April 3, 2017 - A redacted FBI official warns Strzok of a Guardian article about General Flynn that has "gotten too deep"

“On April 3, 2017, a redacted official in the FBI Washington Field Office emails Strzok a link to a Guardian article titled “Michael Flynn: New Evidence Spy Chiefs Had Concerns about Russia Ties,” saying, “Im [sic] sure you are tracking, but this has gotten too deep.” Strzok replies, “I wasn’t. WTF is this…” Strzok then forwards the exchange to Page, saying “Not great.”

(Judicial Watch, 8/28/2020)

April 2017 - April 2019: The Fourth Branch of U.S. government targets Julian Assange for kidnapping or assassination 

“On September 26, 2021, Yahoo News published an extensive article about the CIA targeting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2017 and the extreme conversations that were taking place at the highest levels of the U.S. government about how to control him. There is a much bigger story transparently obvious when overlapped with CTH research files on the Intelligence Branch of government; specifically the motive missed by Yahoo News for the stunning activity they outline.

What I am going to outline below, is a deep dive using the resources and timeline from within that article and the specific details we have assembled that paints a clear picture about what interests existed for the Deep State, the Intelligence apparatus and what I call the Fourth Branch of Government.

This fully cited review is not for the faint of heart. This is a journey that could shock many; could alarm more, and will likely force more than a few to reevaluate just what the purpose was for Mike Pompeo within the Donald Trump administration.

As the Yahoo News article begins, they outline how those within the Trump administration viewed Assange as a risk in 2017.  Here it is critical to accept that many people inside the Trump administration were there to control events, not to facilitate a policy agenda from a political outsider.   In the example of Assange, the information he carried was a risk to those who attempted and failed to stop Trump from winning the 2016 election.

Julian Assange was not a threat to Donald Trump, but he was a threat to those who attempted to stop Donald Trump.  In 2017, the DC system was reacting to a presidency they did not control.  As an outcome, the Office of the President was being managed and influenced by some with ulterior motives.

Yahoo, via Michael Isikoff, puts it this way: “Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request “sketches” or “options” for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. “There seemed to be no boundaries.”

As we overlay the timeline, it is prudent to pause and remember some hindsight details.  According to reports in November of 2019, U.S. Attorney John Durham and U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr were spending time looking carefully at CIA activity in the 2016 presidential election. One quote from a media-voice increasingly sympathetic to a political deep-state noted:

“One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish list presented to London commented that, “It is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services””. (Link)

It is interesting that quote came from a British intelligence official as there was extensive pre-2016 election evidence of an FBI/CIA counterintelligence operation that also involved U.K. intelligence services. There was an aspect to the FBI/CIA operation that overlaps with both a U.S. and U.K. need to keep Wikileaks founder Julian Assange under tight control.

To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to FBI/CIA interests, and effectively the Fourth Branch of Government, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the FBI/CIA were in 2016. It is within this network of foreign and domestic operations where FBI Agent Peter Strzok was clearly working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI operations.

By now, people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor generally identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the FBI/CIA to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. {Go Deep}

In a similar fashion, the FBI tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor, Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent, under the false name Azra Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos.

The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets legal and much easier.

One of the more interesting aspects to the unfinished Durham probe is the possibility of a paper trail created as a result of the intelligence community tasking operations. If Durham has indeed gone into this intelligence rabbit hole, we could see evidence of a paper trail.

Personally, I am doubtful Durham will put what you are reading into any actionable scenario.  Nor do I anticipate a report that could outline the risk of Julian Assange to the activities that took place within the political weaponization of the intelligence apparatus.

HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes has outlined how very specific exculpatory evidence was known to the FBI and yet withheld from the FISA application used against Carter Page that also mentions George Papadopoulos. The FBI also fabricated information in the FISA and removed evidence that Carter Page was previously working for the CIA.  This is what FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was convicted for doing.

One week after the FBI and DOJ filed the second renewal for the Carter Page FISA [April 7, 2017], Yahoo News notes how Mike Pompeo delivered his first remarks as CIA Director:

(…) On April 13, 2017, wearing a U.S. flag pin on the left lapel of his dark gray suit, Pompeo strode to the podium at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank, to deliver to a standing-room-only crowd his first public remarks as Trump’s CIA director.

Rather than use the platform to give an overview of global challenges or to lay out any bureaucratic changes he was planning to make at the agency, Pompeo devoted much of his speech to the threat posed by WikiLeaks. (link)

Why would CIA Director Mike Pompeo be so concerned about Julian Assange and Wikileaks in April 2017?

In April of 2017 Pompeo’s boss, President Donald Trump, was under assault from the intelligence community writ large, and every deep state actor was leaking to media in a frenzied effort to continue the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy.   The effort was so all-consuming that FBI Director James Comey was even keeping a diary of engagement with President Trump in order to support an ongoing investigation built on fraud…  yet, Mike Pompeo is worried about Julian Assange?

Again, here it is important to put yourself back into the time of reference.  Remember, it’s clear in the text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that Strzok had a working relationship with what he called their “sister agency”, the CIA.

Additionally, former CIA Director John Brennan has admitted Strzok helped write the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which outlines the Russia narrative; and it was also Peter Strzok who authored the July 31st, 2016, “Electronic Communication” from the CIA to the FBI that originated FBI operation “Crossfire Hurricane.”  Strzok immediately used that EC to travel to London to debrief intelligence officials around Australian Ambassador to the U.K. Alexander Downer.

In short, Peter Strzok was a profoundly overzealous James Bond wannabe, who acted as a bridge between the CIA and the FBI. The perfect type of FBI career agent for 2016’s CIA Director John Brennan to utilize.

Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson hired CIA Open Source analyst Nellie Ohr toward the end of 2015; at appropriately the same time as “FBI Contractors” were identified exploiting the NSA database and extracting information on a specific set of U.S. persons.  One, if not the primary extractors, has now been identified as Rodney Joffe at Neustar.   “The campaign plot was outlined by Durham last month in a 27-page indictment charging former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann with making a false report to the FBI. The document cites eight individuals who allegedly conspired with Sussmann but does not identify them by name. The sources familiar with the probe have confirmed that the leader of the team of contractors was Rodney L. Joffe.” {Go Deep}

It was also Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson who was domestically tasked with a Russian lobbyist named Natalia Veselnitskaya. A little-reported Russian Deputy Attorney General named Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was working as a double-agent for the CIA and Kremlin. Karapetyan was directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Glenn Simpson was organizing her inside the U.S as part of his Trump-Russia creation.

Glenn Simpson managed Veselnitskaya through the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. However, once the CIA/Fusion GPS operation using Veselnitskaya started to unravel with public reporting…. back in Russia Deputy AG Karapetyan died in a helicopter crash.

Simultaneously timed in late 2015 through mid-2016, there was a domestic FBI operation using a young Russian named Maria Butina tasked to run up against Republican presidential candidates. According to Patrick Byrne, Butina’s handler,  was FBI agent Peter Strzok who was giving Byrne the instructions on where to send her. {Go Deep}

All of this context outlines the extent to which the FBI/CIA was openly involved in constructing a political operation that settled upon anyone in candidate Donald Trump’s orbit.  A large international operation directed by the FBI/CIA, and domestic operations seemingly directed by Peter Strzok operating with a foot in both agencies. [Strzok gets CIA service coin]

Recap: ♦Mifsud tasked against Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Halper tasked against Flynn (CIA), Page (CIA), and Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Azra Turk, pretending to be Halper asst, tasked against Papadopoulos (FBI). ♦Veselnitskaya tasked against Donald Trump Jr (CIA, Fusion GPS). ♦Butina tasked against Trump, and Donald Trump Jr (FBI).

Additionally, Christopher Steele was a British intelligence officer, hired by Fusion GPS to assemble and launder fraudulent intelligence information within his dossier. And we cannot forget Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, who was recruited by Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to participate in running an operation against the Trump campaign and create the impression of Russian involvement. Deripaska refused to participate.

All of this engagement directly controlled by U.S. intelligence; and all of this intended to give a specific Russia impression. This predicate was presumably what John Durham was reviewing in November of 2019.

The key point of all that contextual background is to see how committed the CIA and FBI were to the constructed narrative of Russia interfering with the 2016 election. The CIA, FBI, and by extension the DOJ and a multitude of political operatives put a hell of a lot of work into it.

We also know that John Durham was looking at the construct of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA); and talking to CIA analysts who participated in the construct of the January 2017 report that bolstered the false appearance of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This context is important because it ties in to the next part that involves Julian Assange and Wikileaks.  This is where the motives of Mike Pompeo in mid/late 2017 come into play.

[…] By the summer of 2017, the CIA’s proposals were setting off alarm bells at the National Security Council. “WikiLeaks was a complete obsession of Pompeo’s,” said a former Trump administration national security official. (link)

On April 11th, 2019, the Julian Assange indictment was unsealed in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA). From the indictment we discover it was under seal since March 6th, 2018:

On Tuesday, April 15, 2019, more investigative material was released. Again, note the dates: Grand Jury, *December of 2017* This means FBI investigation prior to….

The FBI investigation took place prior to December 2017, it was coordinated through the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) where Dana Boente was U.S. Attorney at the time. The grand jury indictment was sealed from March of 2018 until after Mueller completed his investigation, April 2019.

Why the delay?

What exactly was the DOJ waiting for from March 2018 to April 2019?   This timeframe is the peak of the Robert Mueller/Andrew Weissmann special counsel investigation.

Here’s where it gets interesting….

The Yahoo article outlines, “there was an inappropriate level of attention to Assange“, by the CIA according to a national security council official.  However, if you consider the larger ramifications of what Julian Assange represented to all of those people inside and outside government interests who created the Trump-Russia collusion/conspiracy, well, there was actually a serious risk.

Remember why in May 2017 Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann effectively took over the DOJ.  The entire purpose of the Mueller investigation was to cover up the illegal operation that took place in the preceding year.   The people exposed to the risk included all of those intelligence operatives previously outlined in the CIA, FBI, and DOJ operations.

The FBI submission to the Eastern District of Virginia Grand Jury in December of 2017 was four months after congressman Dana Rohrabacher talked to Julian Assange in August of 2017: “Assange told a U.S. congressman … he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents … did not come from Russia.”

(August 2017, The Hill Via John Solomon) Julian Assange told a U.S. congressman on Tuesday he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year’s election did not come from Russia and promised additional helpful information about the leaks in the near future.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is friendly to Russia and chairs an important House subcommittee on Eurasia policy, became the first American congressman to meet with Assange during a three-hour private gathering at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up for years.

Rohrabacher recounted his conversation with Assange to The Hill.

“Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year’s presidential election,” Rohrabacher said, “Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.”

Pressed for more detail on the source of the documents, Rohrabacher said he had information to share privately with President Trump. (read more)

Dana Rohrabacher later published this account of the events:

Knowing how much effort the CIA and FBI put into the Russia collusion-conspiracy narrative, and knowing that Assange could essentially destroy the baseline predicate for the entire Trump-Russia investigation – which included the use of Robert Mueller, it would make sense for corrupt government officials to take keen interest after this August 2017 meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange.  And that would explain why those same government officials, willfully or by direction, would quickly gather specific evidence (related to Wikileaks and Bradley Manning) for a grand jury by December 2017.

Within three months of the grand jury seating (Nov/Dec 2017), the DOJ generated an indictment and sealed it in March 2018. The EDVA then sat on the indictment while the Mueller/Weissman probe was ongoing.

