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Thread: Fraud Upon the FISA Court Confirmed

  1. #391
    Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) says he is tabling his efforts to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after having several meetings with Republican leadership, stating that he would instead pursue contempt if the Justice Department (DOJ) does not turn over documents Congress is seeking.
    While the impeachment option remains on the table, Meadows told reporters Thursday he now hopes it will be a contempt process rather than impeachment.

    More at: http://thehill.com/policy/national-s...contempt-after
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment



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  3. #392
    Opposition research firm Fusion GPS was dealt a major blow on Tuesday when the a federal judge in a lawsuit against BuzzFeed ordered them to answer a wide-ranging series of questions on the infamous Steele dossier, reports the Daily Caller's Chuck Ross.

    U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro issued the decision Tuesday in a defamation lawsuit a Russian tech executive filed against BuzzFeed News, which published the dossier on Jan. 10, 2017.
    The trial is scheduled to begin in Miami in November.
    Ungaro ruled that attorneys for the executive, Aleksej Gubarev, can ask Fusion GPS representatives in a deposition about the firm’s dossier clients, its efforts to verify the dossier, its decision to hire dossier author Christopher Steele and its interactions with government officials and media outlets, including BuzzFeed. -Daily Caller
    “This ruling gave us everything that we had hoped for,” Evan Fray-Witzer, a lawyer for Gubarev, told The Daily Caller News Foundation - adding “After a year of trying everything they could think of to avoid being deposed, Fusion is finally going to have to sit down and answer our questions."

    More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...steele-dossier
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment



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  5. #393
    Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said on Sunday that if the Department of Justice doesn’t hand over documents that Congress has requested, he and other lawmakers will force a vote on the impeachment of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
    “If they don’t give us the information that we, as a separate and equal branch of government are entitled to have in order to get answers for the American people, then we will actually call to vote for the impeachment of Rod Rosenstein,” Jordan told radio host John Catsimatidis in an interview on AM 970 in New York.

    More at: http://thehill.com/homenews/house/39...peachment-vote
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  6. #394
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  7. #395
    Did the Central Intelligence Agency lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation down a rabbit hole in the counterintelligence investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign?
    Although the FBI’s case officially began July 31, 2016, there had been investigative activity before that date. John Brennan’s CIA might have directed activity in Britain, which could be a problem because of longstanding agreements that the U.S. will not conduct intelligence operations there. It would explain why the FBI continues to stonewall Congress as to the inquiry’s origin.
    Further, what we know about the case’s origin does not meet the threshold required by the attorney general guidelines for opening a counterintelligence case. That standard requires “predicate information,” or “articulable facts.”

    More at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-ar...ing-1533078662
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  8. #396
    Anti-Trump FBI agent Peter Strzok insisted on preserving his security clearance and powers he held as a deputy assistant director at the agency before joining Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, newly released emails show.
    The emails, acquired by the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch, reveal that Strzok’s supervisor agreed to make him a “floating” deputy who would be able to approve national security letters and declassify documents – all while working on the Mueller team investigating the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with the Russian government.
    “Broadly, I need to be able to act at least in the capacity of my old CD [counterintelligence division] DAD [deputy assistant director] job – approve NSLs [national security letters], conduct [redacted] declassify information, [redacted] agent travel, requisitions, etc. Of those, the most problematic and one of the most essential is declassification authority,” Strzok wrote in an email to Bill Priestap, FBI counterintelligence chief, dated July 13, 2017.


    Priestap wrote back a few days later, saying his request was approved: “In answer to your initial question, while assigned to the special counsel’s office, you will retain your CD DAD authorities to include declassification authority.”
    “Assuming the 7th floor approves, you will remain on CD’s books as a fourth (floating) DAD. When you move on from your DAD position, your DAD slot will revert back to HRD [human resources department],” he added.


    Strzok's insistence on keeping the declassification authority raises concerns whether such authority gave the Mueller investigation special capabilities to target President Trump.
    “It sure did,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told Fox News. “Strzok wouldn't have asked for it if he didn't think it'd be useful in his new job.”
    “He wanted the authority to issue national security letters, which essentially are secret requests for information that fall short of needing court approval,” Fitton continued. “He also wanted – and he said this was ‘essential,’ which is very unusual – he wanted the ability to declassify information. He wanted to keep that ability.”

    More at: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018...ails-show.html
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  9. #397
    In the last 48 hours, the FBI has released two caches of documents through their "FBI Vault" website related to the 2016 US election. One sheds light on the agency's relationship with Christopher Steele, while the other reveals that disgraced agent Peter Strzok waited until after the 2016 election to have Anthony Weiner's laptop analyzed for hacking.

    The 71-page release of heavily redacted records concerning former MI6 spy Christopher Steele reveals that he was paid by the agency over an unknown period of time - at least 11 times during 2016, and that Steele was admonished by the agency for unknown reasons in February, 2016.
    An example of the heavily redacted forms noting Steele's payments as well as his admonishment:


    Steele compiled the infamous and largely unverified "Steele Dossier," which was funded in part by the Clinton campaign and used by the FBI as a foundational document to apply for a surveillance warrant on Trump associate Carter Page. The records were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by watchdog organization Judicial Watch.
    What's already known is that the FBI offered to pay Steele $50,000 if he could verify the claims in his dossier - and ultimately did not pay him for that specific deliverable.
    Mr. Steele met his F.B.I. contact in Rome in early October [2016], bringing a stack of new intelligence reports. One, dated Sept. 14, said that Mr. Putin was facing “fallout” over his apparent involvement in the D.N.C. hack and was receiving “conflicting advice” on what to do.
    The agent said that if Mr. Steele could get solid corroboration of his reports, the F.B.I. would pay him $50,000 for his efforts, according to two people familiar with the offer. Ultimately, he was not paid. -NYT
    Strzok sat on Weiner laptop

    Another FBI vault release under the "Hillary Clinton" files (Part 24 of 24) reveals that disgraced counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok waited until November 9th, 2016 to submit the hard drive from what is believed to be Anthony Weiner's laptop to the FBI's forensics team to investigate whether the device had been hacked - something they told a Judge was a concern to justify their October 30 search warrant application.

