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1997 - 2017 - Congress used a $17 million dollar secret “slush fund” for hush money payments to victims of sexual misconduct

(Credit: Revolver News graphic)

(…) Meanwhile, our elected officials are dipping into our tax dollars to clean up all their messes. Don’t forget revelations from a few years ago that Congress has its own secret slush fund of hush money—all courtesy of you, the hapless taxpayer. Funny how that works, it’s like one rule for them, and another for everyone else.

Indeed, Office of Congressional Compliance (OOC) which was set up to ensure compliance with the ludicrously named 1995 Congressional Accountability Act, controls a whole treasure chest of disputes involving congressional officials—not just congressional officials, in fact. You’ll be pleased to know that the Capitol Police, the Congressional Budget Office, and many other legislative groups get to wet their beaks in this slush fund as well. Recent reports have indicated that over 17 million dollars has been used from this fund to take care of various “hush” projects on behalf of members of congress and other agencies.

However, one thing is true, there is a lot of confusion and misinformation surrounding that “sexy slush fund.” So, let’s debunk some common misconceptions about this secret hush money to shed light on just how corrupt our government truly is. First off, the $17 million figure was not solely paid out to sexual abuse victims, that we know of. We’re told that it represents the total settlements from 1997 to 2017, covering a slew of issues from sexual misconduct to various forms of discrimination lawsuits. The problem is, we don’t know how much of that $17 million was used for sexual misconduct, because supposedly, nobody kept track, and for some unknown reason, can’t go back in time and figure it out.

CNN:

According to a report from the Office of Compliance, more than $17 million has been paid out in settlements over a period of 20 years – 1997 to 2017.

How many settlements have there been?
According to the OOC data released Thursday, there have been 268 settlements. On Wednesday, Rep. Jackie Speier, the California Democrat who unveiled a bill to reform the OOC, announced at a news conference Wednesday that there had been 260 settlements. The previous tally did not include settlements paid in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Where did the settlement money come from?
Taxpayers. Once a settlement is reached, the money is not paid out of an individual lawmaker’s office but rather comes out of a special fund set up to handle this within the US Treasury – meaning taxpayers are footing the bill. The fund was set up by the Congressional Accountability Act, the 1995 law that created the Office of Compliance.

How many of the settlements were sexual harassment-related?
It’s not clear. Speier told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that the 260 settlements represent those related to all kinds of complaints, including sexual harassment as well as racial, religious or disability-related discrimination complaints. The OOC has not made public the breakdown of the settlements, and Speier says she’s pursuing other avenues to find out the total.

In its latest disclosure, the OOC said that statistics on payments are “not further broken down into specific claims because settlements may involve cases that allege violations of more than one of the 13 statutes incorporated by the (Congressional Accountability Act).”

Who knows about the settlements and payments?
After a settlement is reached, a payment must be approved by the chairman and ranking member of the House administration committee, an aide to Chairman Gregg Harper, a Mississippi Republican, told CNN.

The aide also said that “since becoming chair of the committee, Chairman Harper has not received any settlement requests.” Harper became chairman of the panel at the beginning of this year.

It’s not clear how many other lawmakers – if any – in addition to the House administration committee’s top two members are privy to details about the settlements and payments.

The most infamous sexual abuse case we do know about involves a now-deceased former highfalutin Democrat lawmaker from Michigan named John Conyer. This article is from 2017 and basically blew the lid off the secret “sexy slush fund.”

BuzzFeed:

Michigan Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat and the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, settled a wrongful dismissal complaint in 2015 with a former employee who alleged she was fired because she would not “succumb to [his] sexual advances.”

Documents from the complaint obtained by BuzzFeed News include four signed affidavits, three of which are notarized, from former staff members who allege that Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, repeatedly made sexual advances to female staff that included requests for sex acts, contacting and transporting other women with whom they believed Conyers was having affairs, caressing their hands sexually, and rubbing their legs and backs in public. Four people involved with the case verified the documents are authentic.

Conyers confirmed he made the settlement in a statement Tuesday afternoon, hours after this story was published, but said that he “vehemently denied” the claims of sexual harassment at the time and continues to do so.

And the documents also reveal the secret mechanism by which Congress has kept an unknown number of sexual harassment allegations secret: a grinding, closely held process that left the alleged victim feeling, she told BuzzFeed News, that she had no option other than to stay quiet and accept a settlement offered to her.

“I was basically blackballed. There was nowhere I could go,” she said in a phone interview. BuzzFeed News is withholding the woman’s name at her request because she said she fears retribution.

Last week the Washington Post reported that Congress’s Office of Compliance paid out $17 million for 264 settlements with federal employees over 20 years for various violations, including sexual harassment. The Conyers documents, however, give a glimpse into the inner workings of the office, which has for decades concealed episodes of sexual abuse by powerful political figures.