As soon as the Mueller probe ended, on April 11th, 2019, a planned and coordinated effort between the U.K. and U.S. was executed; Julian Assange was forcibly arrested and removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and the EDVA indictment was unsealed (link).

As a person who has researched this three-year fiasco; including the ridiculously false 2016 Russian hacking/interference narrative: “17 intelligence agencies”, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) needed for Obama’s anti-Russia narrative in December ’16; and then a month later the ridiculously political Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January ’17; this timing against Assange is too coincidental.

It doesn’t take a deep researcher to see the aligned Deep State motive to control Julian Assange because the Mueller report was dependent on Russia cybercrimes, and that narrative is contingent on the Russia DNC hack story which Julian Assange disputes.

♦ This is critical. The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election.  This claim is the fulcrum point that structurally underpins the entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative.  However, this important claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian Assange’s on-the-record statements.

The predicate for Robert Mueller’s investigation was specifically due to Russian interference in the 2016 election. The fulcrum for this Russia interference claim is the intelligence community assessment (Peter Strzok), and the only factual evidence claimed within the ICA is that Russia hacked the DNC servers; a claim only made possible by relying on forensic computer analysis from another Michael Sussmann partner, Shawn Henry at Crowdstrike, yes another DNC contractor and collaborator with the Clinton campaign.

The CIA always held a massive conflict of self-interest problem surrounding the Russian hacking claim as it pertains to their own activity in 2016. The FBI and DOJ always held a massive interest in maintaining that claim.  Robert Mueller and Andrew Weismann did everything they could to support that predicate; all of those foreign countries whose intelligence apparatus participated with Brennan and Strzok also carried a self-interest in maintaining that Russia hacking and interference narrative.

Julian Assange was/is the only person with direct knowledge of how Wikileaks gained custody of the DNC emails; and Assange has claimed he has evidence it was not from a hack.

This Russian “hacking” claim was ultimately so important to the CIA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI and U.K Intelligence apparatus…. Well, right there is the obvious motive to shut Assange down as soon as intelligence officials knew the Mueller report was going to be public.

And that is exactly what the Fourth Branch of Government did.

The Yahoo article does a great job outlining who, how, when, and where the CIA and intelligence community were targeting Julian Assange.  However, what they did not connect -and ideologically they would not want to connect- was exactly WHY the U.S. government, not Trump, was targeting Assange.

(Conservative Treehouse, 10/11/2021)  (Archive)

(Republished with permission.)

April 26, 2017 - The FISC report reveals the Obama administration conducted political surveillance as early as mid-2012

“Former U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia, Joe diGenova, discusses the declassification of intelligence documents relating to political surveillance; and the origin of the database abuses outlined by FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer.

Given last weeks visit to Main Justice by congressman Mark Meadows; and considering the visit was specifically to review unredacted Page-Strzok-McCabe messages; it could be surmised the first series of declassified documents might be those communiques. Additionally, John Solomon has stated “Bucket Five” is likely the first release prior to the IG report:

Bucket Five – Intelligence documents that were presented to the Gang of Eight in 2016 that pertain to the FISA application used against U.S. person Carter Page; including all exculpatory intelligence documents that may not have been presented to the FISA Court.  Presumably this would include the recently revealed State Dept Kavalac email; and the FBI transcripts from wiretaps of George Papadopoulos (also listed in Carter Page FISA).

Now that we have significant research files on the 2015 and 2016 political surveillance program; which includes the trail evident within the Weissmann/Mueller report; in combination with the Obama-era DOJ “secret research project” (their words, not mine); we are able to overlay the entire objective and gain a full understanding of how political surveillance was conducted over a period of approximately four to six years.

This is why there’s panic.

Working with a timeline, but also referencing origination material in 2015/2016 – CTH hopes to show how the program operated. This explains an evolution from The IRS Files in 2010 to the FISA Files in 2016.

More importantly, research indicates the modern political exploitation of the NSA database, for weaponized intelligence surveillance of politicians, began mid-2012.

The FISA-702 database extraction process, and utilization of the protections within the smaller intelligence community, was the primary process. We start by reviewing the established record from the 99-page FISC opinion rendered by presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer on; and explain the details within the FISC opinion.

I would strongly urge everyone to read the FISC report (full pdf below) because Judge Collyer outlines how the DOJ, which includes the FBI, had an “institutional lack of candor” in responses to the FISA court. In essence, the Obama administration was continually lying to the court about their activity, and the rate of fourth amendment violations for illegal searches and seizures of U.S. persons’ private information for multiple years.

Unfortunately, due to intelligence terminology Judge Collyer’s brief and ruling is not an easy read for anyone unfamiliar with the FISA processes outlined. The complexity also helps the media avoid discussing, and as a result most Americans have no idea the scale and scope of the issues. So we’ll try to break down the language. View this document on Scribd

For the sake of brevity and common understanding CTH will highlight the most pertinent segments showing just how systemic and troublesome the unlawful electronic surveillance was.

Early in 2016 NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) “About” queries using the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.

The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016, for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May 1st, 2016.

While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) “about query” option, and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016 (keep these dates in mind).

Here are some significant segments:

The key takeaway from these first paragraphs is how the search query results were exported from the NSA database to users who were not authorized to see the material. The FBI contractors were conducting searches and then removing, or ‘exporting’, the results. Later on, the FBI said all of the exported material was deleted.

Searching the highly classified NSA database is essentially a function of filling out search boxes to identify the user-initiated search parameter and get a return on the search result.

