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

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)

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(…) 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

The Department of Homeland Security hired a literal former spokesperson for the PLO and put her in charge of vetting “asylum” seekers

While working as an Asylum Officer, she remained an open pro-Hamas extremist who hates all Jews who don’t condemn Israelhttps://t.co/YTpcnqgQGz

— Luke Rosiak (@lukerosiak) October 18, 2023

Two possibilities: Either DHS called the PLO to get a job reference as part of the vetting process, or it didn’t vet even the people it hires to vet immigrants She posted to public social media continuously about her true allegiance and goal to “root the resistance in Palestine” pic.twitter.com/moI7QY4tzu

— Luke Rosiak (@lukerosiak) October 18, 2023

Newja Ali was promoted this year. Asked about it, DHS said “USCIS strongly condemns antisemitism & the use of violent rhetoric in any form,” adding that its vetting officers are unbiased & polite

Reached by phone, Ali said she is still employed &
to “mind your fucking business” pic.twitter.com/ipWh2EHEy6

— Luke Rosiak (@lukerosiak) October 18, 2023

(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)

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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

“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 25^th 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 25^th 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.

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 25^th 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

 

“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

“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

“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

“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

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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).

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.”

“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

“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

“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.

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.

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.

March 26, 2019 - Schiff sends a letter to DNI chief Dan Coats asking that he hide dozens of transcripts that pertain to Obama Spygate

“Award-winning journalist John Solomon obtained a 2019 letter House Intel Chairman Adam (D-CA) sent then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats revealing how he secretly hid dozens of transcripts in Obama’s Spygate scandal.

The transcripts in question pertain to the ‘Russian collusion’ investigation.

In September of 2018, the GOP-led House, with bipartisan support, voted to make public the transcripts of 53 witnesses in the bogus Russia probe.

Here we are 19 months later and the transcripts are still hidden from the public even though US Intelligence has declassified and cleared for release.

The reason? Adam Schiff has been able to keep dozens of transcripts hidden with his backroom dealings with the ODNI.

Schiff got to work hiding the transcripts as soon as the Democrats took over the House in the 2018 midterms and he took over as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

According to John Solomon, the transcripts contain exculpatory evidence for President Trump’s team and Schiff demanded they be kept from Trump and White House lawyers — even if the declassification process required the transcripts to be shared.

Via John Solomon:

Shortly after Schiff took over from Republican Rep. Devin Nunes as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in 2019, he sent a letter to the office of then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

The letter obtained by Just the News specifically ordered that the witness transcripts — some of which contained exculpatory evidence for President Trump’s team — not be shared with Trump or White House lawyers even if the declassification process required such sharing.

“Under no circumstances shall ODNI, or any other element of the Intelligence Community (IC), share any HPSCI transcripts with the White House, President Trump or any persons associated with the White House or the President,” Schiff wrote in a March 26, 2019 letter to then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

“Such transcripts remain the sole property of HPSCI, and were transmitted to ODNI for the limited purpose of enabling a classification review by IC elements and the Department of Justice,” Schiff added.

US Intel officials told John Solomon that Adam Schiff’s demand made it impossible for them to declassify 10 transcripts from White House and National Security Council witnesses because White House counsel would have to look over them for what is known as “White House equities” and presidential privileges.

However, 43 of the transcripts were declassified and given permission to be publicly released, but they still have not been made public.

The dozens of transcripts are currently with Adam Schiff and his team in hiding despite the Committee’s vote to release them to the public.

Committee Republicans are also in the dark about the ODNI’s review of the 43 transcripts.” (Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 4/22/2020)  (Archive)

UPDATE: A list of the transcripts that are missing, has been posted by Jeff Carlson @themarketswork.

 

March 24, 2019 - A review of the Barr “Principal Conclusion” Notification Letter

CTH is going to break down the AG Barr Principal Conclusion notification letter against more than three years of background research.  Yes, more than “three years“, is the correct time-frame here.  The origin of the DOJ/FBI operation against Donald Trump goes back to 2015; the Mueller probe was a 2017 concluding chapter in the seditious conspiracy effort.

