Featured Timeline Entries
May 7, 2020 - Russia Probe Transcript: Obama official Evelyn Farkas admits to never seeing evidence of Trump/Russia collusion

“Former Obama administration defense official Evelyn Farkas testified under oath that she lied during an MSNBC interview when she claimed to have evidence of alleged collusion, a newly declassified congressional transcript of her testimony shows. Farkas testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on June 26, 2017, as part of the committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election between Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Lawmakers keyed in on an appearance Farkas made on MSNBC on March 2, 2017, in which she urged intelligence community bureaucrats to disseminate within the government and potentially even leak to media any incriminating information they had about Trump or his aides.

“I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior [Obama administration] people who left…[that] it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy,” Farkas said.

Farkas, who served in the Obama administration as the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia from 2012 through 2015, also claimed that administration officials appointed by Trump might even destroy evidence of alleged collusion if they “found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff’s dealing with Russians.”

They might “try to compromise those sources and methods,” Farkas alleged in the MSNBC interview. “And we would no longer have access to that intelligence.”

“Not enough was coming out into the open and I knew there was more,” Farkas claimed.

(Read more: The Federalist, 5/07/2020)  (Archive)

May 12, 2020 - Senator Chuck Grassley writes letter to DOJ and DNI requesting more declassification

“Senator Grassley sends a letter (pdf here) thanking AG Bill Barr and DNI Richard Grenell for the declassified documents produced so far.  With the DOJ deciding to drop the Flynn prosecution Grassley notes there are three more buckets of classified documents he would like to see declassified and presented soon:

(1) The Flynn/Kislyak transcript. (2) The Susan Rice Memo to file. (3) The original and mysteriously missing Flynn 302 authored by FBI agent Joe Pientka. [Grassley Press]

Within the letter, Senator Grassley notes he previously requested the release of these documents from former DAG Rod Rosenstein; who refused to submit them and made excuses to congressional oversight.

Additionally, Senator Grassley appeared on Fox Business for an interview with Liz MacDonald.  Interestingly Ms. MacDonald went into a deep dive on the 2016 FISA Court ruling by Judge Rosemary Collyer today…. and, even more interestingly, MacDonald connected the FBI searches of the NSA database to the recent activities of the DNI.

Here she is interviewing Senator Grassley about his letter and other interesting developments… listen carefully at 02:20:

(Conservative Treehouse, 5/12/2020)  (Archive)

May 14, 2020 - Scott Ritter: Another perjury trap is exposed, George Papadopoulos

George Papadopoulos (Credit: public domain)

(…) [The Judiciary Committee releases] recently declassified Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications submitted by the Department of Justice to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a unique judicial body that approves requests for secret warrants used by law enforcement to conduct covert electronic and physical surveillance of U.S. citizens, reveal that the predicate for the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into alleged Russian collusion by the Trump campaign was triggered by a May 10, 2016, meeting between Papadopolous and an Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer (who at the time was the Australian Ambassador to the United Kingdom) in a London bar.

According to Downer, Papadopolous revealed that, based upon an April 26 conversation with a Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud, “he [Papadopolous] thought that the Russians may release information, might release information, that could be damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign at some stage before the election.”

Downer and a fellow Australian diplomat who was also at the meeting and witnessed Papadopolous’ statement, drafted a cable back to the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Canberra recording the gist of the conversation. “There was no suggestion from Papadopoulos nor in the record of the meeting that we sent back to Canberra, there was no suggestion that there was collusion between Donald Trump or Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russians,” Downer said. “All we did is report what Papadopoulos said.”

After the release by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016, of thousands of emails allegedly sourced from the DNC, Downer, concerned that there might be a link between Papadopolous and the DNC emails, provided a copy of his cable to the U.S. Embassy in London, which forwarded it on to the FBI. This cable was used by the FBI to initiate its Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign; a derivative investigation into Papadopolous was given the codename “Crossfire Typhoon.”

As far as predicates for sensitive counterintelligence investigations of presidential campaigns go, the Papadopolous conversation with Misfud is transparently weak. A cursory examination of the emails released by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016, shows that no in-time reference pre-dates May 25, 2016, more than a month after the alleged “data staging” event that Schiff highlighted as the link between the DNC hack and Papadopolous.

In short, regardless of the content of Papadopolous’s conversation with Mifsud, as relayed by Downer, there was no linkage between any emails alleged to be in the possession of Russia at the time of April 26, 2016, Papadopolous-Misfud meeting and the actual data released by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016, that the FBI used to justify the opening of both the Crossfire Hurricane and Crossfire Typhoon investigations. As Mueller notes in his report, the information released by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016, coincides with a separate, alleged cyber attack on the DNC Microsoft Exchange Service between May 25 and June 1, 2016 — an attack that Mifsud could not have known about when he met with Papadopolous in April.

Moreover, the FBI knew before it interviewed Papadopolous on Jan. 27, 2017, that Papadopolous was not involved in any scheme to acquire purloined Russian emails on behalf of the Trump campaign. In September and October of 2016, the FBI made use of two confidential human sources (CHS) to engage Papadopoulos in conversations designed to elicit corroboration into its now-debunked theory.

In a Sept. 15, 2016, meeting between Papadopolous and an FBI-controlled CHS, Papadopolous was asked outright whether or not the Trump campaign could benefit from third-party intervention from the likes of WikiLeaks or Russia. Papadopolous made it clear in his response that no one in the campaign was advocating for this kind of intervention because it was “illegal,” “compromised national security,” and “set a bad precedent.”

News media around the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 7, 2018, waiting for former Trump adviser George Papadopolous, found guilty of lying to the FBI, (Credit: Phil Roeder/Flickr)

“At the end of the day,” Papadopolous said, “it’s an illegal, it’s illegal activity. Espionage is treason. This is a form of treason.” And when asked by a second FBI-controlled CHS on Oct. 29, 2016, about who he thought was behind the hacking of the DNC, Papadopolous responded that it could be “the Chinese,” “the Iranians,” “Bernie supporters,” or “Anonymous” — but not the Russians. “Dude, Russia doesn’t have any interest in it anyways,” Papadopolous said. “They — dude, no one knows how a president is going to govern anyways. I mean…Congress is very hostile to Russia anyways.” It was a prescient, and telling, exchange — one the FBI chose to ignore.

In the court filing detailing the facts sustaining Papadopolous’s guilty plea, Mueller declared that “defendant PAPADOPOULOS impeded the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the Campaign and the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.”