(…) Search an ip address “about” and read all data into that server; put in an email address and gain everything about that account. Or use the electronic address of a GPS enabled vehicle (about) and you can withdraw more electronic data and monitor in real time. Search a credit card number and get everything about the account including what was purchased, where, when, etc. Search a bank account number, get everything about transactions and electronic records etc. Just about anything and everything can be electronically searched; everything has an electronic ‘identifier’.

The search parameter is only limited by the originating field filled out. Names, places, numbers, addresses, etc. By using the “About” parameter there may be thousands or millions of returns. Imagine if you put “@realdonaldtrump” into the search parameter? You could extract all following accounts who interacted on Twitter, or Facebook etc. You are only limited by your imagination and the scale of the electronic connectivity.

As you can see below, on March 9th, 2016, internal auditors noted the FBI was sharing “raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information”.

In plain English the raw search returns were being shared with unknown entities without any attempt to “minimize” or redact the results. The person(s) attached to the results were named and obvious. There was no effort to hide their identity or protect their 4th amendment rights of privacy:

But what’s the scale here? This is where the story really lies.

Read this next excerpt carefully.

The operators were searching “U.S Persons”. The review of November 1, 2015, to May 1, 2016, showed “eighty-five percent of those queries” were unlawful or “non compliant”.

85% !! “representing [redacted number].”

We can tell from the space of the redaction the number of searches were between 1,000 and 9,999 [five digits]. If we take the middle number of 5,000 – that means 4,250 unlawful searches out of 5,000.

The [five digit] amount (more than 1,000, less than 10,000), and 85% error rate, was captured in a six month period.

Also notice this very important quote: “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” So they were searching the same phone number, email address, electronic “identifier”, or people, repeatedly over different dates. Specific people were being tracked/monitored.

Additionally, notice the last quote: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of” these non lawful searches “since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 coincided with an unusually high error rate”.

That means the 85% unlawful FISA-702(16)(17) database abuse has likely been happening since 2012. (Again, remember that date, 2012) Who was FBI Director? Who was his chief-of-staff? Who was CIA Director? ODNI? etc. Remember, the NSA is inside the Pentagon (Defense Dept) command structure. Who was Defense Secretary? And finally, who wrote and signed-off-on the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment?

Tens of thousands of searches over four years (since 2012), and 85% of them are illegal. The results were extracted for?…. (I believe this is all political opposition use; and I’ll explain why momentarily.)

OK, that’s the stunning scale; but who was involved?

Private contractors with access to “raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI’s requests“:

And as noted, the contractor access was finally halted on April 18th, 2016.

(Coincidentally (or not), the wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, goes to the White House the next day on April 19th, 2016.)

None of this is conspiracy theory.

All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87: “deliberate decisionmaking“:

This specific footnote, if declassified, would be key.  Note the phrase: “([redacted] access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding entered into [redacted])”, this sentence has the potential to expose an internal decision; withheld from congress and the FISA court by the Obama administration; that outlines a process for access and distribution of surveillance data.

Note: “no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016“, that is important.

Summary of this aspect: The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 5/24/2019)

May 8-20, 2017 - Rod Rosenstein’s communications with Eric Holder, John Huber, other senior Obama officials and the media, at the same time he appoints Mueller

“Judicial Watch announced today it received 382 pages of documents showing former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s communications with former Obama officials, including Eric Holder and information sharing with the media in the days immediately surrounding the inception of the Mueller investigation.

These documents were obtained in response to a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) lawsuit filed against the U.S. Department of Justice for all records of communications of Rosenstein between May 8 and May 17, 2017 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:19-cv-00481)).

On May 15, 2017, Public Affairs Specialist Marsha Murphy sends Rosenstein an email with the subject line “Eric Holder just called for you.” The message says: “Please call him.”

On May 16, 2017, U.S. Attorney John Huber wrote to Rosenstein: “Rod, We’re proud of you.” Later that year, Huber was chosen by then-Attorney General Sessions to head up the Clinton Foundation investigation.

(On May 17, 2017, Robert Mueller was appointed by Rosenstein as special counsel.)

The documents revealed that Rosenstein had communications with Washington Post reporter Sari Horwitz that included multiple off-the-record calls, information sharing, and smoothing over arguments with the DOJ press office.

In an email exchange on May 12, 2017, with the subject line “Off the record” Horwitz complains to Rosenstein about then-DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores yelling at her and the Washington Post’s national security editor and calling a story of theirs “bullshit.” Rosenstein replies, “I will talk to Sarah.” Horwitz adds that she is “around all night if [Rosenstein wants] to talk off the record.”

In an email exchange between May 13-16, 2017, Horwitz requests that they speak off the record again. Rosenstein replied by sending her a link to a story about him in The Baltimore Sun.

On May 18, 2017, Horwitz emails Rosenstein with the subject line, “Urgent” to ask him about President Trump being the focus of an FBI investigation: “The Washington Post has been told by very good sources that President Trump is now a focus of the FBI investigation Can I please talk to you as soon as possible on deep background?”

On May 15, 2017, Rosenstein received an email from Katherine Davis, likely the 60 Minutes producer. In it, she states: “I hope you’re handling all of this craziness this week. Am sure you are. Much to discuss. FBI finalists. And whether you are considering recusing (hoping not but lmk) Lmk when I can come and visit. Next week? You know where to reach me in the meantime.”

In the days surrounding the appointment of Robert Mueller as Special Counsel, Rosenstein received calls from multiple emails of support from former senior Obama administration officials.

On May 12, 2017, Rosenstein received an email from former Obama Special Counsel Jonathan Su: Hi Rod: I know there’s a lot going on right now, but I wanted to send you a note of support. If there’ s anything I can do to be of help, please let me know. Hope you hang in there.”

On May 13, 2017, he received a similar supportive email from former Obama White House Deputy Associate Counsel Mike Leotta with the subject line “Thinking of you and your family.” The message says: “I hope you’re hanging in there, [redacted] despite all the press attention, attacks, and contradictory claims.”