Mr. Conyers wasn’t paraded into court for using our tax dollars to quiet down a victim, was he? We’d love to do a little digging and see if any other lawmakers or federal employees got the same treatment as President Trump, but guess what? We don’t know the names of the federally employed folks who dipped into this congressional “hush money” honey pot.

What we’re witnessing in the United States is a prime example of peak corruption in action. Federal employees can get away with sexual assault left and right, and when they’re caught, the slush fund jumps into action to hush it up, no questions asked. And instead of these scumbags facing the music, it’s President Trump who’s under the microscope and being dragged through a sham political trial.

We should be used to this shameless “two-tier” injustice system by now. (Read more: Revolver News, 4/16/2024)  (Archive)

January 2018 - The Great COVID Cover-up: Shocking truth about Wuhan and what 15 federal agencies know

How vast was the Great COVID Cover-up? Well, my investigation has recently discovered government officials from 15 federal agencies knew in 2018 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to create a coronavirus like COVID-19.

Peter Daszak and Anthony Fauci (Credit: New York Post)

These officials knew that the Chinese lab was proposing to create a COVID 19-like virus and not one of these officials revealed this scheme to the public. In fact, 15 agencies with knowledge of this project have continuously refused to release any information concerning this alarming and dangerous research.

Government officials representing at least 15 federal agencies were briefed on a project proposed by Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

This project, the DEFUSE project, proposed to insert a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus to create a novel chimeric virus that would have been shockingly similar to the COVID-19 virus.

For years, I have been fighting to obtain records from dozens of federal agencies relating to the origins of COVID-19 and the DEFUSE project. Under duress, the administration finally released documents that show that the DEFUSE project was pitched to at least 15 agencies in January 2018.

What does this mean?

It means that at least 15 federal agencies knew from the beginning of the pandemic that EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology were seeking federal funding in 2018 to create a virus genetically very similar if not identical to COVID-19.

Disturbingly, not one of these 15 agencies spoke up to warn us that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been pitching this research. Not one of these agencies warned anyone that this Chinese lab had already put together plans to create such a virus.

Ralph Baric surrounded by lab equipment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (Credit: Jeremy M. Lange/TIME)

Peter Daszak concealed this proposal. University of North Carolina scientist Ralph Baric, a named collaborator on the DEFUSE project, failed to reveal that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had already proposed to create a virus similar to COVID-19.

And now we know that 15 agencies heard the proposal and when each agency discovered that COVID-19 was strangely similar to DEFUSE’s proposed virus creation, not one agency head stepped forward to warn the public that the virus might be man-made and therefore already adapted to transmit freely among humans.

THE ARROGANCE OF ANTHONY FAUCI

Not surprising to some of us, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was not only briefed on Wuhan’s desire to create this virus, NIAID was actually listed as a participant in the initial DEFUSE pitch. Fauci’s Rocky Mountain Lab was named as a partner alongside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the proposal.

These documents also reveal that a scientist whose lab has received millions of dollars from EcoHealth was also part of the original plan to create these chimeric coronaviruses. This researcher, Ian Lipkin, also later became one of the authors of “Proximal Origins,” a journal paper commissioned by Fauci and National Institutes of Health head Francis Collins to throw shade on anyone arguing that the virus might have come from the lab. Yet, Ian Lipkin never revealed to the public the DEFUSE proposal.

Did NIAID warn us? Did Anthony Fauci warn us? No! All lips remained sealed. (Read more: Fox News, 4/10/2024)  (Archive)

November 2023

January 30, 2018 - Stormy Daniels issues signed statement claiming affair with Trump 'never happened'

Hours before a scheduled appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to follow President Trump’s nationally televised State of the Union address on Tuesday night, porn star Stormy Daniels issued a signed statement addressed “To Whom It May Concern” that denied an alleged affair with Donald Trump.

“The fact of the matter is that each party to this alleged affair denied its existence in 2006, 2011, 2016, 2017 and now again in 2018,” the signed statement reads. “I am not denying this affair because I was paid ‘hush money’ as has been reported in overseas-owned tabloids. I am denying it because it never happened.”

The alleged affair came to prominence in early January when the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen negotiated a secret $130,000 payment to secure Daniels’ silence shortly before the 2016 presidential election.

The White House dismissed the story as “old, recycled reports.” Cohen also released a statement signed by “Stormy Daniels” denying there had been an affair and calling reports of a payment “completely false.”

The celebrity magazine In Touch subsequently published a transcript of an interview it said Daniels gave in 2011. The reporter, Jordi Lippe-McGraw, who spoke with Daniels according to In Touch, confirmed to the Washington Post that the transcript was an accurate reflection of their May 2011 phone interview.