I’m going to cite as much background as possible; however, this review encompasses so much granular history that some parts might be too complex for a person who only recently jumped into the story.  Disclaimer: this outline does not fit the narrative from those who claim Mueller and Rosenstein are honorable men.  They ain’t.

The first part that matters is a few paragraphs into the letter.  Here we find the scale of the investigative group, and a description of some of the investigative paths they traveled:

There are several takeaways that are worthy of notation.

♦ First, the team of 19 lawyers and 40 FBI agents is more than the original Crossfire Hurricane investigative team (lawyers added), but includes the exact same group of FBI and DOJ staff level investigative officials that originated the Trump operation long before Robert Mueller was selected to lead them.

The transferring team assembly has been missed by media; and also missed by those who have researched the investigators. It is an important point, yet completely overlooked.

The same career staff unit that originated the unlawful activity to weaponize the DOJ and FBI is the same team that transferred into the Mueller probe.  Their supervising officials changed, Comey, McCabe, Baker, Lynch and Yates (et al) were fired; however, the career investigative officials within the process are identical.

The FBI agents transferred from Operation Crossfire Hurricane into the Mueller Special Counsel.  This is a key, heck, critical point, that is continually missed and glossed over.

The Mueller Special Counsel in May 2017 did not start from a clean slate of investigators.  Yes, new additional lawyers were added, but the investigators who conducted the Mueller probe were the same investigators who were carrying out the 2016 unlawful and illegal surveillance activity.

Initially Lisa Page and Peter Strzok also transferred to the Mueller team; but they had to be removed in July 2017 due to the discovery of their paper trail.  If their paper trail had never been discovered they would have remained with their comrades.

And that takes us to an important SIDEBAR that everyone forgets.  Lisa Page and Peter Strzok were removed because Inspector General Horowitz accidentally stumbled upon their communication.  Originally Horowitz was looking at “media leaks”, and that led him to question Deputy FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.  McCabe denied the leaks, but when the IG questioned Lisa Page about media contacts she said McCabe told her to give stories to the media.  McCabe and Page were contradicting each-other.

The IG asked Page if she could prove her side of the story, Page said she had texts from McCabe and gave her phone to INSD investigators…. the rest is history.  Those IG investigators, while validating the instructions from McCabe (showing he lied), uncovered the Peter Strzok and Lisa Page bias and communication that set the ground work for “spygate”.  The IG then had to inform Mueller of the compromised position.

♦The second point that needs to be noted from these paragraphs, is the scale of tools used by the Special Counsel (paragraphs reposted for additional review):

Remember, Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein re-authorized and re-submitted the third renewal of the Carter Page Title-1 (not title-3) FISA warrant in mid-July 2017.

That Carter Page Title-1 warrant did not expire until mid-October 2017.  So when we look at search warrants, subpoenas, and specifically “50 authorized pen registers“, we should note most of them were generally not needed while the Page FISA warrant was active.

When Mueller’s team began; and remember this is the same operational team – just using a new leader; they had the legal authority to conduct active electronic surveillance on any individual who was within two hops of Carter Page.  [So anyone who was in direct contact with Carter Page, and anyone that person was in contact with, and anyone that second person was in contact with.]  All of those officials were under surveillance.  A typical two-hop Title-1 warrant ends up hitting a network between 900 to 2,500 people.

The “pen registers” are ‘trap and trace warrants’ [SEE HERE], essentially another form of electronic surveillance (phone, email, etc) and extraction.  They would not have been needed for anyone within the Carter Page orbit (the Trump campaign), until the Title-1 FISA warrant expired (October 2017).  The pen registers fall under Title-3, ordinary domestic, non-FISA related, DOJ suspect searches and inquires, ie. “phone taps”.

Between the Title-1 FISA warrant (entire trump orbit captured) and the 50 pen registers (unknown orbit) and 500 search warrants (also Title-3), there was a massive dragnet of active surveillance and extraction of electronic files from all targets.  Active wire-taps, or “listening bugs”, would also fall under the FISA warrant and/or the Title-3 pen registers.

This gives us the scale of reach for those 40 active and assigned FBI agents.

Understanding that President Trump was a defined initial target of the investigation (as also noted in the Barr letter), those wire-taps, electronic surveillance, phone intercepts and listening “bugs” would have applied directly to President Trump and the White House.