    It's already known that the FBI sat on the Weiner laptop, which the agency knew contained Clinton emails as early as September 28, 2016, yet former FBI Director James Comey wasn't briefed on the newfound emails until October 27, 2016. The FBI famously analyzed 350,000 emails and 344,000 blackberry communications in just a few days (Oct. 30 - Nov. 5, 2016).
    However as the Conservative Treehouse and others have noted, Strzok waited until November 9 - one day after Hillary Clinton's loss, to submit the laptop's hard drive to the forensics team.
    Via the Conservative Treehouse:

    From this page (15): The day after the 2016 election Peter Strzok is asking the FBI forensics data lab to run an intrusion analysis of Huma Abedin’s laptop hard drive.

    From This Page (16): The day after the 2016 election specific instructions to look for “evidence of intrusion."
    Item 4.4: “List any previous efforts to analyze this evidence”: “None”

    In other words, the FBI told a judge that hacking was a concern in their October 30 warrant, yet waited until after the election to investigate whether there were any intrusions.

    More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...t-weiner-probe
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  10. #398
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    In other words, the FBI told a judge that hacking was a concern in their October 30 warrant, yet waited until after the election to investigate whether there were any intrusions.
    Nothing to see here. They were probably busy doing other, higher priority things. FBI is generally short staffed and good agents are hard to find.

  11. #399

  12. #400
    After months of dribbling out incomplete document requests made by frustrated GOP lawmakers, President Trump may be about to override Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and use his presidential authority to declassify several caches of information related to the DOJ/FBI's ongoing Trump-Russia counterintelligence operation, according to former IBD Bureau Chief Paul Sperry.
    Sperry tweeted on Sunday that President Trump may declassify: 20 redacted pages of a June, 2017 FISA renewal, "and possibly" 63 pages of emails and notes between "Ohr & Steele," and FD-302 summaries of 12 interviews - In reference to twice-demoted DOJ official Bruce Ohr and/or his wife Nellie, both of whom were working with opposition research firm Fusion GPS to investigate Trump.
    Look this month for POTUS to declassify ...

    -- 20 redacted pages of June 2017 FISA renewal

    ... and possibly ...

    -- 63 pages of emails and notes b/t Ohr & Steele

    -- FD-302 summaries of 12 FBI interviews w/ Ohr re Steele

    ... and watch Dems and media toadies become apoplectic
    — Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) August 5, 2018

    More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...sa-docs-report
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment



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  14. #401
    Account Restricted. Admin to review account standing


    Posts
    28,739
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
    The old man is knee deep in it!




  15. #402
    The Department of Justice has been ordered by a federal court to preserve federal records from the personal email accounts of former FBI Director James Comey, following a joint motion by the Daily Caller and Judicial Watch to compel the preservation.

    Via Judicial Watch:
    In the motion, Judicial Watch argued that “there is reason to be concerned that the responsive records could be lost or destroyed.” Judicial Watch pointed out that in June 2018, the DOJ’s Inspector General stated,We identified numerous instances in which Comey used a personal email account (a Gmail account) to conduct FBI business.” The Justice Department, in response to Judicial Watch’s concerns, sent Mr. Comey a letter asking him to preserve records but refused to make the letter available and opposed a preservation order.
    In granting the motion for a preservation order, the court ruled:
    [T]he Court will allow [the DOJ] until September 28, 2018 to complete its review and release of any responsive, non-exempt records to Plaintiffs. That being said, [the DOJ] is also ORDERED to make rolling productions between today and September 28, 2018, at reasonable intervals, of any records that are reviewed and found to be responsive and non-exempt.
    ***
    In order to avoid any possible issues later in this litigation, the Court will GRANT [Judicial Watch’s] Motion. [The DOJ] is ORDERED to take all necessary and reasonable steps to ensure that any records that are potentially responsive to either of the Plaintiffs’ FOIA requests located on former Director Comey’s personal e-mail account are preserved. Although it contends that such an order is unnecessary, [the DOJ] has not explained why this preservation order would prejudice Defendant or cause any undue burden.
    BREAKING: JW announced that a federal court ordered the DOJ to preserve federal records in the personal email of fired FBI Director James Comey – a big court win for JW & @DailyCaller News Foundation after our motion was opposed by the DOJ & FBI. (1/6)https://t.co/iQ3i3amCPm
    — Judicial Watch �� (@JudicialWatch) August 7, 2018
    JW argued that “there is reason to be concerned that the responsive records could be lost or destroyed.” As DOJ’s IG stated, “We identified numerous instances in which Comey used a personal email account (a Gmail account) to conduct FBI business.” (2/6)https://t.co/iQ3i3amCPm
    — Judicial Watch �� (@JudicialWatch) August 7, 2018
    In response to JW’s concerns, the Justice Department said it sent James Comey a letter asking him to preserve relevant government records in his possession – but refused to make the letter available & opposed a preservation order from the court. (3/6)https://t.co/iQ3i3amCPm
    — Judicial Watch �� (@JudicialWatch) August 7, 2018
    The federal court ruled: “[The DOJ] is ORDERED to take all necessary & reasonable steps to ensure any records that are potentially responsive to either of [JW's] FOIA requests located on former Director Comey’s personal e-mail account are preserved.” (4/6)https://t.co/iQ3i3amCPm
    — Judicial Watch �� (@JudicialWatch) August 7, 2018
    JW President @TomFitton: “The FBI has been playing shell games with Comey’s records and other records, so we’re pleased the court issued this preservation order.” (5/6)https://t.co/iQ3i3amCPm
    — Judicial Watch �� (@JudicialWatch) August 7, 2018
    JW President @TomFitton: “This preservation order helps to ensures no Comey records are going to be lost or destroyed. We expect the DOJ to take immediate steps to make sure the records are preserved, as the court ordered.” (6/6)https://t.co/iQ3i3amCPm
    — Judicial Watch �� (@JudicialWatch) August 7, 2018
    In her ruling, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly made clear: "This Order should not be interpreted in any way as indicating that the Court has taken any position as to whether the former Director’s e-mail account will contain any responsive records. It also should not be interpreted in any way as expressing any concern on the Court’s behalf that Defendant or Director Comey would lose or purposefully destroy responsive records."

    More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...-email-records
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  16. #403
    The former British spy who used Kremlin sources to assemble a Clinton-funded anti-Trump dossier, which the Obama administration used to spy on the Trump campaign, had extensive contacts with the Department of Justice's #4 official before and after the FBI opened its Trump-Russia probe in the summer of 2016, according to new emails recently turned over to Congressional investigators.
    That official, Bruce Ohr, was demoted twice after the DOJ's Inspector General discovered that he lied about his involvement with opposition research firm Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson - who employed Steele. Ohr's CIA-linked wife, Nellie, was also employed by Fusion as part of the firm's anti-Trump efforts, and had ongoing communications with the ex-UK spy, Christopher Steele as well.