Tuesday’s statement came as Daniels has been cashing in on her new-found notoriety, with sold-out shows at strip clubs, an appearance at the AVN awards show in Las Vegas known as the “Oscars of Porn,” as well as on national media including Inside Edition in addition to Jimmy Kimmel Live! Daniels is also scheduled to appear Thursday on The View.

(…) The authenticity of the signed statement was confirmed Tuesday by Daniels’s representative Gina Rodriguez.

The statement ends abruptly. “I will have no further comment on this matter,” it reads and then concludes with a promotional message: “Please feel free to check me out on Instagram at @thestormydaniels.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/30/2018) (Archive)

February 8, 2018 - A letter from Michael Cohen’s lawyers admits Trump knew nothing about Stormy Daniels ‘hush money’ transaction

Michael Cohen claimed he was not reimbursed by Donald Trump or his organization for hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels in a 2018 letter to federal authorities, contradicting his recent grand jury testimony.

Michael Cohen (Credit: TheImageDirect.com)

The bombshell document, exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com, could throw a wrench in the works of prosecutors pursuing criminal charges against Trump over the payments.

Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and the star witness in the case over which Trump reportedly faces imminent arrest, claims that Trump got him to pay $130,000 to Daniels to keep her quiet about her alleged affair with the real estate mogul, just days before the 2016 presidential election.

The letter appears to be in direct conflict with Cohen’s sworn testimony to Congress given a year later. Cohen said under oath that Trump ‘asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair,’ and that ‘Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a Home Equity Line of Credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign.’

He says Trump reimbursed him with personal funds, and later pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance law over the hush money.

After canceling today’s session, the grand jury has been asked to return at noon Thursday, when prosecutors ‘may present one more witness,’ a court official told DailyMail.com.

The letter appears to be in direct conflict with Cohen’s sworn testimony to Congress given a year later.

Cohen said under oath that Trump ‘asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair,’ and that ‘Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a Home Equity Line of Credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign.’

But in a February 8, 2018 letter to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Cohen’s attorney Stephen Ryan wrote: ‘Mr. Cohen used his own personal funds’, and that ‘Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford, and neither reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payment directly or indirectly.’

The letter was written in response to an FEC probe launched after complaints of campaign finance violations, lodged by Paul Ryan and the organization Common Cause. (Read more: The Daily Mail, 3/22/2023)  (Archive)

March 20, 2018 - Andrew McCabe is not charged for leaks and perjury because he was facing "unprecedented challengers [sic] and pressures"

“In 2018, both the Department of Justice Inspector General and FBI Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe had “made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor − including under oath − on multiple occasions.”

However, internal FBI documents indicate the Department of Justice, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, decided to give McCabe the benefit of the doubt and credit for his years of devoted service in deciding not to charge him with a crime.

The documents, obtained by the watchdog Judicial Watch, appear to show that the case against McCabe was closed on March 20, 2018, about the time he was fired from the FBI. But the decision not to charge him was not announced publicly.” (Read more: Sharyl Attkisson, 8/09/2019)

A snippet from the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility’s report on Andrew McCabe.

April 2018 - A key witness tells team Mueller that the 'black ledger' evidence was fabricated; Ukraine officials claim it couldn't be corroborated

(Credit: Patriot Post)

“One of Robert Mueller’s pivotal trial witnesses told the special prosecutor’s team in spring 2018 that a key piece of Russia collusion evidence found in Ukraine known as the “black ledger” was fabricated, according to interviews and testimony.

The ledger document, which suddenly appeared in Kiev during the 2016 U.S. election, showed alleged cash payments from Russian-backed politicians in Ukraine to ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

“The ledger was completely made up,” cooperating witness and Manafort business partner Rick Gates told prosecutors and FBI agents, according to a written summary of an April 2018 special counsel’s interview.

In a brief interview with Just the News, Gates confirmed the information in the summary. “The black ledger was a fabrication,” Gates said. “It was never real, and this fact has since been proven true.”

Gates’ account is backed by several Ukrainian officials who stated in interviews dating to 2018 that the ledger was of suspicious origins and could not be corroborated.

If true, Gates’ account means the two key pieces of documentary evidence used by the media and FBI to drive the now-debunked Russia collusion narrative — the Steele dossier and the black ledger — were at best uncorroborated and at worst disinformation. His account also raises the possibility that someone fabricated the document in Ukraine in an effort to restart investigative efforts on Manafort’s consulting work or  to meddle in the U.S. presidential election.” (Read more: JustTheNews, 2/06/2020)  (Archive) 

May 2, 2018 - America colludes with neo-Nazis in Ukraine [while they're condemned in America]

Neo-Nazi leader, Arsen Avakov (left center), posts on his FB page, “a meeting with US Ambassador Marie Jovanovich @USEmbassyKyiv discussed urgent issues of ensuring fair and transparent elections, security and preventing provocations at polling stations during voting.” ((Credit: Yulia Babich/Twitter))