However, any careful examination of the data used by the FBI to link Papadopolous to the WikiLeaks release of DNC emails on July 22, 2016, clearly shows that there was absolutely no connection. As such, Papadopolous’s conversation with Mifsud had zero material bearing on the FBI’s investigation, a fact known to the FBI prior to its interview of Papadopolous on Jan. 27, 2017.” (Read more: Scott Ritter/Consortium News, 5/14/2020)  (Archive)

May 18, 2020 - Bill Barr's silence impacts the outcome of the 2020 Election

(Credit: CNN)

“On May 18, 2020, then-Attorney General Bill Barr made a statement to the media, declaring that special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Russiagate hoax wasn’t focused on either former President Barack Obama or former Vice President Joe Biden, stating that “I don’t expect Mr. Durham’s work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man.”

In his new book, Barr has revealed that he made that statement in response to a series of tweets by then-President Donald Trump. A week earlier, Trump had started using the term “Obamagate” on Twitter, alleging that both Obama and Biden had “led the charge” on the FBI’s phony Russiagate investigation.

Barr recounts in his book that he felt it was unacceptable for Trump to attempt to drag his presidential election opponent into the Russiagate scandal and that Barr felt that it was incumbent upon him to make a public statement.

The corporate media immediately seized upon Barr’s statement, with The Washington Post running a same-day headline that “Barr says he does not expect Obama or Biden will be investigated by prosecutor reviewing 2016 Russia probe.” The New York Times’ headline went further, claiming that “Barr Dismisses Trump’s Claim That Russia Inquiry Was an Obama Plot.”

Barr’s May 18 claim is an often underappreciated statement, the fallout of which was felt throughout the 2020 presidential election. Although Barr now claims that he issued his statement from a position of fairness, what he actually did was insert himself and the Department of Justice (DOJ) into the presidential campaign, and in doing so, he set the stage for the media’s whitewashing of questions of corruption that swirled around Biden throughout the campaign.

It’s also worth noting that Barr’s decision to make a public statement contrasts sharply with former FBI Director James Comey, who claimed that as a matter of DOJ policy he wouldn’t confirm or deny if President Trump was actually under investigation in 2017.

More importantly, Barr’s May 18 statement stands in stark contrast to his decision to remain silent after the second presidential debate in October 2020, when Biden falsely blamed the story about his son Hunter’s laptop on a “Russian plot.”

Barr recently recounted that he “was very disturbed during the debate when candidate Biden lied to the American people about the laptop.” Barr told Fox News in an interview that Biden “was squarely confronted with the laptop and he suggested that it was Russian disinformation. … And I was shocked by that. … When you’re talking about interference in an election, I can’t think of anything more than that kind of thing.”

Barr’s supposed “shock” over Biden’s claims of Russian disinformation during the debate begs a simple question: If Barr actually felt that Biden’s assertions of “Russian disinformation” amounted to “interference in an election,” why didn’t Barr say anything at the time?”  (Read more: Zero Hedge, 3/26/2022)  (Archive) (The Epoch Times, 3/23/2022)

May 19, 2020 - Susan Rice email confirms that Michael Flynn was personally targeted during a Jan. 5 Oval Office meeting with Obama

(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Newly declassified portions of a key Susan Rice email confirm that Michael Flynn was personally targeted during a Jan. 5 Oval Office meeting with Obama.

Michael Flynn was personally targeted during a crucial Jan. 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting arranged by then-President Barack Obama, a newly declassified document shows.
On Jan. 20, 2017, as President Donald Trump was being inaugurated, former White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice sent herself a bizarre email detailing the Jan. 5 meeting between her, Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and fired former Federal Bureau of Investigations Director James Comey. In the email, portions of which were not declassified until recently, Rice recorded that Flynn, who at the time was the incoming national security adviser for Trump, was personally discussed and targeted during the meeting with Obama.

Documents previously released and declassified showed that the FBI never possessed any evidence that Flynn was a secret Russian agent or that he had broken any laws. An FBI electronic communication closing the agency’s counterintelligence investigation against him, which was dated Jan. 4, made clear that “no derogatory information” about Flynn had been obtained during the months-long investigation of Flynn.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently determined that an ambush FBI interview of Flynn, which later formed the foundation of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s single charge against Flynn, had no legal basis. Contemporaneous handwritten notes from the FBI’s top counterintelligence official at the time show that the FBI’s goal in targeting Flynn in early 2017 was to “prosecute him or get him fired.”

DOJ is currently in the process of dismissing all charges against Flynn, citing rank corruption and abuse of power in the FBI’s campaign against Flynn.

(h/t X22Report)

(Read more: The Federalist, 5/19/2025)  (Archive)

In 2020, President Trump retweeted my post. It said that on January 4th, 2017–one day before meeting w. Obama–Comey (FBI’s “7th Floor”) ordered not to close the Flynn investigation

“Strzok ordered Barnett to close the Flynn case but 20 minutes after the closing doc was circulated, Strzok ordered to keep it open following the intervention of
“7th Floor” (FBI leadership)”

Comey knew the investigation was opened under a false pretense namely Halper’s lies about me and Gen Flynn.

Comey needed the Flynn investigation open to get Trump.

May 20, 2020 - Judicial Watch releases the originating FBI “EC” Electronic Communication, the start of Crossfire Hurricane

“The “EC” or electronic communication that started the July 31st counterintelligence operation was one of the original declassification requests from Devin Nunes original bucket list in 2018.   The EC has been declassified and Judicial Watch received it.

Originally the EC was presumed to be a CIA communication to the FBI detailing the need for a counterintelligence investigation; however, the EC as presented is originated by FBI Agent Peter Strzok and centers around George Papadopoulos.

This means Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign, was predicated based on gossip, innuendo and rumors related to George Papadopoulos.   The information was relayed by Australian Diplomat Alexander Downer.

(Judicial Watch) […] The redacted document details seeming third hand information that the Russian government “had been seeking prominent members of the Donald Trump campaign in which to engage to prepare for potential post-election relations should Trump be elected U.S. President.” The document also alleges Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, claimed to an unnamed party that “they (the Russians) could assist the Trump campaign with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton.” (more)

The EC is below:

If we take the CTH timeline on George Papadopoulos it will help to assemble the picture of what took place:

♦Early Feb. 2016 After leaving the campaign of Ben Carson, George Papadopoulos joins London Center for International Law Practice (LCILP)

♦Mid March, 2016, Papdopoulos travels to Rome as part of LCILP role. During visit Papadopoulos introduced to Joseph Mifsud. Mifsud introduced as professor for London Academy for Diplomacy, London England.

♦March 17,2016, Papadopoulos returns to London.

♦March 21, 2016, President Trump names Papadopoulos amid list of foreign policy advisors, with focus on energy sector.