[Insert “by the book” notation from President Obama here.]

Do you think we’ll ever hear about how Team Mueller took over active bugs within the White House?… I digress.

Again, I’m going to repeat…. The same investigators who initiated the Trump operation in late 2015, through spygate, and into Crossfire Hurricane (July 2016), were the same investigators in May 2017 when Mueller became their boss.   That’s three years of active electronic surveillance, intercepts and extraction.   Think about it.

♦ Next we move on to Page Two.  Here AG Barr tells us the Mueller report has two elements. Russian interference, including Trump’s potential collusion with Russians; and the second element is the Obstruction investigation:

The key point on the Russian collusion/conspiracy aspect is not actually within Barr’s letter, but is really the unwritten 800lb gorilla in the corner of the letter.  There was NO actual Russian election interference to speak of.   The entire premise was/is absurd.

A Macedonian content farm producing shit memes on social media isn’t exactly a vast Russian election conspiracy. So it is absurd that the predicate for the Special Counsel was to see if Trump was coordinating with irrelevant shit-posting meme providers etc.

The lack of evidence, for a premise that doesn’t exist, leads Robert Mueller to quote in his report: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities”. (Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 3/25/2019)

March 27, 2019 - Opinion: Stephen Cohen - The Real Costs of Russiagate

(…) “Contrary to a number of major media outlets, from Bloomberg to The Wall Street Journal, nor does Mueller’s exculpatory finding actually mean that “Russiagate . . . is dead” and indeed that “it expired in an instant.” Such conclusions reveal a lack of historical and political understanding. Nearly three years of Russiagate’s toxic allegations have entered the American political-media elite bloodstream and they almost certainly will reappear again and again in one form of another.

This is an exceedingly grave danger because the real costs of Russiagate are not the estimated $25 to $40 million spent on the Mueller investigation but the corrosive damage it has already done to the institutions of American democracy—damage done not by an alleged “Trump-Putin axis” but by Russsigate’s perpetrators themselves. Having examined this collateral damage in my recently published book War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate, I will only note them here.

— Clamorous allegations that the Kremlin “attacked our elections” and thereby put Trump in the White House, despite the lack of any evidence, cast doubt on the legitimacy of American elections everywhere—national, state, and local. If true, or even suspected, how can voters have confidence in the electoral foundations of American democracy? Persistent demands to “secure our elections from hostile powers”— a politically and financially profitable mania, it seems—can only further abet and perpetuate declining confidence in the entire electoral process. Still more, if some crude Russian social media outputs could so dupe voters, what does this tell us about what US elites, which originated these allegations, really think of those voters, of the American people?

— Defamatory Russsiagate allegations that Trump was a “Kremlin puppet” and thus “illegitimate” were aimed at the president but hit the presidency itself, degrading the institution, bringing it under suspicion, casting doubt on its legitimacy. And if an “agent of a hostile foreign power” could occupy the White House once, a “Manchurian candidate,” why not again? Will Republicans be able to resist making such allegations against a future Democratic president? In any event, Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign manager, Robby Mook, has already told us that there will be a “next time.” (Read more: The Nation, 3/27/2019)

Tales of the New Cold War: 1 of 2: The Russiagate damage comes home to America. Stephen F. Cohen @NYU @Princeton EastWestAccord.com

Tales of the New Cold War: 2 of 2: The Russiagate damage comes home to America. Stephen F. Cohen @NYU @Princeton EastWestAccord.com

March 28, 2019 - Devin Nunes could submit a criminal referral for CIA Director John Brennan

Former CIA Director John Brennan lies at the heart of the intelligence community decision to weaponize against Donald Trump.  In this outline, I will make the case for a possible criminal referral by Devin Nunes.

The FBI’s formal origination of the counterintelligence investigation into candidate Donald Trump known as “Operation Crossfire Hurricane”, begins with a two-page memo submitted by former CIA Director John Brennan to former FBI Director James Comey.

The two-page origination memo is known as an “EC” or “electronic communication”.  This classified origination memo is one of the key documents requested by Congress for declassification by President Trump, to be shared with the American people.

According to House Intelligence Committee member Devin Nunes; who is also a member of the intelligence oversight ‘Gang-of-Eight’; that EC contains intelligence material that did not come through “official intelligence channels” into the U.S. intelligence apparatus.

