Featured Timeline Entries
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.”

July 30, 2018 - Watergate was really about Pedogate

SOTN has both written and posted many articles over the years seriously questioning the official narrative surrounding Watergate.  It never made any sense as the exposé below clearly indicates.  Now we know why!

For those who do not have the time to read the entire post, the following excerpt from this bombshell exposé says it all in just a few sentences. The full version does draw one conclusion, however, about President Nixon that SOTN completely disagrees with.  It’s more likely that Nixon would use highly classified Pedogate info to gain political advantage; and quite unlikely that he was involved in any way with pedophilia…although anything is possible.

In 1972, Rothstein arrested one of the five Watergate burglars, CIA operative Frank Sturgis. During a subsequent two-hour interrogation, he discovered the truth about Watergate. The burglars sought something they nicknamed “The Book” which listed the Democrat and Republican politicians who accessed child prostitutes, their sexual proclivities, the amounts they paid to rape kids, and such.

The official Watergate explanation is that the Republicans broke into Democratic National Committee Headquarters to obtain information about their election strategies. People who lived through Watergate typically comment with a frown, “that never made sense.” Rothstein’s experiences make better sense of why Nixon conspired to quash the Watergate investigation, why he suggested the investigation posed a threat to national security, why his personal secretary destroyed Oval Office tape recordings after they were subpoenaed, and why his own Vice President issued a pardon…

The critical point is: Why would Nixon’s high-level GOP operatives ever risk exposing themselves with such a perilous political scheme and criminal Watergate break-in.  No matter what the truth is, this deep insider’s back story about Watergate rings entirely true.

The main message, of course, that was sent by Deep State to the entire U.S. political establishment was that Pedogate was strictly off-limits as far as opposition research was concerned.  And, that only the Shadow Government could use Pedogate as a weapon in the politics of personal destruction.  Anyone else attempting to would go down like Nixon…faster than the Hindenburg crashed and burned.

State of the Nation
July 30, 2018

by Fiona Barnett

Fiona Barnett (Credit: public domain)

In October 2016, I presented at a Trauma and Dissociation conference in Seattle, USA. Following my talk, one attendee approached me in the hotel lobby where my fellow presenters sat at their merchandise stalls. “All this!” she shouted while sweeping her arm across the sideshow alley of over-priced books, stickers and fridge magnets, “All this – is shit! You have the real stuff! Where’s your book?!” Tears welled in her eyes. “Write a book! Please write a book!”

Yes, I have the real stuff. I’m not some arrogant academic pretending to understand what it’s like to be a victim of the most heinous crimes. I lived it. I spent my developmental years trapped in a mind control labyrinth. I then spent my adult years navigating a way out. I eventually achieved what few victims have, true integration. I may therefore declare with authority what does and does not work.

I prefer the term ‘victim’ to ‘survivor’ because the latter implies my ordeal is over. My ordeal will likely never end. As Dr Reina Michaelson warned, “Fiona, I think this is a life sentence.” I serve a life sentence for crimes committed against me, with the full knowledge and blessing of the Australian government. I am constantly harassed by police, paid agitators, pedophile payroll academics and journalists, DID sleeper cells, perpetrator relatives, fake victims, fake advocates, professional social media trolls, and retired intelligence community thugs hired to do the dirty work of the VIP pedophiles who dare not overtly attack me since that would attract media attention to their role in the international child trafficking operation.

Recovery from extreme abuse begins with realising the true nature and extent of international child trafficking. In 2015, a certain journalist wrote favourable articles about me concerning my Sydney press conference. I subsequently phoned and asked him to investigate and publish my full story. If only one mainstream journalist published my testimony against Antony Kidman, I reasoned, it would blow the international child trafficking network wide open. During this call, he relayed a conversation he once had with “a couple of spooks” who told him that all senior politicians are pedophiles because that is how they are controlled. He asked me if that was my story.

“That’s exactly right. That’s consistent with my experience,” I tried to contain my excitement. “The mainstream media has long documented the CIA’s involvement in drugs and weapons trafficking, right?”

He agreed, noting there had just been another story about that in the mainstream press.

“Well then, is it so hard to imagine they are also involved in trafficking children – which is far more lucrative than guns and drugs? ASIO and the CIA work together to traffic children between Australia and America. They’re the ones who trafficked me.”

The journalist promised to consider my request, bearing in mind he had a young family and publishing my story would surely place them at risk. But he never got back to me. A short time later, he suddenly developed a rare and aggressive form of cancer. I called him, expressed my condolences, and we chatted for a bit. At the end of the conversation, I mentioned I was considering writing a book. I asked him to clarify and elaborate on what he told me of his encounter with the “spooks”.

“I never said that,” he bluntly asserted.

I sighed in resignation… It was over. There went my last chance at breaking into the mainstream media. There went years of building rapport and credibility with mainstream journalists. Years of investigating other abuse cases and passing my findings on to television and newspapers. Years of driving journalists around the district to meet the victims themselves. Years of results in other cases. The Gold Coast Hogtie Doctor story went international, with Neville Davis being permanently banned from practising medicine in Australia (although, that doesn’t stop him setting up shop in Thailand). Gary Willis’ 20-year child abuse spree ended with a permanent ban on his teaching for the NSW education department (although, that didn’t stop him from working for Education Queensland, at Tallebudgera Primary School). And NSW police were forced to do a mop up investigation of Daruk Boys Home after sensational headlines about a victim having his penis cut off went global (although, they left out the bit where Daruk boys were trafficked to VIP pedophiles at Kings Cross child brothels).

I had come so close. My 2015 press conference was statistically the most popular story on the Sydney Morning Herald website that day, even though their computer technicians refused to list it as the most viewed article. The USA National Inquirer intended to run a front-page story about Antony Kidman being a pedophile, until they received a vicious letter from Nicole’s lawyers. A journalist and her photographer husband flew up from Sydney to interview me for a major Australian magazine – until Nicole, who had lucrative contracts with Sydney’s media outlets, took a “Scientology approach to managing” me. Finally, a UK journalist travelled around the country interviewing me and two other victims of Antony Kidman for the Daily Mail Online, until one of the victims (whose parents were Antony Kidman’s personal friends), was threatened and subsequently withdrew last minute.