♦March 24, 2016, Papadopoulos meets Mifsud in London. Mifsud accompanied by Olgya Polonskya who Mifsud introduced as former student/Putin niece. [sketchy]

♦March 31, 2016, Trump campaign foreign policy team meeting, Washington DC. Trump International Hotel. [famous table photograph with Papadopoulos, Sessions, Trump]

♦Early April, 2016, Mifsud continues contact w/ Papadopoulos via email. Ms. Polonskya also emailing Papadopoulos; however, later discovered Mifsud actually writing Polonskya emails. Papadopoulos returns to London, U.K.

♦April 11, 2016, Mifsud emails Papadopoulos about his own upcoming travel to Russia. Suggests meeting for following day, April 12.

♦April 12, 2016, Papadopoulos and Mifsud meet at Andaz Hotel in London, U.K. This meeting is in advance of Mifsud traveling to Russia.

♦April 18, 2016, Mifsud emails Papadopoulos from Russia. Introduces Ivan Timofeev.

♦April 25, 2016, Mifsud returns to London after a stopover in Rome.

♦April 26, 2016, Papadopoulos and Mifsud meet again at Andaz Hotel in London, U.K. During meeting Mifsud claims Russians “have dirt” on Hillary Clinton; “emails of Clinton”; and “thousands of emails”.

♦May 6, 2016, Papadopoulos gets call from Christian Cantor (Israeli Embassy) wanting to introduce his ‘girlfriend’ Erika Thompson (Australian Embassy aide to Ambassador Alexander Downer). They meet at a London Pub.

(NOTE: Mueller cites the content of May 6, 2016, meeting as communicating “clinton emails” from Papadopoulos; however, Mueller conflates and falsely attributes the content material of this Erika Thompson meeting. Mueller attributes content to Ambassador Downer meeting with Papadopoulos on May 10, 2016.  Conflation appears intentional)

♦May 6, 2016, Following initial meeting, Papadopoulos gets email from Erika Thompson suggesting meeting with her boss, Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer.

♦May 10, 2016, Papadopoulos meets Ambassador Downer at the Kensington Wine Rooms in London, England.

MEDIA CLAIM: “Downer met with George Papadopoulos, where Papadopoulos — having been introduced through two intermediaries, Christian Cantor and Erika Thompson — mentioned that Russians had material on Hillary Clinton.”

Both Papadopoulos and Downer refute their May 10th meeting discussed Clinton’s emails.  Papadopoulos notes that Ambassador Downer is recording their conversation.

Alexander Downer is the Australian diplomat who engaged George Papadopoulos in London just days after U.S. intelligence asset Joseph Mifsud told Papadopoulos that Russians had emails from Hillary Clinton.  The communication from Ambassador Downer to the United States is what’s referenced in that EC above.

On April 18, 2019, coinciding with the release of the Mueller report, the Australian government declassified and released information that is specifically connected to the EC released today.  We can take the Australian release and overlay it into some really fantastic research on Alexander Downer, previously done by TWE:

In 1956, Australia — alongside New Zealand — were both added to the newly expanded UKUSA Agreement, which extended intelligence co-operation to those two countries with the current members of the agreement — United Kingdom, United States and Canada — which formed the alliance known as “Five Eyes”.

Many years later, on February 22, 2006, Alexander Downer and Bill Clinton signed a memorandum of understanding to spread grant money over the course of four years to a project to provide screening and drug treatment to AIDS patients in Asia as part of the Clinton Foundation.

On February 18, 2014, Downer was announced as Australia’s next High Commissioner to London, where he would replace Mike Rann.

Between March 7–13, 2016, Director James Comey visited Australia and met with Attorney General George Brandis and Justice Minister Michael Keenan.

Three days later, on March 16, Director James Clapper arrived in Australia from New Zealand via a C-17 Globemaster.

On May 10, 2016, at the Kensington Wine Rooms in London, England, Downer met with George Papadopoulos, where Papadopoulos — having been introduced through two intermediaries, Christian Cantor and Erika Thompson — mentioned that Russians had material on Hillary Clinton.

There’s a little bit of a conflict in the dates (likely due to the significantly different time zones between London and Australia). According to Downer’s calendar schedule the meeting with Papadopoulos was May 11th, 2016 (as released).

♦May 11, 2016, Ambassador Downer files notes to Australian government about the content of the conversation and the outlook of the Trump campaign foreign policy.

Here’s the heavily redacted cable communique from Downer to Canberra, AU office, on May 11th, 2016, the day he meting Papadopoulos (as released):

Here’s the excerpt from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report that describes the events. However, worth noting Mueller assigns this meeting to May 6th, 2016. (Conflating earlier meeting with Erika Thompson – with Ambassador Downer meeting with Papadopoulos on May 10, 2016. Conflation appears intentional.)

Alexander Downer decided to inform the United States Embassy in London, England about his conversation with Papadopoulos, upon the release of the Democratic National Committee’s e-mails by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016.

On July 23, 2016, the Australian Government contacted Elizabeth Dibble at the United States Embassy to inform her about Downer and Papadopoulos’s conversation.

♦July 26, 2016, Mueller says (pg 89, fn465) Australia informs U.S. government of Papadopoulos statements about Clinton emails.

Somehow the information was transmitted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Crossfire Hurricane was then opened on July 31, 2016 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Two days later, on August 2, 2016, Special Agent Peter Strzok and another agent at the Federal Bureau of Investigation met with Downer directly in London to discuss his conversation with Papadopoulos further. Strzok then received reading materials, which he texted about to Lisa Page.

However, it’s worth noting information provided by Devin Nunes (April 2018) as it pertains to an unofficial channel of information that surrounded these events:

REPRESENTATIVE DEVIN NUNES: “That’s correct. So it took us a long time to actually get this, what’s called the “electronic communication”, as we know it now for your viewers, what it is it’s the original intelligence, original reasons that the counterintelligence was started.

Now this is really important to us because the counterintelligence investigation uses the tools of our intelligence services that are not supposed to be used on American citizens. And we’ve long wanted to know: what intelligence did you have that actually led to this investigation? So what we’ve found now, after the investigators have reviewed it, is that in fact there was no intelligence.

So we have a traditional partnership with what’s called the Five Eyes Agreement. Five Eyes Agreement involves our friends in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, and of course, us. So long time processes and procedures in place where we move intelligence across.

We are not supposed to spy on each others’ citizens. And it’s worked well. And it continues to work well. And we know it’s working well because there was no intelligence that passed through the Five Eyes channels to our government.