“The orthodox American political-media narrative blames “Putin’s Russia” alone for the new US-Russian Cold War. Maintaining this (at most) partial truth involves various mainstream media malpractices, among them lack of historical context; reporting based on unverified “facts” and selective sources; editorial bias; and the excluding, even slurring, of proponents of alternative explanatory narratives as “Kremlin apologists” and carriers of “Russian propaganda.” An extraordinary example appeared on May 1, when Jim Sciutto, CNN’s leading purveyor of Russiagate allegations, tweeted that “Jill Stein is…repeating Russian talking points on its interference in the 2016 election and on U.S. foreign policy.” To the extent that Sciutto represents CNN, as he does almost nightly on air, it is useful to know what this influential network actually thinks about a legitimate third party in American electoral democracy and its presidential candidate. And also about many well-informed Americans who have not supported Stein or her party but who strongly disagree with CNN’s orthodox positions on Russiagate and US foreign policy. No less important, however, is the highly selective nature of the mainstream narrative of the new Cold War, what it chooses to feature and what it virtually omits. Among the omissions, few realities are more important than the role played by neofascist forces in US-backed, Kiev-governed Ukraine since 2014. Not even many Americans who follow international news know the following, for example:

§ That the snipers who killed scores of protestors and policemen on Kiev’s Maidan Square in February 2014, thereby triggering a “democratic revolution” that overthrew the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, and brought to power a virulent anti-Russian, pro-American regime—it was neither democratic nor a revolution, but a violent coup unfolding in the streets with high-level support—were sent not by Yanukovych, as is still widely reported, but instead almost certainly by the neofascist organization Right Sector and its co-conspirators.

§ That the pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians and others in Odessa shortly later in 2014 reawakened memories of Nazi extermination squads in Ukraine during World War II has been all but deleted from the American mainstream narrative even though it remains a painful and revelatory experience for many Ukrainians.

§ That the Azov Battalion of some 3,000 well-armed fighters, which has played a major combat role in the Ukrainian civil war and now is an official component of Kiev’s armed forces, is avowedly “partially” pro-Nazi, as evidenced by its regalia, slogans, and programmatic statements, and well-documented as such by several international monitoring organizations. Congressional legislation recently banned Azov from receiving any US military aid, but it is likely to obtain some of the new weapons recently sent to Kiev by the Trump Administration due to the country’s rampant network of corruption and black markets.

Marie Yovanovich’s partial testimony regarding her friendship with Ukrainian neo-Nazi, Arsen Avakov. Also pictured (l) is Andriy Biletsky, leader of the Azov Batallion and seen in the photo (r) with Avakov. (Credit (now banned on Twitter): @UkraineLiberty)

§ That stormtroop-like assaults on gays, Jews, elderly ethnic Russians, and other “impure” citizens are widespread throughout Kiev-ruled Ukraine, along with torchlight marches reminiscent of those that eventually inflamed Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s. And that the police and official legal authorities do virtually nothing to prevent these neofascist acts or to prosecute them. On the contrary, Kiev has officially encouraged them by systematically rehabilitating and even memorializing Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi German extermination pogroms and their leaders during World War II, renaming streets in their honor, building monuments to them, rewriting history to glorify them, and more.

§ Or that Israel’s official annual report on anti-Semitism around the world in 2017 concluded that such incidents had doubled in Ukraine and the number “surpassed the tally for all the incidents reported throughout the entire region combined.” By the region, the report meant the total in all of Eastern Europe and all former territories of the Soviet Union.

Americans cannot be faulted for not knowing these facts. They are very rarely reported and still less debated in the mainstream media, whether in newspapers or on television. To learn about them, Americans would have to turn to alternative media and to their independent writers, which rarely affect mainstream accounts of the new Cold War. One such important American writer is Lev Golinkin. He is best known for his book ‘A Backpack, A Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka,’ a deeply moving and highly instructive memoir of his life as a young boy brought to America by his immigrant parents from Eastern Ukraine, now the scene of tragic civil and proxy war. But Golinkin has also been an unrelenting and meticulous reporter of neofascism in “our” Ukraine and a defender of others who try to chronicle and oppose its growing crimes. (Many of us seeking reliable information often turn to him.)

The significance of neo-Nazism in Ukraine and the at least tacit official U.S support or tolerance for it should be clearly understood: (Read more: The Nation, 5/02/2018)  (Archive)

(Stephen F. Cohen was a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. He died from lung cancer on September 18, 2020, at the age of 81. He will be greatly missed.)