On May 14, 2017, Rosenstein emailed Judge Brett Kavanaugh for Senior D.C. District Court Judge John D. Bates’ cell phone number, three days before the appointment of Robert Mueller.

On May 16, 2017, Rosenstein received a supportive email from former Obama Deputy Attorney General, James Cole: “You have the right approach. I always found that if you concentrated on doing your job (protecting the constitution) your reputation takes care of itself.”

On May 16, 2017, the day before Mueller was appointed, scheduling emails indicate that Rosenstein spoke with both Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI).

The day after the special counsel appointment, on May 18, 2017, Judge Bates sent an email to Rosenstein with the subject line “Great move” and the message “Well done.”

On May 20, 2017, Rosenstein requests a phone call with Obama’s former Principal Deputy Solicitor General, Neal Katyal, who was also Al Gore’s co-counsel in Bush v. Gore and recently published the book, Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.

“These astonishing emails show that Rod Rosenstein had many Obama/Clinton and media friends supporting him around the time he infamously appointed Robert Mueller,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.” (Read more: Judicial Watch, 2/11/2020)  (Archive)

May 10, 2017 - Andrew McCabe orders an obstruction of justice investigation into Trump, the next day he testifies there has been no interference to date

December 12, 2017 - Text message reveals Hunter Biden proposes meeting for dad, uncle and Chinese exec in NYC

Newly released messages from the House Ways and Means Committee appear to show Hunter Biden proposing a meeting in New York City between the boss of a Chinese energy company and Joe Biden, the former vice president at the time, along with Joe’s brother, Jim Biden.

“Can you meet this evening early,” Hunter Biden asked Yadong Liu, CEO of CEFC Global Strategic Holdings in a poorly punctuated text message the evening of Dec. 12, 2017.

“My father will be in New York also and he wants me to attend the Sandy Hook memorial service with him and I would like him to meet you along with my uncle and then you and I can talk let me know if that works.”

“I’m sorry for the late notice I got off the red eye in Baltimore from LA and take a little nap before I got his message,” Hunter added.

Yadong told Hunter “No problem” and asked to let him “know when and where to meet.”

Less than two weeks after the proposed meeting among the four individuals, Hunter Biden messaged Yadong, asking Yadong to call him, saying he was “anxiously waiting” for his report from a meeting in China.

“I am still in China. Apologies for not getting back to you sooner but I knew [sic] you have been talking to Kevin…,” Yadong said, appearing to reference a CEFC China Energy executive named Gongwen Dong.

“I didn’t get to see the chairman on this trip but president chen asked me to convey to you that while we attach great importance to working with you, under the current circumstances it is almost impossible to move forward on any of the projects with you. There are a few key dates in the next weeks and we are focused on those legal challenges and cannot afford to do anything that have any potential of being misunderstood or misconstrued.”

“He sincerely hopes that you can understand our situation and looks forward to removing those legal uncertainties and working with you again,” Yadong continued. “I am coming back next week and can meet to explain face to face if necessary. Thank you.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House, Jim Biden and Hunter Biden’s attorney to confirm whether the meeting in New York City took place but did not receive a response. (Read more: Fox News, 5/22/2024)  (Archive)

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The House Ways and Means Committee voted Wednesday to release 100 pages of new evidence that shows Hunter Biden lied under oath to Congress during his Feb. 28 deposition.

The evidence, provided by IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who probed the first son’s finances, reveals Hunter “indisputably” lied at least three times during his sworn testimony, the panel’s majority said after voting in a closed-door executive session for its release.

Hunter, 54, claimed he was “high or drunk” when he sent a threatening text message to the wrong Chinese business associate — but phone records of the WhatsApp message show the associate, Raymond Zhao, responded and “knew exactly” what the president’s son was talking about when he asked to speak with the chairman of CEFC China Energy, Ye Jianming.

“Sure. I need some time to reach him,” Zhao, a translator for CEFC, wrote back in messages over the next day. “CEFC is willing to cooperate with the family.”

The first son also kept exchanging messages with Zhao after making the threat that he was “sitting” with his father, Joe Biden, and said they would both “hold a grudge” if the CEFC translator reneged on a “commitment.” (Read more: New York Post, 5/23/2024)  (Archive)

May 16, 2017 - Biden Laptop Report: China's President Xi Jinping personally approved CEFC China Energy's business partnership with the Biden family

May 17, 2017 - A Rosenstein email conflicts with Mueller testimony that he was not interviewed for the FBI Director's position

“Mueller testified under oath he did NOT interview with Trump for the job of FBI Director on May 16, 2017

Yet new FOIA’d emails show, DAG Rosenstein sending an email the very next day, May 17, saying that “Mueller” has now “withdrew from consideration for FBI Director”

Mueller’s testimony to the House. Mueller is clear that he was never “applying” for the job of FBI Director, he was never under consideration, and his “interview” on May 16, 2017 was just to give his “input” on “what it would take to do the job”
(Mueller Transcript)

Rosenstein email, just released in FOIA. Mueller “withdrew from consideration for FBI Director”, sent the day after the “interview” with Trump, May 17, 2017.

(Note: Rosenstein appointed Mueller Special Counsel later that same day)

Mueller can’t “withdraw” from “consideration” for the job of FBI Director unless he was previously under consideration for the role, which he testified he wasn’t. Rosenstein was in the “interview” on May 16, so his email makes no sense if Mueller was never under consideration.

So who is wrong? Mueller, or Rosenstein (Mueller’s boss)? Because they can’t both be right, and one of them was under oath. (Undercover Huber @JohnWHuber, 8/27/2020)  (Archive)

May 23, 2017 - Brennan lies; Gowdy claims a classified email can prove Brennan insisted the Steele dossier be included in the presidential intelligence community assessment (ICA)

“The Christopher Steele dossier was called “Crown Material” by FBI agents within the small group during their 2016 political surveillance operation. The “Crown” description reflects the unofficial British intelligence aspect to the dossier as provided by Steele.