And that’s why we had to see that original communication. So now we’re trying to figure out, as you know, we are investigating the State Department, we think there’s some major irregularities in the State Department, and we’re trying to figure out how this information about Mr. Papadopoulos of all people who was supposedly meeting with some folks in London, how that made it over across into the FBI’s hands.” (Video Interview Link)

.

…On the day Peter Strzok starts Crossfire Hurricane he says it “feels momentous“…

(Conservative Treehouse, 5/20/2020)  (Archive)

May 20, 2020 - Senate Committee issues first subpoena to Blue-Star Strategies in Biden-Burisma investigation

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee meets on Capitol Hill, May 20, 2020, to issue a subpoena to Blue Star Strategies. (Credit: Andrew Harnik/The Associated Press))

“The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee approved on Wednesday its first subpoena as part of an investigation into the relationship between former vice president Joe Biden and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.

The Republicans senators in the committee approved the subpoena, at the request of the panel’s chairman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), for Blue Star Strategies in an 8-6 party-line vote.

It will cover records dating back to Jan. 1, 2013, regarding the public relations firm’s work for Burisma.

Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden, joined the board of Burisma in April 2014 when the former vice president was leading the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy. He left Burisma in 2019.

Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in mid-2019 to “look into” corruption allegations against the Bidens, noting that Joe Biden forced the ouster in 2016 of a prosecutor who was probing Burisma. The phone call sparked an impeachment inquiry against Trump, leading to his impeachment in December 2019.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) supports the subpoena and said it will provide the Senate with the full picture of Biden’s relationship with Burisma.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 5/20/2020)  (Archive)

May 20, 2020 - Zelensky seeks probe over leaked audio of Biden linking US aid to Ukraine prosecutor's ouster

Vlodomyr Zelensky and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko debate on April 19, 2019. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for an investigation Wednesday of leaked recordings purportedly depicting then-Vice President Joe Biden telling Zelensky’s predecessor Petro Poroshenko that his country would receive U.S. aid once top prosecutor Viktor Shokin was replaced.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee already has acknowledged such an arrangement publicly. But the leaked audio revived criticism that Biden was engaged in a kind of quid-pro-quo, much like President Trump was accused — during impeachment proceedings — of linking U.S. aid to calls for Zelensky to probe Shokin’s ouster.

The new audio indicates Poroshenko went along with Biden’s plan but did not think Shokin was involved in wrongdoing.

Shokin purportedly has said under oath that he had launched a probe concerning Hunter Biden’s role at Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings when he was ousted. Hunter Biden held a lucrative post there, despite limited expertise, while his father handled Ukrainian policy as vice president. At the least, Ukrainian prosecutors had previously been investigating Burisma’s founder. Biden’s defenders have argued his intervention had nothing to do with Burisma and was focused on corruption concerns.

Zelensky said at a news conference in Ukraine that the contents of the leaked conversations, however, “might be perceived, qualified as high treason,” according to The Washington Post. Ukrainian prosecutors have said they are looking into sweeping “international corruption.” Zelensky has tried to maintain good relations with the Trump administration, even as his 2019 discussions were at the core of the U.S. president’s impeachment.

Andriy Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, released the recordings a day earlier.

“It’s going to be critical for him to work quickly to repair the damage that Shokin did,” the man identified as Biden says in one clip. “And I’m a man of my word. And now that the new prosecutor general is in place, we’re ready to move forward to signing that new $1 billion loan guarantee. And I don’t know how you want to go about that… I’ll leave it to you to how you want it done and where you want it done.”

(Read more: Fox News, 5/20/2020)  (Archive)

May 23, 2020 - Flynn judge, Emmett Sullivan, hires high-powered D.C. attorney to "defend his actions in Flynn case”

The Washington Post headline reads (emphasis mine): “Federal judge hires high-powered D.C. attorney to defend his actions in Flynn case.” Which gives some insight into the framework and purpose of this event, and how it reached the WaPo narrative engineers.

The Washington Post is, as an institution, adverse to the interests of Michael Flynn.  So this story, specifically the events behind the story, is written in a posture to aid Judge Sullivan and oppose Flynn.  Keep that in mind (I’ll explain after).

Judge Sullivan has hired a high profile DC lawyer to assist him in responding to the inquires of the DC circuit:

(…) In a rare step that adds to this criminal case’s already unusual path, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan has retained Beth Wilkinson to represent him in defending his decision to a federal appeals court in Washington, according to a person familiar with the hire who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

(…) Wilkinson, known for her top-notch legal skills and get-results style, is expected to file a notice with the court in the coming week about representing the judge. She declined to comment when reached Friday evening. Sullivan also declined to comment through his office.

(…) A federal judge doesn’t typically hire private counsel to respond to an appeals court, and yet so much about Flynn’s case has been a departure from the norm.

(…) Flynn’s lawyers then accused Sullivan of bias and asked the U.S. Court of Appeals to intervene.  On Thursday, that higher court took the extraordinary step of ordering Sullivan to answer within 10 days. The court also invited the Justice Department to comment.

(…) Wilkinson, a go-to advocate for prominent officials snared in major Washington investigations and high-stakes legal battles, now joins the fray. (read more)

I’m not going into the weeds to outline the motives of Beth Wilkinson.  Suffice to say the reason she is considered ‘high-profile’ or ‘high-powered’ is because of her connections to the DC system; a political system that frequently becomes enmeshed with the legal system.  Beth Wilkinson is well-connected; that’s the part that matters.

A federal judge hiring a well-connected lawyer to write his response to a DC circuit court appeals panel is the part that’s interesting.  There’s no guarantee the appeals court will accept such a response; but that’s also another issue.   Bottom line: Judge Sullivan is importing a lawyer to represent his interests.  Very unusual.

CTH readers are smart; aware and smart enough not to get stuck in the weeds; so let’s stay elevated on this and look at the whole picture.  Consider this decision by Judge Emmet Sullivan through the prism of recent events surrounding Flynn:

♦ The DOJ joined with the defense position and filed an unopposed motion to drop the case against Michael Flynn.

♦ A USAO from Missouri, Jeff Jensen, has discovered a trail of internal evidence pointing toward a corrupt originating prosecution for the case against Flynn.   Mr. Jensen has been revealing those documents and providing them to the court (and defense).

♦ Meanwhile DNI Ric Grenell has declassified and revealed documents showing a corrupt intent by the U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) against Michael Flynn.

♦ Just yesterday (5/22/20) the FBI Director announced an internal investigation into officials inside the FBI for wrongful conduct specifically as it relates to a corrupt operation, now discovered and public, against Michael Flynn.

Additionally, we shall not play games and ignore the obvious.

