March 29, 2021 - Judicial Watch statement on Supreme Court refusal to uphold court ruling requiring Hillary Clinton email testimony

“Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton issued the following statement in response to the United States Supreme Court’s refusal to grant cert to Judicial Watch’s challenge to an appeals court decision exempting Hillary Clinton from testifying under oath about her emails and Benghazi attack documents:

Hillary Clinton ignored the law but received special protection from both the courts and law enforcement. For countless Americans, this double standard of justice has destroyed confidence in the fair administration of justice. Americans would never have known about Hillary Clinton’s email and related pay for play scandals but for Judicial Watch’s diligence. We expect that the Biden State and Justice Departments will continue to protect her and cover up their own misconduct as we press for additional accountability through the courts.

Judicial Watch argued that the Supreme Court should hear its case because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit erred in undermining the Freedom of Information Act in giving Clinton unwarranted special treatment that conflicts both with Supreme Court precedent and the precedents of other courts of appeal, including its own.

The cert petition arose from the Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242), which led directly to the disclosure of Clinton’s use of a nongovernment email server to conduct government business. On March 2, 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth authorized Judicial Watch to depose Clinton about her emails and the existence of relevant Benghazi attack documents. The court also ordered the deposition of Clinton’s former Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills, and two other State Department officials. (Judicial Watch, 3/29/2021)

March 30, 2021 - Top FBI Russiagate intelligence analyst, Brian Auten, cannot verify any allegations in the Steele Dossier then says nothing for years

Brian Auten (Credit: Radaris)

“For the past four years, Democrats and the Washington media have suspended disbelief about the Steele dossier’s credibility by arguing that some Russia allegations against Donald Trump and his advisers have been corroborated and therefore the most explosive charges may also be true. But recently declassified secret testimony by the FBI official in charge of corroborating the dossier blows up that narrative.

The top analyst assigned to the FBI’s Russia “collusion” case, code-named Crossfire Hurricane, admitted under oath that neither he nor his team of half a dozen intelligence analysts could confirm any of the allegations in the dossier — including ones the FBI nonetheless included in several warrant applications as evidence to establish legal grounds to electronically monitor a former Trump adviser for almost a year.

FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten made the admission under questioning by staff investigators for the Senate Judiciary Committee during closed-door testimony in October. The committee only this year declassified the transcript, albeit with a number of redactions including the name of Auten, who was identified by congressional sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“So with respect to the Steele reporting,” Auten told the committee, “the actual allegations and the actions described in those reports could not be corroborated.”

Brian Auten Transcript – October 29, 2020 – pgs. 103-104

After years of digging, Auten conceded that the only material in the dossier that he could verify was information that was already publicly available, such as names, entities, and positions held by persons mentioned in the document.

His testimony, kept secret for several months, is eye-opening because it’s the first time anybody from the FBI has acknowledged headquarters failed to verify any of the dossier evidence supporting the wiretaps as true and correct.

As one of the FBI’s leading experts on Russia, Auten was highly familiar with the subject matter of the dossier and the Russian players it cited. He also had a team of intelligence analysts at his disposal to pore over the material and chase down leads. They even traveled overseas to interview the dossier’s author, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, and other sources.

The FBI  debunked this claim early on about Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, travelling to Prague.

Still, they could not corroborate any of the allegations of Trump-Russia “collusion” in the dossier, and actually debunked many of them — including the rumor, oft-repeated by the media, that Trump attorney Michael Cohen flew to Prague in the summer of 2016 to secretly huddle with Kremlin agents over an alleged Trump-Russia plot to hack the election. They determined that Cohen had never even been to the Czech Republic.

Andrew McCabe (l) and James Comey (Credit: Jahi Chikwendiu/Matt McClain, Getty Images)

Yet Auten and his Crossfire teammates — who referred to the dossier as “Crown material,” as if it were valuable intelligence from America’s closest ally, Britain — never informed a secret surveillance court that the dossier was a bust. Instead, they used it as the basis for all four warrant applications to spy on Carter Page, a tangential 2016 Trump campaign adviser. Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who personally signed and approved the final application, has testified that without the dossier, the warrants could not have been obtained.

Financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 as opposition research against Trump, the dossier was used by the FBI to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to eavesdrop on Page from October 2016 to September 2017. A U.S. citizen, Page was accused of being a Russian agent, even though he previously assisted both the CIA and FBI in their efforts to hold Moscow in check. He was never charged with a crime and at least half the warrants have since been invalidated by the court. Page is now suing the FBI, as well as Auten, among other individual defendants, and is seeking a total of $75 million in damages.

The bureau’s handling of the warrants is part of Special Counsel John Durham’s ongoing investigation into the government’s targeting of Trump and his campaign during the election, and later, the Trump presidency. In January, Durham secured a criminal conviction against top Crossfire lawyer Kevin Clinesmith for falsifying evidence against Page to help justify the last warrant issued in June 2017.

It could not be ascertained whether Durham has interviewed Auten — a spokesman did not return messages — but Auten has hired one of the top white-collar criminal defense lawyers in Washington. And former federal law enforcement officials say Auten is certainly on Durham’s witness list.