On April 22nd, 2018, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes appeared on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the origin of the July 2016 counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign.

WATCH the first two minutes:

The origin of the 2016 counterintelligence operation was the Electronic Communication document, a ‘raw intelligence product’ delivered by CIA Director John Brennan to the FBI.

The EC was not an official product of the U.S. intelligence community. Additionally, Brennan was NOT using official partnerships with intelligence agencies of our Five-Eyes partner nations; and he did not provide raw intelligence –as an outcome of those relationships– to the FBI.

When we first watched this interview the initial questions were: if the EC is not based on official intelligence from U.S. intelligence apparatus or any of the ‘five-eyes’ partners, then what is the origin, source and purpose therein, of the unofficial raw intelligence? Who created it? And why?

Now we know many of the answers to those questions.

All research indicates CIA Director John Brennan enlisted the help of U.S. and foreign intelligence assets to run operations against the Trump campaign early in 2016. The objective was to give the false and manufactured appearance of compromise. Once the CIA established the possibility of compromise, that activity created the EC which opened the door for an FBI investigation.

The operation run by Brennan targeting Papadopoulos is at the center of the two-page “EC” (electronic communication); given to FBI Director James Comey to start the counterintelligence operation (Crossfire Hurricane) against the Trump campaign.  Two of the intelligence assets Brennan organized were Joseph Mifsud and Stefan Halper.

Yes, the primary intelligence source of John Brennan’s “EC” is was the operation run by FBI and CIA operative Stefan Halper. A great background on Halper is HERE.

In March 2018 Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller took a deep dive into how Stefan Halper interacted with George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.  Halper is sketchy, and he was trying to initiate contacts with low-level Trump campaign aides. [SEE HERE]

DAILY CALLER – Two months before the 2016 election, George Papadopoulos received a strange request for a meeting in London, one of several the young Trump adviser would be offered — and he would accept — during the presidential campaign.

The meeting request, which has not been reported until now, came from Stefan Halper, a foreign policy expert and Cambridge professor with connections to the CIA and its British counterpart, MI6.

Halper’s September 2016 outreach to Papadopoulos wasn’t his only contact with Trump campaign members. The 73-year-old professor, a veteran of three Republican administrations, met with two other campaign advisers, The Daily Caller News Foundation learned. (Please Keep Reading)

We now know Brennan’s originating structure involved Stefan Halper the foreign policy expert and Cambridge professor deeply connected to the CIA and willing to run the operation to benefit the political objective for CIA Director Brennan.  This is how John Brennan originates the “EC” through non-traditional intelligence channels.  The EC is then given to James Comey, who starts Operation Crossfire Hurricane on July 31st, 2016.

(NOTE: •On July 31st, 2016 the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign. They did not inform congress until March 2017. •At the beginning of August (1st-3rd) 2016 FBI Agent Peter Strzok traveled to London, England for interviews with UK intelligence officials. •On August 15th, 2016 Peter Strzok sends a text message to DOJ Lawyer Lisa Page describing the “insurance policy“, needed in case Hillary Clinton were to lose the election. That’s where Carter Page comes in.)

However, CIA Director John Brennan didn’t stop with simply originating the FBI investigation, he went on to promote additional material from his knowledge of the Christopher Steele Dossier.

This is the part that John Brennan has denied; however, the evidence proving his lies is overwhelming.

We start by remembering the sworn testimony of John Brennan to congress on May 23rd, 2017. Listen carefully to the opening statement from former CIA Director John Brennan and pay close attention to the segment at 13:35 of this video [transcribed below]:

Brennan: [13:35] “Third, through the so-called Gang-of-Eight process we kept congress apprised of these issues as we identified them.”

“Again, in consultation with the White House, I PERSONALLY briefed the full details of our understanding of Russian attempts to interfere in the election to congressional leadership; specifically: Senators Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Dianne Feinstein and Richard Burr; and to representatives Paul Ryan, Nancy Pelosi, Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff between 11th August and 6th September [2016], I provided the same briefing to each of the gang of eight members.”