Despite everything the pedophile network threw at me, my story still got out there, such that if you Google Antony Kidman’s name, the words ‘child abuse’ soon follow. Once Nicole Kidman’s PR team shut down my mainstream media exposure, by drawing on Kidman’s lucrative contracts with every Australian media outlet, I turned to the internet. Armed with a simple meme app and a talent for lyric writing, I launched my own social media campaign. I spent years in front of the computer, communicating with hundreds of victims and supporters, many fake, many genuine. I hit the conspiracy theory jackpot when David Icke featured an enormous photograph of me and my story on his Australian speaking tour.

My tactics worked. Online articles about Nicole Kidman, where the pubic was free to leave negative comments, were followed by streams of intelligent attacks on her orchestrated stardom. I realised my impact when Kidman’s PR team paid a newspaper and a morning television show to feature an article tellingly titled, ‘Shame on you, Australia. Stop hating on Nicole Kidman.’ People don’t hate Nicole as an individual. They hate what the Harvey Weinstein scandal later highlighted: that Hollywood rewards something other than an ability to sing, dance or act. Hollywood rewards loyalty to their pedophile system.

But no amount of alternative media success can match a complete break into mainstream. So, I admitted defeat. I stopped posting and even checking my sites.

Days before the 2016 US Presidential Election, I received a barrage of texts from old friends asking if I was okay. People started inquiring about our family’s welfare. I had no idea what was happening. Then I checked my blog site. A spike of 100,000 views in one day stemmed from an article that activist group Anonymous published about my being trafficked to American VIPs. They used my story to undermine Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and expose her involvement in a child sex trafficking ring. The Clinton Foundation was a front for the trafficking of children including Haiti earthquake victims. Bill and Hillary’s trafficking network implicated her campaign chairman John Podesta. Podesta and his brother Tony were staying in a villa owned by UK politician Sir Clement Freud, near British child Madeleine McCann when she disappeared in Portugal. Clement was Sigmund Freud’s grandson who was outed in mainstream British media as a pedophile. John and Tony Podesta perfectly matched the identikit images Scotland Yard released of Madeleine’s abductors.

Pedogate, as the scandal became known, surfaced when Wikileaks released emails from John Podesta’s account in October 2016. The emails notably outed Hillary Clinton as a self-confessed “Molech” worshipper, and captured politicians ordering children for pedophile parties using fast-food code words. The White House, for instance, made a massive ‘fast food’ order, contravening policy dictating all food be prepared onsite using raw ingredients to counter the security risk posed by externally prepared foods. The trafficked kids were held in transit cellars within local Washington DC businesses, including a restaurant where a drag entertainer was caught on tape boasting about raping and killing kids. Clean FBI and NYPD officers made multiple attempts to charge Clinton and other VIP members of the trafficking ring, but their efforts were typically thwarted by those above them in the chain of command.

Mainstream media giants launched a cover-up campaign against the leaked Podesta emails. The likes of CNN (founded by one of my pedophile rapists, Ted Turner) successfully drew the public’s attention from what was contained in the emails, to who might have leaked them and spread ‘fake news’. Clinton herself never addressed or denied the emails contents. The emails were in fact leaked by US intelligence community staff who opposed organised pedophilia. Mainstream journalists who reported the truth of the matter were promptly fired. Dozens of Clinton staff and associates met untimely deaths, in quick succession. So Pedogate was discredited as ‘fake news,’ despite NBC’s June 11, 2013 televised report regarding Hillary Clinton using her position as U.S. Secretary of State to cease an investigation into child sex trafficking within the State Department.

Pedogate reached the public via social media. YouTube featured interviews with credible witnesses who testified to the existence of an international child sex trafficking operation involving US politicians and the CIA. That was when I noticed retired NYPD Detective James Rothstein. The Pedogate ring, he explained, was the same network he investigated for 35 years. Rothstein observed, the perpetrators were doing everything in their power to shut the Pedogate story down. He predicted the perpetrators would successfully bury it, like every other time their network was almost exposed.

Rothstein explained that the NYPD was no ordinary state police force, but a leading investigative agency with national and international offices. Back in 1966, Rothstein became the first police detective assigned to investigate the prostitution industry. He soon discovered the underground sexual blackmail operation that compromised politicians with child prostitutes. ‘Human Compromise’ is the term he uses for this honey-trap process. Rothstein and his colleagues found that up to 70 percent of top US government leaders had been compromised. The CIA conducted the human compromise operation, while the FBI’s task was to cover it up.

James Rothstein was alerted to an identical VIP pedophile ring operating in the UK, when British Intelligence consulted him regarding the Profumo Affair. MI6 agents visited Rothstein in New York to extract what he knew about British politicians and other VIPs having sex with child prostitutes. This was part of their effort to cover up the true pedophile nature of the Profumo scandal.

Rothstein found the international pedophile rings are connected, and that their members meet at various world locations where each destination catered for a different type of degenerate sexual proclivity, including satanic themed abuse.

Rothstein and his colleagues encountered fierce resistance to the investigation and prosecution of members of the child trafficking operation. His investigative journalist contacts at the New York Times and Washington Post could not get stories about the VIP pedophile ring printed. All police, FBI, customs and IRS officers who pursued the VIP pedophile network above street level had their careers subsequently destroyed.

Rothstein’s attempts to arrest key perpetrators were continually thwarted. The choice example is when he served the head of the CIA’s human compromise operation, Tippy Richardson. According to pedophile turned police informant Ben Rose, in November 1971, Tippy Richardson, businessman Leonard Stewart (from OPEC, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) and a surgeon named Dr Chesky, raped and murdered three boys aged 14 to 15 years in Rose’s apartment on East 64th Street in New York City. The New York State Select Committee on Crime subsequently served subpoenas on both Tippy Richardson and Leonard Stewart. When served, Richardson said that because he worked for the CIA, the subpoena would be withdrawn under the National Security Act by the time Rothstein and his colleague returned to their offices. It was.