    In short, Steele was much closer to the Obama administration than previously disclosed, and his DOJ contact Bruce Ohr reported directly to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates - who approved at least one of the FISA warrants to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
    Steele and the Ohrs would have breakfast together on July 30 at the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington D.C., while Steele turned in installments of his infamous "dossier" on July 19 and 26. The breakfast also occurred one day before the FBI formally launched operation "Crossfire Hurricane," the agency's counterintelligence operation into the Trump campaign.
    “Great to see you and Nellie this morning Bruce,” Steele wrote shortly following their breakfast meeting. “Let’s keep in touch on the substantive issues/s (sic). Glenn is happy to speak to you on this if it would help.”
    Calendar notations and handwritten notes indicate Ohr followed up on Steele’s offer and met with Simpson on Aug. 22, 2016. Ohr’s notes indicate Simpson identified several “possible intermediaries” between the Trump campaign and Russia.
    One was identified as a “longtime associate of Trump” who “put together several real estate deals for Russian investigators to purchase Trump properties.” Another was a Russian apparently tied to Carter Page, Ohr’s note of his Simpson contact indicated.
    Steele offered Ohr many other theories over their contacts, including a now widely discredited one that the Russian Alfa Bank had a computer server “as a link” to the Trump campaign, Ohr’s notes show.
    ...
    In all, Ohr’s notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence probes in recent American history. -The Hill

    Bruce Ohr and wife Nellie, who Fusion GPS hired for anti-Trump effort

    Disturbingly, Steele appears to have been lobbying for a Putin-linked Russian oligarch and Paul Manafort associate, Oleg Deripaska, while the former UK spy was also involved in the anti-Trump effort - asking Bruce Ohr to "monitor" Deripaska's efforts to obtain a Visa to attend an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in the US.
    [Perhaps this explains why the Obama administration granted Russian Trump-hating lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya - a Fusion GPS associate - a special visa under "extraordinary circumstances" to enter the US and participate in the Trump Tower meeting and a DOJ lawsuit against her Russian client, Denis Katsyv.]
    Steele asked Ohr, the #4 official at DOJ, to "monitor" any developments in Deripaska's visa case. Ohr said he would. Was Steele working for Deripaska? His attorney, Adam Waldman, registered under FARA for his work in lobbying for Deripaska's visa. https://t.co/EgwicnsyHT pic.twitter.com/AkIAxoRltg
    — Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) August 9, 2018
    Emails in 2016 between former British spy Christopher Steele and Justice Department official Bruce Ohr suggest Steele was deeply concerned about the legal status of a Putin-linked Russian oligarch, and at times seemed to be advocating on the oligarch's behalf, in the same time period Steele worked on collecting the Russia-related allegations against Donald Trump that came to be known as the Trump dossier. The emails show Steele and Ohr were in frequent contact, that they intermingled talk about Steele's research and the oligarch's affairs, and that Glenn Simpson, head of the dirt-digging group Fusion GPS that hired Steele to compile the dossier, was also part of the ongoing conversation. -Washington Examiner
    Dossier author Christopher Steele was likely working for Putin-linked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska at the exact same time he was telling Hillary and the press that Trump’s alleged ties to Russia were treason. https://t.co/jEXY2NM5hg
    — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) August 9, 2018



