Featured Timeline Entries
May 18, 2023 - Peter Strzok attacks Peter Schweizer for his work on Biden corruption

Peter Strzok (l) (Credit: Saul Loeb/Getty Images) and Peter Schweizer (Credit: public domain)

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok, a key figure in the “Russia collusion” hoax, attacked Breitbart News contributor Peter Schweizer on Thursday for his work on alleged corruption by Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.

Stzrok linked to a New York Times article published Thursday about Republicans’ interest in investigating another FBI agent, Timothy R. Thibault. The Times noted that the FBI had once approached Schweizer for documents and information relating to his own investigations into Hunter Biden’s business dealings:

Before the [2020] election, two agents contacted Peter Schweizer, who is the president of the Government Accountability Institute, which has received millions of dollars from prominent conservative donors. Mr. Schweizer also writes for Breitbart, a right-wing news outlet, and had ties to Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House strategist for Mr. Trump.

In an interview, Mr. Schweizer confirmed that the two sought information about Hunter Biden, the president’s son, whose foreign business dealings have been the subject of intense Republican scrutiny for years.

Mr. Schweizer had recently published a book, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,” delving into the financial dealings of the Biden family. The agents, Mr. Schweizer said, wanted to know if he could share documents related to Hunter Biden’s foreign business ties that he might have gathered for his work. Mr. Schweizer said he passed on corporate records and other files.

Schweizer told the Times that the FBI did not contact him for more help after Hunter Biden’s laptop emerged in 2020, even though he reached out to the agency to inform it that he had a copy of the contents of the laptop.

Schweizer noted that the Times had verified his reporting, including that which was published in Clinton Cash, an exposé that apparently prompted the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign to commission the false dossier on Trump and Russia — which was fed to the FBI and formed the basis for its subsequent “collusion” inquiry. (Breitbart News, 5/19/2023) (Archive)

May 19, 2023 - FISA Court releases report stating, FBI continues to abuse surveillance tool after Trump-era abuses

(…) The FISA Court’s report detailed the nearly 300,000 abuses logged between 2020 and early 2021.

For instance: After the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, an FBI employee ran a whopping 23,132 separate queries of Americans “to find evidence of possible foreign influence, although the analyst conducting the queries had no indications of foreign influence related to the query term used,” Contreras found. Justice Department officials “concluded there was no specific factual basis to think the searches would turn up foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime” and the court opinion found that “no raw Section 702 information was accessed as a result of these queries.”

In June 2020, the FBI searched for digital data and communications of 133 people arrested “in connection with civil unrests and protests between approximately May 30, and June 18, 2020,” when protests and riots erupted across the country over George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.

That search was done, officials said, to see if there was counter-terrorism information about those individuals. When questioned about the searches later, FBI officials said it was reasonable for agents to think the searches would return foreign intelligence. The court opinion describing that effort has significant redactions, making it unclear why the FBI developed its theory.

Incredibly, the Court also found a long pattern between 2016 and 2020 in which the FBI conducted FISA searches targeting “individuals listed in police homicide reports, including victims, next-of-kin, witnesses, and suspects,” according to the court opinion. The Justice Department found these searches violated the rules “because there was no reasonable basis to expect they would return foreign intelligence or evidence of crime.”

In its defense, the FBI argued “that querying FISA information using identifiers of the victims — simply because they were homicide victims — was reasonably likely to retrieve evidence of crime.”

Even more egregiously, an FBI analyst “conducted a batch query for over 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign” because the campaign was supposedly “a target of foreign influence,” the opinion said.

Justice Department officials found that “only eight identifiers used in the query”—such as a name, phone number or an email address—”had sufficient ties to foreign influence activities” that complied with the FISA standards.

Officials said lawmakers who were briefed months ago about the problems have been pushing authorities to make them public. The delay in doing so was due to discussions of redactions of a separate part of the opinion, which described a novel application of surveillance techniques, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters.

Senior law enforcement officials said Friday that the problems in the report do not represent FBI’s current practices. The problems were discovered largely due to Justice Department audits, they said, and have been remedied.

“We’re not trying to hide from this stuff, but this type of non-compliance is unacceptable,” a senior FBI official said. “There was confusion historically about what the query standard was,” said another senior law enforcement official.

The FBI has rolled out a host of changes to how agents and analysts use the Section 702 database. While a previous version of the system automatically included it in a list of areas that agents could search for information, agents and analysts must now specifically seek and choose to search 702 information. FBI users of the database are also required to write, in their own words, why they think their search will return foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime, and an attorney must approve any “batch” searches involving large numbers of people.

In recent months, authorities have touted that the number of 702 searches conducted that involve U.S. residents or companies has dropped dramatically — more than 90 percent last year. Officials said Friday that the dropoff was largely the result of the Justice Department audit having found significant compliance failures by the FBI.

The problems identified by the court and the Justice Department are separate from criticism lodged against the FBI in 2019 by the Justice Department’s inspector general, and again this week by special counsel John Durham, over the FBI’s use of a different kind of foreign intelligence surveillance court order, which specifically targeted a former Trump adviser in 2016 and 2017 based on faulty and incomplete FBI applications.

In 2021, a follow-up report by Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz found “widespread” failures by the FBI to follow one of the key rules of FISA surveillance, indicating that the problems went far beyond the FBI’s investigation of former Trump adviser Carter Page.

Additionally, the court opinion included information regarding what officials called a “highly sensitive” surveillance technique, and a court debate about the novel use of that technique. Details about the technique are redacted, making it difficult to determine the purpose and scope of the controversial surveillance.

In a statement to American Greatness, Jordan said: “Chris Wray told us we can sleep well at night because of the FBI’s so-called Fisa reforms. But it just keeps getting worse.” (Read more: American Greatness, 5/19/2023)  (Archive)

The FBI’s Illegal Surveillance Is Not New, but the Magnitude of the Problem Has Never Been Fully Disclosed—Until Now – Video

May 22, 2023 - Second Hunter Biden IRS whistleblower emerges after dismissal despite five years on case

(Credit: John Hinman, Director, IRS Whistleblower Office)

A second IRS whistleblower in the criminal investigation of first son Hunter Biden emerged Monday in documents sent to Congress following the purge of the entire investigatory team looking into President Biden’s son for tax fraud and related crimes.

The new whistleblower is a special agent in the IRS’s international tax and financial crimes group and worked on the Hunter Biden case since it was opened in 2018 — until he was ousted without explanation last week.

The agent joins his supervisor, who plans to testify behind closed doors before the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday, in publicly registering concerns about how the Justice Department has handled the investigation.

Both IRS whistleblowers expressed concerns internally for years about the case being swept under the rug but got nowhere, and they lay out extensive claims of retaliation in new disclosures to Congress.

Hunter, 53, allegedly failed to pay taxes on millions of dollars he received from foreign associates who in some instances interacted with then-Vice President Joe Biden.

Hunter wrote in communications retrieved from his abandoned laptop that he had to share “half” of his income with his father.

The IRS supervisor, who oversaw the probe since January 2020, and his 12 subordinates were removed from the case — allegedly on Justice Department orders — after he contacted Congress on April 19 to allege “preferential treatment” and false testimony to Congress by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

(Read more: New York Post, 5/22/2023)  (Archive)

May 23, 2023 - Court filings reveal USVI Del. Stacey Plaskett misled the public about her deep ties to Jeffrey Epstein

U. S. Virgin Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett (Credit: public domain)

Democratic Del. Stacey Plaskett, a representative of the U.S. Virgin Islands in Congress, has distanced herself from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, claiming she was completely “unaware” of his donations. However, recent court filings shed light on a much closer relationship between Plaskett and Epstein than previously known.

The unsealed documents outline a decade-long association involving direct solicitations for money, personal meetings, and employment at a law firm deeply connected to Epstein’s shadowy network.

Plaskett not only repeatedly sought financial contributions from Epstein and had multiple face-to-face encounters with him, but she also worked directly for a St. Thomas-based law firm that played a role in cultivating influence for Epstein’s clandestine activities.