In 1972, Rothstein arrested one of the five Watergate burglars, CIA operative Frank Sturgis. During a subsequent two-hour interrogation, he discovered the truth about Watergate. The burglars sought something they nicknamed “The Book” which listed the Democrat and Republican politicians who accessed child prostitutes, their sexual proclivities, the amounts they paid to rape kids, and such.

The official Watergate explanation is that the Republicans broke into Democratic National Committee Headquarters to obtain information about their election strategies. People who lived through Watergate typically comment with a frown, “that never made sense.” Rothstein’s experiences make better sense of why Nixon conspired to quash the Watergate investigation, why he suggested the investigation posed a threat to national security, why his personal secretary destroyed Oval Office tape recordings after they were subpoenaed, and why his own Vice President issued a pardon which protected him from prosecution for any crimes he had “committed or may have committed or taken part in” as president. If Nixon’s crimes included pedophilia, that would make perfect sense.

I am confident President Richard Nixon and his good buddy ‘the Reverend’ Billy Graham were named in the Watergate pedophile records, because I was sex trafficked to both men as a young child.

When I spoke with James Rothstein, he said he had not heard that Nixon was a pedophile, but that he certainly knew from multiple victims Reverend Billy Graham was a rampant pedophile. Rothstein also told me that during his investigations he became aware of an identical child sex trafficking ring in Australia involving Prime Ministers’ Although he never directly investigated it himself, he said Peter Osborne who worked in Australian intelligence knew the details. He also confirmed that Australian politicians and other VIPs attended international child brothels.

Another voice to surface in the wake of the Pedogate scandal was Dutch banker Ronald Bernard. Bernard shed further light on the people and system behind the international child trafficking network during a series of interviews with an Irma Schiffers. Bernard said he worked in international finance and high-end money laundering for 12 years. There he discovered that political power does not reside with publicly elected representatives, but with the world’s 8,000 to 8,500 wealthiest individuals who exercise power behind the scenes and who routinely manipulate the media. These people, he explained, sit at the top of a power structure that resembles a pyramid. Directly beneath them sits the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Below the BIS sit the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank. Below them sit the Central Banks, which are illegally created private banks which oversee the commercial banking system of their respective countries. Below these sit the multinational companies. Finally, below these sit the countries’ governments.

Bernard said the wealthiest 8,000 to 8,500 people created the BIS in 1930. Since the world’s richest individuals are too young to have helped establish the BIS 88 years ago, he must be referring to banking dynasties like the Rothschilds. In a Chapter titled, ‘Banking and the World’s Biggest Business,’ the book Dope, Inc.: Britain’s Opium War Against the U.S. (Kalimtgis, Goldman & Stienberg, 1978) lists the Rothschilds as one of the nine family dynasties responsible for the modern drug industry which, they assert, “is run as a single integrated world operation, from the opium poppy to the nickel bag of heroin sold on an inner-city corner.” The current global drug trade was established by the British Crown during the Opium Wars, when P&O steam lines were founded to transport the drugs, the HSBC bank was established to launder the proceeds, and the ‘court Jews’ (Rothschilds) were employed to financially manage the operation. Apparently, little has changed, and the same operation has simply been expanded.

There must have been some truth to the content of Dope Inc. because its revelations resulted in the HSBC bank losing its license to operate in the USA. The book also inspired law enforcement officials to swap their assumption that drug trafficking consisted of pockets of independent criminal activity, for the fact it is a global network coordinated by the CIA, with proceeds laundered through banks and funneled into the CIA’s covert, terrorist operations.

This is the very system Ronald Bernard described. He said his own laundering operation dealt with governments, multinationals, terrorist organisations, and secret services. Secret service agencies, he specified, do not serve and protect a people or country as the public expect. Instead, they are all criminal organizations that trade in drugs, weapons, and children. According to Bernard, the wealthy elites controlled their employees by compromising and blackmailing them – just like James Rothstein said.

The best way to understand the child trafficking industry is to trace the history of the drug trafficking industry. As you read Dope Inc., cross out each occurrence of the word ‘drugs’ and replace it with the word ‘kids’ – this will give you a picture of the child trafficking network that victimised me. Like the drug trade, the child sex trafficking industry is run by the very same people as a single integrated world operation. At the top of this sit the wealthy elite who maintain control by ensuring only blackmailed, compromised politicians, military brass, and government officials occupy leadership. The secret services, including ASIO, the CIA and British Intelligence, coordinate the child trafficking and human compromise operation, receive the victims procured via the little men, train these into suitable assets, and transport the victims nationally and internationally to service VIP pedophiles.

Australia is in the process of two federal investigations, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse, and the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry. Only one of these investigations has shed any light on the global child trafficking network I personally reported to the Child Abuse Royal Commission. On 5 April 2018, the newly appointed head of AUSTRC (Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre) told the ABC News:

I thought coming from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission that I had a pretty good handle on serious and organised crime side. I didn’t appreciate the depth and breadth of involvement with private entities and banks. I didn’t appreciate how many industries it does actually touch. There’s a misperception that money laundering is a victimless white-collar crime that’s probably just looking at tax avoidance – and it’s not. It’s criminal entities using financial institutions here and nationally to move criminal funds around our country and our financial system overseas and it has a massive impact on everyday life; whether that’s child exploitation, serious and organised crime, drug importation – it all involves money laundering.

Australia’s Commonwealth Bank was subsequently fined 700 million dollars for near 54,000 breaches of anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing laws, including the laundering of proceeds from child sex trafficking, and the channeling of funds into overseas terrorist organisations. So, my very own bank, which wooed my kiddie custom with a green tin money box painted to resemble a building, simultaneously facilitated my child abuse.  (The Millennium Report, July 30, 2018)    (Archive)

h/t @seacaptim

August 16, 2018 - Can members of Congress engage in insider trading?

Lawless insider trader, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,  tears up President Donald Trump’s ‘State of the Union 2020’ speech. (Credit: BBC)

Members of Congress come across a lot of information in the course of their official duties. Can they use “insider information” to make a quick buck by buying and selling stock at opportune times?

The answer to this question is a resounding and unequivocal no. Statutory law forbids it, and even if it did, Congress has always had the constitutional power to discipline its Members.