“That analyst needs to be investigated,” said former assistant FBI director and prosecutor Chris Swecker, noting that Auten is a central, if overlooked, figure in the FISA abuse scandal — and one who attended several meetings with McCabe in the Durham case. In fact, the 52-year-old analyst shows up at every major juncture in the Crossfire investigation.

Auten, who did not respond to requests for comment directly or through his lawyer, was assigned to the case from its opening in July 2016 and supervised its analytical efforts, including researching other members of the Trump campaign who might serve as possible targets in addition to Page. He played a key supportive role for the agents preparing the FISA applications, including reviewing the probable-cause section of the applications and providing the agents with information about the sub-sources noted in the applications, and even drafting some of the language that ended up in the affidavits to spy on Page. He also helped prepare and review the FISA renewal drafts.

A 15-year FBI veteran, Auten assisted the case agents in providing information on the reliability of FBI informant Steele and his sources and reviewing for accuracy their information cited in the body of the applications, as well as the footnotes. He also sifted through the emails, text messages and phone calls the FBI collected from the wiretaps on Page. He met with top Crossfire officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, briefed McCabe and then-FBI Director James Comey, and even ran meetings with case agents and analysts regarding the election-year investigation, which he testified “was done as a ‘headquarters special.’ ”

Steele primary sub-source Igor Danchenko appears on Russia-language channel RTVi (U.S.-Israel) in July 2016. (Credit: Twitter/@LikesLurks)

In addition, Auten personally met with Steele and his “primary sub-source,” a Russian emigre living in the U.S., as well as former British intelligence colleagues of Steele. Auten also met with former Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and processed the material Ohr fed the FBI from Glenn Simpson, the political opposition research contractor who hired Steele to compile the anti-Trump dossier on behalf of the Clinton campaign. He was involved in key source interviews where David Laufman and other top Justice officials were present, and shows up on critical email chains with these officials, who are also subjects of interest in the Durham probe.

Auten also attended meetings of a mysterious top-secret interagency entity, believed to have been overseen and budgeted by then-CIA Director John Brennan, known as the “Crossfire Hurricane Fusion Center,” or the Fusion Cell. Finally, it was Auten who provided analytical support to Special Counsel Robert Mueller when he took over the Crossfire case in May 2017. He brought his team of six analysts with him to Mueller’s office.

Instead of disqualifying the dossier as evidence, Auten let its fictions go into FISA applications. (Credit: The Associated Press)

As early as January 2017, Auten discovered that the dossier was larded with errors, misspellings, factual inaccuracies, conflicting accounts and wild rumors, according to a Justice Department inspector general report on the FISA abuses. Instead of disqualifying the dossier as evidence, the report found he let its unsubstantiated innuendo go into the FISA applications.

Auten gave Steele the benefit of the doubt when sources or developments called into question the reliability of his information or his own credibility, according to the same inspector general’s report. In many cases, he acted more as an advocate than a fact-checker, while turning a blind eye to the dossier’s red flags, the report documented.

For example, when a top Justice national security lawyer initially blocked the Crossfire team’s attempts to obtain a FISA warrant, Auten proactively turned to the dossier to try to push the case over the line. In a September 2016 email to FBI lawyers, he forwarded an unsubstantiated claim from the dossier that Page secretly met with Kremlin-tied official Igor Divyekin in July 2016 and asked, “Does this put us at least *that* much closer to a full FISA on [Carter Page]?” (Asterisks for emphasis in the original.)

Senate investigators grilled Auten about his eager acceptance of the allegation, which Page had denied in secretly recorded conversations with an undercover FBI informant — exculpatory evidence that was withheld from the FISA court. Auten confessed he had no other information to independently verify the dossier’s charge, which was central to the FISA warrants.

In a declassified internal FBI spreadsheet he compiled in January 2017 to try to corroborate the dossier, Auten cited a September 2016 Yahoo News article as possible corroboration of “Page’s alleged meeting with Divyekin” — even though the source of that article was Steele himself.

“So you had no knowledge of a secret meeting between Divyekin and Page, but you thought this information ‘put us at least that much closer to a full FISA’ on Carter Page?” then-chief Senate Judiciary Committee investigative counsel Zach Somers asked Auten, incredulously. “Why does the mention of a meeting with Page and Divyekin move you ‘that much closer’ to a FISA application if you haven’t confirmed the information in the Steele dossier?”

“There was something about Divyekin,” Auten said. “That’s all I can say.”

In the secret informant recordings, which were made before the Crossfire team submitted its first FISA warrant application in October 2016, Page stated he never met with Divyekin or even knew who he was.

“Were you aware of his statements denying knowing who Divyekin was?” Somers asked Auten. “I don’t recall exactly whether or not I knew those statements at the time or whether I learned about those statements subsequent to that time,” Auten replied.

“Do you think you learned about them prior to the first Page FISA application?” Somers persisted. “I’m not sure if I learned them before the first Page application,” Auten answered.