    With recent comments by President Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani suggesting there's evidence the American public hasn't seen, one has to wonder what we need to "stay tuned" for...
    This is an illegally brought Rigged Witch Hunt run by people who are totally corrupt and/or conflicted. It was started and paid for by Crooked Hillary and the Democrats. Phony Dossier, FISA disgrace and so many lying and dishonest people already fired. 17 Angry Dems? Stay tuned!
    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2018
    More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...hile-compiling
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  17. #404
    A memory stick quietly exchanged in a coffee shop.
    An admission of a “Hail Mary” leak.
    An unmistakable effort to push the Russia investigation closer to Donald Trump’s inner circle with uncorroborated tales.
    Those are just some of the highlights from the day that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson — paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to find dirt on her GOP rival — met secretly with a top Justice Department official, right after Trump won the 2016 election.
    And all of it was captured in the official’s handwritten notes — a contemporaneous record that intelligence professionals tell me exposes the flaws plaguing the early Russia collusion case.
    For example, Simpson told then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr during the Dec. 10, 2016, meeting in a Washington coffee shop that he believed Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, was the “go-between from Russia to the Trump campaign.”
    Yet, Simpson allegedly acknowledged that most of the information Fusion GPS and British intelligence operative Christopher Steele developed did not come from sources inside Moscow. “Much of the collection about the Trump campaign ties to Russia comes from a former Russian intelligence officer (? not entirely clear) who lives in the U.S.,” Ohr scribbled in his notes.
    In those notes, Ohr repeatedly misspells Simpson’s first name as “Glen.”
    Cohen has emphatically and repeatedly denied any role in connecting Russia to the Trump campaign. His lawyer, Lanny Davis, declined comment Thursday.
    Simpson admitted in sworn testimony last year to the House Intelligence Committee that he had contact with Ohr after Trump’s election victory. But Ohr’s notes provide the first detailed public account of what the two men actually discussed.
    Congressional investigators now are scouring them for evidence that Simpson and Steele had influence over the Russia probe, even after Steele was dismissed as an FBI informant in November 2016. Investigators want to know if any players in the Russia probe gave Congress false testimony.
    One notation that stands out is Simpson’s account that he asked Steele to talk with Mother Jones reporter David Corn about their muckraking on Trump and Russia in the final days of the election. At the time, Steele still worked as an FBI source.
    Corn’s Oct. 31, 2016, story was one of the most definitive to allege possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow, creating an important talking point for Democrats in the final days of the campaign.
    “Glen asked Chris to speak to the Mother Jones reporter. It was Glen’s Hail Mary attempt,” Ohr wrote.
    When Simpson testified before Congress, he said he and Steele acted out of a sense of duty. “For him it was professional obligations. I mean, for both of us it was citizenship. You know, people report crimes all the time,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
    In his House testimony, though, he conceded not knowing if what he and Steele dug up amounted to a crime: “At the time that we — you know, that Chris decided to take this to the FBI, I wasn't convinced of the facts of anything in terms of — I wasn't convinced that there was a specific crime that occurred.”
    So, congressional investigators want to know why — if Simpson acted purely on the basis of civic duty — he and Steele went to the press shortly before Election Day with allegations before the FBI completed its work.
    Simpson’s lawyer, Josh Levy, did not return a call seeking comment.
    Much of the other information attributed to Simpson that December day, according to Ohr’s notes, involved admittedly uncorroborated allegations — such as claims that a computer server in a Russian-owned bank was secretly transmitting messages to the Trump campaign, or that the NRA was secretly taking money from a Russian official. Many of the claims eventually made their way into news reports.
    Ohr made clear he took possession of some evidence from Simpson, writing: “Glen gave me a memory stick.”
    Early on, Ohr’s notes detail, the conversation focused on a theory apparently offered by Simpson that revolving Trump team members — former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, followed by informal adviser Carter Page, then Cohen — forged a secret channel with Moscow to hijack the election.
    All three men long have been cited in the Russia investigation; each denies any coordination with Russia. But Ohr’s notes are the first to quote Simpson as suggesting the three essentially were shark-tooth spies who replaced each other in a secret plot.
    “He identified Michael Cohen, a lawyer in Brooklyn w. Russian (Brighton Beach) clients, as the go-between from Russia to the Trump campaign who replaced Manafort and Carter Page,” Ohr’s notes read, quoting Simpson’s alleged narrative.
    The notes suggest guilt by association, citing Cohen’s wife and suggesting one of Cohen’s in-laws had real estate dealings in Moscow “with ties to the Kremlin.”
    “Cohen may have attended a meeting in Prague, possibly in September, about this,” Ohr quoted Simpson as saying — a claim that became public a month later, in January 2017, when BuzzFeed published a version of Steele’s uncorroborated dossier.
    Cohen’s lawyers have rebutted every mention of their client in the dossier, pointedly noting he has never been to Prague.
    Cohen, now under investigation by federal prosecutors in New York, has hinted he may have information damaging to Trump. But special counsel Robert Mueller has signaled he's not currently interested in Cohen, letting U.S. attorneys in Manhattan take the first crack at his case.
    Two days after Ohr's meeting with Simpson, the senior Justice Department official met with the FBI and submitted to an interview about what he had learned.
    I shared the Ohr notes I obtained to career intelligence professionals with years of experience analyzing data, sorting the reliable from the garbage.
    All had the same reaction: The information, on face value, has the lowest level of credibility. It was second- or third-hand, they noted, and couched with lots of caveats like “may,” “possibly” and “others disagree.”
    The alleged Simpson statement that he went to the media as a “Hail Mary” stood out to those professionals as an act of desperation that they would see as weighing against the motives of an intelligence source.
    A couple of the experts flagged that most of what Simpson allegedly told Ohr was not from Moscow — where the alleged plot was supposed to be based — but from a reported Russian in the United States who later seemed to disappear, according to Ohr’s notes.
    “First thing I’m wondering is whether that Russian was part of a ‘kompromat' operation to further roil the U.S. election rather than a whistleblower,” one of the experts opined.
    And all wondered why a Justice official — Ohr — who was not in the chain of command in the Russia counterintelligence probe, and whose wife worked for Fusion GPS on the Trump project, interviewed Simpson at all.
    The Ohr interview and many other now-public actions in the Russia collusion case are “breaking every protocol at the fundamental level of intelligence gathering,” one highly decorated intelligence professional told me.
    Whatever their assessment, Congress has a wide, new mandate to investigate the Simpson-Ohr-Steele contacts with renewed vigor and lots of questions that did not exist just a few short weeks ago: What was on the memory stick? What did Ohr do with the information? Did the FBI rely on it for future court actions? Did the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court that approved surveillance warrants know Ohr was getting information from the Simpson-Steele operation after Steele had been dismissed?
    Those answers could make for a long, politically hot autumn in Washington.

    http://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/401...oj-about-trump
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  18. #405
    House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) warned of possible subpoenas if the Justice Department ignores congressional committees' requests to question former FBI official Bruce Ohr and others about the infamous anti-Trump dossier.
    Gowdy referenced reports from Fox News and The Hill, which recall how Ohr -- who was not involved in the use of ex-British spy Christopher Steele as an FBI source -- continued to communicate with Steele after the FBI cut ties with him.


    House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) is reportedly preparing subpoenas for the Ohrs, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson and other current and former FBI and DOJ officials, according to two congressional sources familiar with the matter.
    "Chairman Goodlatte is a patient man, but we have run out of patience," Gowdy said.
    "[The DOJ] either needs to set this for a date-certain, or there will be a subpoena issued."

    More at: http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/08/1...e-trump-russia
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  19. #406
    How many times have they ran out of patience already?

  20. #407

  21. #408
    Oversight committee's appear to be good day time drama at best. What good is it to call people to testify or even demand that they testify with threat of contempt and or perjury when repeatedly over and over people perjure themselves and information that is demanded is not supplied and nothing ever happens. After watching many hours of these charades over the years I can definitely say that the validity of these hearings are as meaningful or as real as Pro Wrestling at best.



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  23. #409

    Rudy Giuliani: 'The Guy Running It Was Brennan'

    https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article...it-was-brennan

    August 14, 2018

    Former CIA Director John Brennan, a man who repeatedly blasts President Donald Trump -- even accusing him of treason after the Helsinki summit -- was the "quarterback" behind the Trump-Russia investigation that is so riddled with irregularities, Rudy Giuliani told Fox News's Sean Hannity Monday night.

    President Trump's attorney is demanding an independent counsel to "investigate the investigators."

    "I'm going to tell you who was the quarterback for all of this," Giuliani said. "(Former FBI Agent Peter) Strzok, he's a bit of a puppet. Then there's Mueller, he's a puppet...The guy running it is Brennan. And he should be in front of a grand jury."

    Giuliani said Brennan took a "false" dossier ("you can look at it and laugh at it") and peddled it to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

    “That led to the request for the investigation,” Giuliani continued. “So he takes a false...dossier; he get the senators involved, and a couple of Republican senators; and they demand an investigation. A totally phony investigation.

    “Now, why can't we get an investigation when there are clear facts showing possible violations of the law? Even in the order appointing Mueller, which is completely illegitimate, they don't point out any crime. You have to point out a crime under the independent counsel regulations. They don't point it out, Giuliani said.

    "We have lots of crimes and we can't get (Attorney General Jeff) Sessions to move and appoint an independent counsel. He's, look, he's recused from everything. And (Deputy Attorney General Rod) Rosenstein is too much involved in it. And they're possible witnesses.”