June 14, 2018 - FBI Director Wray commits to the institutional cover-up of gross misconduct by former and current DOJ and FBI officials

(…) “FBI Director Wray lost all credibility in June of 2018 when he participated in a structured press conference intended to diminish the IG report on the institutional issues with the FBI.   It was then obvious Wray was committed to the institutional cover-up of gross misconduct by former and current DOJ and FBI officials.

At the conclusion of that June 14, 2018, press conference an earlier unscheduled meeting on January 3rd, 2018, between Christopher Wray, Rod Rosenstein and House Speaker Paul Ryan then began to make a lot more sense.

During that January 2018 meeting FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and House Speaker Paul Ryan formed an alliance against HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes.

January 3rd, 2018 – WASHINGTON DC – Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Chris Wray made an unannounced visit to Speaker Paul Ryan’s office Wednesday as the Justice Department grapples with an increasingly hostile faction of House Republicans demanding documents related to the bureau’s Russia probe.

Rosenstein was spotted entering Ryan’s office, and a spokesman for the speaker confirmed that Rosenstein and Wray had requested the meeting. A second person familiar with the meeting said it was related to a document request issued over the summer by House intelligence committee chairman Devin Nunes. (more)

(Credit: Eric Gay/The Associated Press)

(OIG Report on FBI)

(Read more: The Conservative Treehouse, 5/08/2019)

June 27, 2018 - Strzok testimony reveals DOJ and Clinton lawyers struck secret deal to block FBI access to Clinton Foundation Emails

Bill and Hillary Clinton (Credit: public domain)

“The Justice Department and Hillary Clinton’s legal team “negotiated” an agreement that blocked the FBI from accessing emails on Clinton’s homebrew server related to the Clinton Foundation, according to a transcript of recently released testimony from last summer by former FBI special agent Peter Strzok.

“Under questioning from Judiciary Committee General Counsel Zachary Somers, Strzok acknowledged that Clinton’s private personal email servers contained a mixture of emails related to the Clinton Foundation, her work as secretary of state and other matters.

Were you given access to [Clinton Foundation-related] emails as part of the investigation?” Somers asked

“We were not. We did not have access,” Strzok responded. “My recollection is that the access to those emails were based on consent that was negotiated between the Department of Justice attorneys and counsel for Clinton.” – Fox News

Strzok added that “a significant filter team” was employed at the FBI to “work through the various terms of the various consent agreements.”

“According to the attorneys, we lacked probable cause to get a search warrant for those servers and projected that either it would take a very long time and/or it would be impossible to get to the point where we could obtain probable cause to get a warrant,” said Strzok.

(…) Later in his testimony last summer, Strzok said that agents were able to access “the entire universe” of information on the servers by using search terms to probe their contents – saying “we had it voluntarily.”

“What’s bizarre about this, is in any other situation, there’s no possible way they would allow the potential perpetrator to self-select what the FBI gets to see,” said former Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz – former chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee until 2017 and current contributor to Fox News. “The FBI should be the one to sort through those emails — not the Clinton attorneys.“

Chaffetz suggested that the goal of the DOJ was to “make sure they hear no evil, see no evil — they had no interest in pursuing the truth.”

“The Clinton Foundation isn’t supposed to be communicating with the State Department anyway,” said Chaffetz. “The foundation — with her name on it — is not supposed to be communicating with the senior officials at the State Department.” (Read more: Zero Hedge, 3/15/2019)  (Strzok Transcript)

June 27, 2018 - Peter Strzok deleted ‘personal’ communications with Lisa Page

Peter Strzok (Credit: public domain)

“Former FBI official Peter Strzok told Congress in 2018 that he deleted “personal” communications he had with his mistress, former FBI attorney Lisa Page.

“As a fact of the matter, following the — at some point, I — you know, it was related to personal reasons — deleted all those,” Strzok told lawmakers on June 27, 2018, according to a transcript of the testimony released Thursday.

“But they were the personal communications, not the work ones,” added Strzok, who acknowledged having an extramarital affair with Page.

Aitan Goelman, an attorney for Strzok, told The Daily Caller News Foundation on Thursday that Strzok deleted the messages before he was removed from the Mueller team.

“Pete deleted personal communications from his personal iPhone before and unrelated to these investigations,” said Goelman, who added in a follow-up comment that the deletions were made prior to July 27, 2017, when Strzok was kicked off the Mueller probe.

Goelman did not provide a specific date for the deletions.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 3/14/2019)

July 13, 2018 - Lisa Page discusses the DOJ influence over the FBI's Clinton email investigation

(Credit: State of the Nation)

(…) “Page also repeatedly noted a tension between the FBI and DOJ, noting that the DOJ was far more cautious in their approach to matters and was ultimately responsible for the decision not to prosecute in the Clinton case.

Another aspect that developed in the dynamic between the DOJ and the FBI was pressure from the department to place additional people into the FBI’s investigation. Page noted that “as soon as the planning started to begin to interview some of the more high-profile witness, not just Mrs. Clinton but also Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan, and her sort of core team, the department wanted to change the sort of structure and the number of people who were involved.”