Former FBI Special Agent Michael Biasello, a 25-year veteran of the FBI who spent 10 years in counterintelligence working closely with intelligence analysts, said Auten should be “held accountable” for his role in what he described as FBI headquarters’ blatant disregard for the diligent process FISA warrants demand.

“A FISA warrant must be fully corroborated. Every statement, phrase, paragraph, must be verified in order for the affiant to attest before a judge that the contents are true and correct,” he said. “I remember agents and analysts scouring warrants and affidavits obsessively to make certain the document was meticulous and accurate.”

“To think the Crossfire team signed off on those FISA affidavits knowing the contents were uncorroborated is unconscionable, immoral and also illegal,” Biasello added. “All of them must be prosecuted for perjury, fraud and other federal crimes.” (Read more: RealClearInvestigations, 3/30/2021)  (Archive)

March 31, 2021- In the Matt Gaetz attempted extortion plot by former DOJ/Intel officials, a pattern emerges that shows they use missing FBI agent Robert Levinson as a cover story

David McGee (Credit: public domain)

The father of Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz says that he wore a wire while working with the FBI in an attempt to uncover a purported $25 million extortion plot against his son, related to reported sex-trafficking allegations against the lawmaker.

Don Gaetz, himself a former Florida state senator, backed up his son’s counter-allegation of blackmail in an interview with Politico late Tuesday.

“The FBI asked me to try and get that information for Matt and an indication we would transfer money to Mr. David McGee,” the elder Gaetz told Politico, referring to a former Department of Justice official who Rep. Gaetz claims tried to extort him.

Both Rep. Gaetz and McGee, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in Florida, have strongly denied any wrongdoing.

The dueling allegations began to fly Tuesday, when The New York Times reported that the younger Gaetz, 38, was under investigation by the DOJ for allegedly paying a 17-year-old girl with whom he had a sexual relationship to travel with him across state lines.

Gaetz, a Republican, told The Post that he denied the allegations “in the strongest possible terms” — then, during an appearance on Fox News, accused McGee by name of attempting to extort $25 million from his family to make the sex-trafficking accusations go away.

Gaetz went on to tell Fox that he and his father were working with the FBI on a separate investigation into the purported blackmail, that entailed his dad wearing a wire in an attempt to gather evidence against McGee.

Stephen Alford mugshot (Credit: public domain)

(…)Don Gaetz went on to tell Politico that he was prepared to wear a wire a second time during a Wednesday meeting with Stephen Alford, a Florida developer who he claimed was also part of the alleged extortion scheme.

Gaetz said that that meeting fell apart when news broke of the sex-trafficking probe.

Alford did not respond to Politico’s attempts to reach him for comment.

McGee told The Washington Post on Wednesday that the allegations Rep. Gaetz lodged against him are “completely false,” characterizing them as “a blatant attempt to distract from the fact that he’s under investigation for sex trafficking of minors.”

The DOJ and FBI have not publicly commented on the existence of either investigation.  (Read more: New York Post, 3/31, 2021)  (Archive)

August 31, 2021 –

Stephen Alford, a prominent Fort Walton Beach businessman with a checkered legal history, has been indicted on federal charges stemming from alleged efforts to extort $25 million.

A press release announcing the indictment, which doesn’t name the victim, states Alford offered “to obtain a presidential pardon for a family member” of his victim.

Both former state Sen. Don Gaetz and his son, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, have claimed that Alford was among a group of people who tried to extort millions of dollars from their family.

According to a version of events provided first by Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, Pensacola attorney David McGee and others attempted to extort $25 million from the Gaetz family, and Don Gaetz, a Niceville resident, wore a wire to a meeting to discuss a $5.4 million down payment to allow federal agents to gather evidence about the conspiracy.

Don Gaetz on Tuesday afternoon referred comment to his attorney, Jeff Nieman, who was not available.

Bob Kent (Credit: CNN)

In an April interview, Alford, a twice-convicted felon, did not deny approaching the wealthy Gaetz family for money. He said he, McGee and others were attempting to work through the Gaetzes to rescue Robert Levinson, a CIA operative who disappeared in 2007 and is believed to have been kidnapped by agents of the government of Iran.

(…) Bob Kent, a former Air Force intelligence officer and an alleged Alford co-conspirator, spoke to CNN and said of Congressman Gaetz, “If the allegations are true, he’s in need of some goodwill from the government.”

“I’m in need of a sponsor to fund the rescue project,” Kent continued. “There is no threat. I don’t have anything to do with the (sexual allegations) indictment. I don’t have anything to do with the investigation into Matt Gaetz.” (Read more: NFW Daily News, 8/31/2023)  (Archive) 

David McGee was also involved In 2009 with FBI director Robert Mueller and the bureau asking Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to spend millions of his own dollars funding an FBI-supervised operation to rescue a retired FBI agent, Robert Levinson, captured in Iran while working for the CIA in 2007.

April 12, 2021 - Durham subpoena's Brookings Institute re Steele primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko; Brookings aka Lawfare then tells NYT

The New York Times writes a story about John Durham issuing subpoenas to the Brookings Institute for records of Igor Danchenko’s work there.   Danchenko was Chris Steele’s primary sub-source for the infamous Steele Dossier.