Judge Emmet Sullivan is well aware of the reason why former Judge Rudolph “Rudy” Contreras was recused from the Flynn case; only days after accepting the first plea agreement, and less than 72 hours after the Peter Strzok and Lisa Page text messages publicly surfaced.

Lisa Page: “Rudy is on the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]! Did you know that?” “Just appointed two months ago”

Peter Strzok: “I did. We talked about it before and after. I need to get together with him.”

On November 30th, 2017, Mike Flynn signed a guilty plea; ostensibly admitting lying to investigators.  The plea was accepted by Judge Rudolph “Rudy” Contreras; who is also a FISA court judge.  Six days later, December 7, 2017, Judge Contreras “was recused” from the case without explanation.

If the conflict -which required recusal- existed on December 7, 2017, wouldn’t that same conflict have existed days earlier on November 30th?

The same DC circuit now ordering Judge Sullivan to explain his decision-making, is the same DC circuit that previously recused and replaced Judge Contreras from the Flynn case.  None of this, including the specific tone of the panel in their order, is disconnected from the larger background.

So when we take everything in total, the decision by Sullivan to hire a high-profile and well connected DC lawyer to represent his interests in the Flynn case…. well, it looks to me like Sullivan just hired himself a defense attorney.

The phase of the “resistance” that federal Judge Emmet Sullivan was participating in, and had a role to play, is now almost totally engulfed in sunlight.  With few options for deniability and justification remaining, Sullivan has hired himself a lawyer.

(Conservative Treehouse, 5/23/2020)  (Archive)

May 27, 2020 - Matt Whitaker discusses the “Obstruction of Justice Trap” - Mueller probe used as weapon to cover coup effort

Within an interesting interview conducted by Jan Jekielek of Epoch Times, former AAG Matt Whitaker confirms what CTH long suspected. The Mueller investigation was used by corrupt interests within the special counsel’s office to threaten any/all executive branch and congressional officials with “obstruction of justice” charges if they revealed any exculpatory or counter-narrative information during the Mueller probe.

Whitaker describes this as the “obstruction of justice trap.”

Essentially, this approach confirms the second-prong purpose of the Mueller investigation itself. First, use the special counsel in 2017, 2018 and into the beginning of 2019, as a shield (hide information); and secondly a weapon (threats) against any entity who would reveal the background intelligence that undercut the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.

We know President Trump was threatened by Rod Rosenstein not to declassify any information in September of 2018 or the Mueller investigation would use that act as evidence of obstruction. Whitaker confirms that same approach was applied toward any executive branch officer who would reveal or release information to congress during the tenure of the special counsel; even within the DOJ and including the attorney general.

This is how the Mueller probe was weaponized to mislead the American people.

While the Mueller team continued the same corrupt process started in 2016; and essentially transferred the same objectives as the DOJ/FBI team under Crossfire Hurricane; that same investigative unit was used to keep information from surfacing in ’17, ’18 and ’19 that would expose the corrupt nature of the investigation itself.

Documents could not be released without Mueller approval; interviews with key FBI/DOJ officials could not be conducted without Mueller team approval; information could not be declassified without Mueller team approval, etc.

Any agency or individual that attempted to release any information was subject to the threat of indictment by the same corrupt prosecutors leading the investigation. It’s a self-fulfilling safety mechanism.  Even DOJ officials like Matt Whitaker were under threat. Whitaker calls it the “Obstruction of Justice Trap”.

With that in mind, this is a very serious flaw in the authority of the special counsel statute that needs to be addressed by congress. Who can watch the watchers, when the watchers were specifically selected because they would knowingly contribute to the corruption.

Very disturbing (timestamps for interview):

♦03:43 On Judge Sullivan choosing not to dismiss the case against Gen. Flynn
♦06:54 On FBI director Christopher Wray calling for an internal investigation
♦08:41 What kind of accountability will we see for 2016 election surveillance?
♦15:27 The problem with the regulation creating Special Counsels
♦19:32 Obstruction of justice trap?
♦35:38 Communist China’s a greater threat than Russia

(Conservative Treehouse, 5/27/2020)  (Archive)

May 29, 2020 - Dana Boente resigns amid criticism for his role in Flynn investigation

Dana J. Boente (Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

FBI’s top lawyer Dana Boente was asked to resign on Friday. Two sources familiar with the decision to dismiss Boente said it came from high levels of the Justice Department rather than directly from FBI Director Christopher Wray.

His departure comes on the heels of recent criticism by Fox News for his role in the investigation of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

A spokesman for the FBI confirmed to NBC News that Boente did in fact resign on Friday.

Boente signed one of the warrants renewing the FBI’s authority to surveil Flynn. The warrants, known as FISA warrants, were renewed several times and had to be approved by a judge.

(Timeline editor’s note: Dana Boente did NOT sign one of the FISA warrants to surveil Flynn. The FISA warrants were used to surveil Carter Page.)

Boente also said in a recently leaked memo that material put into the public record about Flynn was not exculpatory for the former national security advisor. The memo undermines the Justice Department’s latest position that material about Flynn was mishandled by prosecutors.

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs said on April 27 that, “Shocking new reports suggest F.B.I. General Counsel Dana Boente was acting in coordination with F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray to block the release of that evidence that would have cleared General Flynn.” (Read more: NBC News, 5/29/2020)  (Archive)

June 1, 2020 - Podesta's plan to stop Trump from taking office if he wins - Transition Integrity Project

Transition Integrity Project (TIP)  (Archive)

June 2, 2020 - Hillary Clinton loses her appeal, order stands to testify on private server and Benghazi emails

Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Select Committee on Benghazi October 22, 2015. (Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

(…) The hearing in the D.C. Circuit came in the case Judicial Watch v. Clinton, a public records case involving a request for State Department documents and communication about the 2012 terror attack at the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.  U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attack.

The case also involves Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.  Judicial Watch, a conservative activist watchdog group that files Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to investigate claimed misconduct by government officials, uncovered another 756 pages of emails the FBI was able to retrieve that were part of Hillary Clinton’s unsecured server revealing communications between some prominent Washington figures and classified emails sent by former prime minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair.  The emails were part of the batch “Clinton tried to delete or destroy,” Judicial Watch stated in its press release.  It showed that Clinton had asked Blair to continue using her private email after her confirmation and also revealed that Blair was sending classified information on her unsecured server.  Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information, as ex–FBI director James Comey carefully and rather mildly concluded in July 2016, announcing there would be no charges against her.  Judicial Watch did not drop the case.

On June 2, Clinton’s lawyers challenged a March 2 order from U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who ordered Clinton to testify:

P.5: “The Court is not confident that State currently possesses every Clinton email recovered by the FBI; even years after the FBI investigation, the slow trickle of new emails has yet to be explained. For this reason, the Court believes the subpoena would be worthwhile and may even uncover additional previously undisclosed emails. Accordingly, the Court GRANTS this request.”