In particular, David Laufman, a deputy assistant attorney general and head of counterintelligence for the DOJ’s National Security Division at the time, pushed extensively to be present for the higher profile interviews. As Page noted, this quickly spiraled into a problem for the FBI:

“Once we started talking about including David, then the U.S. Attorney’s Office also wanted to participate in the interviews, although they had participated in virtually none by that point. And so, then the U.S. Attorney’s Office was pushing to have the AUSAs [Assistant U.S. Attorney], who were participating in the Clinton investigation, also participate.”

“And so now, all of a sudden, we were going from our standard two and two to this burgeoning number of people.”

Apparently, Laufman felt so strongly that he went to his boss, George Toscas, the deputy assistant attorney general in the National Security Division, who then approached McCabe directly.

The DOJ’s ongoing influence was felt in other ways as well. Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, both fact witnesses, were allowed to attend Clinton’s interview as her attorneys. As Page admitted, “I would agree with you, that it is not typically appropriate or operationally necessary to have fact witnesses attend the interview.”

The decision to allow attendance of fact witnesses during Clinton’s interview came from the DOJ, although Page said she wasn’t certain who had made the decision. She noted that the FBI protested the move but were overridden, so the decision must have come from a senior level within the DOJ.” (The Epoch Times, 1/21/2019)

July 13, 2018 - Lisa Page admits Obama DOJ ordered stand-down on Clinton email prosecution

“Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page admitted under questioning from Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe last summer that “the FBI was ordered by the Obama DOJ not to consider charging Hillary Clinton for gross negligence in the handling of classified information,” the congressman alleged in a social media post late Tuesday, citing a newly unearthed transcript of Page’s closed-door testimony.

(Credit: Twitter)

Page and since-fired FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, who were romantically involved, exchanged numerous anti-Trump text messages in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, and Republicans have long accused the bureau of political bias. But Page’s testimony was perhaps the most salient evidence yet that the Justice Department improperly interfered with the FBI’s supposedly independent conclusions on Clinton’s criminal culpability, Ratcliffe alleged.

“So let me if I can, I know I’m testing your memory,” Ratcliffe began as he questioned Page under oath, according to a transcript excerpt he posted on Twitter. “But when you say advice you got from the Department, you’re making it sound like it was the Department that told you: You’re not going to charge gross negligence because we’re the prosecutors and we’re telling you we’re not going to —”

Page interrupted: “That is correct,” as Ratcliffe finished his sentence, ” — bring a case based on that.” (Read more: Fox News, 3/13/2019)

July 21, 2018 - The FISA applications relied on hearsay from tertiary sources

“The newly released FISA applications also confirm a fourth significant fact: To obtain the surveillance warrant, the DOJ and FBI relied on unverified hearsay from sub-sources (i.e., Steele’s sources) of unknown reliability.

While the government may rely on unverified information provided by an informant who has a history of providing reliable information, to establish probable cause with evidence coming from a source of unknown reliability, the government must corroborate that information. The FISA applications make no mention of corroboration of the sub-sources’ claims concerning Page’s purported conversations with two Russian agents.

Further, the FISA applications reveal that the DOJ only established Steele’s reliability, not that of “sub-sources.” But as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy first highlighted in February 2018:

The only reliability that counts is the reliability of the factual informants, not of the investigator who purports to channel the informants. The judge wants to know why the court should believe the specific factual claims: Was the informant truly in a position to witness what is alleged, and if so, does the informant have a track record of providing verified information? The track record of the investigator who locates the sources is beside the point. A judge would need to know whether Steele’s sources were reliable, not whether Steele himself was reliable.

While we do not know what lay behind the redacted portions of the applications, it seems clear from the placement, context, size of the blackouts that the FBI did not include information in the application either establishing the sub-sources’ reliability or detailing any efforts to corroborate Page’s claimed collusion with the Russian agents.” (Read more: The Federalist, 7/23/2018)  (Archive)

July 22, 2018 - Clapper admits on CNN that Obama ordered spying on the Trump team

Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper admitted in a CNN interview Saturday that former President Obama instigated the ongoing investigations into Donald Trump and those in his orbit.

Speaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Clapper let slip:

“If it weren’t for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today including Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. President Obama is responsible for that. It was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place.”

August 30, 2018 - The Justice Department discloses there were no FISA court hearings held on Carter Page warrants

“Judicial Watch today announced that in response to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the Justice Department (DOJ) admitted in a court filing last night that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held no hearings on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) spy warrant applications targeting Carter Page, a former Trump campaign part-time advisor who was the subject of four controversial FISA warrants.