The material provided by Danchenko to Steele was described as unsubstantiated “gossip”, “rumor”, “hearsay” and innuendo by Danchenko himself after he was questioned by the FBI.

New York Times – […] Mr. Durham has keyed in on the F.B.I.’s handling of a notorious dossier of political opposition research both before and after the bureau started using it to obtain court permission to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser in 2016 and 2017 and questioned witnesses who may have insight into the matter.

In particular, Mr. Durham has obtained documents from the Brookings Institution related to Igor Danchenko, a Russia researcher who worked there a decade ago and later helped gather rumors about Mr. Trump and Russia for that research, known as the Steele dossier, according to people familiar with the request.

By asking about the dossier, Mr. Durham has come to focus at least in part on re-scrutinizing an aspect of the investigation that was already exposed as problematic by a 2019 Justice Department inspector general report…. (read more)

The Backstory is…in essence Chris Steele put a bunch of garbage inside his dossier, and his dossier was used to get the Carter Page FISA warrant to conduct surveillance against the Trump campaign (October 21, 2016).  Danchenko then disavowed the veracity of all the information he provided during FBI interviews in January, February and March 2017; but the FBI ignored the Danchenko discussion and used the dossier for two more FISA renewals in April and June 2017.

The issue of import with the story today is not about the content of the Danchenko work while inside the Brookings group, but rather how the leak from Brookings to the New York Times about the subpoena begins to unravel the Lawfare network.

The Lawfare group is largely funded by The Brookings Institute.  Brookings is largely funded by the Chinese.  As we pointed out during our research, essentially when you follow the trail you realize the Chinese Communist Government was financing the information that went into the Steele Dossier.  But wait, it gets better….

The Lawfare group is also the “beach friends” group.  The Lawfare group includes James Baker, Lisa Page, Benjamin Wittes, and Daniel Richman.  Once you realize who Lawfare consists of; and then you realize The Brookings Institute is behind Lawfare; you then realize the Lawfare group was likely feeding the opposition research into Danchenko while he worked for Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson who actually contracted Chris Steele for his dossier.

The FBI and DOJ officials working with Lawfare essentially provided raw information to Danchenko, who then packaged it and sent it to Chris Steele.  Steele then puts the Danchenko package in his dossier and that is sent back to the FBI and DOJ for use in their FISA application.  It is a laundry of weaponized political opposition research.

• FBI/DOJ extracted intelligence to Lawfare.
• Lawfare sends to Brookings (Danchenko)
• Danchenko sends to Chris Steele (dossier).
• Chris Steele sends Dossier back to FBI/DOJ.
• FBI/DOJ use dossier in FISA application.

See the laundry?

The Brookings institute tipping off the New York Times about the Durham subpoena is actually more telling than the content of the subpoena itself.

Brookings is Lawfare.  Benjamin Wittes runs Lawfare. He is personal friends with James Comey.

Benjamin Wittes is also personal friends with another Lawfare colleague Daniel Richman:

Daniel Richman is also personal friends with James Comey.

James Comey used Richman to leak his memo content to the New York Times:

China is Funding the Brookings Institute.

The Brookings Institute is funding Lawfare.

Lawfare is a group of current and former DOJ and FBI officials.

As a consequence, China funded the attack position of Lawfare and the DOJ/FBI against the Trump administration.

(Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 4/12/2021)  (Archive)

April 16, 2021 - Caity Johnstone: The CIA Used To Infiltrate The Media. Now The CIA Is The Media.

Caity Johnstone

“Back in the good old days, when things were more innocent and simple, the psychopathic Central Intelligence Agency had to covertly infiltrate the news media to manipulate the information Americans were consuming about their nation and the world. Nowadays, there is no meaningful separation between the news media and the CIA at all.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald just highlighted an interesting point about the reporting by The New York Times on the so-called “Bountygate” story the outlet broke in June of last year about the Russian government trying to pay Taliban-linked fighters to attack US soldiers in Afghanistan.

“One of the NYT reporters who originally broke the Russia bounty story (originally attributed to unnamed ‘intelligence officials’) say today that it was a CIA claim,” Greenwald tweeted. “So media outlets — again — repeated CIA stories with no questioning: congrats to all.”

Indeed, NYT’s original story made no mention of CIA involvement in the narrative, citing only “officials,” yet this latest article speaks as though it had been informing its readers of the story’s roots in the lying, torturing, drug-running, warmongering Central Intelligence Agency from the very beginning. The author even writes “The New York Times first reported last summer the existence of the C.I.A.’s assessment,” with the hyperlink leading to the initial article which made no mention of the CIA. It wasn’t until later that The New York Times began reporting that the CIA was looking into the Russian bounties allegations at all.

This would be the same “Russian bounties” narrative which was discredited all the way back in September when the top US military official in Afghanistan said no satisfactory evidence had surfaced for the allegations, which was further discredited today with a new article by The Daily Beast titled “U.S. Intel Walks Back Claim Russians Put Bounties on American Troops”.