In May 2019 former House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy stated there are emails from former FBI Director James Comey that outline instructions from CIA Director John Brennan to include the “Crown Material” within the highly political Intelligence Community Assessment. Specifically outlined by Gowdy, the wording of the Comey email is reported to say:

…”Brennan is insisting the Crown Material be included in the intel assessment.”

 

However, on May 23rd, 2017, in testimony -under oath- to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) John Brennan stated [@01:54:28]:

GOWDY: Director Brennan, do you know who commissioned the Steele dossier?

BRENNAN: I don’t.

GOWDY: Do you know if the bureau [FBI] ever relied on the Steele dossier as part of any court filing, applications?

BRENNAN: I have no awareness.

GOWDY: Did the CIA rely on it?

BRENNAN: No.

GOWDY: Why not?

BRENNAN: Because we didn’t. It wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment that was done. Uh … it was not. (Video is cued  @01:54:28)

As Victor Davis Hanson wrote at the time:

(…) James Clapper, John Brennan, and James Comey are now all accusing one another of being culpable for inserting the unverified dossier, the font of the effort to destroy Trump, into a presidential intelligence assessment—as if suddenly and mysteriously the prior seeding of the Steele dossier is now seen as a bad thing. And how did the dossier transmogrify from being passed around the Obama Administration as a supposedly top-secret and devastating condemnation of candidate and then president-elect Trump to a rank embarrassment of ridiculous stories and fibs?

Given the narratives of the last three years, and the protestations that the dossier was accurate or at least was not proven to be unproven, why are these former officials arguing at all? Did not implanting the dossier into the presidential briefing give it the necessary imprimatur that allowed the serial leaks to the press at least to be passed on to the public and thereby apprise the people of the existential danger that they faced? (read more)

Fox News Maria Bartiromo has more knowledge of the details within the 2016 political surveillance scandal than any other MSM host. Bartiromo has followed the events very closely and now she is the go-to person for those who are trying to bring the truth behind the scandal to light.

On the morning of May 20th, 2019, on her Fox Business Network show Ms. Bartiromo outlined the current issues between Comey and Brennan. WATCH:

It certainly looks like former CIA Director John Brennan has exposed himself to perjury. However, beyond that and even more disturbing, what does this say about the political intents of a weaponized intelligence apparatus?

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

The JAR was followed a week later by the January 7th, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment. The ICA took the ridiculous construct of the JAR and then overlaid a political narrative that Russia was trying to help Donald Trump.

The ICA was the brain-trust of John Brennan, James Clapper, and James Comey. While the majority of the content was from the CIA, some of the content within the ICA was written by FBI Agent Peter Strzok who held a unique “insurance policy” interest in how the report could be utilized in 2017.  NSA Director Mike Rogers would not sign up to the “high confidence” claims, likely because he saw through the political motives of the report.” (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 10/22/2019)   (Archive)

June 9, 2017 - A Shakespeare in the Park production features the stabbing death of a Trump look-alike actor playing Julius Caesar

 

He looks like Donald Trump, with his fluffy hair, dark suit and tie hanging below the belt. He moves like Trump. He even has a wife with a Slavic accent.

And at the start of the third act, the actor playing Julius Caesar in Central Park’s free summer Shakespeare in the Park festival is knifed to death on stage, blood staining his white shirt.

The decision to inject a Trump look-alike into the leading role in “Julius Caesar” is a provocative one, given both the famous assassination scene and a nude scene in the show.

Performances at the Delacorte Theater began in late May, just days before comedian Kathy Griffin was widely condemned for posing for a photograph in which she gripped a bloodied rendering of Trump’s head.

Oskar Eustis, the Public Theater’s artistic director who also directed the play, said in a statement that “anyone seeing our production of ‘Julius Caesar’ will realize it in no way advocates violence towards anyone.”

Shakespeare’s play, and the New York production, he said, “make the opposite point: Those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic methods pay a terrible price and destroy their Republic. For over 400 years, Shakespeare’s play has told this story and we are proud to be telling it again in Central Park.”

“Julius Caesar” tells a fictionalized story of a powerful, popular Roman leader who is assassinated by senators who fear he is becoming a tyrant. It is set in ancient Rome, but many productions have costumed the characters in modern dress to give it a present-day connection. (Read more: NBC News, 6/9/2017)  (Archive)

June 29, 2017 - FBI submits third FISA warrant application on Carter Page suggesting his plan to write a book is proof of Russia collusion

“Nine months into a relentless effort to spy on Carter Page with the most awesome surveillance tools the U.S. possesses, the FBI had no proof the former Trump adviser had colluded with Russia to hijack the 2016 election.

In fact, the bureau hid from the FISA court the fact that it knew Page was actually a U.S. asset who had helped the CIA and that in a secret recording with an informant he had denied all the core allegations against him with significant proof.

But it wanted to keep spying on its target for another three months. So what did the FBI cough up to the FISA judge to keep up its surveillance and its now-debunked claim that Page might be a Russian agent of influence?

The FBI actually argued that Page’s lawful exercise of his First Amendment rights — he was giving media interviews and considering writing a book — might be proof he was carrying out a Russian plot, according to a newly declassified version of the final FISA warrant reviewed by Just the News.

“The FBI also notes that Page continues to be active in meeting with media outlets to promote his theories of how U.S. foreign policy should be adjusted with regard to Russia and also to refute claims of his involvement with Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election,” the once top-secret FISA application read on page 57.

