. Specific people were being tracked/monitored.
Additionally, notice the last quote: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of” these non lawful searches “since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 coincided with an unusually high error rate”.
That means the 85% unlawful FISA-702(16)(17) database abuse has likely been happening since 2012. (Again, remember that date, 2012) Who was FBI Director? Who was his chief-of-staff? Who was CIA Director? ODNI? etc. Remember, the NSA is inside the Pentagon (Defense Dept) command structure. Who was Defense Secretary? And finally, who wrote and signed-off-on the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment?
Tens of thousands of searches over four years (since 2012), and 85% of them are illegal. The results were extracted for?…. (I believe this is all political opposition use; and I’ll explain why momentarily.)
OK, that’s the stunning scale; but who was involved?
Private contractors with access to “raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI’s requests“:
And as noted, the contractor access was finally halted on April 18th, 2016.
(Coincidentally (or not), the wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, goes to the White House the next day on April 19th, 2016.)
None of this is conspiracy theory.
All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87: “deliberate decisionmaking“:
This specific footnote, if declassified, would be 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“, that is important.
Summary of this aspect: 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.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 5/24/2019)
Rod Rosenstein joins William Barr as he speaks during a press conference on the release of the redacted version of the Mueller Report, April 18, 2019. (Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“Judicial Watch announced today it received 382 pages of documents showing former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s communications with former Obama officials, including Eric Holder and information sharing with the media in the days immediately surrounding the inception of the Mueller investigation.
These documents were obtained in response to a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) lawsuit filed against the U.S. Department of Justice for all records of communications of Rosenstein between May 8 and May 17, 2017 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:19-cv-00481)).
On May 15, 2017, Public Affairs Specialist Marsha Murphy sends Rosenstein an email with the subject line “Eric Holder just called for you.” The message says: “Please call him.”
On May 16, 2017, U.S. Attorney John Huber wrote to Rosenstein: “Rod, We’re proud of you.” Later that year, Huber was chosen by then-Attorney General Sessions to head up the Clinton Foundation investigation.
(On May 17, 2017, Robert Mueller was appointed by Rosenstein as special counsel.)
The documents revealed that Rosenstein had communications with Washington Post reporter Sari Horwitz that included multiple off-the-record calls, information sharing, and smoothing over arguments with the DOJ press office.
In an email exchange on May 12, 2017, with the subject line “Off the record” Horwitz complains to Rosenstein about then-DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores yelling at her and the Washington Post’s national security editor and calling a story of theirs “bullshit.” Rosenstein replies, “I will talk to Sarah.” Horwitz adds that she is “around all night if [Rosenstein wants] to talk off the record.”
In an email exchange between May 13-16, 2017, Horwitz requests that they speak off the record again. Rosenstein replied by sending her a link to a story about him in The Baltimore Sun.
On May 18, 2017, Horwitz emails Rosenstein with the subject line, “Urgent” to ask him about President Trump being the focus of an FBI investigation: “The Washington Post has been told by very good sources that President Trump is now a focus of the FBI investigation Can I please talk to you as soon as possible on deep background?”
On May 15, 2017, Rosenstein received an email from Katherine Davis, likely the 60 Minutes producer. In it, she states: “I hope you’re handling all of this craziness this week. Am sure you are. Much to discuss. FBI finalists. And whether you are considering recusing (hoping not but lmk) Lmk when I can come and visit. Next week? You know where to reach me in the meantime.”
In the days surrounding the appointment of Robert Mueller as Special Counsel, Rosenstein received calls from multiple emails of support from former senior Obama administration officials.
On May 12, 2017, Rosenstein received an email from former Obama Special Counsel Jonathan Su: Hi Rod: I know there’s a lot going on right now, but I wanted to send you a note of support. If there’ s anything I can do to be of help, please let me know. Hope you hang in there.”
On May 13, 2017, he received a similar supportive email from former Obama White House Deputy Associate Counsel Mike Leotta with the subject line “Thinking of you and your family.” The message says: “I hope you’re hanging in there, [redacted] despite all the press attention, attacks, and contradictory claims.”
On May 14, 2017, Rosenstein emailed Judge Brett Kavanaugh for Senior D.C. District Court Judge John D. Bates’ cell phone number, three days before the appointment of Robert Mueller.
On May 16, 2017, Rosenstein received a supportive email from former Obama Deputy Attorney General, James Cole: “You have the right approach. I always found that if you concentrated on doing your job (protecting the constitution) your reputation takes care of itself.”
On May 16, 2017, the day before Mueller was appointed, scheduling emails indicate that Rosenstein spoke with both Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI).
The day after the special counsel appointment, on May 18, 2017, Judge Bates sent an email to Rosenstein with the subject line “Great move” and the message “Well done.”
On May 20, 2017, Rosenstein requests a phone call with Obama’s former Principal Deputy Solicitor General, Neal Katyal, who was also Al Gore’s co-counsel in Bush v. Goreand recently published the book, Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.
“These astonishing emails show that Rod Rosenstein had many Obama/Clinton and media friends supporting him around the time he infamously appointed Robert Mueller,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.” (Read more: Judicial Watch, 2/11/2020)(Archive)
Candid shot of Andrew McCabe for his 60 Minutes interview. (Credit: CBS News)
“Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe says he ordered an obstruction of justice investigation into President Donald Trump [the day] after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017, to ensure the Russia probe wouldn’t “vanish in the night without a trace.”
“I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground in an indelible fashion that, were I removed quickly or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace,” McCabe told CBS News in a partial interview clip aired Thursday.
(…) While it had been previously reported that an obstruction of justice probe had been opened as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, McCabe’s disclosure was the first time he publicly addressed why he launched the investigation.” (Read more: US News, 2/14/2019)
The following day on May 11, 2017, McCabe testifies to the Senate Intelligence Committee and says there has been “no effort to impede our investigation to date.”
Newly released messages from the House Ways and Means Committee appear to show Hunter Biden proposing a meeting in New York City between the boss of a Chinese energy company and Joe Biden, the former vice president at the time, along with Joe’s brother, Jim Biden.
“Can you meet this evening early,” Hunter Biden asked Yadong Liu, CEO of CEFC Global Strategic Holdings in a poorly punctuated text message the evening of Dec. 12, 2017.
“My father will be in New York also and he wants me to attend the Sandy Hook memorial service with him and I would like him to meet you along with my uncle and then you and I can talk let me know if that works.”
“I’m sorry for the late notice I got off the red eye in Baltimore from LA and take a little nap before I got his message,” Hunter added.
Yadong told Hunter “No problem” and asked to let him “know when and where to meet.”
Hunter Biden told the CEFC CEO he would like his father, Joe Biden, the former vice president at the time, to meet the executive in New York City. (House Ways and Means Committee)
Less than two weeks after the proposed meeting among the four individuals, Hunter Biden messaged Yadong, asking Yadong to call him, saying he was “anxiously waiting” for his report from a meeting in China.
“I am still in China. Apologies for not getting back to you sooner but I knew [sic] you have been talking to Kevin…,” Yadong said, appearing to reference a CEFC China Energy executive named Gongwen Dong.
“I didn’t get to see the chairman on this trip but president chen asked me to convey to you that while we attach great importance to working with you, under the current circumstances it is almost impossible to move forward on any of the projects with you. There are a few key dates in the next weeks and we are focused on those legal challenges and cannot afford to do anything that have any potential of being misunderstood or misconstrued.”
“He sincerely hopes that you can understand our situation and looks forward to removing those legal uncertainties and working with you again,” Yadong continued. “I am coming back next week and can meet to explain face to face if necessary. Thank you.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House, Jim Biden and Hunter Biden’s attorney to confirm whether the meeting in New York City took place but did not receive a response. (Read more: Fox News, 5/22/2024) (Archive)
The House Ways and Means Committee voted Wednesday to release 100 pages of new evidence that shows Hunter Biden lied under oath to Congress during his Feb. 28 deposition.
The evidence, provided by IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who probed the first son’s finances, reveals Hunter “indisputably” lied at least three times during his sworn testimony, the panel’s majority said after voting in a closed-door executive session for its release.
Hunter, 54, claimed he was “high or drunk” when he sent a threatening text message to the wrong Chinese business associate — but phone records of the WhatsApp message show the associate, Raymond Zhao, responded and “knew exactly” what the president’s son was talking about when he asked to speak with the chairman of CEFC China Energy, Ye Jianming.
“Sure. I need some time to reach him,” Zhao, a translator for CEFC, wrote back in messages over the next day. “CEFC is willing to cooperate with the family.”
The first son also kept exchanging messages with Zhao after making the threat that he was “sitting” with his father, Joe Biden, and said they would both “hold a grudge” if the CEFC translator reneged on a “commitment.” (Read more: New York Post, 5/23/2024) (Archive)
“A 2019 Judicial Watch FOIA Lawsuit resulted in the release of a May 16, 2017, memo written by then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. [Link Here] At the time of the FOIA release most people focused on Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein’s willingness to wear a wire to record the President; however, the memo content actually revealed much more.
There are three aspects to the McCabe memo that warrant attention: (1) Rosenstein’s willingness to wear a wire. (2) Evidence that Rosenstein took Mueller to the White House on May 16, 2017, as a set-up to interview Mueller’s pending target; and (3) the CURRENT redactions to the memo indicate CURRENT efforts by the CURRENT AG Bill Barr to protect the corrupt intent of Rod Rosenstein. While all three points are alarming; given recent events, the last aspect is most concerning.
In order to show the significance of this FOIA release, CTH is going to present the McCabe memo in two different ways. First, by highlighting the raw memo release; and then secondly, to highlight the important context by inserting the memo into the timeline.
The first two substantive issues within the McCabe memo can only be accurately absorbed against the background of those two context links.
Now we can insert the McCabe memo information into the timeline. This will help better understand what was happening in/around the dates in question.
Start by noting the May 16, 2017, date of the meeting at 12:30 pm is immediately before Rod Rosenstein took Robert Mueller for an interview with President Trump in the oval office. The oval office “interview” is where Mueller reportedly left his “cell phone” at the White House.
“Crossfire Hurricane” – During 2016, after the November election, and throughout the transition period into 2017, the FBI had a counterintelligence investigation ongoing against Donald Trump. FBI Director James Comey’s memos were part of this time period as the FBI small group was gathering evidence. Then Comey was fired….
♦TuesdayMay 9th – James Comey was fired at approximately 5:00pm EST. Later we discover Rod Rosenstein first contacted Robert Mueller about the special counsel appointment less than 15 hours after James Comey was fired.
♦Wednesday May 10th – From congressional testimony we know DAG Rod Rosenstein called Robert Mueller to discuss the special counsel appointment on Wednesday May 10th, 2017, at 7:45am.
(See Biggs questions to Mueller at 2:26 of video)
According to his own admissions (NBC and CBS), Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe immediately began a criminal ‘obstruction’ investigation. Wednesday, May 10th; and he immediately enlisted Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
A few hours after the Rosenstein-Mueller phone call James Comey’s office was being searched by the SSA Whistleblower per the IG report on Comey’s memos.
♦Thursday May 11th – Andrew McCabe testified to congress. With the Comey firing fresh in the headlines. McCabe testified there had been no effort to impede the FBI investigation.
Also on Thursday May 11th, 2017, the New York Timesprinted an article, based on information seemingly leaked by James Comey, about a dinner conversation between the President and the FBI Director. The “Loyalty” article [link]. The IG report shows: “[Daniel] Richman confirmed to the OIG that he was one of the sources for the May 11 article, although he said he was not the source of the information in the article about the Trump Tower briefing“.
♦Friday May 12th – Andrew McCabe met with DAG Rod Rosenstein to discuss the ongoing issues with the investigation and firing. Referencing the criminal ‘obstruction’ case McCabe had opened just two days before. According to McCabe:
… “[Rosenstein] asked for my thoughts about whether we needed a special counsel to oversee the Russia case. I said I thought it would help the investigation’s credibility. Later that day, I went to see Rosenstein again. This is the gist of what I said: I feel strongly that the investigation would be best served by having a special counsel.” (link)
According to Andy Biggs questioning of Mueller, on this same day, May 12th, evidence shows Robert Mueller met “in person” with Rod Rosenstein. This is the same day when SSA Whistleblower went to James Comey’s house to retrieve FBI material and both Rybicki and Comey never informed the agent about the memos:
May 12th, is the date noted by David Archey when FBI investigators had assembled all of the Comey memos as evidence. However, no-one in the FBI outside the “small group” knows about them.