The Daily Beast, which has itself uncritically published many articles promoting the CIA “Bountygate” narrative, reports the following:

It was a blockbuster story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great Game” in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.

But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven — and possibly untrue.

So the mass media aggressively promoted a CIA narrative that none of them ever saw proof of, because there was no proof, because it was an entirely unfounded claim from the very beginning. They quite literally ran a CIA press release and disguised it as a news story.

This allowed the CIA to throw shade and inertia on Trump’s proposed troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Germany, and to continue ramping up anti-Russia sentiments on the world stage, and may well have contributed to the fact that the agency will officially be among those who are exempt from Biden’s performative Afghanistan “withdrawal”.
In totalitarian dictatorships, the government spy agency tells the news media what stories to run, and the news media unquestioningly publish it. In free democracies, the government spy agency says “Hoo buddy, have I got a scoop for you!” and the news media unquestioningly publish it.

In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled “The CIA and the Media” reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America’s most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird. It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media is meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.

Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and people are too propagandized to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits. The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor, and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence agencies per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price and Rick Francona, as are known CIA assets like NBC’s Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.

This isn’t Operation Mockingbird. It’s so much worse. Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something to the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting as the media. Any separation between the CIA and the news media, indeed even any pretence of separation, has been dropped.

This is bad. This is very, very bad. Democracy has no meaningful existence if people’s votes aren’t being cast with a clear understanding of what’s happening in their nation and their world, and if their understanding is being shaped to suit the agendas of the very government they’re meant to be influencing with their votes, what you have is the most powerful military and economic force in the history of civilization with no accountability to the electorate whatsoever.

It’s just an immense globe-spanning power structure, doing whatever it wants to whoever it wants. A totalitarian dictatorship in disguise.

And the CIA is the very worst institution that could possibly be spearheading the movements of that dictatorship. A little research into the many, many horrific things the CIA has done over the years will quickly show you that this is true; hell, just a glance at what the CIA was up to with the Phoenix Program in Vietnam will.

There’s a common delusion in our society that depraved government agencies who are known to have done evil things in the past have simply stopped doing evil things for some reason. This belief is backed by zero evidence, and is contradicted by mountains of evidence to the contrary. It’s believed because it is comfortable, and for literally no other reason.

The CIA should not exist at all, let alone control the news media, much less the movements of the US empire. May we one day know a humanity that is entirely free from the rule of psychopaths, from our total planetary behavior as a collective, all the way down to the thoughts we think in our own heads.

May we extract their horrible fingers from every aspect of our being. (Caity Johnstone, 4/16/2021)
____________________
(The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. – Caity Johnstone)

April 19, 2021 - Nunes: What the hell are national intelligence agencies doing spying on American citizens?

Rep. Devin Nunes asked FNC’s Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” why intelligence agencies like the NSA are focusing on “Republican Naval officers” and politicizing domestic surveillance rather than Russian or Chinese espionage.

“We have lots of problems out there. What in the hell are they doing spying on American citizens?” blasted Nunes.

“But, Congressman, that’s because there was no accountability. We know what took place, of all the spying in 2016 on Trump and his associates. That was never — there was never accountability for this. First, it was the FBI. Then, it was the CIA politicized. The IRS was politicized under Obama. And now we have got the politicization going into our military,” Bartiromo said. “This is outrageous!”

“Yes,” Nunes said. “If they don’t respond to our questions, we will be putting subpoenas together that we can issue in 2023 — assuming the American people reward us in the election cycle.”

BARTIROMO: In an Intelligence Committee hearing, you blasted FBI Director Christopher Wray for weaponizing the Department of Justice and the FBI against Republicans.

Is this still happening? What can you tell us about surveillance of regular Americans right now, Congressman?

NUNES: Well, the big concern with the FBI is, is that they were very critical of our investigation, accusing us of things like material omissions.

But because it was the first time that Director Wray was in front of the committee, I had to make sure that Director Wray understood the material omissions that the FBI was failing to give to Congress. So, that was the purpose of that.

But what should be troubling all of us is, is that the national intelligence, our agencies put out a report on domestic surveillance. So, at a time — we just walked through the Russia problem, the China problem, Iran problem, Afghanistan. We have lots of problems out there.

What in the hell are they doing spying on American citizens? And so I have warned all of these leaders, this is a very slippery slope to begin to turn these surveillance activities — we already know the FBI and DOJ did it back in 2015 and ’16. And they were investigating President Trump for the entire four years he was in office.

But now we have the NSA, part of our military, where they’re actually targeting Naval officers, Republican Naval officers. They’re killing — they’re putting them under phony investigations in order to kick Republicans out of the military. That’s effectively what happened.

So, I asked General Nakasone this. And his answers are pretty muddy. And I think a lot of the American people already know that the surveillance powers of the United States of America have been out of control. And now you have politicization, where you’re targeting Republicans and removing them from being able to even work at the National Security Agency?

I think it raises real questions. If they’re able to stop Republicans from working, what are they able to do that we don’t know about, where we have caught them in the past willing to reverse-target American citizens?