In the filing the Justice Department finally revealed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held no hearings on the Page FISA spy warrants, first issued in 2016 and subsequently renewed three times:

(National Security Division) FOIA consulted (Office of Intelligence) … to identify and locate records responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] FOIA request…. [Office of Intelligence] determined … that there were no records, electronic or paper, responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] FOIA request with regard to Carter Page. [Office of Intelligence] further confirmed that the [Foreign Surveillance Court] considered the Page warrant applications based upon written submissions and did not hold any hearings.

The Department of Justice previously released to Judicial Watch the heavily redacted Page warrant applications. The initial Page FISA warrant was granted just weeks before the 2016 election. (Read more: Judicial Watch, 8/31/2018) (Archive)

September 10, 2018 - The Dept of Homeland Security hires a pro-Hamas PLO spokeswoman to handle asylum claims

(Timeline Date Source)

September 11, 2018 - Letter and media report reveal Obama Foundation continues to store classified docs in abandoned furniture warehouse

(…) It is not merely NARA’s referral to the DOJ and Ferriero’s apparent bias that suggests a political motive, however: It is the reality that even if the documents were classified, Trump has the right to access them and NARA could have worked with the former president to set up a secure location for his presidential papers, which is precisely what Ferriero and the NARA did with Barack Obama.

In 2016, before President Obama left office, he rented a private facility in Hoffman Estates to serve as a storage place for his presidential papers, and by October of 2016, while he was still in office, shipments of artifacts from his presidency began arriving at the suburban Chicago storage facility. A year later, the Chicago Tribune reported that after the National Archives and Records Administration had worked with the former Democrat president to ship his documents to the Chicago suburb, where they were stored and kept secured, Obama decided not to retain a paper archive at his presidential museum, “meaning they would be shipped back to Washington once a decision [was] made on where to keep them permanently.”

The Obama documents — both classified and unclassified — remained in Hoffman Estates well into 2018, as evidenced by a letter of intent executed between Ferriero on behalf of the National Archives Trust Fund and the Obama Foundation. Among other things, the letter of intent memorialized the Obama Foundation’s agreement to “transfer up to three million three hundred thousand dollars ($3,300,000) to the National Archives Trust Fund (NATF) to support the move of classified and unclassified Obama Presidential records and artifacts from Hoffman Estates to NARA-controlled facilities that conform to the agency’s archival storage standards for such records and artifacts.”

The only difference between the Hoffman Estates’ storage of the Obama presidential records that began in 2016 and the Mar-a-Lago storage of Trump’s presidential records was that the documents were technically within the possession of NARA. But even though the documents were legally the property of NARA, Obama still had the right to access the records, including the classified documents.

So if upon receiving the 15 boxes of documents back from Trump, NARA had legitimate concerns about the security of Mar-a-Lago — a strange worry to hold given that the Secret Service must safeguard the location to protect Trump and his family — a bureaucracy committed to the country and safeguarding her artifacts would have worked to arrange for the documents to be preserved under the auspices of NARA control in a location chosen by Trump, as it had done with Obama.” (Read more: The Federalist, 8/15/2022)  (Archive)

Upon further investigation by Matt Margolis at PJ Media, 9/22/2022:

“The Obama Foundation stored classified documents in an abandoned furniture warehouse, according to a 2018 letter from the Obama Foundation to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

The letter, available on the Obama Foundation website and dated Sept. 11, 2018, reveals that the Obama Foundation not only acknowledged possessing classified documents but also admitted that they kept them in a facility that did not meet NARA standards for the storage of those documents.

Media reports confirm that the Obama Foundation had rented space from Hoffman Estates to store these documents, and extended their original lease for four more years back in August.

“While no firm date has been announced for the completion and opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Library near the University of Chicago, its future contents will stay in Hoffman Estates for four more years,” the Daily Herald reported. “Village board members unanimously approved an extension to the special-use permit that enables landlord Hoffman Estates Medical Development LLC to lease the 74,200-square-foot former Plunkett Furniture store at 2500 W. Golf Road to the National Archives and Records Administration through Dec. 31, 2026.”

This means that, as the debate over the supposedly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is unfolding, the Obama Foundation is, at this very moment, storing classified documents in unused retail space in the suburbs of Chicago.” (Read more: PJ Media, 9/22/2022)  (Archive)

September 21, 2018 - Records show a DOJ effort to craft response to reports on Rosenstein wearing wire and invoking 25th Amendment

(Credit: Judicial Watch)

“Judicial Watch today released 14 pages of records from the Department of Justice showing officials’ efforts in responding to media inquiries centering on talks within the DOJ/FBI allegedly invoking the 25th Amendment to “remove” President Donald Trump from office and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offering to wear a “wire” to record his conversations with the president.