In mid-November 2011, CBS’ 60 Minutes ran a story alleging that Members of Congress were using insider information to benefit on stock trades. The story provoked a furor among the public, leading to the enactment of the STOCK Act, which President Obama signed into law on April 4, 2012. The act had several effects, but the most notable was that it explicitly stated that Members and congressional employees “are not exempt from the insider trading prohibitions arising under the securities laws…” (§4(a)). Additionally, it amended the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, to specify each Member or employee “owes a duty” when in receipt of “material, nonpublic information” obtained as a result of their public office (§4(b)(2)).

Although the STOCK Act amended the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, in the lead up to its enactment, there was some debate over whether Members and staffers were exempt from anti-insider trading law. For instance, in February 2012, when the House passed the STOCK Act, Representative Rob Woodall of Georgia said, “The STOCK Act has been characterized … as to prevent insider trading by members of Congress, as if members of Congress are allowed to participate in insider trading today, and they are not.” Similarly, when the Senate passed the STOCK Act, The Wall Street Journal reported:

Robert Khuzami, head enforcement official at the Securities and Exchange Commission, said in testimony late last year that it is possible that insider-trading laws do, in fact, apply to members of Congress.

But he said it is possible that a federal judge could disagree with him and strike down an insider-trading case. As a result, he said it would be easier to prosecute an insider-trading case against a lawmaker if Congress approved legislation to make it clear that lawmakers have a duty to keep private the nonpublic information they hear in Congress about legislation and policy changes that could affect markets.

The dispute over whether congressional insider trading could be prosecuted before the passage of the STOCK Act aside, adopting it was a way for Congress to attempt to restore public trust amidst public indignation. You could dismiss that as a mere show, but maintaining the confidence of the public is critical for a healthy democracy. Even if it was possible to prosecute congressional insider trading before the STOCK Act, with both it and other laws in force today, it is unambiguous that Members of Congress may not engage in insider trading, whether the information they obtain is from their public office or their private life.

(Members are required to publicly report on their annual financial disclosure forms all stocks that are owned, purchased or sold. Such transactions should be reported within 30 days and “in no case later than 45 days” afterwards (§6(a)). The Act also required that the reports be posted on the House and Senate websites (§8(a)) This allows the public and the media to check whether a Member has been engaged in any suspicious activity in the securities markets.)

In addition to statutory law against insider trading, each Chamber has a constitutional right to discipline its own Members, officers, and staff. Both the House and Senate ethics rules provide ample room to punish insider trading—and, arguably, did so even before the passage of the STOCK Act. Both the 2008 edition of the House Ethics Manual and the 2003 edition of the Senate Ethics Manual note that individuals under their respective Chambers’ jurisdictions may be disciplined for violations of the Code of Ethics for Government Service. This code admonishes public servants, “Never use any information gained confidentially in the performance of governmental duties as a means of making private profit.” Aside from specific references to the Code of Ethics for Government Service, each Chamber has broad rules requiring Members and staff to act at all times in ways that do not dishonor their Chamber, and each of the ethics manuals contain a discussion on the various ways the House and Senate can discipline for behavior that is not otherwise explicitly forbidden. The House and Senate could impose different kinds of penalties, including fines and, for Members, expulsion from office if 2/3 of the Chamber votes to do so. Any discipline imposed by one of the houses of Congress would be separate from prosecution by the Justice Department. Sanction by a Member’s chamber is an additional form of punishment that a private citizen would not face.

Aside from the discipline that Congress or the criminal justice system might pursue, there is always the court of public opinion. Members of Congress are always responsible to their constituents, who always have the right to turn an incumbent out of office at the next election, for whatever reason. Beyond having a right to defeat an unworthy incumbent, it is not even too much of a stretch to say that the people must do so. As James Garfield, then a U.S. Representative, wrote in April 1877:

[N]ow, more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand those high qualities to represent them in the national legislature.

Garfield’s admonition reminds of the power that citizens have to hold their elected officials accountable—remember it any time a scandal in Congress bubbles up. (Congressional Institute, 8/16/2018)  (Archive)

(…) The law does not provide for a criminal penalty, but violators can face substantial fines.

Some supporters of the Stock Act thought it clearly banned the buying or selling of stocks based solely on information members of Congress learn about on the job, because it brought them under that “relationship of trust or confidence” rule — namely, their duty to the public. But that concept has never been tested in court, and some former SEC officials have said they doubt that members of Congress have a duty of confidentiality.

But even if that approach of the insider trading law clearly did apply to Congress, bringing a criminal case would be difficult for prosecutors because of the immunity provided by the Constitution’s speech or debate clause.

“They’ll never be [able to] prosecute anybody for this, if they have to penetrate a committee to find out if that’s where the information came from. That’s speech-or-debate protected territory,” said Stan Brand, a Washington lawyer and former U.S. House general counsel.

Members of Congress can nonetheless be prosecuted for insider trading when the information they act on comes from a company, not through the legislative process. Former Rep. Chris Collins, a New York Republican, was sentenced to 26 months in prison in January after he admitted revealing inside knowledge to his son about a drug company’s stock that was likely to fall. Collins learned of the information because he served on the company’s board. (Read more: NBC News, 3/20/2020)

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)

November 24, 2018 - Donations to Clinton Foundation plunge after Hillary’s defeat in the 2016 election

(Credit: ROFLBOT)

“In the year after Hillary Clinton’s presidential defeat, donors seemed to abandon the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, with contributions plummeting nearly 58 percent.

The $36 million nosedive in donations has come to light as Republican legislators plan to hold hearings on the results of a federal corruption investigation into the non-profit next month.

Federal authorities have long been probing the non-profit over allegations of “pay to play.” Specifically, the FBI investigation focused on whether any donations made to the foundation were linked to policy decisions made while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, according to published reports.

The foundation has vigorously and repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Contributions plunged from $62,912,331 in 2016 to $26,566,825 in 2017, recently released federal tax filings show.

Revenue from speeches given by the Clintons also fell from a high of $3.6 million in 2015 to just under $300,000 in 2017. In 2016, during the presidential campaign, the non-profit took in no earnings from speeches, tax filings show. (Read more: The New York Post, 11/24/2018)

December 19, 2018 - Lynch testimony reveals bias and intent for failing to give Trump defensive briefing

Loretta Lynch (Credit: Moriah Ratner/The Hill)

“The defensive briefing, after all, is a procedure that is often given to presidential candidates, elected officials and even U.S. businesses that have either been unwittingly approached by foreign actors attempting to gain trust and befriend those in position of influence.