And then you have this report that comes out on domestic extremism. What on earth? We’re supposed to be looking at foreign threats. We’re not supposed to be using our intelligence services against our own people, specifically Republicans and conservatives. It’s what happens in Third World countries and banana republics. And we have to expose this for the American people to know.

BARTIROMO: But, Congressman, that’s because there was no accountability.

We know what took place, of all the spying in 2016 on Trump and his associates. That was never — there was never accountability for this. First, it was the FBI. Then, it was the CIA politicized. The IRS was politicized under Obama. And now we have got the politicization going into our military.

This is outrageous.

NUNES: Yes. And, look, and this is why we’re going to have to — we’re going to submit a lot of questions for the record to try to build the case and build evidence. And this is why it’s so critical that we don’t have subpoena power. But we will — if they don’t respond to our questions, we will be putting subpoenas together that we can issue in 2023, assuming the American people reward us in the election cycle.

(Video – RealClearPolitics, 4/19/2021)  (Archive)

April 22, 2021 - Judge orders IRS to reveal if it has criminally investigated the Clinton Foundation

John Moynihan and Larry Doyle testify before Congress, December 2018. (Credit: public domain)

“A U.S. Tax Court judge has ordered the Internal Revenue Service to reveal if it criminally investigated the Clinton Foundation, directing the agency to cure a mysterious “gap” in its records in the case.

Most of the proceedings in the case involving the Clinton Foundation and the whistleblowers Lawrence W. Doyle and John F. Moynihan have been sealed, but U.S. Tax Court Judge David Gustafson authorized the release of an April 22 ruling to Just the News this week.

In it, Gustafson remanded the case back to the IRS Whistleblower Office (WO), saying the agency’s claim there was no criminal investigation against the Clinton Foundation “was not supported by the administrative record and thus constituted an abuse of discretion.”

“The WO must further investigate to determine whether CI [criminal investigative division] proceeded with an investigation based on petitioners’ information and collected proceeds,” the judge ruled. “… It seems clear we should remand the case to the WO so that it can explore this gap.”

File
 Lawrence W. Doyle 088.pdf

While ordering the IRS to reveal whether the Clinton Foundation was criminally investigated, the judge declined the whistleblowers’ request to take an Arkansas state official’s deposition or compel discovery in the case, saying such actions were “outside the scope of proper discovery.”

“Petitioners evidently look forward to a trial in which they hope to prove wrongdoing and tax evasion by the target entities and to prove dereliction of duty by the IRS,” he added. “There will be no such trial in this case.” (Read more: JusttheNews, 5/11/2021)  (Archive)

April 26, 2021 - Judge Boasberg signs off on FISA court's warrantless surveillance despite FBI’s 'widespread violations'

“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s presiding judge signed off on the sweeping surveillance powers held by federal spy agencies, a newly declassified yearly report shows, despite finding “widespread violations” of the FBI’s rules related to handling and searching the massive number of emails and other intercepts collected without a warrant.

Judge James Boasberg (Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM/The Associated Press)

Judge James Boasberg, the top judge on the FISA court, issued a 67-page ruling in November, which was made public on Monday, dealing with FBI analyst searches of information on U.S. citizens in emails and other data sources that the National Security Agency has collected. Despite a number of problems highlighted by the judge, similar to those highlighted in a December 2019 ruling by the FISA court, Boasberg gave the green light to the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program, authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, for another year.

The program stems from U.S. tech companies assisting the NSA overseas with intercepting the communications of foreign targets — some of whom are communicating with U.S. citizens. Despite improper searches by the bureau, the judge largely gave the FBI a pass, arguing many of the violations occurred before newly implemented reforms from the bureau were put in place.

“While the Court is concerned about the apparent widespread violations of the querying standard … it lacks sufficient information at this time to assess the adequacy of the FBI system changes and training, post-implementation,” Boasberg concluded. “Under these unique circumstances, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the Court is willing to again conclude that the improper queries described above do not undermine it’s prior determination that, with implementation of the documentation requirement, the FBI’s querying and minimization procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.”

The judge said that during an oversight review of a redacted FBI program, the government “discovered 40 queries that had been conducted in support of predicated criminal investigations relating to healthcare fraud, transnational organized crime, violent gangs, domestic terrorism involving racially motivated violent extremists, as well as investigations relating to public corruption and bribery [redacted].” The judge said that “none of these queries was related to national security.”

Boasberg also said, “Another analyst ran a ‘batch query’ using [redacted] accounts as query terms in connection with predicated criminal investigations relating to domestic terrorism that returned 33 Section 702-acquired products,” but the FBI was “unable to confirm whether any products were opened.” (Read more: The Washington Examiner, 4/27/2021)  (Archive)

April 26, 2021 - The FBI continues failing to obtain FISA warrants before reviewing results of evidence-of-crimes queries

(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

“A FISA Court opinion and order declassified today reveals continued FBI abuses of “raw FISA-acquired information.” After a DOJ National Security Division review, the FISA Court noted “the FBI’s failure to properly apply its querying standard when searching Section 702-acquired information was more pervasive than was previously believed.”