P. 10: “The Court GRANTS Judicial Watch’s request to depose Secretary Clinton on matters concerning her reasons for using a private server and her understanding of State’s records management obligations.”

P. 10–11: “The Court holds that Secretary Clinton and Ms. Mills [Counselor and Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton during her whole tenure as United States Secretary of State] cannot be questioned about the underlying actions taken after the Benghazi attack, but they may be questioned about their knowledge of the existence of any emails, documents, or text messages related to the Benghazi attack. Such inquiries would go to the adequacy of the search without expanding the parameters…Accordingly, the Court GRANTS IN PART AND DENIES IN PART this request.”

(…) Judicial Watch wants to know about the Benghazi talking points — when senior Obama administration officials knowingly misled the country about what had happened by heavily scrubbing the CIA’s talking points regarding terror references on the eve of the 2012 presidential election.  They would want to ask her why she deleted 33,000 emails from her private server and what information they contained — because despite her claims that they were “personal,” the FBI recovered more than 17,000 of them that were work-related.  Did they contain any classified information?  Did they contain human intel?  Did she know about the upcoming terrorist attack?  What measures did she use to prevent the Benghazi attack?  What measures did she use to save American lives?  And many, many more.

And now, despite all the effort to avoid testimony, Madam Secretary will have to answer questions from Judicial Watch, as the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals submitted the case, which will now be heard on September 9.” (Read more: American Thinker, 6/14/2020)  (Archive)

June 3, 2020 - Rosenstein and McCabe accuse each other of lying in Russia hoax

(Credit: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

(…) During Rosenstein’s testimony, McCabe issued a statement saying the former DAG was giving “false” testimony about his recollection regarding former FBI Director James Comey’s memos about his interactions with President Donald Trump.

Interestingly, both men accuse each other of lying, pointing the finger at one another, in one of the biggest hoaxes in modern political history. They lied to each other, all the while creating a hoax to fool the American people and the world. McCabe and Rosenstein, along with their colleagues in the bureau, DOJ and the intelligence community know that eventually they will get caught up in the lies and explanations. This is when the finger-pointing will start.

(…) During the hearing, Rosenstein said during his testimony that McCabe did not share details about Comey’s memos or his conversations with Trump prior to opening the special counsel investigation. Rosenstein claimed that he didn’t know about the memos until they were leaked by Comey’s friend Columbia Law School Professor Daniel Richman to the media. Comey admitted to Congress during testimony in June 2017 that he purposefully leaked several memos to Richman in an effort to ensure a special counsel investigation.

“Lying is when you ask someone a direct question and get a false answer. Candor is when you’re forthcoming with information someone needs to know,” said Rosenstein. “I believe McCabe should have recognized that when I became acting AG (overseeing the Russia probe), I needed to know about Comey’s memos and he didn’t tell me until a couple of hours before they showed up in the New York Times.”

It didn’t take long for McCabe to fire back at Rosenstein, saying “Mr. Rosenstein’s claims to have been misled by me, or anyone from the FBI, regarding our concerns about President Trump and the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia are completely false.”

“Mr. Rosenstein approved of, and suggested ways to enhance, our investigation of the President,” McCabe added. “Further, I personally briefed Mr. Rosenstein on Jim Comey’s memos describing his interactions with the President mere days after Mr. Rosenstein wrote the memo firing Jim Comey.” (Read more: Sara Carter, 6/03/2020)  (Archive)

June 10, 2020 - FBI knew Steele’s Russia research was connected to Clinton, Dems from earliest interactions

An ecstatic Hillary Clinton celebrates at the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention where she accepted the nomination on Thursday, July 28, 2016. (Credit: Ben Lowy/ Time)

“Notes and emails that have been kept so far from Senate investigators show the FBI knew from its earliest interactions with Christopher Steele in July 2016 that his Russia research project on Donald Trump was connected to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

(…) While the headlines since that report have mostly focused on FISA abuses, Senate investigators have also zeroed in on a handful of little-noticed passages in Horowitz’s narrative that reference original FBI source documents showing what agents and supervisors knew about Steele, the former MI6 agent, and the firm that hired him, Fusion GPS.

(…) But one passage and two footnotes in Horowitz’s report that have largely escaped public attention suggest the FBI agent who first interviewed Steele about his anti-Trump research in London on July 5, 2016 was aware immediately of a connection to Clinton and that a separate office of the FBI passed along information from an informant by Aug. 2, 2016 that Simpson’s Fusion GPS was connected to the DNC.

For instance, the agent in London contacted an Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) in the New York field office (NYFO) shortly after interviewing Steele and obtaining one of the anti-Trump memos that made up his dossier, according to information in Horowitz’s report.

The agent sought advice July 13, 2016, on how to handle the sensitive election-year allegations from the supervisor in New York, where the FBI had already opened a probe of Page that would eventually be assumed by Washington headquarters.

“ASAC 1’s notes from his July 13 call with Handling Agent 1 closely track the contents of Report 80, identify Simpson as a client of a law firm, and include the following: ‘law firm works for the Republican party or Hillary and will use [the information described in Report 80] at some point,’” the Horowitz report stated. “ASAC 1 told us that he would not have made this notation if Handling Agent 1 had not stated it to him.”

Footnote 223 in the report reveals a second line of evidence that came to the FBI from a confidential human source (CHS) suggesting the Steele-Simpson-Fusion project was tied to Democrats. That warning was immediately sent to Agent Peter Strzok, the case agent for the Crossfire Hurricane probe investigating whether Trump and Russia colluded to hijack the 2016 election.

Senate investigators want to see the original emails and notes from these conversations as they plan to interrogate dozens of key witnesses in the Russia investigation about whether there was an intentional effort by he FBI to hide from the courts and Congress the flaws in their case, exculpatory evidence involving the Trump targets, and derogatory information about Steele’s credibility.” (Read more: Just the News, 6/10/2020)  (Archive)

June 11, 2020 - DNI Ratcliffe declassifies “Annex A” the supportive documents for 2017 Intel Community Assessment

“DNI John Ratcliffe has declassified the Appendix to the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). [Source Document Here] The appendix known as “Annex A” was the material the FBI and CIA did not include in the body of the ICA; however, it was used to brief congress.

There was always suspicion that “Annex A” was the ridiculous claims by FBI source Christopher Steele; those suspicions are confirmed today.  The ICA was written in late December ’16 & early January 2017, and the purpose was to politicize intelligence by making outlandish claims of the Trump-Russia conspiracy the official position of the U.S intelligence apparatus (CIA, FBI, DOJ and NSA).