“Given the highly sensitive nature of what was an active counter-intelligence case [that means the FBI], involving an ongoing Russian effort, to interfere in our presidential election, the full details of what we knew at the time were shared only with those members of congress; each of whom was accompanied by one senior staff member.”

Notice a few things from this testimony.  First, where Brennan says “in consultation with the White House“.  This is a direct connection between Brennan’s activity and President Obama, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Chief-of-Staff Denis McDonough, each of whom would have held knowledge of what Brennan was briefing to the Go8.

Secondly, Brennan is describing raw intelligence (obviously gathered prior to the Carter Page FISA Application/Warrant – October 21st, 2016) that he went on to brief the Gang-of-Eight (pictured below).  Notice Brennan said he did briefings “individually”.

Brennan also says in his testimony that he began the briefings on August 11th, 2016.  This is a key point because former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to James Comey on August 27th, 2016, as an outcome of his briefing by John Brennan. But it is the content of Reid’s letter that really matters.

In the last paragraph of Reid’s letter to Comey he notes something that is only cited within the Christopher Steele Dossier [full letter pdf here]:

This letter is August 27th, 2016.  The Trump advisor in the letter is Carter Page. The source of the information is Christopher Steele in his dossier. Two months later (October 21st, 2016) the FBI filed a FISA application against Carter Page using the Steele Dossier.

So what we are seeing here is CIA Director John Brennan briefing Harry Reid on the Steele dossier in August 2016, even before the dossier reached the FBI.  However, John Brennan has denied seeing the dossier until December of 2016.  A transparent lie.

Brennan goes on to testify the main substance of those 2016 Go8 briefings was the same as the main judgements of the January 2017 classified and unclassified intelligence assessments published by the CIA, FBI, DNI and NSA, ie. “The Intelligence Community Assessment” (ICA).

However, we know Brennan put material from the Dossier into the ICA.

We also know from Paul Sperry: “[…] A source close to the House investigation said Brennan himself selected the CIA and FBI analysts who worked on the ICA, and that they included former FBI counterespionage chief Peter Strzok.  “Strzok was the intermediary between Brennan and [former FBI Director James] Comey, and he was one of the authors of the ICA,” according to the source.” (link)

♦Summary so far:  During a period early in 2016 CIA Director John Brennan manufactured the material needed to start the FBI investigation on July 31st, 2016.  John Brennan also received information from within the Steele Dossier which he put into President Obama’s Daily Briefing and shared with the Gang of Eight.

Here’s where it gets even more interesting.

On December 15, 2016, Strzok and Page texted each other about a sister organization leaking to the mainstream media. The next day, December 16, Strzok texted Page again, this time to discuss an article in The Washington Post: “FBI in agreement with CIA that Russia aimed to help Trump win White House”, where Strzok argued that the Central Intelligence Agency is more capable of manipulating the press and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had the initial position, not the Central Intelligence Agency…

So it would seem that Brennan was leaking to the media and pushing hard on this same Russia narrative during the transition period.  It’s almost bizarre to see Brennan now saying “perhaps he had bad information”…  BRENNAN IS THE INFORMATION !!

Fucking Brennan.

Additionally, if you want to throw on an even more stunning layer upon this manipulation matrix, consider that Nellie Ohr was likely working for the CIA.

“I read an article in the paper that mentioned Glenn Simpson. And I remembered because he had been a Wall Street Journal reporter working on things like Russian crime and corruption, so I recognized the name. I was underemployed at that time and I was looking for opportunities.”

~ Nellie Ohr via congressional testimony

If Nellie Ohr, a known CIA open source contractor, sought out Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS for the job in 2015, not vice-versa, then it would appear a sting operation from within the CIA (John Brennan) was underway and long planned.  The evidence of this likelihood surfaces later from Brennan’s knowledge of the specific intelligence within the Steele Dossier as shared with Obama and briefed to Harry Reid in August 2016.

So let us recap:

♦In the first phase of this operation the CIA, likely Brennan, seeded Fusion GPS with information via Nellie Ohr.  After it became clear that Donald Trump would be the 2016 GOP candidate, that information was then piped-into another Fusion GPS contractor and former FBI Source, Chris Steele.  Steele then “laundered”, and returned the Ohr research material into an official intelligence product to the FBI. [The tool was Carter Page.]