This opinion includes these findings:

1. One FBI intelligence analyst “conducted 110 queries for analytic paper.”
2. Another analyst conducted improper queries for “ongoing vetting of confidential human sources” as well as “overly broad queries” and “mistakenly failed to opt out of querying against raw FISA-acquired information.”

Judge James Boasberg, who presides over the FISA Court, found little issue with these abuses. In fact, Boasberg concluded:

“[T]he Court is willing to again conclude that the improper queries described above do not undermine its prior determination that, with implementation of the documentation requirement, the FBI’s querying and minimization procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.”

HOWEVER – Boasberg then concludes that the government has reported numerous incidents involving searches of FISA information without warrants.

In other words, the FBI is using FISA acquired information to investigate domestic crimes – not matters of foreign intelligence. These included investigations of “health-care fraud, transnational organized crime, violent gangs, domestic terrorism involving racially motivated violent extremists, as well as investigations relating to public corruption and bribery.”

“Public corruption and bribery.” I highlight that last part because it means the FBI continued to improperly use FISA-acquired information to spy on government officials.

(Techno Fog, 4/26/2021)  (Archive)

May 10, 2021 - Biden’s DOJ hires Russia collusion hoaxer Susan Hennessey to its National Security Division

“The Biden administration’s newest addition to the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, Susan Hennessey, is a Russia collusion hoaxer who deleted hundreds of tweets boosting lies about the Trump administration before she announced her new position.

I’ll still have this account, in a personal capacity. But things will be a bit quieter around here.

— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) May 10, 2021

Hennessey, who formerly worked for Democrat think tank and Russia collusion hoax organization the Brookings Institution, deleted hundreds of rants peddling lies about Michael Flynn, Carter Page, and FISA, boosting the Steele dossier, and pushing other leftist collusion talking points.

Not only did Hennessey openly adopt and echo corporate media narratives alleging that former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, but she also accused the Republican and his team of lying to the public while encouraging trust in the Intelligence Community that falsified information on spy warrant applications.

“The FBI officials were telling the truth.”

The FISA court said warrants against Carter Page were illegal, and one of Mueller’s FBI lawyers who compiled the FISA applications was convicted of falsifying information in those FISA applications.

This nutjob now works at DOJ. pic.twitter.com/JDgKJikcuK

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) May 10, 2021

(Read more: TheFederalist, 5/10/2021) (Archive)

Saagar Enjeti gives his thoughts on the selection of Susan Hennessey to head the NSA at the Department of Justice.

May 14, 2021 - John Podesta announces the appointment of Neera Tanden as Senior Adviser to Biden

“Today, the Biden administration announced that CAP President and CEO Neera Tanden has been appointed as senior adviser to President Joe Biden. John Podesta, founder and director of CAP, released the following statement:

Neera Tanden (c), president of the Center for American Progress, with co-founder John Podesta (l), and Hillary Clinton, poses during a gala celebrating the 10th anniversary of the center on October 24, 2013. (Credit: Chip Somodavilla / Getty Images)

Neera’s intellect, tenacity, and political savvy will be an asset to the Biden administration as she assumes a new role as senior adviser to the president. While we will be sorry to lose her considerable policy expertise and leadership at the Center for American Progress—an organization which we founded together in 2003—I am exceptionally thrilled to see her step into a new position serving this White House and the American people.

In a few short months, the White House has made remarkable progress combating numerous once-in-a-generation challenges—from vaccinating millions of Americans, to delivering real economic relief from the coronavirus pandemic, to strengthening the Affordable Care Act,  to tackling climate change, and more. Many of these bold policy solutions, which have bipartisan support from voters across the country, were developed and led by Neera at CAP over many years. The administration’s efforts will be magnified with Neera Tanden on the team, and I am excited to see what she will achieve in the role of senior adviser and in the years to come.

In addition to serving as president and CEO of CAP, Tanden also served as CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. In those roles, she focused on how both organizations can fulfill their missions to expand opportunity for all Americans. Tanden has also served in both the Obama and Clinton administrations as well as on presidential campaigns.” (Read more: American Progress, 5/14/2021)  (Archive)

May 25, 2021 - Fusion GPS is losing the fight to keep its records secret. What will Fusion's internal e-mails reveal?

Glenn Simpson (Credit: New York Times)

“There’s a fight brewing in a DC federal court over Fusion GPS’s internal correspondence and records. And they’re losing.

Background

In 2017, the owners of Alfa Bank (we’ll call them Alfa Bank for the purposes of this article) sued Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson for their publication of false statements accusing Alfa Bank of “bribery, extortion, and interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.”

Now, the Alfa Bank is on offense. They have filed a motion to compel, asking the Court to require Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson to produce nearly 500 critically important documents improperly withheld as privileged.

Fusion/Simpson have fought the production of the documents, arguing that they are subject to the “attorney-client privilege” and otherwise privileged and not subject to production.

These are weak legal arguments – and the attorneys for Alfa Bank recognize it. First, Fusion/Simpson previously admitted the purpose of their work was political, and not for the purposes of any ongoing litigation.