“The FBI believes that Page may have been instructed by Russian officials to aggressively deny, especially in the media, any Russian involvement with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The FBI believes this approach is important because, from the Russian government’s point of view, it continues to keep the controversy of the election in front of the American and world medium, which has the effect of undermining the integrity of the US electoral process and weakening the effectiveness of the current US administration.

It added: “The FBI believes Page also may be seeking media attention in order to maintain momentum for potential book contracts.”

It offered no proof for such a dramatic allegation. No source. No document. No intercept. Nothing. Just the affirmation “The FBI believes …”

(Read more: Just the News, 2/05/2021)  (Archive)  (FISA application, 6/29/2017)

July 17, 2017 - The improper association of Victor Pinchuk with Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea Clinton, and covered up by the US Media, DOJ and IMF

 

“Never in the field of American conflict with Russia has so much wool pulled over the eyes been owed to so few sheep.  That was during the losing presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Now, in the investigations of President Donald Trump and his family, it’s a case of so many sheep producing so little wool.

The case of the $13 million paid to the Clinton family by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, in exchange for personal favours and escalation of the war against Russia, was reported in detail throughout 2014. Click to read the opener,  and more.

Early this month there has been fresh investigation of Pinchuk’s money links with the Clintons, owing to the start of Ukrainian government inquiries into the theft of billions of dollars of International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans to Ukraine – money then transferred to  Ukrainian commercial banks including Pinchuk’s Credit Dnepr bank,  and then loaned to offshore entities controlled by Pinchuk but apparently not repaid.  Theft of the IMF money was first reported here in connection with Igor Kolomoisky’s operation of Privat Bank.

Credit Dnepr’s [Pinchuk] takings were reported here. Also on the receiving end was the IMF’s Kiev representative, Jerome Vacher. For the reporting of his relationship with Pinchuk, read this. Vacher was recently replaced in Kiev. He and the IMF management decline to explain why.

Last week, in an investigation of Pinchuk, Credit Dnepr, and the Clintons, a group known as CyberBerkut published what it says were emails hacked from the files of Pinchuk operative, Thomas Weihe. He is currently listed as head of the Pinchuk Foundation board and chief executive.  Read the emails here.

The BBC’s Ukrainian service reports that CyberBerkut is a “staunchly anti-Western group which takes its name from the riot police used against protesters during the unrest in Kiev that led to the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych. The group’s declared goal is thwarting Ukraine’s military plans and thus stopping the “genocide” that it accuses Kiev of unleashing at America’s behest. Its motto is ‘We won’t forgive or forget’, and its rhetoric closely resembles that of Russian state media.”

The Wikipedia entry for CyberBerkut calls it “a modern organized group of pro-Russian hacktivists”, with a long list of cyber operations starting in March 2014. For details, read.  On July 13, Wikileaks tweeted the CyberBerkut report but qualified its conclusions, calling them “alleged”.

Russian press pick-up has yet to reach the mainstream Moscow media,  or the English-language outlets run by Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin press head.  If it did, they might correct factual errors in the CyberBerkut report, such as the linking of Pinchuk to the Ukrainian Delta Bank. Before its collapse in March 2015, Delta was owned by Nikolai Lagun.  Graham Stack’s investigation of Lagun’s looting of Delta Bank reveals plenty of crime, but no trace of Pinchuk.

The first Russian publication of the CyberBerkut report is on the Novorussian website, Colonel Cassad;   this is no more than a re-publication of the original text.

This is how CyberBerkut charts the relationship between the Pinchuk outlays and Clinton receipts:

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The evidence of the movement of IMF money through Credit Dnepr into the offshores, and from Pinchuk pockets into Clinton pockets,  has yet to be corroborated. What is revealed for the first time are emails between Clinton and Pinchuk operatives during the second half of 2014. These confirm the investigations, reported here three years ago, of what Pinchuk was doing to promote his steel-pipe trade with the US and his anti-Russian agenda, with the Clintons and the Obama Administration. At the same time, Pinchuk was using the demonstration of support he was procuring from them in order to boost his political power in Kiev and financial favour from the National Bank of Ukraine.

Read the emails, commencing in July of 2014:

Douglas Schoen, Pinchuk’s lobbyist in the US, does not respond to queries. Nor does Weihe, the Pinchuk Foundation apparatchik. They have made no statement challenging the authenticity of these emails. Nor have the Clinton Foundation officials who sent or received the emails, and who have been working to manage Clinton’s relationship with Pinchuk and satisfy his requests.

The three Clinton operatives, who remain at work at the foundation, are Amitabh Desai (pictured below, left), Robert Harrison (centre), and Craig Minassian (right).

Desai, according to the Clinton website, “has been with the Clinton Foundation for more than 10 years. As foreign policy adviser, Ami guides international strategy and relationships and plays a central role in shaping and executing President Clinton’s vision. This includes managing relationships with heads of state, business leaders, philanthropists, and NGOs around the globe” Before taking his job at the foundation, Desai worked for Clinton when she was a US senator, and before that, for Senator Edward Kennedy.

Last week’s report isn’t the first disclosure that in Desai’s emails he was selling access to Clinton for foreign money. More of them can be found here. Among the excerpts already published by US investigators, mainly from Freedom of Information Act pursuit of State Department files, there is no reference to Pinchuk or Ukraine. The US archive on reports of fraud at the Clinton Foundation is very large and can be combed through here. Fraud involving Pinchuk isn’t reported in this database.

(…) On November 3, the week before the election, AP broke the news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been pursuing an investigation of Clinton’s government favours for foundation donations, but that the Justice Department stopped it. “Though agents believed they had grounds to move forward with an investigation, Justice Department lawyers were more skeptical. The lawyers did not direct the FBI to stop looking into the matter during the meeting, but public-corruption prosecutors in Washington expressed disinterest in a Clinton Foundation-related investigation based on the information presented.”