    Hannity noted that Rosenstein signed the fourth and final FISA warrant to surveil former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.

    “And that's why he's a possible witness," Giuliani said. "Independent counsel to investigate the investigators," he offered as the segment wrapped up.

    In early June, Brennan told MSNBC, "I didn't put eyes on the Steele dossier until December of 2016, after the election, but yet people claim that I was the one that was sharing it around town and briefing it. That is not true," Brennan said.

    In his interview with Hannity Monday night, Giuliani said the Steele dossier compiled by a former British spy was "provably false," a "cut and paste job by a down and out ex-spy, English spy, who hated Trump and was paid by the Hillary Clinton and the DNC."

    Giuliani said the Trump Justice Department is hiding the affidavits, based on the dossier, that were used to get FISA warrants on Carter Page.

    "Well, my goodness, here are the things we need to know about it. Was the fact that Hillary Clinton and DNC-- the people who paid for this -- was that pointed out to the judge? Because if it wasn't you've got a glaring omission,” Giuliani said.

    “Was it pointed out during the course of this that Steele was fired by the FBI? Were problems in his background exposed to the judge? I mean, when you present this guy, was he presented as a fully reliable informant or were the questions -- you have to do that in an affidavit. I wrote many of these affidavits.”

    Giuliani said it would have been a "nonstarter" if the FISA court was not told that Clinton and the Democrats paid for the dirt on Trump.

    "So here's the point," Giuliani said. "Strzok created a false document. When we say is there any evidence that his bias led to action that he took against Trump? Yeah. He perjured himself in the affidavit in order to start his insurance policy investigation.

    “They were hoping they could do something with that before the election, but they ran into the same problem Mueller runs into. The president didn't do anything wrong. They couldn't find any evidence. They struck out.”

  24. #410
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post


    Ohr and his beautiful wife.


  25. #411
    Jan2017
    Member

    Quote Originally Posted by timosman View Post
    Ohr and his beautiful wife.
    A marriage made in . . . Hades

    We will watch them . . . one after another . . . wanting immunity in exchange for their testimony.

    A sure way to get nothing - called the ' Rosenstein Uranium One Technique.'

  26. #412
    In March, 2017, two days before former FBI Director James Comey testified to lawmakers that the bureau had an open counterintelligence investigation into President Trump’s campaign, former British spy Christopher Steele sent an urgent message to Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr hoping that “important firewalls will hold” when Comey testified.

    The text message from Steele, who compiled the infamous unverified dossier on Trump, was sent on March 18, 2017, to Ohr and obtained by SaraACarter.com from a government source, familiar with the ongoing investigation.

    In the text, Steele writes Ohr, “Hi! Just wondering if you had any news? Obviously, we’re a bit apprehensive given scheduled appearance at Congress on Monday. Hoping that important firewalls will hold. Many thanks.”
    Ohr writes back later that day, saying “Sorry, no new news. I believe my earlier information is still accurate. I will let you know immediately if there is any change.”
    It is not certain, based on the limited communications obtained by Congress between the pair, what Ohr was referring to when he discussed “earlier information” that he delivered to Steele.
    The exchange raises questions, according to a government source who asked, “What did Steele mean by important firewalls before Comey testimony? And what did Ohr mean by earlier information he provided?” The source noted that the ‘firewall’ statement seemed raise similar questions posed by lawmakers after (now-fired) FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok sent the infamous “insurance policy” texts to his paramour, former FBI Attorney Lisa Page.


    Last week, SaraACarter.com published a law enforcement sensitive document written by Ohr that raised serious concerns among lawmakers regarding his possible contacts with FBI agents involved in the Russia-Trump bureau investigation.
    Months before Comey’s testimony, on Nov. 21, 2016, the handwritten document by Ohr lists a possible meeting with Strzok, Page and Special Agent Joe Pientka (who along with Strzok interviewed former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn). The document is one of several hundred documents obtained by lawmakers after long battles with the DOJ.
    In the handwritten note, Ohr jots down, “no prosecution yet, pushing ahead on M case,” in reference to Paul Manafort, who is now facing years old charges on financial crimes and money laundering.
    Ohr also wrote on the same memo, “may go back to Chris,” in reference to Christopher Steele.

    More at: https://saraacarter.com/exclusive-st...lls-will-hold/
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  27. #413
    Rosenstein’s testimony detailing the FISA application approval process presents three possible scenarios that could explain how he did not know that Steele remained a source for the Russia investigation by feeding the intel through Ohr.
    First, it is possible the FBI did not include any information in the June 2017 FISA application that Steele or Simpson fed through Ohr to the FBI. However, without access to the unredacted FISA applications and the FBI 302 interview summary forms, it is impossible to assess whether the final FISA applications included Steele (or Simpson’s) post-November 2016 intel.
    A second possibility? The FBI agents involved in drafting the revised FISA applications could have included information Steele or Simpson filtered through Ohr, without naming the Fusion GPS sources or mentioning Ohr. But, again, it is impossible to know whether the FBI played this sleight of hand without access to the unredacted FISA application and 302 interview summaries. (Of course, the congressional oversight committees could assess this point.)
    Finally, the FISA application could have laid out Steele, Simpson, and Ohr’s role in the intel-gathering, but the team of attorneys from the DOJ who briefed Rosenstein on the application might have concealed Ohr’s involvement from Rosenstein. This possibility seems unlikely given that, in questioning Rosenstein, the congressmen made no reference to the FISA application revealing Ohr’s role as an intermediary.
    One congressman noted, though, that the FISA renewal application lists the name of “the people that briefed [Rosenstein] on the substance of that FISA renewal.” Was Ohr one of the individuals involved in briefing Rosenstein? If so, it would seem Ohr intentionally kept his boss in the dark on Steele’s continued role in the Russia investigation.