♦Concurrently timed with the start of this first phase, Brennan was running an operation using Stephan Halper and Joseph Mifsud to generate the “EC” and initiate the FBI to begin a counterintelligence operation named Crossfire Hurricane. [The tool was George Papadopoulos]

This is why the media got/get somewhat confused with the origins of everything: Papadopoulous (Crossfire Hurricane) -vs- Carter Page (dossier into FISA); an origination confusion which still exists through today.

In essence we can see that John Brennan was the initiator manipulating everything, somewhat behind the scenes, for all of the activity (tangentially noted by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page in their text messages about the CIA leaks).   After the 2016 election, Brennan continued pushing the Steele Dossier into the media bloodstream as it carried the Russian Conspiracy virus he created.

During the time James Comey’s FBI was running operation Crossfire Hurricane, Comey admitted he intentionally never informed congressional oversight: “because of the sensitivity of the matter“.  I suspect he knew there was manipulation behind the events that initiated the construct; he was, however, willfully blind to it.

When Brennan now says in hindsight he might have received “bad information“, it’s laughable – because the information is his creation.

Now with all of that hindsight in mind, watch the first four minutes of this interview and pay attention to the duping delight:

Lastly, unlike other DOJ and FBI officials connected to the fraudulent exploitation of the FISA court, John Brennan is not attached to the ongoing DOJ Inspector General investigation being conducted by IG Horowitz. The inspector general is only looking at the process, procedures and people who were involved in submitting an unverified and likely fraudulent FISA application.  The list of the participants does not include anyone outside the DOJ and FBI process.

This means John Brennan, or any other Obama-era official outside the DOJ and FBI, can be referred for criminal investigation and that referral will not impede any ongoing investigation by IG Michael Horowitz.

That’s why Devin Nunes could likely submit a criminal referral for ¹John Brennan.

¹Or, NSA Advisor Susan Rice, ODNI James Clapper, or former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power (unmasking); or any other administration official who may have engaged in leaking and/or disseminating classified intelligence information.”

(Conservative Treehouse, 3/28/2019)  (Archive)

April 18, 2019 - Mueller’s own report undercuts its core Russia-meddling claims

“While the 448-page Mueller report found no conspiracy between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, it offered voluminous details to support the sweeping conclusion that the Kremlin worked to secure Trump’s victory. The report claims that the interference operation occurred “principally” on two fronts: Russian military intelligence officers hacked and leaked embarrassing Democratic Party documents, and a government-linked troll farm orchestrated a sophisticated and far-reaching social media campaign that denigrated Hillary Clinton and promoted Trump.

But a close examination of the report shows that none of those headline assertions are supported by the report’s evidence or other publicly available sources. They are further undercut by investigative shortcomings and the conflicts of interest of key players involved:

• The report uses qualified and vague language to describe key events, indicating that Mueller and his investigators do not actually know for certain whether Russian intelligence officers stole Democratic Party emails, or how those emails were transferred to WikiLeaks.
• The report’s timeline of events appears to defy logic. According to its narrative, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the publication of Democratic Party emails not only before he received the documents but before he even communicated with the source that provided them.
• There is strong reason to doubt Mueller’s suggestion that an alleged Russian cutout called Guccifer 2.0 supplied the stolen emails to Assange.
• Mueller’s decision not to interview Assange – a central figure who claims Russia was not behind the hack – suggests an unwillingness to explore avenues of evidence on fundamental questions.
• U.S. intelligence officials cannot make definitive conclusions about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee computer servers because they did not analyze those servers themselves. Instead, they relied on the forensics of CrowdStrike, a private contractor for the DNC that was not a neutral party, much as “Russian dossier” compiler Christopher Steele, also a DNC contractor, was not a neutral party. This puts two Democrat-hired contractors squarely behind underlying allegations in the affair – a key circumstance that Mueller ignores.
• Further, the government allowed CrowdStrike and the Democratic Party’s legal counsel to submit redacted records, meaning CrowdStrike and not the government decided what could be revealed or not regarding evidence of hacking.
• Mueller’s report conspicuously does not allege that the Russian government carried out the social media campaign. Instead it blames, as Mueller said in his closing remarks, “a private Russian entity” known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).
• Mueller also falls far short of proving that the Russian social campaign was sophisticated, or even more than minimally related to the 2016 election. As with the collusion and Russian hacking allegations, Democratic officials had a central and overlooked hand in generating the alarm about Russian social media activity.
• John Brennan, then director of the CIA, played a seminal and overlooked role in all facets of what became Mueller’s investigation: the suspicions that triggered the initial collusion probe; the allegations of Russian interference; and the intelligence assessment that purported to validate the interference allegations that Brennan himself helped generate. Yet Brennan has since revealed himself to be, like CrowdStrike and Steele, hardly a neutral party — in fact a partisan with a deep animus toward Trump.