In a deposition last month, Plaskett disclosed that she was introduced to Epstein by Erika Kellerhals, an attorney who lobbied on his behalf and represented his business and philanthropic ventures. Kellerhals’s significance goes beyond a casual connection. Before Plaskett’s congressional tenure, she worked at Kellerhals Ferguson Kroblin PLLC, the boutique tax firm in the Virgin Islands from 2013 to 2014, a period in which Epstein was a major client.

Plaskett’s involvement with Epstein may extend further back, as she previously served as counsel on the Virgin Islands Economic Development Authority (EDA), which granted Epstein $300 million in allegedly improperly obtained tax exemptions over the course of two decades.

Asked during her deposition if she worked for Epstein or any Epstein-linked businesses while serving at the Kellerhals law firm, which specializes in EDA assistance, Plasket responded, “I don’t recall.”

The two years during which she worked for Epstein’s lawyer are notably missing from Plaskett’s LinkedIn account, with a two-year gap between 2012 and when she entered Congress in 2015.

Emails and testimony, however, closely link Plaskett’s rapid political rise with Epstein’s deep pockets. (Read more: Lee Fang, 6/27/2023)  (Archive)

May 19, 2023 - Greenwald shatters Bellingcat’s “fact-checking” facade and exposes dark funding strings

(Credit: Glenn Greenwald)

Bellingcat presents itself as an independent “fact-checking” organization. But there’s a lot more to this group than meets the eye. Some believe that Bellingcat is just another left-wing activist group masquerading as a “fact-checker.” Bellingcat’s reporting and political narratives reinforce those beliefs. Recently, Bellingcat came under intense scrutiny when they shared a manipulated image of a Hispanic shooter, casting him as a right-wing extremist and a so-called “white nationalist.” This incident wasn’t just a slip-up but a glimpse into their broader strategy of manipulation and propaganda.

Elon Musk actually called out Bellingcat recently over that ridiculously fake-looking propaganda picture.

Elon isn’t the only one calling out Bellingcat. In a thought-provoking exposé, Glenn Greenwald — an award-winning independent journalist known for his critical views on media — examined the financial ties Bellingcat shares with various entities. Greenwald’s research shows a web of funding from organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a U.S.-based non-profit that supposedly spreads “democracy” in foreign countries. While NED claims its mission is to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through non-governmental efforts, some critics argue that its involvement with Bellingcat raises questions about both groups objectivity and goals. Clearly, the government has a vested interest in what Belligcat has to say.

Critics of Bellingcat also believe that this funding relationship has severe implications for journalistic integrity, which is Glenn’s area of expertise. He examines what’s really going on with Bellingcat in this informative and compelling exposé that explores their possible funding ties to the US government.

Watch the show here:

(Read more: Revolver News, 5/25/2023)  (Archive)

May 30, 2023 - James Comey: “I think he [Trump] poses a near existential threat to the rule of law"

(…) The entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative was a lie.  The Democrats and media knew it was a lie.  We now know that the Hillary Clinton Campaign was behind the entire narrative.  Democrats used this in their attempted coup of the sitting president.  They jailed and bankrupted innocent men in their coup attempt.

It was all a lie and Hillary hatched the lie and then later promoted the lie.

James Comey knew this all along and yet pushed an intelligence investigation against candidate and president-elect Trump and President Trump knowing the entire investigation was based on lies concocted by the Hillary Campaign.

(…) On Tuesday morning disgraced FBI Director James Comey joined MSNBC and had the gall to accuse President Trump of being a threat to America. This man is devoid of a conscience.

James Comey: “I think he poses a near existential threat to the rule of law. He will do everything he can in a new term to try to tear down the institutions that he sees as threats and dismantle them and the people who occupy them.” (The Gateway Pundit, 5/30/2023)  (Archive)

 

May 31, 2023 - Judicial Watch: Major revelations in Trump Russia scandal, Clinton Corruption—Hillary did It, Obama knew

(Credit: Judicial Watch)

(…) This month, significant new evidence comes to correct the historical record—and prove Tom right. The new evidence comes from the report of Special Counsel John Durham.

Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham in April 2019 to get to the bottom of the Russia mess. Barr told Congress he wanted a review of “the genesis and conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016.”

Durham’s prosecution record is a bust—two failed court cases and one low-level plea deal—but his 300-page, highly detailed final report is sensational.

Durham’s central mandate was to investigate the opening and conduct of the Crossfire Hurricane probe into possible Trump collusion with elements of the Russian government, particularly whether “any person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaign.”

“Our findings,” the Durham Report notes, “…are sobering.”

Finding: at the opening of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, there was no evidence of collusion.

 “Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the intelligence community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” the Durham Report noted. [Italics added].

 Durham goes into stunning detail. He notes that Crossfire Hurricane “was opened as a full investigation without [the FBI] ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information…without (i) any significant review of its own intelligence databases, (ii) collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities, (iii) interviews of witnesses essential to understand the information it had received, (iv) using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence. Had it done so…the FBI would have learned that their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials, nor were others in sensitive positions at the CIA, the NSA, and the State Department aware of such evidence.”

Finding: Obama and Biden knew about Clinton plans to link Trump to Russia.

Durham reports that  top Obama administration officials—including the president, Vice President Biden, the FBI director, the Attorney General and others—were briefed by CIA Director John Brennan on reports of a plan by the Clinton campaign to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.”

Elements of the Clinton Plan were disclosed in 2020 when the Director of National Intelligence reported it in a declassified letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Durham adds significant new context—and hints there is more hidden behind the walls of government secrecy. In a classified appendix to the report, Durham notes, there are “specific indications and additional facts that heightened the potential relevance of [the Clinton Plan intelligence] to the Office’s inquiry.”

In an interview with the special counsel, Durham notes, Hillary Clinton dodged questions about “her alleged plan to stir up a scandal between Trump and the Russians. Clinton stated it was ‘really sad,’ but ‘I get it, you have to go down every rabbit hole.’”

Finding: the Steele Dossier was a slanderous Clinton campaign creation devoid of real evidence and used by the FBI to target Carter Page.

 Durham devotes more than 150 pages of his report to the Steele Dossier and its devastating ramifications.

“Perkins Coie, a law firm acting as counsel to the Clinton campaign…retained Fusion GPS…to conduct opposition research on Trump and his associates.” Fusion GPS hired Steele. From July through December 2016, Durham wrote, “Steele and Fusion GPS prepared a series of reports containing derogatory information about purported ties between Trump and Russia. According to the reports, important connections between Trump and Russia ran through campaign manager Paul Manafort and foreign policy advisor Carter Page.”

Durham details at length how the Steele reports “played an important role in [FBI] applications to the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] targeting Page, a U.S. person. The FBI relied substantially on the [Steele] reports to assert probable cause that Page was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Russia.”

The problem with the FBI’s assertion? Durham notes: “the FBI was not able to corroborate a single substantive allegation contained in the Steele reports, despite protracted efforts to do so.” [Italics added.]

Finding: Clinton good—Trump bad—the FBI repeatedly gave all things Clinton a pass while hitting Trump hard.

 In the course of his investigation, Durham learned of three attempts by foreign governments to funnel money to the Clintons or otherwise buy influence. Durham is measured, but it’s easy to read between the lines on the double standard. “The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign,” Durham noted.

In the eighteen months leading up to the 2016 election, “the FBI was required to deal with a number of proposed [Clinton] investigations that had the potential of affecting the election. In each of those instances, the FBI moved with considerable caution.”

In one instance, the FBI ended the case after its confidential source was found to be funneling money to the Clintons. In a second case, the FBI placed so many restrictions on how matters were to be handled that “essentially no investigative activities occurred for months leading up to the election.” In the third case, the FBI elected to give “defensive briefings” to Clinton and others. No such briefings, Durham notes, were offered at any time to the Trump campaign.

Finding: Investigations into the Clinton Foundation were killed by top Justice Department and FBI officials.

 Durham notes that beginning in January 2016, three different FBI field offices—Little Rock, New York, and Washington—“opened investigations into possible criminal activity involving the Clinton Foundation.” Foreign governments were suspected of making, or planning to make, “contributions to the Foundation in exchange for favorable or preferential treatment” from Hillary Clinton.

Top Washington officials opposed the probes, Durham reports. One Justice Department section chief interviewed by Durham recalled the department’s reaction to a Clinton Foundation briefing as “hostile.”

At a February 2016 meeting about possibly closing the Clinton Foundation cases, a participant told Durham that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was “negative” and “annoyed” and “angry,” wanting to close the probes. “Why are we even doing this?” McCabe is reported to have said. Judicial Watch has reported extensively on McCabe and his Democratic Party ties.

FBI field officials prevailed on McCabe at that meeting to keep the investigations open, but six months later the inquiries were dead in the water, Durham reports. The Washington and Little Rock field office probes were folded into the New York investigation. But the New York investigation went nowhere because Justice Department branches in New York declined to issue subpoenas.

Last week, the New York Times added new twists to the Clinton Foundation story, noting that after prosecutors in New York declined to issue subpoenas, the case moved back to Little Rock. Prosecutors in Little Rock closed the case in January 2021 but not without protest from line FBI agents in Arkansas. The “top agent in Little Rock,” the Times reported, “wanted it known that career prosecutors, not FBI officials, were behind the decision” to close the case.

The Times reported that the FBI received an official “declination memo” closing the case in August 2021—effectively making the decision to stop investigating the Clinton Foundation a move by the Biden Administration.

That’s a move worth a closer look. So is the FBI claim, according to the Times, that all of the evidence developed during the investigation “has been returned or otherwise destroyed.”

After all the revelations about misconduct at the highest levels of government in the Trump Russia saga, it’s impossible to take FBI assertions at face value—as John Durham has proved, and as Tom Fitton presciently recognized so long ago. (Read more: Judicial Watch, 5/31/2023)  (Archive)

May 30, 2023 - After John Durham bombshell, judge breathes new life into Clinton Foundation whistleblower case

Moynihan and Doyle testify to the House Oversight Government Operations Subcommittee on oversight of foundations and restrictions to their political activities, with a focus on the New York-based Clinton Foundation. (Credit: CSpan)

Just a few weeks after Special Counsel John Durham revealed significant failures to investigate allegations against Hillary Clinton’s family charity, a U.S. Tax Court judge has once again breathed new life into a years-long whistleblower case alleging IRS improprieties involving the controversial Clinton Foundation.

U.S. Tax Court Judge David Gustafson has already once before denied an IRS request to dismiss the whistleblower case, first brought in 2017. And three years ago, he ordered the tax agency to reveal whether it criminally investigated the foundation, citing a mysterious “gap” in its records.

The IRS filed a new motion to dismiss, and all parties filed arguments over the last year. But on Monday, Gustafson postponed ruling on those motions, instead asking for new arguments in light of three recent precedent-setting court rulings, once again frustrating IRS efforts to make the case go away.

The three recent rulings in other tax cases “may affect the parties’ positions as to the pending motions,” Gustafson wrote. “We will order further filings so that the parties may address those recent opinions.”

 ClintonFoundationMay302023Ruling.pdf

The judge gave whistleblowers John Moynihan, a former federal agent, and Larry Doyle, a corporate tax compliance expert, until June 30 to update their arguments and the IRS until July 28 to respond. That means the case will almost certainly stretch on for many more months.

The judge also noted the IRS hasn’t responded to a request to update the court record with new evidence.

Monday’s ruling adds new intrigue in a case that first surfaced nearly five years ago when Doyle and Moynihan, two respected forensic financial investigators, revealed the existence of their 2017 IRS whistleblower complaint against the foundation during a congressional hearing.

(…) Judge Gustafson’s new request gives Moynihan and Doyle a fresh opening to incorporate Durham’s bombshell allegations in their court filings due next month.

The judge also called attention to a specific recent ruling in a Tax Court case titled Berenblatt vs. IRS Commission that he said might be relevant.

In that ruling last week, the court decided that IRS whistleblowers may be entitled to discovery they ordinarily would not be granted if they could show the agency had engaged in earlier bad faith conduct to keep information out of the case.

“Whistleblowers may be granted limited discovery if they make a significant showing that there is material in the IRS’s possession indicative of bad faith on the IRS’s part in connection with the case or of an incomplete administrative record compiled by the IRS,” the court ruled.

 USTaxCourtBarenblatt2023Ruling.pdf

(Read more: Just the News, 5/30/2023)  (Archive)

June 1, 2023 - How the FBI lost, found, and rewarded the alleged Russian spy pivotal to surveilling Trump

Igor Danchenko: suspected Russian spy was secretly groomed by Brian Auten of the FBI, and paid $220,000 to target Trump. (Credit: public domain)

Paul Sperry/RealClearInvestigations

Twelve years ago, FBI agents in Baltimore sought to wiretap former Brookings Institution analyst Igor Danchenko on suspicions he was spying for Russia. But the counterintelligence analyst they were assigned to work with ‒ Brian Auten ‒ told them he could not find their target and assumed the Russian national had fled back to Moscow.

But Danchenko had not left the U.S., court documents show. He was living in the Washington area. In fact, he had been arrested in Maryland in 2013 by federal Park Police for being drunk and disorderly, something the FBI analyst could have easily discovered by searching federal law enforcement databases. Clueless, the FBI closed its espionage case on Danchenko.

Auten would quickly rise to become the FBI’s top Russian analyst. In 2016 and 2017, he failed to properly vet the Steele dossier, a collection of salacious allegations created for Hillary Clinton’s campaign which sought to tie Donald Trump to the Kremlin, before clearing it as the central piece of evidence used by the FBI to obtain warrants to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Brian Auten, FBI supervisor: The Steele dossier’s bogus “Report 94,” alleging secret Page-Russia meetings, helped make the case for spying on him. (Credit: Twitter)

Working out of headquarters as a supervisor, Auten knew Danchenko helped Christopher Steele compile the dossier while living in the area. But instead of contacting the Baltimore agents, Auten secretly groomed him as an informant, arranging payments of $220,000 to target Donald Trump and his former aide Page. 

One result: Danchenko, the suspected Russian spy, falsely accused Page, a former U.S. Navy office who had previously helped the FBI, of being a Russian spy in the dossier.

Auten also never informed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court about the FBI’s longstanding concerns about Danchenko.

Like the Baltimore agents, investigators at FBI headquarters relied on Auten to build their counterintelligence cases on Page and three other Trump advisers. Auten provided the reports and memos they used to establish probable cause in each case. Auten also supported investigators working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

Auten’s conduct was first singled out for rebuke by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who in 2019 issued a report detailing how Auten cut corners in the dossier verification process. Horowitz referred Auten to the FBI for discipline, which does not appear to have been administered.

His earlier and deeper connections to Danchenko have only been more recently revealed in the report issued by Special Counsel John Durham. His findings suggest that if Auten had done his job over a decade ago, chances are the now-discredited dossier never would have been created and used by the FBI to eavesdrop on Page and help launch the Russiagate probe. It’s likely that Danchenko, the main source of the dossier’s allegations, would have been deported years earlier and flagged in the system, according to the recently released Durham Report.

The embattled analyst was recommended for suspension from the bureau last year, and his case has been under disciplinary review for several months. Contacted by RealClearInvestigations, an FBI spokeswoman declined to say if Auten has been suspended. “In keeping with our usual practice,” she said, “we have no comment on personnel matters.”

According to the Durham Report, Danchenko came onto the radar of agents working out of the Baltimore field office in 2010 after two former Brookings colleagues entering the government told the FBI that he had solicited classified information.

The agents subsequently opened an espionage case after discovering Danchenko had previous contacts with the Russian Embassy and known Russian intelligence officers.

“In particular, the FBI learned that in September 2006, Danchenko informed one Russian intelligence officer that he had an interest in entering the Russian diplomatic service,” the report stated. “Four days later, the intelligence officer contacted Danchenko and informed him that they could meet that day to work ‘on the documents and then think about future plans.’”

The next month, Danchenko contacted the intelligence officer “so the documents can be placed in [the following day’s] diplomatic mail pouch,” according to the report.

In addition, Danchenko had been identified as an associate of two other espionage suspects, Durham learned from a review of his case file.

In July 2010, the FBI initiated a request to obtain a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on Danchenko. Auten helped research Danchenko and provided information for wiretap applications. However, the investigation was soon closed after the FBI incorrectly concluded Danchenko had left the country in September 2010. Danchenko and his wife continued to reside openly in the Washington area.

Rod Rosenstein: The U.S. attorney who once prosecuted Danchenko, later the top Justice Department official during the Trump-Russia affair. (Credit: The Associated Press)

But the probe wasn’t completely dead. In 2012, Auten exchanged emails with one of the Baltimore agents in which they speculated whether Danchenko had actually left the country. Then in 2013, the U.S. Park Police arrested Danchenko in Greenbelt, Md., on drunk-and-disorderly charges, court records first obtained by RCI show.

Danchenko’s case was visible in the federal law enforcement database and prosecuted by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, who years later, as acting attorney general, would sign one of the 2017 applications to renew a wiretap targeting Page and authorize an expansion of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.

The Russian-born Danchenko, who was living in the U.S. on a work visa, was released from jail on the condition he undergo drug testing and “participate in a program of substance abuse therapy and counseling,” as well as “mental health counseling,” the records show. His lawyer asked the court to postpone his trial and let him travel to Moscow “as a condition of his employment.” The Russian trips were granted without objection from Rosenstein. Danchenko ended up several months later entering into a plea agreement and paying fines.

Despite the flurry of legal records generated on Danchenko in the federal system, it is not clear why the FBI failed to take note of his presence in the country. What the record does show is that the bureau did not reopen the espionage case against him.

Danchenko reappeared on Auten’s radar in late 2016 as he and the FBI were using the Steele dossier he helped create on Trump to seek warrants to spy on Page.

Auten identified his old espionage target in December 2016 as the “primary subsource” of the document. Instead of wiretapping Danchenko, the FBI recruited him as an informant and paid him $220,000 to help the bureau continue wiretapping the former Trump aide. FBI headquarters proposed paying Danchenko an additional $300,000 even as Durham was actively investigating him as the “linchpin to the uncorroborated allegations contained in the Steele Reports.” After asking officials at FBI headquarters about the bureau’s relationship with Danchenko, Durham determined that they were unable to justify keeping him open as a confidential source, “much less making hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to him.”

David Laufman: At the DOJ, he was involved in an immunity offer to Danchenko. (Credit: wiggin.com)

After examining FBI documents, Durham discovered that Auten interviewed Danchenko over three days in January 2017 as part of a plan to recruit him as a paid informant, despite the unresolved counterespionage investigation. Working with then-DOJ official David Laufman, the FBI offered immunity from prosecution to the longtime spy suspect and invited his lawyer to sit with him during the interviews.

“If this recruitment was successful, the FBI planned to mine Danchenko for information that was corroborative of the damaging allegations about President-elect Trump in the Steele Reports,” Durham said in his report.

Auten confessed to Durham that Danchenko “was not able to provide any corroborative evidence related to any substantive allegation contained in the Steele Reports ‒ and critically ‒ was unable to corroborate any of the FBI’s assertions contained in the Carter Page FISA applications,” according to the Durham report (emphasis in the original).

Danchenko was kept on the FBI payroll for more than three years.

In internal FBI documents, Danchenko’s handling agent Kevin Helson incorrectly stated that there was no “derogatory” information associated with Danchenko and that he had not been a prior subject of an FBI investigation.

“This was clearly not true as there had previously been the unresolved Baltimore FBI counterespionage investigation of Danchenko that was only closed because it was believed he had left the country and returned to Russia,” Durham pointed out.

Agent Helson later learned that the informant he was assigned to handle had been investigated as a suspected spy. However, Auten advised Helson that the espionage case against Danchenko was “interesting, but was not a significant” matter, according to the Durham report.

“Notably,” the report added, “Auten did not inform Helson that he had previously assisted in the Baltimore investigation.”

 A Suspected Kremlin Agent ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’

The Baltimore agents were shocked to learn from Durham’s office that Danchenko had been signed up as a confidential FBI source. One of them interviewed by Durham’s investigators believed Danchenko was a Kremlin agent “hiding in plain sight” in the U.S., while frequently traveling overseas to be debriefed by Russian intelligence. The other Baltimore agent said the counterintelligence case on Danchenko remained unresolved and, in her opinion, “certainly a lot more investigation” should have been conducted on Danchenko.

“It is extremely concerning that the FBI failed to deal with the prior unresolved counterespionage case on Danchenko,” Durham concluded in his report.

“Given Danchenko’s known contacts with Russian intelligence officers and his documented prior pitch [to colleagues at Democratic think tank Brookings] for classified information, the Crossfire Hurricane team’s failure to properly consider and address the espionage case prior to opening Danchenko as a CHS [confidential human source] is difficult to explain, particularly given their awareness that Danchenko was the linchpin to the uncorroborated allegations contained in the Steele Reports,” the special prosecutor added. Crossfire Hurricane was the code name for the FBI’s Russia investigation.

In an RCI interview, Danchenko’s lawyer denied his client ever spied for the Russian government. He said Danchenko feared Russian President Vladimir Putin and was concerned for his personal safety. However, Durham examined immigration records which revealed that Danchenko lived in the U.S. but traveled frequently to Russia, casting doubts about his security concerns.

Yet in sworn affidavits to obtain the FISA warrants targeting Page, FBI agents led judges on the secret surveillance court to believe Danchenko was “Russian-based” – and therefore presumably more credible as a source of the allegations that Page was a Russian agent. By 2017, Auten knew the “Russian-based” claim was untrue. Even so, he let case agents slip it into two FISA renewal requests targeting Page. And so the “Russian-based” fraud lived on through 2017.

Auten assured the court that Danchenko was “truthful and cooperative,” never telling the judges about unresolved questions that made him a suspected Russian agent.

And Auten’s imprimatur carried great weight. In Durham’s telling, Auten was known internally as one of the “Triumvirate of Control” in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, along with senior counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and intelligence section chief Jonathan Moffa. Some case agents working under them believed the surveillance of Page was a “dry hole,” but the “triumvirate” insisted they continue secretly intercepting his emails, text messages, and other communications, according to Durham.

AP

Oct. 19, 2016: As the candidates debated, the FBI was busy with the Clinton-funded dossier behind the scenes. (Credit: Assiciated Press)

On Sept. 19, 2016, the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team formally received a dossier report alleging that Page had held secret meetings with sanctioned Kremlin officials in Moscow earlier that summer in which they allegedly discussed lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia. That same day, an anxious Auten urged department lawyers to consider including the dossier report as part of the initial FISA application targeting Page.

Charles Dolan: Dossier source tied to the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party. (Credit: public domain)

In an email to attorneys, Auten forwarded an excerpt from the dossier report and asked, “Does this put us at least *that* much closer to a full FISA on [Page]?”

The attorneys thought it was a “close call” when they first discussed a FISA targeting Page in early August, but the dossier report in September “pushed it over” the line in terms of establishing probable cause.

Except that the dossier allegation about secret Kremlin meetings was bunk. Auten knew there were serious doubts about it ‒ yet withheld those concerns from FISA judges.

On Oct. 17, 2016, Auten received an email alerting him to a conversation an informant covertly recorded with Page that day in which Page “outright denied” meeting with the Russian officials ‒ or even knowing them.

“Nevertheless,” Durham noted, “Page’s exculpatory statements were not included in the initial FISA application signed just four days later.”

Before the application was submitted, Auten also was aware that the dossier was being funded and promoted by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

On Sept. 2, 2016, CIA personnel briefed Auten at FBI headquarters about credible foreign intelligence they received about the Clinton campaign’s machinations. Yet Auten took no steps to analyze the intelligence and how it might impact the Trump campaign investigation and surveillance requests. Nor did he inform the FISA court about it. Asked why he failed to disclose the “Clinton plan” intelligence, Auten told Durham’s office that it was “just one data point.”

As the FBI made requests to renew its spy warrants throughout 2017, Auten continued to gloss over major holes in the dossier. He even pressured agents and analysts to back off looking into a questionable source of key allegations, according to the Durham report. It turns out that source, Charles Dolan, was also tied to the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.

Agent Helson told Durham that Auten told him to “hold off” on interviewing Dolan, who was never interviewed.

Auten also told a female FBI analyst working for Mueller “to cease all research and analysis related to Dolan,” according to the Durham report. She wrote a memo in September 2017 documenting Dolan’s ties to the dossier, but said that “Auten had made edits to her memorandum, some of which removed information regarding Dolan.” She said she was frustrated by the censorship and wondered if there was “a political motive” behind it. The analyst told Durham she prepared a contemporaneous timeline in case she was ever questioned about her role in the Mueller investigation.

Perhaps most concerning was Auten’s reluctance to corroborate even the existence of a ghost-like source Danchenko claimed had provided him a stream of bombshell allegations that were essential to the FBI’s case for probable cause against Page. The alleged source, Belarus-born businessman and Trump booster named Sergei Millian, actually had no connection of any kind to Danchenko. There is no evidence the two men ever met or spoke. Yet Danchenko attributed to Millian the dossier’s core allegation: that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election in a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation.” This claim, which Durham found to be completely conjured up by Danchenko, formed the backbone of all four of the FBI’s applications to the FISA court to spy on Trump.

Auten knew there were serious problems with the attribution. While debriefing Danchenko in January 2017, Danchenko was dodgy about his supposed conversations with Millian. Still, Auten made no effort to validate Millian as a source. He never examined either Danchenko’s or Millian’s phone records, for starters.

Durham did pull the call records, however, and easily determined that Danchenko never actually spoke with Millian. He also learned from Danchenko’s email records that he fabricated his conversations with Millian, which means he also made up the dossier allegation that Carter Page masterminded the Democratic National Committee email leak, a claim the FBI also vouchsafed to the FISA court to attain the Page wiretaps.

“Nevertheless, the information allegedly provided by Millian remained in the Page FISA applications,” Durham stated in his report.

Auten told Durham that he did, however, check with the FBI’s partners at the CIA to see if they had anything on file to corroborate Danchenko’s  reporting in the dossier.

“They received no corroborating information back,” Durham said.

Durham interviewed a career counterintelligence analyst at Langley who said the dossier was transparent fiction. “Indeed, after the dossier was leaked and became public,” Durham relayed in his report, “that [CIA] expert’s reaction was to ask the FBI, ‘You didn’t use that, right?’”

For several years, Auten moonlighted teaching law enforcement, intelligence, and surveillance courses at Patrick Henry College in North Virginia. He was removed from the Patrick Henry website soon after RealClearInvestigations published a July 2020 story first identifying him as the anonymous “Supervisory Intelligence Analyst” singled out in 2019 by DOJ Inspector General Horowitz for cutting corners verifying the dossier.

Auten also is no longer listed as a member of the college’s Strategic Intelligence Board of Advisors. Patrick Henry’s communications director did not reply to requests for an explanation for Auten’s removal from the website. But a faculty spokesman confirmed over the phone that he is no longer teaching there.

He is, however, apparently, still employed by the FBI. Auten’s most recent activities that have come to light? Possibly using false information to undermine allegations of criminal activity on the part of Hunter Biden. According to a July 25, 2022, letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Auten’s “scheme” entailed using deceptive and derogatory information to derail the FBI’s investigation.

“First, it’s been alleged that the FBI developed information in 2020 about Hunter Biden’s criminal financial and related activity,” Grassley wrote. “It is further alleged that in August 2020, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment which was used by an FBI Headquarters (“FBI HQ”) team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease.” (RealClearInvestigations, 6/01/2023)  (Archive)

Correction, Thursday, June 1, 2023, 10:28 AM Eastern

Because of an editing error, an earlier version mischaracterized Brian Auten’s recollection of an interaction with the CIA. He told Special Counsel John Durham that he did check with the agency in an effort to corroborate Igor Danchenko’s reporting in the Steele dossier. It is not the case that he said he never checked.

June 2. 2023 - Max Blumenthal confronts Rachel Maddow about her years of Russiagate lies

The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate discuss Max Blumenthal’s attempt to question MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about her years of Russiagate lies.

 

June 5, 2023 - New York Times admits Nazi symbology at heart of Ukraine army

Ukrainian soldiers are displaying Nazi iconography on their uniforms, the New York Times has finally accepted, even admitting that “diplomats, Western journalists, and advocacy groups” avoid making mention of it, therefore allowing it to spread.

Army photos “highlight the Ukrainian military’s complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II,” the Times reports, echoing the kind of reporting produced by The National Pulse over a year ago. 

As an example, the “Black Sun” symbol, which appeared in the castle of the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, is regularly appearing on the uniforms of Ukrainian soldiers.

Even Jewish groups and anti-hate organizations that have traditionally called out hateful symbols have stayed largely silent. Privately, some leaders have worried about being seen as embracing Russian propaganda talking points.
– New York Times, June 2023

Both corporate and social media have gone to extreme lengths to cover for Nazi and Neo-Nazi activity at the heart of Ukraine’s war effort. In 2022, Facebook created a special exemption for the nation’s Azov battalion, known for using Nazi overtones. The Washington Post finally admitted to the role of Azov and its relationship with Nazism last year. PBS in fact tried to cover-up for some of the Nazi imagery by blurring the background of a Ukrainian politician. (The National Pulse, 6/5/2023)  (Archive)

June 7, 2023 - Instagram connects a vast pedophile network using the same key words seen in Podesta's Pizzagate emails

(Credit: Revolver News)

In a surprising and unexpected development, the Wall Street Journal has given credibility to “Pizzagate.” For those who may not be familiar with it, “Pizzagate” is a theory that claims elites use coded “pizza references” to openly discuss their hidden pedophile sex ring. According to this theory, terms like “pizza” and “cheese” are allegedly used as code words for illicit activities involving children.

Like many theories that paint the left in a negative light, the Pizzagate theory was swiftly labeled a “right-wing conspiracy” and disregarded by the usual suspects, and anyone who dared to mention Pizzagate was quickly shot down and called a Q-kook.

But now, thanks to this shocking article in the WSJ, everything could be turned upside down. Apparently, Instagram, owned by Meta, has become a sanctuary for a large network of pedophiles who use hashtags related to “cheese pizza,” among others, to communicate and pursue their sinister and depraved intentions against innocent children.

The term “cheese pizza” is used by these perverts because it shares the same initials as “child pornography.”

These are sick and demonic people.

Wall Street Journal:

The pedophilic accounts on Instagram mix brazenness with superficial efforts to veil their activity, researchers found. Certain emojis function as a kind of code, such as an image of a map—shorthand for “minor-attracted person”—or one of “cheese pizza,” which shares its initials with “child pornography,” according to Levine of UMass. Many declare themselves “lovers of the little things in life.”

The bombshell WSJ piece has rocked social media; as if so-called leaders like Mark Zuckerberg didn’t realize this was going on right under his nose? Perhaps he was too busy trying to punish Trump supporters for posting anti-vaccine memes to notice an expansive pedo-ring operating on his site.

Washington Examiner:

Instagram has taken down 27 child pornography networks and intends to remove more, Meta said. It has also blocked thousands of hashtags used to sexualize children and restricted the platform from recommending search terms associated with sexual abuse.

Twitter is also a standard tool for promoting child pornography, Stanford said, but the platform is more aggressive in removing those accounts than Instagram. The response has reportedly improved from Twitter. The platform struggled to keep up with child pornography accounts, according to a February New York Times report testing the website’s content moderation efforts. (Read more: Revolver News, 6/07/2023) (Archive)

June 7, 2023 - Testimony reveals senior FBI official expressed concerns about Trump Mar-a-Lago raid

Steven D’Antuono, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office. (Credit: public domain)

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) just sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland revealing new information related to the raid of former President Donald Trump’s residence and the Department of Justice’s reported indictment of President Donald Trump. This information was obtained from the Committee’s transcribed interview of Steven D’Antuono, the former Assistant Director-in-Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office. Mr. D’Antuono described several abnormalities in the raid.

According to Mr. D’Antuono, the abnormalities include:

The Miami Field Office did not conduct the search. Mr. D’Antuono testified that FBI headquarters made the decision to assign the execution of the search warrant to the Washington Field Office (WFO) despite the location of the search occurring in the territory of the FBI’s Miami Field Office. Mr. D’Antuono stated that he had “absolutely no idea” why this decision was made and questioned why the Miami Field Office was not taking the lead on this matter. Mr. D’Antuono stated that the FBI “learned a lot of stuff from [the] Crossfire Hurricane” investigation—notably “that the [FBI] Headquarters does not work the investigation, it is supposed to be the field offices working the investigations.” Mr. D’Antuono indicated that his “concern is that [the] DOJ was not following the same principles . . . .” In fact, as recently as May 2023, in response to the report of Special Counsel Durham, the FBI asserted that “investigations should be run out of the Field” and not from Washington, D.C.

The Department did not assign a U.S. Attorney’s Office to the matter. According to Mr. D’Antuono, it was unusual to not have a U.S. Attorney assigned to an investigative matter, especially a matter of this magnitude. He explained that he “didn’t understand why there wasn’t a US Attorney assigned” and “raised this concern a lot with” Department officials because this was out of the ordinary. Mr. D’Antuono indicated that he “never got a good answer” and was told that the National Security Division would be handling this matter—with Jay Bratt, who leads the Department’s counterintelligence division, as “the lead prosecutor on the case.” Mr. Bratt is the same Department lawyer who allegedly improperly pressured a lawyer representing an employee of President Trump.10 Mr. D’Antuono again noted his concern regarding lessons learned from Crossfire Hurricane, that the Justice Department was not following the principle that “Headquarters does not work the investigation . . . .”

George Toscas serves as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General/the National Security Division. (Credit: justice.gov)

The FBI did not first seek consent to effectuate the search. Mr. D’Antuono recounted a meeting between FBI and Department officials during which the Department assertively pushed for the FBI to promptly execute the search warrant.12 Based upon his over-20-year tenure at the FBI, Mr. D’Antuono testified that he believed that the FBI,  prior to resorting to a search warrant, should have sought consent to search the premises. He testified that this outcome would have been “the best thing for all parties” involved— “[f]or the FBI, for former President Trump, and for the country . . . .” Mr. D’Antuono indicated a belief that either you or Director Christopher Wray made the decision to seek a search warrant, despite opposition from the line agents working this case in the WFO. Following that meeting, Mr. D’Antuono described how Justice Department counterintelligence official George Toscas—who also reportedly worked on the “Crossfire Hurricane and Clinton email investigations”—told him that FBI agents were ready to execute the warrant.16 Mr. D’Antuono pushed back on the Department for trying to unilaterally allocate FBI resources.

The FBI refused to wait for President Trump’s attorney to be present before executing the search. Mr. D’Antuono testified that the FBI sought to exclude President Trump’s attorney from the search, a move with which Mr. D’Antuono disagreed. Mr. D’Antuono believed that the FBI should have worked with the attorney to get consent to search the residence prior to seeking a warrant for the search. Mr. D’Antuono believes that “there was a good likelihood that [they] could have gotten consent . . . .”

Read the full letter to Attorney General Garland here. (House Judiciary Committee, 6/09/2023)  (Judiciary Transcript)  (Archive)

June 9, 2023 - Judicial Watch: The "Clinton Sock Drawer" case vs. the Trump Mar-a-Lago raid and indictment case

More from this Twitter thread:

In 2010, Judicial Watch submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to Clinton Library and Presidential Museum, seeking access to the Clinton audiotapes from his time as President. The Obama National Archives (NARA) responded that the audiotapes are personal records and therefore not subject to the Presidential Records Act or FOIA. Judicial Watch subsequently sued and requested that the Court to declare the audiotapes to be Presidential records and, because they are not currently in the government’s possession, to compel NARA to assume custody and control over them.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against Judicial Watch. In doing so, she explained:

“Under the statutory scheme established by the PRA, the decision to segregate personal materials from Presidential records is made by the President, during the President’s term and in his sole discretion, see 44 U.S.C. § 2203(b), so [NARA] could not make . . . a classification decision” different from that of President.

“Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office, it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records.”

“The PRA contains no provision obligating or even permitting the Archivist to assume control over records that the President ‘categorized’ and ‘filed separately’ as personal records. At the conclusion of the President’s term, the Archivist only ‘assumes responsibility for the Presidential records.’”

“Plaintiff contends that its factual allegations about the nature and substance of the audiotapes clearly establishes them to be Presidential records, regardless of how they were treated by President Clinton. The Court is not so sure. But even if the Court were inclined to agree with plaintiff’s reassessment of President Clinton’s decision, it would not alter the conclusion that the injury cannot be redressed: the PRA does not confer any mandatory or even discretionary authority on the Archivist to classify records. Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the President. While the plaintiff casts this lawsuit as a challenge to a decision made by the National Archives, the PRA makes it clear that this is not a decision the Archivist can make, and in this particular case, it is not a decision the Archivist did make because President Clinton’s term ended in 2000, and the tapes were not provided to the Archives at that time.”

Background:

While in office, President Clinton enlisted historian Taylor Branch to assist him in creating an oral history of his eight years in office by recording 79 audiotapes that preserved not only President Clinton’s thoughts and commentary on contemporaneous events and issues he was facing as president, but, in some instances, recorded actual events such as presidential telephone conversations. For example, the audiotapes contained the following content:

(More)

June 10, 2023 - Trump indictment reveals lawfare word games - The difference between "classified documents" and "classified markings"

(…) The indictment accuses President Trump of withholding documents containing “classified markings,” a very specifically deployed obtuse wording intended to create the implication of something nefarious where nothing nefarious exists.  It is entirely possible for a person, any person, especially a person who follows the news, to possess documents containing “classified markings.”

There is a big difference between a classified document and a document containing classified markings.  As an example, anyone who has looked at the Carter Page FISA application made public in July 2018, has reviewed a document containing “classified markings.”  When a document is declassified, they do not remove the markings.

You might think this is a one-off use of the “documents with classification markings” lingo, but it’s not.  This language is the underpinning of the entire DOJ/FBI framework that predicated the raid on Mar-a-Lago.   Specifically, neither NARA nor the DOJ-NSD requested President Trump or his team to return Classified Documents.  The DOJ demanded the return of any documents that contained “classified markings.” [SEE BELOW]

Because the verbiage is so intentionally obtuse (ie. Lawfare), a fulsome production in compliance with this DOJ demand would include any newspaper or magazine articles that had a picture of the Carter Page FISA application, or any printed online article that might contain the same or similar elements.  There is a big difference between asking for a classified document return, and asking for a return of documents that contain “classified markings.” [Example from CTH, below]

As a result, it is entirely possible, I would say almost certain, that President Trump -and his legal team- returned every document that contained classified information but may have omitted documents that retained “classified markings”.  There’s the spirit of compliance, and the letter of absolute compliance when contrasted against a very granular interpretation of the request.

It is obvious from the demand, the DOJ/FBI was casting a wide net on the compliance side, knowing that amid hundreds of thousands of presidential documents and records, there would be obscure documents with classified markings that had nothing to do with national security.  Thus, the “classified markings” establishes a Lawfare compliance tactic.

It will be interesting to see how this nonsense progresses.  It becomes easier to call it nonsense, when you simply accept the approach being used.  If the DOJ-NSD, FBI, Special Counsel or NARA were genuinely interested in ‘national security issues’, they would not be playing obtuse word games in order to structure court filings simply for media narrative engineering and propaganda purposes.

Again, all of these insufferable pretending elements simply create more avenues for smart legal minds to highlight to the court.  The judges can see through this nonsense, and their action or lack thereof becomes part of showcasing their own agenda.  Fortunately, Judge Cannon has a very solid background on the Mar-a-Lago documents case.  She wouldn’t need to have this stuff pointed out to her; she has already experienced it. (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 6/10/2023)  (Archive)

June 11, 2023 - If the documents do not belong to President Trump, then why did the government dump them in the WH parking lot and tell him to deal with them?

CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman and CBS News investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge join “Face the Nation” to discuss what’s in the indictment — and what it means for Trump. [Transcript Here]

Before getting to the video, it’s valuable to see Rikki Klieman representing the interpretation of the media outlook toward the indictment handed down by Special Counsel Jack Smith.  It is also valuable to see CBS’s Catherine Herridge represent the defenders of the institutions, from the outside vulgarian personage of Trump.

Klieman buys the Lawfare narrative completely, including the framework of classified documents as opposed to documents containing classified markings.  She sells the Lawfare outline as gospel and makes all assertions from that position.  Herridge looks at how the bureaucracy responds to Trump, including how the institutions hold power of determination higher than a President of the United States.

Bill Barr said emphatically earlier today, “The documents do not belong to Trump,” continuing with “The documents belong to the government who created them, not the man for whom they were created.”  So sayeth the defender of the omnipotent Dept of Justice.  This is where a sharp intellectual knife to cut through the chaff and countermeasures is needed, and notice no one brings up the visible and practical deconstruction point.

If the documents did not belong to President Donald J. Trump, then why did the government dump them in the parking lot of the White House and tell him to deal with them?

 

If the documents belonged to the government, and not to the man for whom they were created, then why did that same government give them to him and force him to take them to a location of his choosing?   Can you see the obtuse argument fall apart when simple pragmatic questions are raised?

The institutions are presented, by the sellers of the Lawfare narrative, as higher than the authority of the President of the United States.  This is how ridiculous our government has become.

Institutions are not omnipotent entities; they are buildings and networks full of people who facilitate processes that are an outcome of policy.  Those buildings and offices are not the government. The elected politicians who we send to Washington DC are not subservient to the processes, norms and morays they determine within the bureaucracy that the politicians are in charge of.

The argument(s) against Donald Trump are akin to a business saying that all work product created during the tenure of employment belongs to the enterprise of the business and not to the employee.  If you want to hold that line of thought, fine.  However, you then need to reconcile that the business enterprise intentionally gave all the work product to the employee, dumped it in their lap, told them to take it and leave, and then comes back at a later date and says – we now need to review the stuff we forced you to take because some of it might not actually belong to you.

Does this happen anywhere else?  Of course not.

The fact that the National Archives and Record Administration refused to take custody of the documents upon the end of the White House tenure, combined with the fact the NARA dumped those documents in the parking lot of the White House for Trump to deal with, is a direct statement the bureaucracy was telling President Trump these are your records.  His records – not their records on loan to him.

The Presidential Records Act is the overriding legislative guidance for the flow of work product post-term in office.  These are essentially document arguments.  The fact that NARA together with the Biden administration would weaponize the disposition of documents, they intentionally forced Trump to take ownership of, speaks to an intent within the bureaucracy that is transparently obvious.

Bill Barr’s entire mindset is based on a belief the institutions are of a higher power than the individuals we elect to control them.  In essence, the President of the United States is subservient to the bureaucracy.  This is nonsense.  This is also why former AG Bill Barr was more concerned about preserving the institutions than stopping the weaponizing activity that flows from them.

President Trump could store his “presidential records” anywhere he wants to; they are his records.

Now, watch Klieman obscure the difference between classified documents and documents containing classified markings.  Despite her pontifications to the contrary, the indictment is not based around any classified documents.  The classification of the documents is technically and factually moot to the ridiculous point the special counsel is making.

(Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 6/11/2023) (Archive)

June 12, 2023 - Georgia's Halderman Report is released and reveals Dominion voting machines are hackable

J. Alex Halderman (Credit: CSpan)

On Wednesday, the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Georgia unsealed the 96-page Halderman Report – the Security Analysis of Georgia’s ImageCast X Ballot Marking Devices.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been hiding this report from the public for two years.

University of Michigan Professor of Computer Science and Engineering J. Halderman and Security Researcher and Assistant Professor at Auburn University Drew Sringall collaborated on the report where they discovered many exploitable vulnerabilities in the Dominion Voting Systems’ ImageCast X system.

Far-left Judge Amy Totenberg sealed and covered up the results of the investigation of Dominion voting machines in Georgia and sat on the report until this week.

The report confirms that votes can be altered in the Dominion voting machines.  In fact, the report reveals that the Dominion software is vulnerable and can be hacked.

On Thursday VoterGA founder Garland Favorito joined Steve Bannon on The War Room to discuss the findings from the explosive report.

Trump-hating Secretary of State Raffensperger hid this information from the public until now.  Why is that?

Here is a copy of the Halderman Report released this week.

Halderman Report on Georgi… by Jim Hoft

Professor Halderman wrote about his findings in a blog post on Wednesday.

Back in September 2020, the Court granted the Curling Plaintiffs access to one of Georgia’s touchscreen ballot marking devices (BMDs) so that they could assess its security. Drew and I extensively tested the machine, and we discovered vulnerabilities in nearly every part of the system that is exposed to potential attackers. The most critical problem we found is an arbitrary-code-execution vulnerability that can be exploited to spread malware from a county’s central election management system (EMS) to every BMD in the jurisdiction. This makes it possible to attack the BMDs at scale, over a wide area, without needing physical access to any of them.

Our report explains how attackers could exploit the flaws we found to change votes or potentially even affect election outcomes in Georgia, including how they could defeat the technical and procedural protections the state has in place. While we are not aware of any evidence that the vulnerabilities have been exploited to change votes in past elections, without more precautions and mitigations, there is a serious risk that they will be exploited in the future.

On Thursday Professor Halderman tweeted out that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger will not install Dominion’s security patches before the 2024 election.

This was taken from a recent Raffensperger statement.

Raffensperger, a vocal Never-Trumper, has been aware of the investigators’ findings for two years!

That means he ran the vulnerable machines during his reelection in 2022!

What is up with Brad Raffensperger? (The Gateway Pundit, 6/15/2023)  (Archive)

Also via Gateway Pundit, 6/15/2023:

(…) Garland Favorito brought the receipts with him on The War Room.

Garland Favorito: Finally,  just yesterday I believe this report was released and it has some amazing findings that basically say what we have been saying all along.  What Mike (Lindell) has been saying, what you and I have been saying, and so many people, that the system is very insecure. It can be hacked.

So what Dr. Halderman did is he looked at only the ballot marking device part of the system.  This (investigation and report) is limited to that. It doesn’t actually even include the scanners which have another incredibly vulnerable. Which we have already found have been compromised in the 2020 election in Fulton County. So that’s the background, Steve, of all of what’s been going on.

Steve Bannon:  I just want to make sure. I want you go through the slides. Holleman’s totally independent, right? He’s some guy that’s an expert in the field. He’s a subject matter expert. He has no axe to grind on this, correct?

Garland Favorito: Absolutely. And if anything, he leans far more on the Democrat side than the Republican. But as you said, he’s an independent professor. Certainly has no axe to grind, particularly for Donald Trump or any Republicans…

…It was a titanic fight. People from all over different organizations have requested that this report be released for the security of their own voting systems. The Secretary of State of Louisiana requested that it be released. OAN requested that it would be released for part of their lawsuit. I think Fox News as well, because Dominion is suing them. It’s critical information, but it’s critical to the security of elections in the country because you could do Dr. Halderman could have done the same thing to a different vendor as well.

Slide two if Cameron has that already. But basically this is about what we call the Dominion ICX, which is the ballot marking device. And — Dr. Holleman says that…  the ICX suffers from critical vulnerabilities that can be exploited to subvert all of its security mechanisms. He goes on to say that he demonstrates that these vulnerabilities provide multiple routes by which attackers can install malicious software on Georgia ballot marking devices. And he continues on, he says, “I explain how such malware can alter voters’ votes while subverting all of the procedural protections practiced by the state. That’s about as damning as you can get.

You go on to number slide three, and he says that attackers can alter the QR codes on the printed ballots to modify voter selections. The QR code, Steve, as you know, contains the votes. The votes are accumulated out of the QR code. The system does not accumulate what the voter actually can see on text. And he also found that the attackers can forge or manipulate the smart cards that the ballot marking device uses to authenticate technicians, poll works, and voters you can manipulate. He goes on to show how they are forged. He actually forged the cards and did all sorts of things as part of his analysis.

So flipping on to the next slide, he says that the software update that Georgia installed in October 2020 left Georgia’s ballot marking devices in a state where anyone can install malware with only brief physical access to the machines. And he goes on to say, I showed that this problem can potentially be exploited in the polling place even by nontechnical voters. Go on to the next slide. And he goes on to say, I demonstrate that attackers can execute arbitrary code with root supervisory privileges, which means that. You have control of everything on the machine.

And he says by altering the election definition file that county workers copy to every BMD before each election, this has been the key point of our concerns, is that this election definition file comes from the state, and the state propagates this to every county, which propagates it to every voting machine. And Professor Holland again says that attackers could exploit this to spread malware to all ballot marking devices across the county or the entire state. And we believe that has actually been done because in 2017, we found that the Secretary of State’s Election Management Server, the state server, was exposed to the Internet for virtually anyone in the world to place malware on it. So head on to the next slide. The ICX contains numerous unnecessary Android applications.

And he talks about a terminal emulator that has a supervisory command interface that overrides all of the access controls. So he goes on to say that an attacker can alter the ballot marking devices audit logs simply by opening them in the on screen text editor application. So you could literally audit you could audit the audit logs just like you would create or change a Word document. That’s how easy that would be.

Going on to the next slide. He says that I developed a series of proof of concept attacks, which he goes over in his 96-page report. And he says that – vulnerabilities in the ballot marking device could be used to change the personal votes of individual Georgia voters, it is very likely that there are other equally critical flaws that are yet to be discovered…

…He said that attackers only have to find one of the flaws. They don’t have to find them all. He found I don’t know how many, probably a dozen or more.

Next slide. He goes on to say that the ICX BMDs that’s the Dominion ICX ballot marking devices are not sufficiently secured against technical compromise to withstand vote-altering attacks by bad actors who are likely to attack future elections in Georgia… Despite the addition of a paper trail, the malware can still change individual votes and most election outcomes without detection. And then we’ve got just one or two more slides.

The next slide: Using vulnerable ICX BMDs for all in-person voters, as Georgia does, greatly magnifies the security risk compared to jurisdictions that just use handmark paper ballots but provide the ballot marking devices to the voters upon request. So in other words, if you have a voter with an impairment, they need ballot marking device. But when you give this ballot marking device to every single voter, it increases the security risk by an incredible order of magnitude. And Dr. Haldeman goes on to say that the critical vulnerabilities in the ICX indicate that it was developed without sufficient attention to security during design, software engineering and testing. Certainly, I think that is true because why would a vendor come out with a QR-coded voting system after we had 15 years of complaints against the unverifiable voting of the old paperless DREs these systems? And it’s not just Dominion, it’s E&S as well. They have one. They are ill-conceived from the point that they were originally designed.

Video via Midnight Rider

 

June 13, 2023 - Senator Grassley reveals redacted part of FBI 1023 report on Confidential Human Source alleging there are audio tapes of his conversations with Joe Biden

Things are certainly getting interesting on the Biden bribery story. Apparently, in the unclassified interview with the Confidential Human Source, the FBI redacted the source alleging he has audio recordings of himself speaking to Joe Biden.

Senator Chuck Grassley revealed this little bit of information today from the security of the Senate floor.

(Transcript) – Last week, I came to the Senate Floor to give a speech about the Biden Justice Department and FBI playing games with the American people by hiding the FBI-generated 1023 document from Congress.

Director Wray was going to be held in contempt for refusing to produce the 1023 that I told Chairman Comer about. Then, instead of contempt, the FBI committed to showing the 1023 and related documents to Congress.

So, the FBI showed but didn’t provide possession of that 1023 to the House Oversight Committee last week.

As the public knows that 1023 involves an alleged bribery scheme between then-Vice President Biden, Hunter Biden and a foreign national. The same allegations that Chairman Comer and I made public on May 3 of this year.

And on the same day that the FBI provided a redacted version of the 1023 to the House Oversight Committee, the Justice Department announced that former President Trump had been indicted and charged with 37 crimes relating to his alleged mishandling of classified records.

Attorney General Garland signed off on prosecuting Trump for conduct similar to what Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton engaged in. Two standards of justice in this country will turn our constitutional Republic upside down. Thanks to the political infection within the Biden Justice Department and FBI, we’re well along the road for that to happen.

This senator will do all that he can to fight that political infection. And you fight it by bringing transparency to what the government does. The public’s business ought to be public. Transparency brings accountability.

With respect to the 1023 shown to that House Committee, from what I’ve been told by folks who’ve reviewed it, it’s filled with redactions. So, Director Wray placed redactions on a document that was already unclassified.

More than that, the FBI made Congress review a redacted unclassified document in a classified facility. That goes to show you the disrespect the FBI has for Congress. On a previous time on the Senate Floor, I asked my fellow senators what’s so unusual about an unclassified document being given to the public, when on May 18 of this year, there was leaked to the New York Times a classified document and even the name of a confidential human source. So, we’re kind of in a strange situation here. A classified document can be leaked to the New York Times, but an unclassified document can’t be made public to 300 million Americans.

Accordingly, Congress still lacks a full and complete picture with respect to what that document really says. That’s why it’s important that the document be made public without unnecessary redactions for the American people to see.

Let me assist for purposes of transparency.

The 1023 produced to that House Committee redacted reference that the foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations with them. Seventeen total recordings.

According to the 1023, the foreign national possesses fifteen audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden. According to the 1023, the foreign national possesses two audio recordings of phone calls between him and then-Vice President Joe Biden. These recordings were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case he got into a tight spot. The 1023 also indicates that then-Vice President Joe Biden may have been involved in Burisma employing Hunter Biden.

So, as I’ve repeatedly asked since going public with the existence of the 1023, what, if anything, has the Justice Department and FBI done to investigate?

The Justice Department and FBI must show their work. They no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt. It’s clear that the Justice Department and FBI will use every resource to investigate candidate Trump, President Trump and former President Trump.

Based on the facts known to Congress and the public, it’s clear that the Justice Department and FBI will use every resource to investigate candidate Trump, President Trump and former President Trump. Based on the facts known to Congress and the public, it’s clear that the Justice Department and FBI haven’t nearly had the same laser focus on the Biden family.

Special Counsel Jack Smith has used a recording against former President Trump. Well, what’s U.S. Attorney Weiss doing with respect to these alleged Joe and Hunter Biden recordings that are apparently relevant to a high-stakes bribery scheme?

Getting a full and complete 1023 is critical for the American people to know and understand the true nature of the document and to hold the Justice Department and FBI accountable.

It’s also important for asserting constitutional congressional oversight powers against an out-of-control Executive Branch drunk with political infection. Remember, Congress has received 1023’s in the past and they’ve been made public. So asking for this 1023 to be turned over to the American people to read is not unusual.

Congress owes it to the American people and the brave and heroic whistleblowers to continue to fight for transparency in this matter and make this document public without unnecessary redactions.

I want everyone to remember, that I have read the unredacted version. (Transcript Link)

(Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 6/13/2023)  (Archive)

June 13, 2023 - A few theories on the identity of the Confidential Human Source/Whistleblower, regarding Biden corruption

June 13, 2023 - Marco Polo's, Garrett Ziegler, reveals identity of second IRS whistleblower on Biden family corruption

Garrett Ziegler founder of Marco Polo joins Steve Bannon’s War Room and reveals that they received a subpoena from an insider at J.P. Morgan in May of 2019. The subpoena lists a gentleman named Joseph Ziegler who is now coming forward as the 2nd IRS whistleblower exposing the Biden family’s crimes. The first IRS whistleblower is Gary Shapley who recently interviewed with CBS.

(Warroom, 6/13/2023)  (Archive)