    Rosenstein’s congressional testimony added another peculiarity to ponder. In discussing Ohr’s misconduct, he stressed as “important” the fact that Ohr is a “career employee” of the DOJ, and that when he arrived, Ohr was already part of the office. Rosenstein said he “never involved” Ohr with the Russia investigation or “assigned” him any role in it. So, that raises the question: Who from the DOJ did assign Ohr to the investigation?
    The texts and emails between Steele and Ohr provide a suggestion. As Solomon reported, Ohr’s involvement with the Russia investigation dated to the beginning of Steele’s involvement. Steele wrote to Ohr on July 1, 2016: “There is something separate I wanted to discuss with you informally and separately. It concerns our favourite business tycoon!”
    That note came a mere four days before Steele first met with an FBI attaché stationed in Rome to share the initial portions of his Trump dossier. Then on July 30, 2016 — the day before the FBI officially launched its investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia — Ohr met with Steele in person in Washington DC.
    At that time, Ohr served under then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who remained in her post through Jan. 30, 2017, when Trump fired her for refusing to defend his travel ban. That means Ohr reported to Yates in November 2016, when he began filtering information from Steele to the FBI, including on Dec. 13, 2016, which was the date of the final report by Steele included in the dossier.
    It also means that Yates oversaw Ohr’s work on Dec. 10, 2016, when he met with Steele’s Fusion GPS boss, Simpson, to gather more details of Fusion GPS’s research on Trump. Additionally, during the time Ohr served under Yates and acted as a conduit for Steele’s intel, the FBI interviewed him a total of seven times.
    Significantly, Yates approved the January 2017 FISA application to spy on Page, which potentially included the intel Ohr relayed to the FBI from November until January, in contravention of the FBI’s termination of Steele as a source.
    We don’t know what Yates knew about Ohr’s role. When Yates testified before Congress in May 2017 about the Russia investigation, Ohr’s involvement was still secret, leading the Senate Judiciary Committee to focus instead on her role in instigating the firing of Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn.
    Once again, Ohr and Steele’s exchanges detailed by Solomon provide a hint: The day after Yate’s firing, Steele contacted Ohr, texting “doubtless a sad and crazy day for you re-SY,” a clear reference to Sally Yates. “Just wanted to check you are OK, still in situ and able to help locally as discussed, along with your Bureau colleagues,” Steele added. Then, after Ohr confirmed “I’m still here and able to help as discussed,” Steele stressed that if Ohr was out at DOJ, he needed another “(Bureau?)” contact.
    This exchange suggests Yates’ removal concerned Steele and left him worried that without Yates at the helm, Ohr’s continued role as a DOJ liaison for Steele was at risk, and that without Yates or Ohr, he would need to work directly with the FBI.
    Was that because Yates approved of Ohr acting as a dossier courier for Steele and the FBI? If so, the Spygate scandal reaches into even higher echelons of the Deep State than previously known. Ohr has a pretty good incentive to come clean and expose anyone else at the DOJ (or in the Obama administration) involved in the decision to continue to use Steele as a source. Otherwise Ohr will hold sole responsibility for going rogue.

    More at: http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/15/...cials-spygate/
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  28. #414
    A Pentagon whistleblower was stripped of his security clearance and demoted after complaining about questionable government contracts with both FBI informant spy Stefan Halper and a company headed by Chelsea Clinton's "best friend" for whom then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arranged meetings, reports the Washington Times.

    Adam Lovinger, a Trump supporter and 12-year veteran of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA), filed a whistleblower reprisal complaint with the Defense Department's inspector general in May against ONA boss James Baker - who hired Halper, 73, to "conduct foreign relations" and kept the details of the spy's contracts "close to the vest." Baker was appointed chief of the ONA in 2015 by Obama Defense Secretary, Ashton Carter.
    At that point, Lovinger wouldn't have known was a spy working with the FBI/DOJ on operation "Crossfire Hurricane" - the code name for the Obama administration's counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign.
    In an internal October 2016 email to higher-ups, Mr. Lovinger wrote of “the moral hazard associated with the Washington Headquarters Services contracting with Stefan Halper,” the complaint said. It said Mr. Baker hired Mr. Halper to “conduct foreign relations,” a job that should be confined to government officials.
    ...
    In the fall of 2016, as the election loomed, Mr. Lovinger sent emails to Mr. Baker and other officials at the Office of Net Assessment complaining about the entire outside contracting process. He also said the office failed to write papers on long-term threats presented by radical Islam, China and Iran.
    And in September 2016, Lovinger sent an email directly to Baker summing up the perceived problems, which reads in part:
    “Some of our contractors distribute to others their ONA work for personal and professional self-promotion,” wrote Lovinger. “Another part is the growing narrative that ONA’s most high-profile contractors are known for getting paid a lot to do rather peripheral work."
    “On the issue of pay, our contractors boast about how much they get paid from ONA. Such boasting, of course, generates jealously among those outside the club, and particularly from those who have tried to secure ONA contracts unsuccessfully.”
    "On the issue of quality, more than once I have heard our contractor studies labeled ‘derivative,’ ‘college-level’ and based heavily on secondary sources. One of our contractor studies was literally cut and pasted from a World Bank report that I just happened to have read the week before reading the contractor study itself. Even the font was the same."
    Halper - an Oxford University professor, former US government official and longtime FBI / CIA asset (who was married to the CIA deputy director's daughter at one point), received over $400,000 for a 2016 contract which Lovinger complained about.
    According to USASpending.gov, Mr. Halper was paid $411,000 by Washington Headquarters Services on Sept. 26, 2016, for a contract that ran until this March. -Washington Times

    In total, the American citizen teaching abroad received over $1 million from contracts dated between 2012 and 2016.
    Lovinger's attorney, Sean M. Bigley, filed the second of four complaints on July 18 with the Pentagon's senior ethics official, claiming that Lovinger's bosses punished him on May 1, 2017 by abusing the security clearance process to yank his credentials and relegate him to clerical chores. Lovinger's complaint also names the Washington Headquarters Services, a support agency within the Pentagon that awarded the Halper contracts.
    “As it turns out, one of the two contractors Mr. Lovinger explicitly warned his ONA superiors about misusing in 2016 was none other than Mr. Halper,” wrote Bigley in the ethics complaint, which referred to the contracts as “cronyism and corruption.”

    Nobody in the office seemed to know what Halper was doing for his money,” said Bigley. “Adam said Jim Baker, the director, kept Halper’s contracts very close to the vest. And nobody seemed to have any idea what he was doing at the time. He subcontracted out a good chunk of it to other academics. He would compile them all and then collect the balance as his fee as a middleman. That was very unusual.”