The records show that, following a September 21, 2018, report on Rosenstein suggesting he would wear a wire to secretly record Trump and his discussions on using the 25th Amendment, Rosenstein sought to ensure the media would have “difficulty” finding anyone in the DOJ to comment and a concerted effort within the DOJ to frame the reporting as “inaccurate” and “factually incorrect.”

The records show DOJ officials had also discussed characterizing Rosenstein’s reported offer of wearing a wire to record Trump as merely “sarcastic.”

Additionally, the records show DOJ Public Affairs officer Sarah Isgur Flores, after conferring with other top DOJ officials and Rosenstein’s office about her email exchange with New York Times reporter Adam Goldman, waited 12 hours to forward the email exchange to DOJ Chief of Staff Matthew Whitaker. Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly had referred to Whitaker as the president’s “eyes and ears” in the DOJ.

Justice Department public affairs officer, Sarah Isgur Flores (r), is hired by CNN as a political editor in early 2019. (Credit: YouTube/CNN)

The records obtained by Judicial Watch include a September 21, 2018, email from Assistant U.S. Attorney (DOJ/NSD) Harvey Eisenberg to Rosenstein informing the DAG that Washington Post reporter Ellen Nakashima had called inquiring about a New York Times report on the 25th Amendment/wire discussion, Rosenstein responds:

“Thanks! Hopefully, we are being successful, and the reporters are having difficulty finding anybody to comment about things. [Remainder of email redacted.]” Apparently in response to the redacted portion of Rosenstein’s reply, Eisenberg responds, “I’m aware. Besides letting you know, [redacted]. My best to you and the family.” Rosenstein replies, “I don’t mean about me. [Redacted.]”

(Read more: Judicial Watch, 9/11/2019)

 

Oct. 17, 2018 - Hunter Biden's laptop offers up a personal video with a hooker and his new, illegally obtained gun

 

(Credit: Marco Polo)

“Hunter Biden shows himself to be a real first son-of-a-gun in the latest embarrassing personal video leak for President Biden’s scandal-scarred offspring.

A naked Hunter casually waves around a handgun and even points it at the camera while cavorting with a nude hooker in a swank hotel room, according to a video provided to The Post by the nonprofit Marco Polo research group.

The cavalier clip of Hunter Biden holding the apparently illegally obtained weapon emerged amid the rash of mass shootings — and random gun violence in major cities  — that included 11 incidents on Saturday and Sunday alone that left at least 15 people dead and 61 injured across the U.S., data shows.

It also came just days after his dad called on Congress to pass new gun-control measures to stem the slaughter, declaring in a televised, primetime address last week that “the Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute.”

(…) Hunter Biden recorded the video on Oct. 17, 2018, according to Radar Online, which first revealed its existence. The outlet and a Post source described his companion in the video as a prostitute.

Five days earlier, he bought a .38-caliber handgun in Delaware, Politico reported last year.

In order to make the purchase, Hunter Biden answered “no” to a question that asked, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” Politico reported last year. (Read more: The New York Post, 6/06/2022)  (Archive)

Oct. 31, 2018 - The FBI learned Information ‘that might bear’ on Christopher Steele’s credibility, lawyer told Congress

The recently released redacted version of the Mueller Report. (Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

“A former FBI attorney who worked on the Russia investigation told Congress last year the bureau learned information about dossier author Christopher Steele “that might bear on his credibility as a source.”

Trisha Anderson, the former principal deputy general counsel, said in a closed-door interview that meetings were held at the FBI with then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and the team working on the investigation to discuss Steele, a former MI6 officer who investigated President Donald Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC.

Steele provided information from his dossier to the FBI, State Department and members of the press.

“There were meetings with Mr. McCabe about the Russia investigation that involved discussions of the various reports that were generated by Chris Steele that we had received, both with respect to the content of the reports as well as what we had learned about Christopher — we, I’m sorry — the FBI investigative team had learned about facts that might bear on his credibility as a source,” Anderson said in the Oct. 31, 2018 interview, a transcript of which was obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“And what were those facts? You had mentioned the contents. More specifically, what were these discussions about? But start with the credibility issues,” a congressional staffer asked Anderson.

Anderson did not say when the meetings occurred. Nor did she say what the possible credibility issues might have been.

When asked for further details, an FBI attorney intervened to say that Anderson could not answer more questions because they “pertain to matters that are being looked at by the special counsel and its investigation.”

At some point after relying on Steele as a confidential source, FBI officials were told that Steele was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC to investigate Trump. The former British spy had been hired in June 2016 by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm.

(…) The Justice Department’s office of the inspector general is reportedly investigating the FBI’s use of Steele as a source as part of a broader probe into possible abuse of the FISA system. The New York Times reported on Friday that intelligence community officials determined at some point in 2017 that some of Steele’s allegations were either likely wrong, or based on exaggeration by Steele’s sub-sources.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 4/26/2019)