(NOTE: the document quality/clarity is very poor as released)

The “Annex A” supporting the narrative was made out of claims by Christopher Steele. The two-page document is stunningly obtuse by design; and despite the FBI knowing the purpose of Christopher Steele, the Annex pretends not to know his agenda.

By keeping the ridiculous Steele claims in the annex the FBI was able to use the claims yet it afforded them plausible deniability under the pretense of non-verification.  When James Comey briefed President Trump about the claims he pretended not to know the political intents of the information; and worse still, he covered-up that Clinton’s campaign had paid for the information.  A stunningly political move based on deception.

In many ways, the refusal of the FBI, CIA, and DOJ to admit their knowledge of the material from Chris Steele is the biggest example of how those same agencies were playing politics.   None of the Steele claims were based on actual evidence; everything was hearsay, gossip, innuendo, and entirely made-up.  The agencies knew this and yet they pretended not to know the motives for the fraudulent intelligence.

As bad as it was to not clearly disclose to FISA court the Steele Dossier had been paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, it was far worse to not disclose this to President-elect (and outgoing President) in the intelligence community assessment.

Deceptive and fraudulent official intelligence documents, purposefully designed to achieve a political agenda, outline a level of serious misconduct even beyond the fabricated claims within the Carter Page FISA application.

The release of this “Annex A” document shows something beyond the willfully blind intentions of James Comey and John Brennan, and speaks to an intentional effort to fabricate claims against the incoming administration on the weakest of possible grounds.

Our research previously outlined how the December 29th, 2016, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) on Russia Cyber Activity was a quickly compiled bunch of nonsense about Russian hacking.

The JAR was followed a week later by the January 7th, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment. The ICA took the ridiculous construct of the JAR and then overlaid a political narrative that Russia was trying to help Donald Trump.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 6/11/2020)  (Archive)

June 12, 2020 - Devin Nunes discusses FBI top lawyer Dana Boente as “a witness to FBI corruption”

“HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes has an interview on OAN news to discuss FBI legal counsel Dana Boente and his exit from the FBI this month.  As Nunes notes Mr. Boente is at the center of an information flow which put him in a position to know the underlying evidence.  As an outcome of that position Boente is either a participant or a witness to corruption at the highest levels of the DOJ.

In prior positions as U.S. Attorney for Virginia; and while leading the DOJ National Security Division; and then later shifting to the FBI as chief legal counsel under Chris Wray; Dana Boente was at the epicenter of corrupt intent and malign activity toward the Trump administration.

It is easiest to capture the full background content in this sequence:

♦June 2019 – Devin Nunes threatens criminal referrals for Dana Boente and Chris Wray – This background highlights Boente as a very bad actor [SEE HERE].

♦April 24, 2020 – Boente and Wray try to block release of Flynn documents. AG Bill Bar intervenes. This is the Flynn firetruck story, that ties to the release of the July 2018 letter from the DOJ-NSD and FBI to the FISA court. [SEE HERE]

♦April 26, 2020 – CTH Open Letter to Bill Barr – Outlines the corruption of Boente and Wray in the long-view and how it all comes together. [SEE HERE]

My educated hunch is the July 12, 2018, letter from the DOJ/FBI that was fraught with false information and purposeful lies to the FISA court, is really the issue that DOJ Bill Barr could not avoid. The lies within the letter are just too brutally obvious and contrast heavily against revelations coming from the outside USAO’s that Barr has brought in to review all of the prior DOJ and FBI activity.

Why do I think that’s the final straw? Because if you take that moment in time and start working backward what you find is demonstrable and provable evidence that Dana Boente was one of the original Trump-era officials who participated in protecting “Spygate” and using his support of the Mueller investigation as an internal weapon. Remember, all the corrupt FBI players on Mueller’s team reported to Boente, including David Archey.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 6/12/2020)  (Archive)

June 17, 2020 - Clinton to President Trump: 'go away quietly' and 'stop messing with our country'

“Unsuccessful presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has hit out at President Donald Trump saying the country and the world is “desperately in need for a change in the American Presidency”. Ms. Clinton told Sky News UK the President tried to characterise the “peaceful protesters” in Washington DC as “thugs” when he sent in the national guard to clear them from the square outside the White House.

She said she is going to “work like crazy to make sure” Democratic candidate Joe Biden wins the November election, but there is “no doubt in my mind” if the election was held on Tuesday Mr Biden would win. “I just have to do everything I can so it’s also true on the first Tuesday of November”. Ms. Clinton said President Trump needed to “go away quietly” and said to him “don’t continue to mess with our country”. (Sky News UK 6/17/2020)

June 19, 2020 - Attorney General Bill Barr removes SDNY attorney Geoffrey Berman and he refuses to leave

“Officially it’s being called a “resignation” according to the Associated Press.  However, all the right Lawfare “beach friends” are going bananas as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, is being replaced.  (DOJ Announcement Here)

According to the DOJ release Berman is being replaced by the nomination of Jay Clayton, currently the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.  Additionally, “Craig Carpenito, currently the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, will serve as the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, while the Senate is considering Jay Clayton’s nomination.”

(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

(Via AP) (…) Geoffrey S. Berman is stepping down as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Attorney General William Barr said in a statement. The office is one of the nation’s premiere districts, trying major mob cases and terror cases over the years.

It was unclear why Berman was leaving his position after serving more than two years. The announcement was made late Friday and came after Barr visited New York City to meet with local police officials. And Trump is nominating the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission to the job, a lawyer with virutally no experience as a federal prosecutor. (link)

UPDATE: USAO Geoffrey Berman is refusing to leave:

Well, there we have it.  That explains things; Geoffrey Berman is a member of the Lawfare resistance, a “beach friend” per se…

It’s worth keeping in mind that Berman’s office was the lead in several high profile cases assembled by Robert Mueller.  Additionally, AG Barr brought in five+ outside U.S. attorney’s to review all of the Mueller cases as an outcome of the FISA court order to conduct a sequestration review of any/all evidence that might have been used as an outcome of the fraudulently obtained Carter Page FISA warrant.

As CTH noted at the time…. “If you consider that several DOJ offices may be involved with the material under review, including the Southern District of New York; The Eastern District of New York; The Eastern District of Virginia; The Washington DC District, and even Main Justice itself; it makes sense that outside DOJ personnel would be needed for this review.”

There’s no evidence the moves are connected to the sequestration review, but with USAO John Durham looking deeply into the background of DOJ and FBI activity surrounding the effort to target candidate Trump, and later President Trump, there could be a possibility that several lanes are merging.   Obviously, AG Barr feels very confident to make the moves and subsequent recommendations to President Trump for replacements.