In all the email evidence which US media investigations pursued to expose Clinton’s foreign favour trading, there was no focus on the Pinchuk emails and the flow of Pinchuk money. Conflict of interest was the Clinton offence the US investigators were after. But in the Pinchuk case, there was another potential offence, and that was reported on February 17, 2014. Pinchuk had looted his Moscow-based Rossiya Insurance Company of up to $200 million, according to investigations by Russian insurance regulators and prosecutors, before the company’s licence was cancelled in October 2013.

The subsequent question was: did that money find its way through Pinchuk’s foundation into Clinton’s foundation, to be traded for political and personal favours?

The release of the CyberBerkut emails last week provides fresh evidence of this trading, but CyperBerkut doesn’t mention the Rossiya Insurance Company crime. As well-known as the crime was in 2013 and 2014, no US media investigator, nor any Russian government investigation has reported pursuing the Rossiya money-trail through Pinchuk’s accounts into Clinton’s. So the big question for the FBI and the Department of Justice —  what check did the Clinton Foundation carry out of the legality of the money it took from Pinchuk? – has never been asked. Or if the US Government did ask the question, the Clinton answer has been concealed.

Note: Thomas Weihe comments:  “First, it is obviously a lie that I don’t respond to queries. Every more or less professional and honest journalist gets an answer from me quickly, and I reply honestly. Second, the whole story is completely wrong. It is so wrong that individual corrections cannot improve it. Everything is invented. There is no truth to anything you say. The so-called evidence proves absolutely none of the claims you make. You should be ashamed of publishing such crap.” (Read more: John Helmer, 7/17/2017)

(Timeline editor’s note: We are excited to have received permission to republish some of Mr Helmer’s well-sourced work on Ukraine, the Clintons and Victor Pinchuk. Please be sure to read his entire article at the link provided. According to Mr. Helmer’s bio, he is the “longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties.”)

September 19, 2017 - Rice tells House investigators why she unmasked senior Trump officials

“Former national security adviser Susan Rice privately told House investigators that she unmasked the identities of senior Trump officials to understand why the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates was in New York late last year, multiple sources told CNN.

The New York meeting preceded a separate effort by the UAE to facilitate a back-channel communication between Russia and the incoming Trump White House.

The crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, arrived in New York last December in the transition period before Trump was sworn into office for a meeting with several top Trump officials, including Michael Flynn, the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his top strategist Steve Bannon, sources said.

(…) It’s unclear precisely which Trump officials Rice discussed at the House meeting. But multiple sources have confirmed to CNN that Zayed met at the time with Flynn, Kushner and Bannon. The three-hour discussion focused on a range of issues, including Iran, Yemen and the Mideast peace process, according to two sources who insisted that opening up a back-channel with Russia was not a topic of discussion.

Still, the fact that the New York meeting occurred prior to the Seychelles session and that the UAE did not notify the Obama administration about why the crown prince was coming to the United States has raised questions in the eyes of investigators on Capitol Hill.” (Read more: CNN, 9/19/2017)

October 16, 2017 - Grassley: Mueller team mischaracterizes Trump campaign emails in court filing

“The special counsel’s office fed “speculation and innuendo” about possible collusion with Russia by withholding key details from emails cited in a court filing in the case of former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos, a top Republican senator alleged in a newly released letter.

“The public deserves to have the full context for the information the Special Counsel chooses to release. The glaring lack of it feeds speculation and innuendo that distorts the facts,” Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley wrote to special counsel Robert Mueller on Oct. 16, 2017.

Grassley, who then chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, was responding to a “statement of offense” released in the case against Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign adviser who entered a plea deal in the special counsel’s probe on Oct. 5, 2017.

Prosecutors quoted from several emails in a way that suggested top Trump campaign officials were eager to meet with Russians. But Grassley asserted that the full emails showed that campaign officials rebuffed the idea of meeting with Russians. The Iowa Republican took Mueller’s team to task for failing to correct news reports that cited the Papadopoulos court filings as evidence of possible collusion with Russia.

“It should be the goal of anyone interested in an accurate portrayal of the facts for the American people to correct the erroneous reporting,” he wrote in the letter, which was published Thursday by Fox News.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 4/05/2019)

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

(…) 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 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.

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.

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)

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

“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) 

April 16-18, 2018 - Former CIA officer and founder of the Marine Corps Intelligence Command, Robert David Steele, testifies on the exploitation of children by satanic elites

Former CIA officer and founder of the Marine Corps Intelligence Command, Robert David Steele, testified before the International Tribunal for Natural Justice on the systemic exploitation of children by powerful satanic elites.

He exposed that children are not only kidnapped but in some cases bred by families in the United States as a cash crop, sold without birth certificates, making it easier to kill them with no trace. He stated children are imported by the plane load, also without documentation.

Steele described this as extending beyond slavery and sex abuse to child torture for adrenalized blood in satanic blood-drinking ceremonies, harvesting of body organs (citing Falun Gong as targets due to their health), and ritual murder!

“We have people in the United States of America that breed children in order to sell them. And when they are sold, they come without birth certificates, which means it’s easier to kill them and have no one ask where they are!

There’s child torture because you have adrenalized blood. You have the whole blood drinking ceremony of the satanic world!”

Former CIA officer and founder of the Marine Corps Intelligence Command, Robert David Steele, testified before the International Tribunal for Natural Justice on the systemic exploitation of children by powerful satanic elites.

He exposed that children are not only kidnapped but… pic.twitter.com/3eI5CGRSPJ

— Bridgett Fertig (@LightOnLiberty) February 10, 2026

(The International Tribunal for Natural Justice launched the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Human Trafficking and Child Sex Abuse at an inaugural seating in Westminster, London on April 16-18th 2018.)