The briefing allows the government to protect the candidates, specifically if there is substantial information or knowledge to suggest that someone has targeted an unwitting American for information. If the FBI or intelligence agencies suspect foreign adversaries may be trying to penetrate a presidential campaign, as those FBI and DOJ sources suggested in testimony to lawmakers, it would then be required to warn those affected, a senior former intelligence official told SaraACarter.com.

Why? Because foreign adversaries like China and Russia for example, and even allies, will attempt to glean information – or favor – from unwitting persons with access to senior level officials. The access can assist those nation’s own national interest or provide access for intelligence collection.

In the case of Trump, the FBI gave only a general counterintelligence briefing but did not provide information to the campaign that the FBI believed there were specific counterintelligence threats. For example, the FBI’s concern over campaign advisors George Papadopolous, Carter Page and then concerns over former national security advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.“It is an essential task of the FBI and the intelligence community to give a defensive briefing to a presidential candidate when a foreign adversary is attempting to penetrate or make contact with someone in the campaign,” said a former senior intelligence official. “If the FBI and DOJ were so concerned about Carter Page and (George) Papadopolous why didn’t they brief Trump when he became a candidate? The fact that they didn’t is very revealing. If they gave defensive briefing to the Clinton campaign then I think we have the answer.

Bruce Ohr’s 268-page testimony, released last week by Georgia Rep. Doug Collins reveals the machinations of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign and the players involved. Ohr’s testimony coupled with testimony provided by former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, which has not been released but reviewed by this reporter, along with former FBI General Counsel James Baker’s testimony reveals a startling fact: everyone appeared to say they were concerned the Russian’s were penetrating the Trump campaign but no one at the DOJ or FBI authorized a defensive briefing.” (Read more: Sarah Carter, 3/14/2019)

January 2, 2019 - Biden laptop texts: Hunter Biden discusses his father's dementia with his psychiatrist, Keith Ablow

Biden Laptop Report, pg. 559

January 21, 2019 - Death of Russiagate: Mueller team ties to Mifsud’s network

“In April last year, Disobedient Media broke coverage of the British involvement in the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, asking why All Russiagate Roads Lead To London, via the quasi-scholar Joseph Mifsud and others.

Chris Blackburn (Credit: Twitter)

The issue was also raised by WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange, just days before the Ecuadorian government silenced him last March. Assange’s Twitter thread cited research by Chris Blackburn, who spoke with Disobedient Media on multiple occasions covering Joseph Mifsud’s ties to British intelligence figures and organizations, as well as his links to Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign, the FBI, CIA, and the private cyber-security firm Crowdstrike.

We return, now, to this issue and specifically the research of Chris Blackburn, to place the final nail in the coffin of the Trump-Russia collusion charade. Blackburn’s insights are incredible not only because they return us to the earliest reporting on the role of British intelligence figures in manufacturing the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, but because they also implicate members of Mueller’s investigation. What we are left with is an indication of collusion between factions of the US and UK intelligence community in fabricating evidence of Trump-Russia collusion: a scandal that would have rocked the legacy press to its core, if Western establishment-backed media had a spine.

In Disobedient Media’s previous coverage of Blackburn’s work, he described his experience in intelligence:

“I’ve been involved in numerous investigations that involve counter-intelligence techniques in the past. I used to work for the 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism, one of the biggest tort actions in American history. I helped build a profile of Osama bin Laden’s financial and political network, which was slightly different to the one that had been built by the CIA’s Alec Station, a dedicated task force which was focused on Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Alec Station designed its profile to hunt Osama bin Laden and disrupt his network. I thought it was flawed. It had failed to take into account Osama’s historical links to Pakistan’s main political parties or that he was the figurehead for a couple of organizations, not just Al-Qaeda.”

“I also ran a few conferences for US intelligence leaders during the Bush administration. After the 9/11 Commission published its report into the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon it created a public outreach program. The US National Intelligence Conference and Exposition (Intelcon) was one of the avenues it used. I was responsible for creating the ‘View from Abroad’ track. We had guidance from former Senator Slade Gorton and Jamie Gorelick, who both sat on the 9/11 Commission. We got leaders such as Sir John Chilcot and Baroness Pauline Neville Jones to come and help share their experiences on how the US would be able to heal the rifts after 9/11.”

“The US intelligence community was suffering from severe turf wars and firewalls, which were hampering counter-terrorism efforts. They were concentrating on undermining each other rather than tackling terrorism. I had mainly concentrated on the Middle East, but in 2003 I switched my focus to terrorism in South Asia.”

Counter Terrorism, Not Counter Intelligence, Sparked Probe

In an article published by The Telegraph last November, the paper acknowledged the following:

“It forces the spotlight on whether the UK played a role in the FBI’s investigation launched before the 2016 presidential election into Trump campaign ties to the Kremlin… Mr. Trump’s allies and former advisers are raising questions about the UK’s role in the start of the probe, given many of the key figures and meetings were located in Britain… One former top White House adviser to Mr. Trump made similar insinuations, telling this newspaper: “You know the Brits are up to their neck.” The source added on the Page wiretap application: “I think that stuff is going to implicate MI5 and MI6 in a bunch of activities they don’t want to be implicated in, along with FBI, counter-terrorism and the CIA.” [Emphasis Added]

The article cites George Papadopoulos, who asked why the “British intelligence apparatus was weaponized against Trump and his advisers.” Papadopoulos has also addressed the issue at length via Twitter. In response to the Telegraph’s coverage of the issue, Chris Blackburn wrote via Twitter: “The Telegraph story on Trump Russia acknowledges that activities involving counter-terrorism are at the heart of the scandal…not counter-intelligence. If the [London Centre for International Law Practice] was British state, not private, some Commonwealth countries are going to be seriously pissed off.”

Blackburn spoke with Disobedient Media, saying: “If you factor in the dreadful reporting to discredit Joseph Mifsud and leaks, it is pretty clear something rather strange happened to George Papadopoulos during the campaign while he was shuttling around Europe and the Middle East. He was working with people who have intelligence links at the London Centre of International Law Practice. A recent article in The Telegraph also alludes to MI5, MI6, and CIA using counter-terrorism assets which would tie into the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP), and its sister organizations, doing counter-terrorism work for the Australian, UK and US governments. They quote anonymous officials who believe that their intelligence agencies used counter-terrorism personnel to kick start the investigation/scandal.” [Emphasis Added]

Blackburn discussed this differentiation with Disobedient Media: “Counter-terrorism is obviously involved in more kinetic, violent political actions-concerning mass casualty events, bombings, assassinations, poisonings, and hacking. But, the lines are blurring between them. Counter-intelligence cases have been known to stretch for decades- often relying on nothing more than paranoia and suspicion to fuel investigations. Counter-terrorism is also a broader discipline as it involves tactical elements like hostage rescue, crime scene investigations, and explosive specialists. Counter-Terrorism is a collaborative effort with counter-terrorism officers working closely with local and regional police forces and civic organizations. There is also a wider academic field around countering violent, and radical ideology which promotes terrorism and insurgencies. Cybersecurity has become the third major discipline in intelligence. The London Center of International Law Practice, the mysterious intelligence company that employed both Papadopoulos and Mifsud, had also been working in that area.”

Continuing, Blackburn pinpointed the significance of defining counter-terrorism as the starting point of the investigation, saying: “It shows that there is a high probability that intelligence was deliberately abused to make Papadopoulos’ activities look like they were something else. As counter-terrorism and counterintelligence are close in tactics and methods, it would seem that they were used because they share the same skill sets – covert evidence gathering and deception. It’s basically sleight of hand. A piece of theatre would be more precise. However, we don’t know if the FBI knew it was real or make-believe. It’s more likely that the CIA played the FBI with the help of close allies who were suspicious and frightened of a Trump presidency.”

Mueller’s Team And Joseph Mifsud

Zainab Ahmad, a member of Mueller’s legal team, is the former Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of New York. As pointed out by Blackburn, Ahmad attended a Global Center on Cooperative Security event in 2017. In recent days, Blackburn wrote via Twitter: “Zainab Ahmad is a major player in the Russiagate scandal at the DOJ. Does she work for SC Mueller? She was at a GCCS event in May 2017. Arvinder Sambei, a co-director of the [London Centre of International Law Practice], worked with Joseph Mifsud, [George Papadopoulos] and [Simona Mangiante]. She’s a GCCS consultant.”

Zainab Ahmad (Credit: The Combatting Terrorism Center, West Point)

Blackburn told this author: “Zainab Ahmad was one of the first DOJ prosecutors to have seen the Steele dossier. In May 2017, she attended a counter-terrorism conference in New York with the Global Center on Cooperative Security (GCCS), an organization which Joseph Mifsud, the alleged Russian spy, had been working within London and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.”

“Richard Barrett, the Former Chief of Counter-Terrorism at MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence department traveled with Mifsud to Saudi Arabia to give a talk on terrorism in 2017. Ex-CIA officers, US Defense, and US Treasury officials were also there. The London Centre of International Law Practice’s relationship to the Global Center had been established in 2014. The Global Center on Cooperative Security made Martin Polaine and Arvinder Sambei consultants, they then became directors at the London Centre of International Law Practice.”

“The Global Center on Cooperative Security’s first major UK conference was at Joseph Mifsud’s London Academy of Diplomacy (LAD). Mifsud then followed Arvinder Sambei and Nagi Idris over to the London Centre of International Law Practice. Sources have told me that Mifsud was moonlighting as a specialist on counter-terrorism and Islamism while working at LAD which explains why he went to work in counter-terrorism after LAD folded.”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Global Center on Cooperative Security is connected to various elements that popped up in the Papadopoulos case. The fact that a prosecutor on Mueller’s team was at Global Center before Mueller was appointed as special counsel is also troubling.”

Days ago, The Hill reported on Congressional testimony by Bruce Ohr, revealing that when served as a DOJ official, he warned FBI and DOJ figures that the Steele dossier was problematic and linked to the Clintons. Critically, The Hill writes:

“Those he briefed included Andrew Weissmann, then the head of DOJ’s fraud section; Bruce Swartz, longtime head of DOJ’s international operations, and Zainab Ahmad, an accomplished terrorism prosecutor who, at the time, was assigned to work with Lynch as a senior counselor. Ahmad and Weissmann would go on to work for Mueller, the special prosecutor overseeing the Russia probe.” [Emphasis Added]

This point is essential, as it not only describes Ahmad’s role in Mueller’s team but places her at a crucial pre-investigation meeting.

Arvinder Sambei (Credit: Public International Law Advisory Group)

Last year, Blackburn noted the connection between Mifsud and Arvinder Sambei, writing: “LCILP director and FBI counsel, works with Mike Smith at the Global Center. They ran joint counter-terrorism conferences and training with Mifsud’s London Academy. Sambei then brought Mifsud over to the [London Centre of International Law Practice]. [Global Center works with Aussies, UK and US State too.]

Sambei has been described elsewhere as a “Former practising barrister, Senior Crown Prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service of England & Wales, and Legal Adviser at the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ), Ministry of Defence.” [British spelling has been retained]

That Sambei has been so thoroughly linked to organizations where Mifsud was a central figure is yet another cause of suspicion regarding allegations that Joseph Mifsud was a shadowy, unknown Russian agent until the summer of 2016. She is also a direct link between Robert Mueller and Mifsud.

Blackburn wrote via Twitter: “Arvinder Sambei helped to organize LCILP’s counter-terrorism and corruption events. She used her contacts in the US to bring in Middle Eastern government officials that were seen to be vulnerable to graft. Lisa Osofsky, former FBI Deputy General Counsel, was working with her.” Below, Arvinder is pictured at a London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP) event.

(Credit: Chris Blackburn/Twitter)

As Chris Blackburn told this author: “Mifsud and Papadopoulos’s co-director Arvinder Sambei was also the former FBI British counsel working 9/11 cases for Robert Mueller. She also runs a consultancy which deals with Special Investigative Measure (SIMs) which is just a posh description for covert espionage and evidence gathering. She has worked for major intelligence and national law agencies in the past. She wore two hats as a director of London Centre and a consultant for the Global Center on Cooperative Security (GCCS), a counter-terrorism think tank which is sponsored by the Australia, Canada, UK and US governments. Alexander Downer’s former Chief of Staff while at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade now works for the Global Center. Mifsud was also due to meet with Australian private intelligence figures in Adelaide in March 2016. So. Australia is certainly a major focus for the investigation.” [Emphasis Added]

Below, former FBI Deputy General Counsel Lisa Osofsky is pictured at a London Centre for International Law Practice event. Osofsky also served as the Money Laundering Reporting Officer with Goldman Sachs International. Since 2018, she has served as the Director of the UK’s Serious Fraud Office(SFO).

Lisa Osofsky, pictured at an LCILP event. (Credit: Chris Blackburn/Twitter)

An Embarrassment For John Brennan?

Disobedient Media previously reported that Robert Hannigan, then head of British spy agency GCHQ, flew to Washington DC to share ‘director-to-director’ level intelligence with then-CIA Chief John Brennan in the summer of 2016. This writer noted that “The Guardian reported Hannigan’s announcement that he would step down from his leadership position with the agency just three days after the inauguration of President Trump, on 23 January 2017. Jane Mayer, in her profile of Christopher Steele published in the New Yorker, also noted that Hannigan had flown to Washington D.C. to personally brief the then-CIA Director John Brennan on alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. What is so curious about this briefing “deemed so sensitive it was handled at director-level” is why Hannigan was talking director-to-director to the CIA and not Mike Rogers at the NSA, GCHQ’s Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partner.”

Blackburn told Disobedient Media: “Former Congressman Trey Gowdy, who has seen most of the information gathered by Congress from the intelligence community concerning the Russia investigation, said that if President Trump were to declassify files and present the truth to the American public, it would “embarrass John Brennan.” I think that is pretty concrete for me, but it’s not definitive. I know the polarization and spin in Washington has become perverse, but that statement is pretty specific for me. If Brennan is involved, it is most probably through Papadopoulos who sparked off the ‘official’ investigation at the FBI. He also made sure the Steele dossier was spread through the US government.”

Blackburn added: “Chris Steele was also working on FIFA projects, and a source has told me that he was working to investigate the Russian and Qatari World Cup bids. The London Centre of International Law Practice has been working with Majed Garoub, the former Saudi legal representative of FIFA, the world governing body for soccer. He’s also been working against the Qatari bid. Steele likes to get paid twice for his investigations.”

ChrisBlackburn/Twitter

“Mifsud has also been associated with Prince Turki the former Saudi intelligence chief, Mifsud and the London Academy of Diplomacy used to train Saudi diplomats and intelligence figures while Turki was the Saudi Ambassador to London. Turki is a close friend of Bill Clinton and John Brennan. Nawaf Obaid was also courting Mifsud and tried to get him a cushy job working with CNN’s Freedom Project at Link Campus in Rome. He also knows John Brennan. Intelligence agencies like to give out professional gifts like this plum academic position for completing missions. In the US, it is widely known that intelligence agencies gift the children of assets to get them into prestigious Ivy League schools.”

At a minimum, we can surmise that Mifsud was not a Russian agent, but was an asset of Western intelligence agencies. We are left with the impression that the Mifsud saga served as a ploy, whether he participated knowingly or not. It seems reasonable to conclude that the gambit was initially developed with the participation of John Brennan and UK intelligence. Following this, Mueller inherited and developed the Mifsud narrative thread into the collusion soap opera we know today.

Ultimately, we are faced with the reality that British and US interests worked together to fabricate a collusion scandal to subvert a US Presidency, and in doing so, intentionally raised tensions between the West and a nuclear-armed power.”

(Disobedient Media/Elizabeth Vos, 1/21/2019)  (Archive)

(Disobedient Media’s website appears to be down and I hope it’s just temporary. Elizabeth Vos volunteered with our group in the early days of this project and we appreciate her permission to let us publish her superb articles.)

February 8, 2018 - Adam Schiff recruits two former National Security Council aides who worked with the hearsay whistleblower

Abigail Grace (l), Adam Schiff (c), Sean Misko (r) (Credit: The Washington Examiner)

“House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff recruited two former National Security Council aides who worked alongside the CIA whistleblower at the NSC during the Obama and Trump administrations, the Washington Examiner has learned.

Abigail Grace, who worked at the NSC until 2018, was hired in February, while Sean Misko, an NSC aide until 2017, joined Schiff’s committee staff in August, the same month the whistleblower submitted his complaint.

(…) Grace, 36, was hired to help Schiff’s committee investigate the Trump White House. That month, Trump accused Schiff of “stealing people who work at White House.” Grace worked at the NSC from 2016 to 2018 in U.S.-China relations and then briefly at the Center for a New American Security think tank, which was founded by two former senior Obama administration officials.

A Schiff aide commented in February: “We have hired staff for a variety of positions, including the committee’s oversight work and its investigation. Although none of our staff has come directly from the White House, we have hired people with prior experience on the National Security Council staff for oversight of the agencies, and will continue to do so at our discretion.” Schiff himself said, “If the president is worried about our hiring any former administration people, maybe he should work on being a better employer.”

Misko, 37, worked in the Obama administration as a member of the secretary of state’s policy planning staff under deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan, who became Hillary Clinton’s top foreign policy official during her 2016 presidential campaign. In 2015, Misko was the director for the Gulf states at the NSC, remaining there into the Trump administration’s first year.

A source familiar with Grace’s work at the NSC told the Washington Examiner, “Abby Grace had access to executive privilege information, and she has a duty not to disclose that information. She is not authorized to reveal that information.”

The same source said that Misko had not been trusted by Trump appointees. “There were a few times where documents had been signed off for final editing before they go to the national security adviser for signature,” the source said. “And he actually went in and made changes after those changes were already finished. So he basically tried to insert, without his boss’ approval. (Read more: The Washington Examiner, 10/11/2019) (Archive)

February 2019 - A new document reveals Ukraine officials had already reopened probe of Hunter Biden-linked firm months before Trump phone call

“A newly unearthed document shows that Ukrainian officials had opened a new probe into the firm linked to Hunter Biden months before President Trump’s phone call with that country’s leader, contributor John Solomon reported late Tuesday.

Solomon said Tuesday on “Hannity” that the U.S. government knew Ukraine was planning to look again into activities at Burisma Holdings, an energy company that employed then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son as a member of its board of directors, early this year. The report is noteworthy because President Trump has been accused by Democrats of threatening in July to withhold foreign aid to Ukraine unless its new president pursued an investigation into the company and the younger Biden’s role there.

“The U.S. government had open-source intelligence and was aware as early as February of 2019 that the Ukrainian government was planning to reopen the Burisma investigation,” he claimed. “This is long before the president ever imagined having a call with President Zelensky,” he added, noting Petro Poroshenko was still Ukraine’s president at that time.

“This is a significant shift in the factual timeline.”

Solomon said the information he obtained, including documents shown on “Hannity” Tuesday, was omitted from a U.S. intelligence community whistleblower’s complaint lodged against Trump last month.

Solomon said that NABU — an FBI-like anti-corruption agency in Ukraine — requested the probe into Burisma and owner Mykola Zlochevsky be reopened earlier this year. The investigation then went forward, Solomon said. The new probe later resulted in a “Notice of Suspicion” being filed, alleging the existence of “illicit funds” running through the firm, Solomon also claimed.” (Read more: Fox News, 10/09/2019)

March 20, 2019 - Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele and Dan Jones are running an elaborate media influence operation, pitching the Russia collusion and Trump impeachment narratives

Glenn Simpson (Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)

“Key Democratic operatives and private investigators who tried to derail Donald Trump’s campaign by claiming he was a tool of the Kremlin have rebooted their operation since his election with a multimillion-dollar stealth campaign to persuade major media outlets and lawmakers that the president should be impeached.

The effort has successfully placed a series of questionable stories alleging secret back channels and meetings between Trump associates and Russian spies, while influencing related investigations and reports from Congress.

The operation’s nerve center is a Washington-based nonprofit called The Democracy Integrity Project, or TDIP. Among other activities, it pumps out daily “research” briefings to prominent Washington journalists, as well as congressional staffers, to keep the Russia “collusion” narrative alive.

TDIP is led by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI investigator, Clinton administration volunteer and top staffer to California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. It employs the key opposition-research figures behind the salacious and unverified dossier: Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Its financial backers include the actor/director Rob Reiner and billionaire activist George Soros.

Christopher Steele (Credit: Victoria Jones/The Associated Press)

The project’s work has been largely shrouded in mystery. But a months-long examination by RealClearInvestigations, drawn from documents and more than a dozen interviews, found that the organization is running an elaborate media-influence operation that includes driving and shaping daily coverage of the Russia collusion theory, as well as pushing stories about Trump in the national media that attempt to tie the president or his associates to the Kremlin.

The group also feeds information to FBI and congressional investigators, and then tells reporters that authorities are investigating those leads. The tactic adds credibility to TDIP’s pitches, luring big media outlets to bite on stories. It mirrors the strategy federal authorities themselves deployed to secure FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign: citing published news reports of investigative details their informants had leaked to the media to bolster their wiretap requests.

Five days a week, TDIP  emails a newsletter to influential Democrats and prominent Beltway journalists under the heading “TDIP Research” – which summarizes the latest “collusion” news, and offers “points of interest” to inspire fresh stories regarding President Trump’s alleged ties to Moscow.

Daniel J. Jones (Credit: The Guardian)

Recipients of the TDIP reports include staffers at the New York Times and Washington Post and investigative reporters at BuzzFeed, ProPublica and McClatchy, as well as news producers at CNN and MSNBC, according to a source familiar with the project’s email distribution list. Democratic aides on Capitol Hill also subscribe to the newsletter.

The briefings typically run several pages and include an “Executive Summary” and links to court documents and congressional testimony, letters and memos, as well as new articles and videos.

The Steele dossier and impeachment are common themes in the reports, which generally spin news events against Trump, copies of the newsletter obtained by RCI show. A March 13 TDIP bulletin, for instance, highlighted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s sentencing without informing readers that Special Counsel Robert Mueller closed the case without any collusion accusation against Manafort, who was punished for personal financial crimes.

A Feb. 12 briefing led with an NBC News exclusive report on the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s two-year Russia probe. But it misstated what the news was — that both Democrats and Republicans agreed with the conclusion that there was “no factual evidence of collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia – claiming instead that Democrats “rejected” the conclusion.

“What’s significant about them is they’re totally one-sided,” said a veteran reporter with a major  newspaper who is plugged into the national security beat in Washington and insisted on anonymity. “It’s really just another way of adding fuel to the fire of the whole Russia collusion thing.”

Jones’ project doesn’t just spin the news. Its more ambitious goal is to make news by essentially continuing the Clinton-funded investigation into alleged Trump/Russia ties that began in 2016, and then sharing findings with news outlets, congressional investigators and federal agents.” (Read much more: RealClearInvestigations, 3/20/2019)

March 25, 2019 - Former CIA director John Brennan admits he received "bad information" that lead to conspiracy indictments

“Former CIA Director John Brennan’s recent admission he received “bad information” that led him to inaccurately predict conspiracy indictments in the Mueller probe is raising questions about claims he made to Congress about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians.

Brennan told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in May 2017 the CIA provided the FBI with information on contacts between Russian officials and Trump campaign figures.

Brennan said he was “concerned” about the contacts because of known Russian efforts to “suborn” Trump campaign associates.

“It raised questions in my mind … whether or not the Russians were ever able to gain cooperation of those individuals,” Brennan said in the May 23, 2017 testimony.

“I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign,” he added, noting he had not seen evidence of collusion between the Trump associates and Russians.

Brennan did not identify the Trump officials or add any other details about the alleged contacts, other than that they occurred in 2016.

Whatever contacts there might have been did not involve a conspiracy to influence the 2016 presidential election, as special counsel Robert Mueller has determined.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 3/27/2019)

Brennan was selling collusion from both inside the White House and out.