Uncertainty Over Who Stole the Emails

The Mueller report’s narrative of Russian hacking and leaking was initially laid out in a July 2018 indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers and is detailed further in the report.  According to Mueller, operatives at Russia’s main intelligence agency, the GRU, broke into Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta’s emails in March 2016. The hackers infiltrated Podesta’s account with a common tactic called spear-phishing, duping him with a phony security alert that led him to enter his password. The GRU then used stolen Democratic Party credentials to hack into the DNC and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) servers beginning in April 2016. Beginning in June 2016, the report claims, the GRU created two online personas, “DCLeaks” and “Guccifer 2.0,” to begin releasing the stolen material. After making contact later that month, Guccifer 2.0 apparently transferred the DNC emails to the whistleblowing, anti-secrecy publisher WikiLeaks, which released the first batch on July 22 ahead of the Democratic National Convention.

The report presents this narrative with remarkable specificity: It describes in detail how GRU officers installed malware, leased U.S.-based computers, and used cryptocurrencies to carry out their hacking operation. The intelligence that caught the GRU hackers is portrayed as so invasive and precise that it even captured the keystrokes of individual Russian officers, including their use of search engines.

In fact, the report contains crucial gaps in the evidence that might support that authoritative account. Here is how it describes the core crime under investigation, the alleged GRU theft of DNC emails:

Between approximately May 25, 2016 and June 1, 2016, GRU officers accessed the DNC’s mail server from a GRU-controlled computer leased inside the United States. During these connections, Unit 26165 officers appear to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments, which were later released by WikiLeaks in July 2016. [Italics added for emphasis.]

The report’s use of that one word, “appear,” undercuts its suggestions that Mueller possesses convincing evidence that GRU officers stole “thousands of emails and attachments” from DNC servers. It is a departure from the language used in his July 2018 indictment, which contained no such qualifier:

“It’s certainly curious as to why this discrepancy exists between the language of Mueller’s indictment and the extra wiggle room inserted into his report a year later,” says former FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley. “It may be an example of this and other existing gaps that are inherent with the use of circumstantial information.  With Mueller’s exercise of quite unprecedented (but politically expedient) extraterritorial jurisdiction to indict foreign intelligence operatives who were never expected to contest his conclusory assertions in court, he didn’t have to worry about precision. I would guess, however, that even though NSA may be able to track some hacking operations, it would be inherently difficult, if not impossible, to connect specific individuals to the computer transfer operations in question.”

The report also concedes that Mueller’s team did not determine another critical component of the crime it alleges: how the stolen Democratic material was transferred to WikiLeaks. The July 2018 indictment of GRU officers suggested – without stating outright – that WikiLeaks published the Democratic Party emails after receiving them from Guccifer 2.0 in a file named “wk dnc linkI .txt.gpg” on or around July 14, 2016. But now the report acknowledges that Mueller has not actually established how WikiLeaks acquired the stolen information: “The Office cannot rule out that stolen documents were transferred to WikiLeaks through intermediaries who visited during the summer of 2016.”

Another partially redacted passage also suggests that Mueller cannot trace exactly how WikiLeaks received the stolen emails. Given how the sentence is formulated, the redacted portion could reflect Mueller’s uncertainty:

Contrary to Mueller’s sweeping conclusions, the report itself is, at best, suggesting that the GRU, via its purported cutout Guccifer 2.0, may have transferred the stolen emails to WikiLeaks. ”

Aaron Mate’ addresses each of the bullet points above in much greater detail at: (RealClearInvestigations, 7/05/2019)