    The other complaint lodged by Lovinger concerns a string of contracts totaling $11 million to Long Term Strategy Group - a D.C. consulting firm headed by self-described "best friend" of Chelseal Clinton, Jacqueline Newmyer Deal.
    In October, the Washington Free Beacon reported that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arranged meetings in 2009 between Deal and Pentagon officials to discuss contracts - to which Deal says no award "resulted directly or indirectly from the actions or influence of Secretary Clinton."
    According to one 2009 email, Clinton said she recommended Deal to Michele Flournoy, the newly installed undersecretary of defense for policy, who was seeking young women to mentor.
    Deal, a specialist in China affairs who worked at the White House as a press aide for First Lady Clinton in the 1990s, wrote back to Clinton saying she would meet Flournoy on May 5, 2009, and stated "thank you very much for making this happen."
    Later that month, Deal thanked Clinton for "all your encouragement and help with DoD, " shorthand for the Defense Department. -Free Beacon
    In a statement, Deal said: "Jacqueline Deal and the Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG) are justifiably proud of their collaboration with the US Department of Defense across multiple administrations over the last two decades, beginning under the administration of President George W. Bush. LTSG’s work has consistently earned the highest respect and confidence of its clientele in government and has won LTSG a reputation for producing research and analysis of exceptional quality."



    More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...halper-clinton
    Last edited by Swordsmyth; 08-16-2018 at 09:33 PM.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  29. #415
    President Donald Trump’s decision to declassify competing congressional memos about the validity of the so-called Steele dossier means the FBI has lost its authority to rebuff Freedom of Information Act requests about the bureau’s efforts to verify the report’s intelligence linking Trump to Russia during the 2016 campaign, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.
    U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta previously blessed the FBI’s decision to refuse such FOIA requests by declining to confirm whether any records exist about aspects of its handling of the hotly contested dossier, prepared by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. The judge ruled in January that Trump’s tweets about the dossier did not require the FBI and other intelligence agencies to be more responsive to public records requests on the issue.
    However, Mehta said Trump’s actions in February to greenlight the release of one memo from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and a separate memo from the panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, left untenable the FBI’s position of resisting disclosure.
    “It remains no longer logical nor plausible for the FBI to maintain that it cannot confirm nor deny the existence of documents” related to attempts to verify information in the dossier, Mehta wrote in a 13-page opinion.


    More at: https://www.politico.com/blogs/under...losures-782237
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  30. #416




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  32. #417


  33. #418
    Anatoli Samochornov, a Russian translator who was present at the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with campaign officials, testified that he was previously an interpreter for Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Barack Obama.