Alfa Bank further observes that Glenn Simpson has even testified that the purpose of his work was pure politics, saying his goal was,  “to expose an opponent’s vulnerabilities, provide source material for the media, and feed attack ads.”

As their motion argues:

Perkins Coie did not engage Defendants to perform legal or litigation-focused work; rather, Defendants have admitted (and publicly boasted) that Perkins Coie engaged Defendants in a “political context” to perform “political work.”

Second, even if these 500 documents were subject to the attorney-client privilege (and they most certainly are not), that privilege was waived when Simpson/Fusion leaked their research to third parties, including the media and government officials.

One has to be curious about exactly why Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson are putting up such a fight to keep these 500 documents hidden. We think it’s because thus far, the public hasn’t seen the communications between Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS/Glenn Simpson or the internal Fusion GPS correspondence.” (Read more: Techno Fog, 5/25/2021)  (Archive)

May 26, 2021 - Newly released OLC Memo shows staff lawyers found no basis for obstruction charges In Mueller Report

Jonathan Turley testifies May 15, 2019, before Nadler’s House Judiciary Committee and warns them not to pursue this ridiculous action of trying to hold Barr in contempt via the courts, because they would be heading into a “world of hurt if they do” (Credit: YouTube)

“The long-awaited, though partial, release of a memorandum from the Justice Department this week left many “frustrated,” as predicted by the Washington Post, in Washington. The reason is what it did not contain.  Critics had sought the memo as the “smoking gun” to show how former Attorney General Bill Barr scuttled any obstruction charges against Donald Trump. Instead, the memo showed the opposite. The staff of the OLC actually found that the allegations did not meet the standard of obstruction even without any defenses or privileges related to Trump’s office.

The issue of obstruction of justice ran throughout Barr’s second term as Attorney General. Before his confirmation hearing, a memo was released that Barr wrote to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The memo discussed flaws in the use of the most likely federal provision on obstruction of justice against Trump. Barr was hammered by Democratic senators on his view of obstruction, as was I when I testified the next day as a witness. I agreed with many of the flaws noted by Barr in the memo.

Barr’s more nuanced arguments were drowned out by a long litany of experts like Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe who publicly insisted that obstruction was not only clearly established (with a long litany of other crimes) but that Barr’s rejection of that crime was evidence of his raw partisanship. In a public letter to me, Ralph Nader, Lou Fisher, and Bruce Fein stated that his rejection of obstruction was akin to “a papal encyclical that President Trump was innocent of obstruction of justice” that ignored Mueller’s “chronicle [of] multiple instances of evidence of obstruction.”

Throughout this never-ending barrage, Barr remained largely silent on the internal review of the matter and declined to release the full OLC memo. That only increased speculation that Barr must be hiding countervailing conclusions of legal staff. We know now that (at least the now disclosed portion of) the memo supports Barr’s prior view and, despite that fact, he withheld the information out of concern for the confidentiality of the internal deliberations.

It turns out that the review and debate over the obstruction allegations began before Barr started as Attorney General. The memo also confirms that the Mueller staff was part of that analysis with career prosecutors at Main Justice. The memo states that the prosecutors reviewed the Mueller evidence and concluded that the evidence “examined by the Special Counsel could not, as a matter of law, support an obstruction charge under the circumstances. Accordingly, were there no constitutional barriers, we would recommend, under the Principles of Federal Prosecution, that you decline to commence such a prosecution.” In plain English, that means that the prosecutors came to the same conclusion as Barr that the alleged conduct did not satisfy the elements of this crime. Moreover, it stated that it would reject such a charge even without consideration of any constitutional barriers presented by Trump’s office.” (Read more: Jonathan Turley, 5/26/2021)  (Archive)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FBI Table

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

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

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

FBI 2021.06.16 Response Ty … by Jim Hoft

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ivan Vorontsov (Credit: Facebook)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Credit: John Helmer)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Republished in part, with permission.)

September 2, 2021 - The Virginia Republican Party releases campaign ad against Terry McAuliffe using his relationship with Clintons

Syracuse native and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (l) shares a laugh with Bill Clinton and their host, Mac Cummings (r) on Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021, in Skaneateles, N.Y. (Credit: Jordan Arnold/Syracuse.com)

“The Virginia Republican Party released an ad on Thursday targeting Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for governor, over his relationship to former President Bill Clinton, his own sex scandals, as well as his friendship with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The ad starts with a news clip about Clinton’s then-upcoming fundraiser for McAuliffe in New York, where McAuliffe is from. The video goes back and forth between McAuliffe touting his friendship with Clinton and news clips – some about Epstein and others about Clinton’s relationship with Epstein. The fundraiser took place on Thursday.

The ad ties Epstein’s donations to the Clinton Foundation, which McAullife served on the board of for many years and has friendships with those who’ve given to it – all demonstrated in a combination of news clips and soundbites of McAuliffe touting those friendships and his time on the board.

The ad ends with the words “This November … tell Terry … time’s up.”

(Read more: Mediate, 9/03/2021)  (Archive)