♦On SaturdayMay 13th, 2017, another meeting between Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller, this time with AG Jeff Sessions also involved. [Per Andy Biggs]
♦Sunday May 14th – Comey transmitted copies of Memos 2, 4, and 6, and a partially redacted copy of Memo 7 to Patrick Fitzgerald, who was one of Comey’s personal attorneys. Fitzgerald received the email and PDF attachment from Comey at 2:27 p.m. on May 14, 2017, per the IG report.
♦Monday May 15th, McCabe states he and Rosenstein conferred again about the Special Counsel approach. McCabe: “I brought the matter up with him again after the weekend.”
On this same day was when James Rybicki called SSA Whistleblower to notify him of Comey’s memos. The memos were “stored” in a “reception area“, and in locked drawers in James Rybicki’s office.
♦Tuesday May 16th – Per the IG report: “On the morning of , Comey took digital photographs of both pages of Memo 4 with his personal cell phone. Comey then sent both photographs, via text message, to Richman.
Back in Main Justice at 12:30pm Rod Rosenstein, Andrew McCabe, Jim Crowell and Tashina Guahar all appear to be part of this meeting. I should note that alternate documentary evidence, gathered over the past two years, supports the content of this McCabe memo. Including the text messages between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok:
Sidebar: pay attention to the redactions; they appear to be placed by existing DOJ officials in an effort to protect Rod Rosenstein for his duplicity in: (A) running the Mueller sting operation at the white house on the same day; and (B) the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel, which was pre-determined before the Oval Office meeting.
While McCabe was writing this afternoon memo, Rod Rosenstein was taking Robert Mueller to the White House for a meeting in the oval office with President Trump and VP Mike Pence. While they were meeting in the oval office, and while McCabe was writing his contemporaneous memo, the following story was published by the New York Times (based on Comey memo leaks to Richman):
Also during the approximate time of this Oval Office meeting, Peter Strzok texts with Lisa Page about information being relayed to him by Tashina Guahar (main justice) on behalf of Rod Rosenstein (who is at the White House).
Later that night, after the Oval Office meeting – According to the Mueller report, additional events on Tuesday May 16th, 2017:
It is interesting that Tashina Gauhar was taking notes presumably involved in the 12:30pm May 16, 2017 meeting between, Jim Crowell, Rod Rosenstein, and Andrew McCabe. But McCabe makes no mention of Lisa Page being present.
It appears there was another meeting in the evening (“later that night”) after the visit to the White House with Robert Mueller. This evening meeting appears to be Lisa Page, Rod Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe; along with Tashina Gauhar again taking notes.
♦ Wednesday May 17th, 2017: Rod Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe go to brief the congressional “Gang-of-Eight”: Paul Ryan, Nancy Pelosi, Devin Nunes, Adam Schiff, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, Richard Burr and Mark Warner.
“Previously unseen e-mails on Hunter Biden’s “Hard Drive from Hell” point to never-before-seen evidence of involvement by Joe Biden in his son’s lucrative business dealings in Ukraine with natural gas conglomerate Burisma Holdings, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.
“Should the American public be allowed to view the draft indictment of Hillary Clinton over the Whitewater case? Judicial Watch, the organization founded to promote transparency in government, has sued to make the allegations against her public.
(…) Among the most significant of the newly declassified documents is a 
“We received 
(…) The FBI’s probe of the Clinton Foundation is actually a compartmentalized investigation. Field offices in Los Angeles and New York are spearheading the case but other offices are involved and contributing, sources said.
“McCabe emphatically declared at the invite-only gathering with raised voice: Fuck Flynn and then we Fuck Trump”.
Now that we have significant research files on the 2015 and 2016 political surveillance program; which includes the trail evident within the Weissmann/Mueller report; in combination with the Obama-era DOJ “