    Samochornov also said that he held a “public trust” clearance from the U.S. government. The clearance provides a level of screening for individuals who do government work described as sensitive, but whose positions do not require a security clearance.
    Samochornov was previously identified as being the Russian translator who was present at the meeting at which Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya reportedly argued against the Magnitsky Act, which sanctions Russian officials. The meeting was set up with Donald Trump Jr., presented as being about information regarding Hillary Clinton. Veselnitskaya says she does not speak English and has given interviews to U.S. news media outlets through translators.
    Breitbart News reported last year that, according to his LinkedIn profile, from 2005 until at least that year Samochornov was a project manager at the Meridian International Center, which describes itself as a “nonprofit, global leadership organization headquartered in Washington, DC.” Meridian is a principal partner of the U.S. State Department.
    The Breitbart News report noted at the time that Samochornov’s LinkedIn profile further describes his work on behalf of the State Department, purportedly while he was at Meridian. The timeline of his work at Meridian included the period when Clinton was secretary of state.
    Now it has emerged that, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Samochornov described his work personally interpreting on one occasion for Clinton, “two or three times” for Kerry and for “Mr. Obama’s summits at the United Nations.”
    Samochornov gave his testimony last November and it was recently made public. The 121 pages of transcript were reviewed by Breitbart News and have become newly relevant following renewed news media scrutiny of the Trump Tower confab.
    At the hearing, Samochornov stated that he had been “doing project management for a subcontractor of the U.S. Department of State.”
    At the time of the November 8, 2017 meeting, Samochornov said that as far as he knew he still possessed a “public trust clearance” from the U.S. government, which he accurately described as a “basic background check, that I’m not into drugs, I am who I say I am, that I pay taxes on time, and basically I do not lie or misrepresent myself, and I am a person who could be trusted with the assignments that I’m given.”
    The U.S. government form to apply for “public trust” verification asks numerous questions seeking to determine whether an applicant is “suitable for the job and/or eligible for a public trust or sensitive position.”
    Regarding his work as a subcontractor for the U.S. government, Samochrnov stated that he “served as an interpreter for Secretary Clinton on one occasion.”
    He continued: “I have two or three times interpreted for Secretary Kerry when he had meetings with his counterpart, Mr. Lavrov, and the group rounds about Syria. I have also interpreted Mr. Obama’s summits at the United Nations, and I believe Vice President Joe Biden also spoke there.”
    Samochornov has other links to the Obama State Department. He was listed as the program administrator for the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, which is implemented by Meridian. Breitbart News found the draft program book for the March 4-12, 2013 leadership initiative, which listed a State Department email for Samochornov.
    Samochornov was also listed as the “Program Officer” for the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program in February 2010. The FBI’s New York field office participated in that month’s program.
    Samochornov is not the only individual at the Trump Tower meeting with a personal tie to Clinton.
    Email transcripts and other information disclosed in testimony released by the Senate Judiciary Committee reveal a significant relationship between Russian-born Washington lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, who was present at the Trump Tower meeting, and an associate of Clinton. Akhmetshin also claims a personal relationship with Clinton and describes meeting with a Clinton associate the same day as the Trump Tower meeting.
    In his Senate testimony, Akhmetshin says that he “knows” Hillary Clinton and has a personal relationship with her that dates back to the late-1990s. Besides describing a direct connection to Clinton, Akhmetshin also testified that he “knew some people who worked on” Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Akhmetshin further revealed that the same day as the Trump Tower meeting he met with a Clinton associate after the confab and possibly also just before.
    In his Senate testimony, Akhmetshin related a personal connection to Clinton via attorney Ed Lieberman, whose late wife Evelyn previously served as Clinton’s chief of staff when she was First Lady. Evelyn Lieberman also served as Bill Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, and famously transferred Monica Lewinsky out of the White House to the Defense Department.
    The New York Times previously reported that Lieberman in 1998 arranged for Akhmitshin’s position at “an organization pushing what he described as a pro-democracy agenda for Kazakhstan.” Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says he met Akhmetshin through Lieberman.
    In his Senate testimony, Akhmetshin described taking an Acela train to New York the day of the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting and says that Lieberman “may” have been with him on the train.
    Akhmetshin says his dealings with Lieberman in New York that day were “personal” and centered on a scholarship program that he claims Lieberman started. “And he was in New York that day to discuss arrangements with Metropolitan Museum with kind of taking care of that scholarship award,” Akhmetshin stated.
    Akhmetshin says that while he was in New York, he had lunch with Veselnitskaya, who told him about the scheduled meeting that day at Trump Tower, but she didn’t say anything about him attending.
    He claims that after he had lunch with Veselnitskaya, she called him and asked him to attend the Trump Tower meeting, but she didn’t suggest any role he would play at the meeting or why he should attend.
    After the meeting at Trump Tower, Akhmetshin says he went to dinner and a play with Lieberman, and the subject of the meeting that same day did not come up in his conversations with Lieberman at dinner or during the play. Akhmetshin also stated in the testimony that he was not asked to keep the meeting confidential.
    In other words, Akhmetshin is claiming that he attended a meeting at the campaign headquarters of Clinton’s presidential challenger with that challenger’s son and other top Trump staffers, and that same night Akhmetshin did not even mention the meeting to his friend Lieberman, a Clinton associate.
    He also said he had drinks that same night with another “friend,” but could not remember who that friend was.
    Later in the testimony, when Akhmetshin described disclosing another matter to journalist friends, he was questioned about his claim that he didn’t tell Lieberman that same night about the Trump Jr. meeting, yet he seemingly evidenced a lack of discretion with reporters.
    During further questioning in Senate testimony, Akhmetshin admitted to possibly telling Clinton associate Lieberman about the Trump Tower meeting, but says he may have told him on another day and not the night they met the same day as the meeting.
    Akhmetshin detailed knowing Hillary Clinton since the late 1990s and last seeing her at Evelyn Lieberman’s 2015 funeral. In the same testimony, Akhmetshin says he “knew” some of the people who worked on Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
    Besides Akhmetshin’s links to Lieberman, the Russian lobbyist is also reportedly tied to Fusion GPS and the controversial firm’s co-founder, Glenn Simpson.
    The Russia collusion conspiracy theory was sparked by the discredited dossier produced by Fusion GPS, which was paid for its anti-Trump work by Trump’s primary political opponents, namely Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) via the Perkins Coie law firm.
    Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya also evidenced a relationship with Fusion GPS.
    Akhmetshin’s November 14, 2017 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee contained numerous sections that detail his past relationship with Fusion GPS and Simpson. Some of that relationship, which also involved Veselnitskaya, spanned the period just prior to the meeting with Trump Jr.
    In one instance, Akhmetshin was asked about an email obtained by the Senate committee in which he described Fusion’s Simpson as a “colleague.”
    The email related to the Russian-linked Prevezon Holdings Ltd., a firm that had settled a case in the U.S. involving the purchase of real estate with allegedly laundered money, accusations that centered around the Magnitsky Act.
    Veselnitskaya, who countered the Magnitsky Act along with Akhmetshin, was an attorney for Prevezon. Veselnitskaya was involved in the case since it investigated financier Bill Browder, who successfully lobbied Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act and was a witness in the Prevezon legal matter. Fusion GPS investigated Browder for another client and their findings were used in the Prevezon trial.
    In his testimony, one Senate griller asked Akhmetshin about a December 2015 email from a Bloomberg News reporter that states he was told that Akhmetshin was “handling media calls” for Prevezon and its owner.
    Akhmetshin’s email reply, in which he calls Fusion GPS’s Simpson “my colleague” was read aloud: “I am traveling this week, but my colleague Glenn Simpson, cc’d, will be able to brief you on the particulars of the case.”
    Another email read in the testimony described plans for a February 4, 2016 dinner meeting between Simpson, Akhmetshin and Veselnitskaya, with Akhmetshin confirming that he did have a meeting with Simpson and Veselnitskaya around that time, possibly dinner. This puts Simpson in person with two participants in the Trump Jr. meeting just four months before the June 2016 Trump Tower meet, although Akhmetshin described the meeting with Simpson as being about the Prevezon case.
    Akhmetshin further describes pitching stories directly to Simpson while Simpson was a journalist prior to his co-founding of Fusion GPS. Simpson previously worked for the Wall Street Journal.
    Akhmetshin also relates a previous working relationship with Simpson’s wife, pitching her stories while she served at the Journal.
    In yet another under-reported issue raising questions about the Trump Tower meeting, Akhmetshin admitted to being present at the same security conference in Canada where Sen. John McCain was reportedly first informed about the anti-Trump dossier.
    Akhmetshin says he might have spoken to McCain and the senator’s assistant David J. Kramer at the Halifax International Security Forum in 2016.
    It was at the security conference in Canada in November 2016 that McCain says he was approached by Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow and friend of ex-British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier.
    Wood briefed McCain and Kramer, a former State Department official and longtime McCain associate who agreed to meet Steele in London for a fuller briefing on the dossier contents.
    The Washington Post reported in February that after meeting with Steele, Kramer went to Washington and received the dossier document directly from Fusion GPS. McCain then passed the dossier to FBI Director James Comey.
    In a New York Times oped in January, GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritch wrote that they helped McCain share their anti-Trump dossier with the Obama-era intelligence community via an unnamed “emissary.”
    In his Senate testimony, Akhmetshin describes attending the Halifax security conference in 2016, but claimed he played no role in the contact where Wood connected with McCain and Kramer to inform them of the dossier’s existence. Akhmetshin also claimed he was not aware of the dossier at the time.
    Akhmetshin said he “might” have “said hi” to McCain but could not say for sure. In other words, Akhmetshin is claiming he is not certain whether he spoke to one of the most famous American politicians, something that would seemingly be quite memorable to most people.
    The Russian lobbyist also said he “might have spoken with” Kramer but would not give a definitive answer.
    Akhmetshin also stated that he had a previous relationship with McCain. “I knew Senator McCain when he was running years ago because I had friends who were — did advance work for him,” Akmetshin said, referring to McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.


    More at: https://www.breitbart.com/big-govern...esident-obama/
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  34. #419

    Lieu: If Trump Fires Sessions, It Would Be Obstruction of Justice

    https://www.breitbart.com/video/2018...on-of-justice/

    24 Aug 2018

    On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) argued that if President Trump fires Attorney General Jeff Sessions, it would be to have someone who will interfere in the Mueller probe and this would be obstruction of justice.

    Lieu said, “I believe that if Donald Trump either pardoned Paul Manafort or fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, that would cross a red line. And he would be firing Jeff Sessions because he wants to make sure that he’s got someone else in place that can run interference on the Mueller investigation. That would constitute obstruction of justice.”

  35. #420

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