All of the exit moves and incoming replacements are coming to a head at the same time; early July. The current SDNY move is effective July 3rd, which is the same time that FBI chief legal counsel Dana Boente is leaving his position.  Both Boente (FBI) and Jeffrey Berman (DOJ-SDNY) appear to be resigning by Bill Barr’s request; essentially being told to leave.

Other activity this week that may hold deeper connection:

♦On Monday House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler announced that two former Special Counsel Robert Mueller attorneys, John W. Elias and Aaron S.J. Zelinsky  would be designated as “whistleblowers” to give testimony against AG Bill Barr. (LINK)

♦On Tuesday, the last remaining DOJ advisor to Jeff Sessions, Jody Hunt, announced his intent to leave the justice dept effective “early July”. (LINK) Mr. Hunt was Jeff Session’s chief-of-staff, and one of the key advisors responsible for the decision to recuse from the Mueller probe. (LINK)

♦On Wednesday the DOJ announced that Solicitor General Noel Francisco will be  departing: “Solicitor General of the United States Noel Francisco announces his departure from the Department of Justice, effective as of July 3, 2020.” (LINK)

♦And now on Friday Geoffrey Berman is removed and replaced at the SDNY office; and his exit is also timed for July 3rd. (LINK)

In addition to an identical exit time, one thing all of these departures have in common, including FBI legal counsel Dana Boente’s exit, is their connection to former AG Jeff Sessions (appointments) and DAG Rod Rosenstein (oversight); and ultimately each of these individuals is connected to the larger Robert Mueller special counsel activity.

Their previous work in the DOJ and FBI during the soft-coup insurance phase; which specifically involved the use of the special counsel appointment; in conjunction with the ongoing –and expanded– internal investigation by John Durham; which now includes seven or eight outside U.S. attorneys offices; just seems too coincidental.

The media are framing the use of outside attorneys as Bill Barr working on behalf of President Trump to undermine current and former prosecutions. However, understanding the January FISC order requiring the sequestration effort, the use of outsiders is absolutely necessary.  This is a big shield that AG Barr is likely keeping in his back pocket until after Nadler launches his impeachment attack.

The same U.S. Attorneys, prosecutors and FBI agents who used evidence gathered from the fraudulent FISA warrants cannot be the same attorneys, agents and prosecutors making decisions about what parts of the warrants were used to gather evidence and how each part of any case was assembled by the use therein. It is a simple matter of a conflict of interest carried by any prosecutor that used corrupt evidence.

The Robert Mueller team of FBI investigators and special counsel prosecutors certainly used the fraudulently obtained FISA warrants as part of their investigative evidence collection. Common sense would tell us this had to be the case or the FBI and Mueller team would not have requested July 2017 renewal of the FISA warrant two months after the special counsel team was assembled.

If the FBI & Special Counsel were not using the FISA warrant(s) to capture information, they would not have needed them renewed. Despite media spin to the contrary, the simple truth of renewals holding investigative value is evident in the renewal itself (ie. common sense).

Under this rather extensive effort to find exactly which investigations -over the course of three years- were touched directly, or indirectly, by the four FISA warrants; and/or which investigative paths may have been influenced downstream or enhanced -by varying degrees of importance- by evidence stemming from the FISA warrants; a reasonable person could see how AG Bill Barr would need to put a team together to retrace the investigative steps and make the sequestration determinations.

Overlay USAO John Durham doing a deeper and more lengthy investigation that touches the edges of the underlying warrant, and, well, that’s quite a lot of review ongoing.

Obviously, for reasons of biased intent, corporate left-wing media would like to ignore why outside prosecutors are needed under this framework. The media ignore in part because honest reporting would require an admission the FISA warrants were fraudulently obtained; and in part, because the left-wing media have never informed the public of the DOJ/FBI sequestration effort in the first place. Likely well more than half the country has no idea the DOJ and FBI have been told to go find the material.

There have been numerous articles, thousands of words, and endless hours of pundit protestations about Bill Barr using outside DC lawyers to review all of the previous DOJ attorney activities; yet not a single time have they ever acknowledged the originating order from the FISA court requiring the DOJ/FBI to conduct the review.

Imagine that?

(Washington Post Link) (…) Shortly after the McCabe announcement on Friday, officials said that Barr had assigned Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney in St. Louis, to review and “assist” prosecutors currently handling the case of Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who is still awaiting sentencing after having pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The Jensen appointment marks the latest iteration of an unusual trend inside the Justice Department of tasking outside U.S. attorneys with reviewing, managing, or reinvestigating work that would otherwise not be in their portfolio. Much of the effort seems aimed at re-examining the work of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, whose probe of possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign infuriated the president, or at targeting the president’s foes.  (read more)

Like I said, the Washington Post (above) and the New York Times (LINK) have both written pearl-clutching articles about Barr using DOJ “outsiders”; yet never once have they noted the FISA Court order that preceded all of these outside USAO’s entering the picture and receiving instructions from Bill Barr.  In order for media ideologues to continue advancing their political narrative and to pretend not to know things…

But Truth Has No Agenda!

(Conservative Treehouse, 6/20/2020)  (Archive)

(Republished with permission)

June 23, 2020 - DOJ reveals discovery of new Strzok notes that are exculpatory to General Flynn

“In the latest twist, the Justice Department disclosed to a federal court Tuesday it has located a new page of notes from Peter Strzok, the former lead FBI agent in the Russia collusion investigation, that are exculpatory to former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin (Credit: public domain)

Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin informed U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of the discovery in a midday court filing, revealing the single page of notes were believed to have been taken by Strzok during the critical juncture of early January 2017 when FBI agents recommended shutting down their investigation of Flynn only to be overruled by FBI superiors.

“This page of notes was taken by former Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok. While the page itself is undated; we believe that the notes were taken in early January 2017, possibly between January 3 and January 5,” Sherwin wrote in the motion. The prosecutor said it was possible more documents may be produced to the court.

The page of notes were not made public with the filing because they are currently subject to a protective order.

A source directly familiar with the discovery of the document told Just the News they include one paragraph of notes believed to be taken around Jan. 4, 2017, the date Strzok relayed a request from FBI leadership to the lead agent in the Flynn case asking him not to shut down the investigation as had been planned. The notes are “highly exculpatory,” the source said, declining to describe them more fully because they are under seal.” (Read more: JustTheNews, 6/23/2020)  (Archive)

@Techno_Fog provides a copy of Sherwin’s letter to Flynn attorney, Sidney Powell: