Tag Archives: Robert Mueller

Explaining The Procedures Involved In Releasing The Memo

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All of the information in this article has been taken from an article posted at The Conservative Treehouse yesterday. The #ReleaseTheMemo movement has been successful.

The article at The Conservative Treehouse includes the following:

The article explains what is involved in releasing the memo and the steps that are necessary in the process in order to comply with the law.

The article reports:

Once the House Intelligence Committee votes to declassify the four-page memo, the White House, National Security Adviser (H.R. McMaster) and National Security Council will have five days to review the content. The White House will likely have a brief review by the NSC and the Office of Legal Counsel of the content, and then issue approval for the release.

…Secondly, while it might seem like a good idea for President Trump to declassify the Nunes memo, if given by the Intel Committee, it would not be prudent to do so. Within this classified document Donald Trump is the subject of adverse action outlined therein.

…Therefore the best route as constructed by Nunes and Goodlatte would be for the House to vote to declassify, pass on to the Executive for review, then President Trump grants approval for the request of the House (legislative branch).

By law, all attempts by the legislative branch to declassify intelligence information must be given to the executive branch for review in advance of release. This is because the executive branch needs to see if any current intelligence operations might be compromised by information not known to the legislative branch.

The National Security Council and any impacted offices of the intelligence information (CIA, NSA, FBI, DOJ, U.S. DoS, DOD, etc.) review, provide opinion, and sign off prior to executive approval and release.

It is not just this declassification that goes through this process, all declassification goes through this process. In this example, presumably, the President has no adverse reason to block the declassification request and it is likely all approvals will happen quite quickly.

After the White House approves of the HPSCI request, the Memo then becomes public.

That’s when Democrats will attack the memo as being authored and misrepresented by Chairman Devin Nunes. This is the politics.

We need to remember a few things here. First of all, the Democrats DO NOT want this memo released. It is becoming obvious that there are things in the memo that make the Democratic party look really bad–such as using the government to spy on political opponents. Watergate was simply attempted spying and people went to jail. This allegedly was using government agencies to spy–many people should go to jail. Secondly, if and when the memo is released, the Democrats will do everything they can to discredit it. However, at some point this month, the Inspector General’s report is due out, and I suspect that will confirm much (if not all) of what is in the memo.

The article further notes what will happen if the Democrats claim the memo is not what it seems to be:

If/when this happens (highly likely it will), Chairman Nunes will then request the entire House of Representatives be given the opportunity to see the underlying FISA documentation that led to the summary.

The underlying FISA documentation likely includes the DOJ/FBI FISA application as presented to the FISA court; again, likely to include the “Clinton/Steele Dossier”.

Additionally, the FISA-702 raw data will include the FBI “searches” on Trump officials that led to the upstream collection of information and the subsequent “unmasking” of Trump officials.

Releasing the underlying FISA documentation -that proves the Nunes FISA memo- will likely follow a similar path as the Nunes memo itself. Again, this is a process, and within each of these processes there are revelations as to the scope of the corruption and conspiracy.

The article concludes:

In April and May 2017 Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, and NSA Director Admiral Rogers, began assembling a pathway for Devin Nunes to climb out of that intelligence box. ODNI Dan Coats declassified the FISA Court opinion, and that opened the door for Horowitz, Grassley, Goodlatte and Nunes to question the content therein that circled the unlawful action of the DOJ and FBI.

Where we are today is a step in the investigative process that is an outcome of months of work by Coats, Rogers and Horowitz to extract Chairman Devin Nunes and bring all prior DOJ and FBI corruption to the surface.

I strongly suggest that you follow the link to read the entire article. The author is amazingly detailed in his research and lists his various sources at the end of the article.

Look for the Democrats to stage a major distraction about the time the memo is released. It may be another government shutdown or it may be some sort of march or filibuster. Based on what I have heard, the Democrats will do almost anything to keep this memo off of the front page of the news. Stay tuned.

Why Not Just Put It On Hillary Clinton’s Secret Server And We Can Get It From The Russians?

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Sorry about the sarcasm. I couldn’t resist. The Hill posted an article today about the fight in Congress to keep the American public from finding out what actually went on behind the scenes during the 2016 presidential campaign and President Trump‘s transition team.

The article reports:

A growing number of Republicans are demanding the release of a classified report that they say reveals political bias at the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) in the investigation into President Trump’s alleged ties to Moscow. 

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) spearheaded the effort this week to allow lawmakers to view a top-secret report compiled by House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

Scores of Republicans have since viewed the document in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) on Capitol Hill. They left expressing shock, saying the special counsel investigation into whether Trump’s officials had improper contacts with Russia is based on politically motivated actions at the highest level of law enforcement.

Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) called the memo “shocking.”

“I’m here to tell all of a America tonight that I’m shocked to read exactly what has taken place,” Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said in a speech on the House floor. 

“I thought it could never happen in a country that loves freedom and democracy like this country. It is time that we become transparent with all of this, and I’m calling on our leadership to make this available so all Americans can judge for themselves.” 

As voters, we need to see this. We need to know exactly what happened–not what the media or the political parties choose to tell us. Why is it classified in the first place? For political purposes?

This is how the process of declassification works:

Meadows and his allies asked GOP leaders in the House to declassify the report as part of a short-term spending bill the House passed late Thursday night. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said he wanted to follow House rules on the matter and deferred to Nunes and the Intelligence Committee.

Nunes could call for a vote to release the report on his panel. If a majority on the committee agrees to declassify the report, the executive branch would just need to sign-off to make it public, said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), another Freedom Caucus member.

“It is so alarming the American people have to see this,” Jordan said.

The article includes the following statement:

Lawmakers were tight-lipped about the contents of the memo, as they are barred from unilaterally releasing classified information.

But the lawmakers who have long been claiming that FBI agents and DOJ officials launched a partisan investigation into Trump said the report vindicated their claims.

This story is currently being overshadowed by threats of a government shutdown. I don’t think that is a coincidence.

Congressional Oversight May Get Very Interesting

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The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about Congressional oversight into the FISA violations under President Obama.

The title of the article is, “How The FBI and DOJ Intelligence Units Were Weaponized Around Congressional Oversight…”

I strongly suggest that you follow the link and read the entire article, but there are a few things I want to mention here.

The article reports:

NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers has announced to his staff he is resigning. A nominee will be announced to replace him shortly. Rogers departure makes sense.  His incredible accomplishments are complete; he will now be free to testify, unencumbered, to congress.

So why is this important?

Admiral Mike Rogers became NSA director in April 2014.

Sometime in early 2016 Admiral Rogers became aware of “ongoing” and “intentional” violations of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Section 702(17) surveillance. Specifically item #17 which includes the unauthorized upstream data collection of U.S. individuals within NSA surveillance through the use of “About Query”.

Section 702 – Item #17 “About Queries” are specifically the collection of electronic messaging, emails and upstream phone call surveillance data of U.S. persons.

The public doesn’t discover this issue, and Director Rogers action, until May 2017 when we learn that Rogers told the FISA court he became aware of unlawful surveillance and collection of U.S. persons.

Put into context, with the full back-story, it appears that 2016 surveillance was the political surveillance now in the headlines; the stuff Chairman Nunes is currently questioning. The dates here are important as they tell a story.

As a result of Rogers suspecting FISA 702(17) surveillance activity was being used for reasons he deemed unlawful, in mid 2016 Rogers ordered the NSA compliance officer to run a full audit on 702 NSA compliance.

Again, 702 is basically spying on Americans; the actual “spying” part is 702. Item 17 is “About Queries“, which allows user queries or searches of content (messaging, email and phone conversations) based on any subject matter put into the search field.

The NSA compliance officer identified several strange 702 “About Queries” were being conducted. These were violations of the fourth amendment (search and seizure), ie searches, privacy violations, and surveillance without a warrant.  Admiral Rogers was briefed by the compliance officer on October 20th, 2016.

Admiral Mike Rogers ordered the “About Query” activity to stop, reported the activity to the DOJ, and then went to the FISA court.

On October 26th, 2016, full FISA court assembled, NSA Director Rogers personally informed the court of the 702(17) violations.  Additionally, and as an outcome of the NSA systems inability to guarantee integrity, Rogers also stopped “About Query” permanently.

Here we have an honest patriot caught in a den of lying crooks. His testimony should be very interesting.

The Story The Mainstream Media Wants You To Ignore

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All we heard from the new yesterday was the Twtter battle between Steve Bannon and Donald Trump. It turns out that the quote in the book involved may not be accurate. So why was this the main story of the day? Because the real main story of the day was not part of the narrative the mainstream media is selling.

In case you missed it, The Gateway Pundit posted an article yesterday about a civil lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C.,  by Paul Manafort against the Department of Justice, Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller.

The article explains the basis for the suit:

To put it plainly, Mueller is tasked with finding a crime that does not exist in the law. It is a legal impossibility. He is being asked to do something that is manifestly unattainable.  Today as reported by Cristina Laila at TGP, Manafort sued the DOJ, Mueller and Rosenstein because what they are doing is not supported by US Law. This is the biggest story of the day! Manafort is suing to have the Mueller investigation shut down!

Manafort’s case argues in paragraph 33 that the special counsel put in place by crooked Rosenstein gave crooked and criminal Mueller powers that are not permitted by law –

  1. But paragraph (b)(ii) of the Appointment Order purports to grant Mr. Mueller further authority to investigate and prosecute “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” That grant of authority is not authorized by DOJ’s special counsel regulations. It is not a “specific factual statement of the matter to be investigated.” Nor is it an ancillary power to address efforts to impede or obstruct investigation under 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a).

If Manafort wins this case – which it appears according to the law he will – the entire investigation would be deemed illegal – which it is – and therefore legally would have to be shut down – which it should be.

There have been a lot of problems with this investigation from the beginning–the choice of an obviously politically biased investigative team, the early morning raid on Manafort’s home when he was already cooperating with investigators, the uneven application of the law by the Justice Department, and the relational incest among the investigators. There has been a year of investigations and so far the only charges have been unrelated to the supposed purpose of the investigation. Meanwhile, the investigation contrasts vividly with the investigative standards used to investigate the Clinton emails and Uranium One.

The Mueller investigation is part of the swamp that needs to be drained. Hopefully this lawsuit will be the beginning of this process.

Awaiting A Constitutional Crisis

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The Conservative Treehouse reminded us today that tomorrow is the deadline for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to turn over to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes documents related to their investigation of the Donald Trump campaign. These documents are under subpoena.

The article reports:

The FBI Counterintelligence Division began an official investigation on/around July 15th, 2016. The target of the investigation was the Donald Trump campaign. The FBI has refused to answer questions or allow investigative oversight toward the origin of their endeavor.

Numerous leaks from the FBI imply the leadership is attempting to shape the narrative surrounding the origin.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is complicated and detailed. I will do my best to hit the highlights, but there is a lot here.

The article states:

In October 2016, immediately after the DOJ lawyers formatted the FBI information (Steele Dossier etc.) for the FISA application, the head of the NSD, Asst. Attorney General John P Carlin, left his job.  During his exit John Carlin informed the FISA court the DOJ-NSD frequently provided false information to the court to gain FISA warrants – Read Here.

Chairman Devin Nunes wants answers to the origin of the FBI counterintelligence operation.  Back in February 2017 Devin Nunes went to a secure SCIF and saw some of the unmasking reports that stemmed from that operation.

A copy of that letter is included in the article.

The story includes the timeline that led to the surveillance:

Those who have followed the back-story closely can see clear political outline of the 2016 operation. Here’s the way the entire construct looks in simple outline.

Career officials, managers and staff within the DOJ and FBI wanted to help ensure Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election. Those people were ideologically aligned with President Obama, and held the goal of maintaining progressive advances as part of their motive.

A “small group” was formed within the DOJ and FBI to facilitate this goal. The first goal was to remove Clinton from the burden of the FBI email investigation.

Once that goal was achieved, they moved on to Clinton’s 2016 challenger. By the time the 2016 GOP convention drew near, everyone accepted that challenger would be Donald Trump.

As such the FBI “small group” began monitoring candidate Donald Trump in June/July 2016 as part of a plan toward the benefit of candidate Hillary Clinton.

However, the FBI and DOJ officials also needed an actual basis, a legal justification for their behavior and the time they were spending. The plan to justify that behavior was to create an official counterintelligence operation.

To get the counterintelligence operation going, they needed a reasonable basis for creating one. That basis was the formative seeds of claims of Russian connections to the Trump campaign.

To establish the basis the Russian elements needed for the operation; the DNC and Clinton campaign has earlier paid Fusion GPS (April ’16) to contract Christopher Steele to write a dossier that would form the legal grounding for the counterintelligence operation.

The wife of Glenn Simpson (Fusion GPS), Mary B. Jacoby, with years of Russia-angled reporting –including Donald Trump– visits the White House on April 19th 2016.

Fusion GPS (Mary B. Jacoby, and Glenn Simpson) hired DOJ Deputy Attorney Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, who was well versed in counterintelligence operations, CIA operations, and using CIA tradecraft to create illusions.

This is just ugly. Please read the entire article to learn the rest of the story. It is a chilling example of using the power of government for political purposes. Thank God it didn’t work.

At Least Congress Is Paying Attention

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The case of Hillary Clinton’s emails is a disgrace to our justice system. A young sailor’s life was ruined because he took a picture of his workplace on his cell phone–he did jail time and is on probation. Hillary Clinton had classified information on an unsecured server and subsequently destroyed information that was under subpoena and was charged with nothing. Something is dreadfully off balance here.

The Hill is reporting tonight on Congressional investigations into this injustice.

The article reports:

The investigators also confirmed that the FBI began drafting a statement exonerating Clinton of any crimes while evidence responsive to subpoenas was still outstanding and before agents had interviewed more than a dozen key witnesses.

Those witnesses included Clinton and the computer firm employee who permanently erased her email archives just days after the emails were subpoenaed by Congress, the investigators said.

Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee who attended a Dec. 21 closed-door briefing by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe say the bureau official confirmed that the investigation and charging decisions were controlled by a small group in Washington headquarters rather the normal process of allowing field offices to investigate possible criminality in their localities. The Clinton email server in question was based in New York.

In normal FBI cases, field offices where crimes are believed to have been committed investigate the evidence and then recommend to bureau hierarchy whether to pursue charges with prosecutors. In this case, the bureau hierarchy controlled both the investigation and the charging decision from Washington, a scenario known in FBI parlance as a “special,” the lawmakers said.

This part of the story should make General Michael Flynn furious:

The FBI also confirmed that a key witness, a computer technician who deleted Clinton emails from her server in March 2015 after a congressional subpoena had been issued for them, originally lied to the FBI during his interviews, memos show. The witness’s name was redacted from documents released by the FBI but he was identified as an employee of a computer firm that helped maintained Clinton’s email server.

His admission of false statements came one day after the Comey statement was already being drafted, investigators told The Hill.

The computer employee originally told the FBI in a February 2016 interview that he did not recall making any deletions from Clinton’s server in March 2015, FBI records show.

But then on May 3, 2016, the same employee in a subsequent FBI interview told agents he had an “oh shit moment” and in late March 2015 deleted Clinton’s email archive from the server, according to FBI documents reviewed by The Hill.

Lying to the FBI is a federal felony, a crime that former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn recently pleaded guilty to. But the FBI decided not to pursue criminal charges against the witness, and instead gave the technician an immunity deal so he could correct his story, congressional investigators said.

The article concludes:

The longtime Senate chairman went to the Senate floor before the holidays to raise another concern: the FBI did not pursue criminal charges when Clinton’s email archives were permanently deleted from her private server days after a subpoena for them was issued by a congressional committee investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi.

The deletion occurred on the same day Clinton’s former chief of staff and her lawyer had a call with the computer firm that handled the erasure using an anti-recovery software called BleachBit, Grassley said.

“You have a conference call with Secretary Clinton’s attorneys on March 31, 2015, and on that very same day her emails are deleted by someone who was on that conference call using special BleachBit software,” Grassley said. “The emails were State Department records under subpoena by Congress.

“What did the FBI do to investigate this apparent obstruction?” Grassley asked. “According to affidavits filed in federal court — absolutely nothing. The FBI focused only on the handling of classified information.”

Can you imagine any ordinary citizen destroying evidence and not being charged? I am not a person who wants to see Hillary Clinton in jail, but I think it’s time to investigate the Clinton Foundation and deal with the mishandling of classified information she engaged in while Secretary of State. Breaking the law needs to have consequences.

When Laws Are Broken And People Suspect That Laws Have Been Broken, Just Deflect Their Attention

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It seems as if certain elements of our news media have become experts at avoiding the truth or avoiding the real story. The New York Times posted an article on Saturday stating that the investigation of Donald Trump‘s ties to Russia began with a barroom conversation between George Papadopoulos and an Australian diplomat. Unfortunately, as The Gateway Pundit and Power Line Blog point out, that account doesn’t hold water. So why did The New York Times post the story? It is fairly common knowledge that the Trump campaign team and the Trump transition team were under electronic surveillance by the Obama Administration (probably with information passed on to the press and to the Hillary Clinton campaign). The question is, “Who authorized that surveillance and why?”

Under most circumstances, the surveillance (on American citizens with names unmasked) is illegal, so who authorized it and what was the justification? It is becoming obvious that the justification was the infamous Christopher Steele dossier originally contracted by mainstream Republican leaders, later paid for by the Clinton campaign, and even later, possibly funded with FBI money. Since none of the information in the dossier has been proven true–it was simply campaign opposition research paper–it really does not justify the issuing of FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrants to wiretap either the Trump campaign or transition team. That is the conclusion that The New York Times is attempting to avoid reaching. That is the reason the article on George Papadopoulos appeared in the New York Times yesterday.

Some excerpts from The Gateway Pundit:

If the dossier wasn’t used in order to obtain a FISA warrant, then SHOW THE PUBLIC THE FISA APPS!

Papadopoulos was already charged. He wasn’t charged with ‘Russian collusion’. Papadopoulos was charged with making a false statement to the FBI because talking to Russians is not illegal, yet he’s what prompted the Russia investigation?

The article at Power Line Blog includes the following tweet by Kimberley Strassel:

Another article at Power Line Blog concludes:

It’s also important to remember that the question of whether the dossier prompted, or helped lead to, the FBI investigation is separate from the question of what role the dossier played when the Justice Department obtained a warrant from the FISA court to engage in electronic surveillance of members of Trump’s team.

The media is holding up a lot of shiny objects for us to look at. The thing to remember is that there are laws protecting the privacy of Americans. If those laws were broken, people need to be punished. That is the story the media does not want us to hear.

We Seem To Have A Problem With Our Intelligence Community Understanding That It Is Supposed To Work Within The Constraints Of Our Representative Republic

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Townhall posted an article today by Sharyl Attkisson about misconduct by the intelligence community of our government.

The article lists ten examples of the intelligence community running amok:

Telecom takeover

Joe Nacchio, CEO of telecom giant Qwest, said that after he refused to spy on his customers for the National Security Agency (NSA) without a warrant in February of 2001, the government retaliated by yanking a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars and filing an insider trading case against him. He went to prison. The government denied charges of retaliation. 

Olympic spying

In 2002, the NSA reportedly engaged in “blanket surveillance” of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, collecting and storing “virtually all electronic communications going into or out of the Salt Lake City area, including … emails and text messages” to “experiment with and fine tune a new scale of mass surveillance.” NSA officials had denied such a program existed.

Spying on Congress

In 2005 intel officials intercepted and recorded phone conversations between then-Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-Calif.)  and pro-Israel lobbyists who were under investigation for espionage.

[…]

Journalist “witch hunts”

Internal emails from a “global intelligence company” executive in 2010 stated: “Brennan is behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning information from inside the beltway sources.

[…]

Misleading on mass spying

On March 12, 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress that intel officials were not collecting mass data on tens of millions of Americans.

[…]

More spying on Congress

CIA officials improperly accessed Senate Intelligence Committee computers, according to an Inspector General report in July 2014, contradicting denials by then-CIA Director Brennan.

[…]

NSA privacy violations

In fall 2016, the government confessed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “significant non-compliance” of crucial procedures designed to protect privacy rights of U.S. citizens.

[…]

Intel mutiny?

Government requests to see or “unmask” names of Americans whose communications are “incidentally” captured during national security surveillance are supposed to be rare and justified.

[…]

Politically motivated press leak

In May 2017, former FBI Director James Comey secretly orchestrated a “leak” to The New York Times of negative memos he said he wrote contemporaneously about President Trump, with the motive of spurring the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the president’s alleged Russia ties.

[…]

Conflicted investigators

One purpose of special counsel investigations, such as the Russia investigation being led by former FBI Director Mueller, is to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest. But multiple investigators working on Mueller’s team have been removed after being caught in compromising positions.

The swamp has been operating successfully for a number of years. It is time for the leadership in the intelligence community to resign. The intelligence community needs to go back to doing their job of protecting Americans–not spying on people who disagree with their political philosophy.

The article reminds us:

This issue has special meaning to the former CBS reporter, who alleges she was spied on by the Obama administration. She’s documented the reported Obama surveillance timeline on her website as well. Even left leaning journalists, like Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, said the leaks from the intelligence community are a prescription to the destruction of our government. Granted, Greenwald’s publication is set up as a safe space for leakers, and to protect them, as they disseminate information relating to government corruption or wrongdoing. Leaking because Hillary Clinton lost isn’t any of those things. Now, Greenwald fears both the deep state and the Trump White House, but noted the former doesn’t have the institutional constraints to keep their power in check.

 

The Insurance Policy

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Andrew McCarthy posted an article at The National Review today titled, “Was the Steele Dossier the FBI’s ‘Insurance Policy’?” It is a rather lengthy article, and I strongly suggest that you follow the link and read the entire article. However, there are two sections of the article that I think tell the whole story.

The article states:

The Obama-era FBI and Justice Department had great faith in Steele because he had previously collaborated with the bureau on a big case. Plus, Steele was working on the Trump-Russia project with the wife of a top Obama Justice Department official, who was personally briefed by Steele. The upper ranks of the FBI and DOJ strongly preferred Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, to the point of overlooking significant evidence of her felony misconduct, even as they turned up the heat on Trump. In sum, the FBI and DOJ were predisposed to believe the allegations in Steele’s dossier. Because of their confidence in Steele, because they were predisposed to believe his scandalous claims about Donald Trump, they made grossly inadequate efforts to verify his claims. Contrary to what I hoped would be the case, I’ve come to believe Steele’s claims were used to obtain FISA surveillance authority for an investigation of Trump.

There were layers of insulation between the Clinton campaign and Steele — the campaign and the Democratic party retained a law firm, which contracted with Fusion GPS, which in turn hired the former spy. At some point, though, perhaps early on, the FBI and DOJ learned that the dossier was actually a partisan opposition-research product. By then, they were dug in. No one, after all, would be any the wiser: Hillary would coast to victory, so Democrats would continue running the government; FISA materials are highly classified, so they’d be kept under wraps. Just as it had been with the Obama-era’s Fast and Furious and IRS scandals, any malfeasance would remain hidden.

The best laid schemes . . . gang aft agley.

I honestly don’t know if President Trump is going to be able to drain the swamp, but the above statement makes it obvious that had Hillary Clinton become President, the swamp would only have gotten bigger.

The article concludes:

In conclusion, while there is a dearth of evidence to date that the Trump campaign colluded in Russia’s cyberespionage attack on the 2016 election, there is abundant evidence that the Obama administration colluded with the Clinton campaign to use the Steele dossier as a vehicle for court-authorized monitoring of the Trump campaign — and to fuel a pre-election media narrative that U.S. intelligence agencies believed Trump was scheming with Russia to lift sanctions if he were elected president. Congress should continue pressing for answers, and President Trump should order the Justice Department and FBI to cooperate rather than — what’s the word? — resist.

Our Founding Fathers must be spinning in their graves.

 

 

Behind The Scenes In The Inspector General Investigation Of The FBI and DOJ

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the Congressional attempts to get information from Deputy FBI Director Andrew “Andy” McCabe and his role in the 2016 “Trump Project”.

Here are some highlights from the article:

♦It is increasingly clear the entire purpose of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe was not to investigate some nefarious and innocuous Russian election interference; but rather with a Trump victory the same people who weaponized the FBI and DOJ to conduct the “Trump Project” needed to generate a shield or firewall to protect them from sunlight. The Mueller probe is that shield.

…♦Secondly, the same FBI and DOJ officials, along with career FBI and DOJ lawyers and administrators, who are at risk from exposure within the plot, do not want to answer questions in public hearings. They are using closed sessions under the auspices of everything therein being “classified”. This venue and manner of testimony blocks congressional representatives from talking about the content publicly.

Everything is being structured to avoid public scrutiny. In essence these career co-conspirators are using the familiar DC system to protect themselves from ramifications of their plot reaching the public.

♦Having said that, it certainly appears we have one person on the side of justice who predicted this was going to happen. By all external appearances DOJ Office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz has moved proactively to set up as much transparency as possible upon his years-long investigation into the politicization of the FBI and DOJ.

The article goes on to list some of the things the Inspector General has released to the press in order to increase transparency in the FBI and DOJ:

IG Stimulated Releases of Information:

♦Release #1 was the FBI Agent Strzok and Attorney Lisa Page story; and the repercussions from discovering their politically motivated bias in the 2015/2016 Clinton email investigation and 2016/2017 Russian Election investigation.

♦Release #2 outlined the depth of FBI Agent Strzok and FBI Attorney Page’s specific history in the 2016 investigation into Hillary Clinton to include the changing of the wording [“grossly negligent” to “extremely careless”] of the probe outcome delivered by FBI Director James Comey.

♦Release #3 was the information about DOJ Deputy Bruce Ohr being in contact with Fusion GPS at the same time as the FISA application was submitted and granted by the FISA court; which authorized surveillance and wiretapping of candidate Donald Trump; that release also attached Bruce Ohr and Agent Strzok directly to the Steele Dossier.

♦Release #4 was information that Deputy Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, was an actual contract employee of Fusion GPS, and was hired by F-GPS specifically to work on opposition research against candidate Donald Trump. Both Bruce Ohr and Nellie Ohr are attached to the origin of the Christopher Steele Russian Dossier.

♦Release #5 was the specific communication between FBI Agent Strzok and FBI Attorney Page. The 10,000 text messages that included evidence of them both meeting with Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to discuss the “insurance policy” against candidate Donald Trump in August of 2016.

The Inspector General’s report is due out in January. If the media chooses to report on it, I suspect it will be very interesting reading for all Americans. I also expect that it may put an abrupt end to the idea that President Trump colluded with the Russians.

The Problem With Special Prosecutors Is That They Don’t Have Limits Even When They Are Supposed To Have Limits

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If we think back to recent (a year) history, Robert Mueller was appointed as a special prosecutor to investigate whether or not there was Russian interference in the 2016 election. He has been searching for a year, and so far has charged two people formerly associated with the Trump Administration with crimes unrelated to the purpose of his investigation. It seems as if he is using his unlimited budget to follow rabbit trails. Now there is a new controversy about some of those rabbit trails.

Yesterday Townhall posted an article about some recent problems with the Mueller investigation.

The article reports:

According to Axios, special counsel Robert Mueller has confiscated thousands of e-mails and communications from President Donald J. Trump’s transition team, including from notable figures such as Jared Kushner and other high profile aides.

“Trump officials discovered Mueller had the emails when his prosecutors used them as the basis for questions to witnesses, the sources said.

The emails include 12 accounts, one of which contains about 7,000 emails, the sources said.

The accounts include the team’s political leadership and the foreign-policy team, the sources said.”

These e-mails supposedly all occurred after  the 2016 presidential election. Mueller’s investigation is explicitly to determine if there was any Russian interference before the election that could have rigged the results for Donald Trump. But, according to Axios’ source “Mueller is using the emails to confirm things, and get new leads.”

If these are the emails of the transition team, they have nothing to do with events before the election–they are the records of the new administration organizing its policies. They are subject to executive privilege and to the Fourth Amendment. It sounds as if neither was honored.

The article concludes:

As Fox News notes, Langhofer says that Mueller’s team gained access to the e-mails via the General Services Administration. The Transition team was using the GSA’s office space and e-mails severs. Trump’s attorneys say that in doing so, Mueller may have violated the 4th amendment by asking the GSA for e-mails which were supposed to be private and secure. 

According to Reuters, the letter says “career staff members at the agency unlawfully produced TFA’s private materials, including privileged communications, to the Special Counsel’s Office.”

Stay tuned.

The Truth Eventually Comes Out

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This story is based on articles in Politico, The Conservative Treehouse, and The Washington Examiner. All three articles deal with comments by former interim CIA Director Mike Morell about the politicization of the CIA during the presidential election campaign on 2016 and after President Trump was elected.

Politico quotes Mr. Morell on the friction between the CIA and President Trump when he became the Republican nominee for President:

And then he sees a former acting director and deputy director of CIA criticizing him and endorsing his opponent. And then he gets his first intelligence briefing, after becoming the Republican nominee, and within 24 to 48 hours, there are leaks out of that that are critical of him and his then-national security advisor, Mike Flynn.

And so, this stuff starts to build, right? And he must have said to himself, “What is it with these intelligence guys? Are they political?” The current director at the time, John Brennan, during the campaign occasionally would push back on things that Donald Trump had said.

So, when Trump talked about the Iran nuclear deal being the worst deal in the history of American diplomacy, and he was going to tear it up on the first day—John Brennan came out publicly and said, “That would be an act of folly.” So, he sees current sitting director pushing back on him. Right?

Then he becomes president, and he’s supposed to be getting a daily brief from the moment he becomes the president-elect. Right? And he doesn’t. And within a few days, there’s leaks about how he’s not taking his briefing. So, he must have thought—right?—that, “Who are these guys? Are these guys out to get me? Is this a political organization? Can I think about them as a political organization when I become president?”

So, I think there was a significant downside to those of us who became political in that moment. So, if I could have thought of that, would I have ended up in a different place? I don’t know. But it’s something I didn’t think about.

The Washington Examiner notes:

The answer to that was simple: Yes, they were political. But the astonishing part of the Morell interview is his admission that at the time he did not stop to consider what was happening from Trump’s perspective, even as the leaks continued when Trump took office. “He must have thought, ‘Who are these guys?'” Morell said. “Are these guys out to get me? Is this a political organization?”

The first time Trump met the FBI‘s then-director, James Comey, was when the intelligence chiefs chose Comey to tell Trump, then the president-elect, about a collection of “salacious and unverified” (Comey’s words) allegations about Trump, compiled by operatives working for the Clinton campaign, that has since become known as the Trump dossier. That surely got Trump off to a good start with the FBI’s intelligence-gathering operation. It was also a clever way for the intel chiefs to push the previously-secret dossier into the public conversation, when news leaked that Comey had briefed the president on it.

The Conservative Treehouse reports:

It is important to emphasize here the possibly illegal “unmasking“, and the certainly illegal “leaking“, were all based on intelligence reports generated from raw intelligence, and not the raw intelligence itself.  It was the FBI (Comey) and ODNI (Clapper) generating the intel reports, including the Presidents’ Daily Briefing (PDB).

The CIA provided raw intel, and the NSA generated the raw monitoring intelligence from the characters identified by the CIA and approved by FBI FISA warrant submissions.

It would be EXPLOSIVE if it turned out the October 2016 FISA warrant was gained by deception, misleading/manipulated information, or fraud as a result of the Russian Dossier; and exponentially more explosive if the dossier was -in part- organized by the wife of an investigative member of the DOJ who was applying for the FISA warrant; the same warrant that led to the wiretapping and surveillance of the Trump campaign and General Flynn, and was authorized by FISA Court Judge Contreras – who was, until recently, the judge in Flynn’s case.

The FBI were running the counter-intelligence operation and generating the actual reports that were eventually shared with the White House, Susan Rice and the Dept of Justice.  Those reports, and interpretations of the report content, were eventually leaked to the media.

During the time James Comey’s FBI was generating the intelligence reports, Comey admitted he intentionally never informed congressional oversight: “because of the sensitivity of the matter“.

John Brennan effectively (and intentionally) took himself out of the picture from the perspective of the illegal acts within the entire process.  James Clapper while rubbing his face and scratching his head had taken the same route earlier.

That leaves James Comey.

Stay tuned. This is going to get interesting, even while the press tries to avoid the major question of whether or not the Russian dossier was used as the basis for surveillance of the Trump campaign and transition team.

Too Many Coincidences

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Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at National Review today about the Mueller investigation. It’s a rather long and detailed look at the people participating in the investigation. I strongly suggest that you follow the link and read the entire article. The article includes a lot of very insightful observations.

The article states:

The investigation is venturing well beyond the original mandate of rooting out evidence of Russian collusion. Indeed, the word “collusion” is now rarely invoked at all. It has given way to its successor, “obstruction.” The latter likely will soon beget yet another catchphrase to justify the next iteration of the investigations.

There seems far less special investigatory concern with the far more likely Russian collusion in the matters of the origins and dissemination of the Fusion GPS/Steele dossier, and its possible role in the Obama-administration gambit of improper or illegal surveilling, unmasking, and leaking of the names of American citizens.

The article concludes:

Indeed, the only remaining trajectory by which Mueller and his investigators can escape with their reputations intact is to dismiss those staff attorneys who have exhibited clear anti-Trump political sympathies, reboot the investigation, and then focus on what now seems the most likely criminal conduct: Russian and Clinton-campaign collusion in the creation of the anti-Trump Fusion GPS dossier and later possible U.S. government participation in the dissemination of it. If such a fraudulent document was used to gain court approval to surveil Trump associates, and under such cover to unmask and leak names of private U.S. citizens — at first to warp a U.S. election, and then later to thwart the work of an incoming elected administration — then Mueller will be tasked with getting to the bottom of one of the greatest political scandals in recent U.S. history. Indeed, his legacy may not be that he welcomed in known pro-Clinton, anti-Trump attorneys to investigate the Trump 2016 campaign where there was little likelihood of criminality, but that he ignored the most egregious case of government wrongdoing in the last half-century.

I totally agree with his conclusions, but I also believe that the chances of Mueller doing the right thing are about the same as finding a needle in a haystack!

 

The Collusion Without A Crime

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Sometimes it is very easy to overlook the obvious when you in the middle of dealing with an intense situation. The Mueller investigation might be considered an intense situation, and there is something obvious being overlooked. Andrew McCarthy pointed it out in an article at National Review today.

Mr. McCarthy points out that after a year of investigation, there is no evidence of Russian cyberespionage. If there is no evidence of cyberespionage, how can there be collusion with cyberespionage? Remember, the FBI was never allowed to examine the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers–the examination was done by a group hired by the DNC. If I were guilty of a crime and the FBI wanted to search my house, would they let me hire a friend to do the searching? Somehow I don’t think so.

The article states:

We have paid too much attention to the so-called collusion component of the probe — speculation about Trump-campaign coordination in Russia’s perfidy. There appears to be no proof of that sort of collusion. Because it has been our focus, though, Mueller has gotten a free pass on a defect that would be fatal to any related prosecution theory: He cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Russia is guilty of hacking the Democratic National Committee and prominent Democrats.

This doesn’t mean it didn’t happen — like the U.S. intelligence agencies, I’m assuming it did, and that Russia should continue to be the subject of intense government counterintelligence efforts. The point is that Mueller can’t prove it in court, which is the only thing for which a prosecutor is needed. If he can’t establish to the required standard of proof that Russia conducted an espionage attack on the election, it is impossible to prove that anyone conspired with Russia to do so. There is no criminal case.

It is important to remember that when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed a special counsel, he did not specify a crime. That alone should have shut down the investigation immediately–what are you investigating? Are you simply on a fishing expedition hoping you can find someone who is guilty of something?

The article concludes:

That is another good reason to deduce that Mueller’s team is playing a long game — impeachment, not prosecution. As a practical matter, there is no prospect of articles of impeachment unless Democrats win the 2018 midterms. So, if you thought or hoped Mueller’s investigation would be winding down anytime soon, disabuse yourself.

Still, after 18 months of investigating, it would be worth putting two simple questions to Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, who — at least nominally — supervises Special Counsel Mueller: 1) Does the Justice Department believe, contrary to the apparent concessions in the intelligence agencies’ Russia report, that the government can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Russia is guilty cyberespionage against the 2016 election; and 2) if not, what is the point of Mueller’s investigation?

The Republican party almost destroyed itself when they tried to impeach President Clinton because the public liked him (and the media was on his side). The Democrats need to learn from that–the public trusts President Trump more than Congress or the media. If the Democrats attempt to impeach him, they will lose seats in 2020 and their presidential candidate will not have a chance.

 

This Is The Cast Of Characters And How They Relate To Each Other

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Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about comments by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif. Representative Nunes believes that the government has abused its surveillance privileges. Please follow the link to read the entire article, but there is one part of the article that I find particularly interesting.

Included in the article is the following chart showing how some of the characters in the rapidly being discredited Mueller investigation are connected and some related comments:

Wow. Just wow. Thank God for the investigative reporters that are operating on the Internet.

 

The Most Important Question In The Investigation By The Special Prosecutor

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The charges against Michael Flynn are based on the difference between how he described a telephone conversation and the written transcripts the FBI had of that conversation. The most important question is, “Why was his name unmasked in the transcript of that conversation?” That question is now being asked by Congress, and the FBI and the DOJ are refusing to answer it. Since Congress is charged with oversight of these government agencies, this is the making of a constitutional crisis.

Yesterday CNS News posted a story which details some of the problems with the ongoing investigation by the Special Prosecutor.

The article reports:

Two simple questions: How did the FBI’s Russia investigation start? And was it started because the Trump “dossier” was presented to somebody at the FBI?

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) asked FBI director Christopher Wray those questions at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, but he got no answers:

This is a portion of the questioning of the Director:

Wray answered, “I’m not aware of who started the investigation within the FBI.”

DeSantis followed up: “Was it started because the dossier was presented to somebody in the FBI?”

“I don’t have the answer to that question,” Wray said.

DeSantis asked Wray if he could get back to the committee with the answer:

“Well, if there’s information that we can provide that — without compromising the ongoing special counsel investigation, I’m happy to see what there is that we can do to be responsive,” Wray said.

Any bets on whether or not that question will ever be answered?

The article continues with questioning by Jim Jordan (R-Ohio):

Jordan questioned why someone like Strzok would be selected for Mueller’s team — and why he’d be kicked off it:

“If you kicked everybody off Mueller’s team who was anti-Trump, I don’t think there’d be anybody left,” Jordan said. “There’s got to be something more here. It can’t just be some text messages that show a pro-Clinton, anti-Trump bias. There’s got to be something more. And I’m trying to figure out what it is,” Jordan said.

“But my hunch is it has something to do with the dossier. Director, did Peter Strzok help produce and present the application to the FISA court to secure a warrant to spy on Americans associated with the Trump campaign?”

Wray refused to discuss anything having to do with the FISA process in an open setting.

“We’re not talking about what happened in the court,” Jordan said. “We’re talking about what the FBI took to the court, the application. Did Peter Strzok — was he involved in taking that to the court?”

Wray again refused to discuss it.

There is a house of cards here. The dossier was a piece of opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign. It has never been proven true. To use it as an excuse for surveillance and later to drum up support for a special prosecutor is to base an investigation on a fictitious political document and to use government agencies for political purposes. That shouldn’t happen in a representative republic–that is the kind of thing that goes on in a banana republic.

The Double Standard Shown In One Video

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The following video was posted at One America News yesterday:

It is time to shut down the Mueller investigation–aside from the fact that all the investigators are partisans, the standards used are totally inconsistent with past investigations of Democrats. Equal justice under the law is not part of the Mueller investigation. The investigation truly is a partisan witch hunt.

A Disgusting Waste Of Taxpayer Money

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This post is based on two articles–one by Andrew McCarthy at the National Review and one by Byron York at The Washington Examiner.

Andrew McCarthy makes the case that the charges against Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI are an indication that Special Prosecutor Mueller doesn’t have anything else to charge anyone for. Byron York makes the case that the Trump Administration was set up by the Obama Administration to be charged with violating the Logan Act (a law under which no one has ever been prosecuted) on day one. Both articles are an indication of how desperate some people in Washington are to undo the results of a valid election. That is a sad place for our country to be.

Andrew McCarthy reminds us:

Bottom line: If the FBI had a collusion case of some kind, after well over a year of intensive investigation, Flynn and Papadopoulos would have been pressured to plead guilty to very serious charges — and those serious offenses would be reflected in the charges lodged against Manafort. Obviously, the pleas and the indictment have nothing to do with collusion because Mueller has no collusion case.

Since there is no collusion case, we can safely assume Mueller is primarily scrutinizing President Trump with an eye toward making a case of obstructing an FBI investigation. This also makes sense in light of the pleas that have been taken.

Obstruction itself is a process crime — i.e., it relates to interference in the investigation of an underlying transaction that may or may not be criminal. In the first point, above, we noted that prosecutors generally do not let a cooperator settle a case by pleading guilty to a mere process crime. But if the main case the prosecutor is trying to build is itself a process crime, such as obstruction, then it is not all that damaging that the witnesses have pled guilty only to process crimes. The theme of such a prosecution is that the investigative process must be protected, not that some terrible underlying crime (like an espionage conspiracy) has been committed. Witnesses such as Flynn and Papadopoulos would therefore not be made to look like they had gotten a pass on serious offenses; they would look like they had owned up to corrupting the process and are now helping the prosecutor against the principal corruption target.

Keep in mind that the obstruction charge is obstructing justice in the investigation of a crime that was never committed. This is beyond bizarre–particularly when Hillary Clinton was not charged with obstruction after she destroyed evidence in the email case.

Byron York reports:

As for another concern that Yates said she had over the Flynn-Kislyak conversations — the worry that Flynn’s lie to Vice President Mike Pence (that sanctions were not discussed on the call) would open Flynn up to possible blackmail — perhaps that is a legitimate concern, but why did it warrant FBI questioning of Flynn under the penalty of prosecution for making false statements? Certainly Yates could have warned the White House about that without interrogating Flynn at all.

Instead, it was the prospect of a Logan Act prosecution that led to the FBI interview, which then, when Flynn lied to investigators, led to his guilty plea on a false statements charge.

From today’s perspective, nearly a year later, it has become apparent that, farfetched as it might seem, the Logan Act made it possible for the Obama administration to go after Trump. The ancient law that no one has ever been prosecuted for violating was the Obama administration’s flimsy pretense for a criminal prosecution of the incoming Trump team.

And by the way, when it finally came time to charge Flynn with a crime, did prosecutors, armed with the transcripts of those Flynn-Kislyak conversations, choose to charge him with violating the Logan Act? Of course not. But for the Obama team, the law had already served its purpose, months earlier, to entangle the new administration in a criminal investigation as soon as it walked in the door of the White House.

Our FBI has become an arm of the Democratic Party. It needs to be replaced. That is a shame.

Investigating The Investigators

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Get out the popcorn, this is going to get very interesting. Byron York at The Washington Examiner posted an article yesterday about the firing of an FBI investigator.

The article reports:

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes has issued an angry demand to the FBI and Department of Justice to explain why they kept the committee in the dark over the reason Special Counsel Robert Mueller kicked a key supervising FBI agent off the Trump-Russia investigation.

Stories in both the Washington Post and New York Times on Saturday reported that Peter Strzok, who played a key role in the original FBI investigation into the Trump-Russia matter, and then a key role in Mueller’s investigation, and who earlier had played an equally critical role in the FBI’s Hillary Clinton email investigation, was reassigned out of the Mueller office because of anti-Trump texts he exchanged with a top FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, with whom Strzok was having an extramarital affair. Strzok was transferred to the FBI’s human resources office — an obvious demotion — in July.

Note that this man was also involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Might that explain why no formal charges were brought after an obvious breach of the law occurred?

The FBI and the DOJ have consistently stonewalled Congress when Congress has sought to exercise its role oversight responsibility.

The article concludes:

As a result, Nunes said he has instructed committee staff to draw up a contempt of Congress citation for Rosenstein and for FBI Director Christopher Wray. The chairman promised to take action on the citation before the end of December unless the FBI and DOJ meet all the committee’s outstanding demands.

Obviously Nunes is angry that he did not know about the real reasons for Strzok’s demotion. And he is equally angry with the FBI’s and DOJ’s treatment of the committee. Contempt of Congress is a big move for lawmakers to take, especially against an agency controlled by the same party as leaders of the House. But remember, House Speaker Paul Ryan has already said the FBI and DOJ “stonewalled” the House, and he demanded that it comply immediately. That was five weeks ago. Now, after this latest episode, it seems likely that leaders in Congress are becoming increasingly frustrated with what they see as the FBI and DOJ jerking lawmakers around. At some point, they will act.

It is becoming obvious that the Washington swamp includes many agencies that until recently have avoided politics. There is an awful lot that needs to be cleaned out.

Some Background On The Indictment Of Michael Flynn

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Michael Flynn is expected to plead guilty this morning of lying to the FBI. Seems as if a lot of other people have done that in the past with limited consequences, but that was then and this is now.

Fox News is reporting the details this morning.

These are the details of the charges:

  • “On or about Dec 29, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Government of Russia’s Ambassador to the United States … to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day; and FLYNN did not recall the Russian Ambassador subsequently telling him that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of his request.”
  • “On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution; and  that the Russian Ambassador subsequently never described to FLYNN Russia’s response to his request.”

At this point I am not going to mention that this information was probably obtained through the illegal surveillance by the Obama Administration during and after the election. That alone would result in the case being thrown out in a legal court.

I want to mention a few other things about Michael Flynn. Unfortunately, he is a pawn in a much larger attempt to end the Trump presidency before it can be successful. Since the economic success of the Trump Administration is already becoming obvious to anyone who is paying attention, those who want Trump impeached are starting to get desperate. I would also like to note that the FBI has a past history with Flynn that might influence those doing the investigating.

In September, I posted an article that included the following:

When the FBI launched an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, one of the bureau’s top former counterterrorism agents believed that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe would have to recuse himself from the investigation.

Former Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz was one of the bureau’s top intelligence analysts and terrorism experts but resigned from the bureau five years ago after she said she was harassed and her career was blocked by top FBI management. She filed a formal sexual discrimination complaint against the bureau in 2013 and it was Flynn, among many others, who publicly came to her aide.

In her first on-camera interview she described the retaliation from McCabe and others in the bureau as “vicious.”

…She told Circa, current senior level management, including McCabe, created a “cancer like” bureaucracy striking fear into FBI agents and causing others to resign. She eventually resigned herself, but her case is still pending.

Lying to the FBI is not a good idea, but I would like to note that the Clintons have done it consistently over the years with very little consequences. The indictment of Flynn is nothing more than the deep state at work. Those responsible for the illegal surveillance need to be held accountable, and all conflicts of interest in the office of the special prosecutor need to be revealed and dealt with. Unfortunately, Flynn has been caught up as a pawn in a much larger witch hunt. It should also be noted that Flynn was fired after about a month in his job in the Trump administration for lying to Vice-President Pence.

It May Be Time For A New Attorney General

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I like Jeff Sessions. I think he is a nice man, but I can’t figure out why he has not enforced some of the laws he is responsible to enforce.

On Thursday, PJ Media posted an article detailing some comments made by former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom about James Comey, Robert Mueller, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.

The article reports:

Appearing on Fox News’ Varney & Co., Kallstrom told the host that it “was obvious to anybody that knows anything” that former President Barack Obama was not going to let James Comey indict Clinton.

“It turns out — unfortunately — he was a political hack,” Kallstrom said flatly. “I think he maybe started out in an honorable way. His opinion of himself is sky high —  just an unbelievable guy with just an arrogance about him…. It got him in trouble because I think he thought he was Superman and he found out that he wasn’t.”

Kallstrom blamed the Clintons for Comey’s descent into hackery.

“The dogs are always going to bite your heels when you’re dealing with the Clintons,” he explained. “Look how long the public, the American people have been dealing with the crime syndicate known as the Clinton Foundation… just look at what’s in the public domain. The Clintons have been taking advantage of their stations in life for so long.”

…Kallstrom pointed out that just “the unmaskings of names alone is a major scandal.” Requests to identify Americans whose names surfaced in foreign intelligence reporting — known as unmasking — was done at a freakishly rapid rate in the final months of the Obama administration.

“We got all these major crime things bubbling – all of which were 20 times bigger than Watergate! And nothing seems to be happening… the attorney general is in a coma!” he said.

I like Jeff Sessions. I think he is an honorable man. I also think he needs to investigate some of the corruption that is swirling around the previous administration or find another job.

 

A Very Different Perspective On Yesterday’s Indictments

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Yesterday Conservative Treehouse posted a very intriguing analysis of the indictment of Paul Manafort. I strongly suggest that you follow the link to read the entire article, but I will try to highlight it here.

The article reports:

As the Special Counsel Robert Mueller indictment documents show with increasing clarity, the entire enterprise surrounding the Washington DC Russian Investigation is not about law, it’s about creating and controlling leverage.

…The 2016 election caused the balance of power to shift favorably toward political forces that are external to the DC machine, ie. President Trump and the deplorables.

The subsequent action by Robert Mueller, Democrats, the Media (writ large), and President Trump is a confrontation over political goals and objectives. The DC machine, the “swamp” per se’, is attempting to frame leverage against actions adverse to their political interest.

…Paul Manafort is being leveraged toward a political objective; his legal jeopardy is negligible. The documents, and the underlying charges, are intended to make life miserable for Mr. Manafort – not to end with some traditionally framed criminal consequence, ie. prison.

Mr. Manafort’s wealth is being held as leverage, compliance, toward his acquiescence within the game; nothing more. He’ll likely end up with some misdemeanor charge, a financial fine good enough for media optics and perhaps -at worst- some probation for not following the FARA rules. That’s it.

Conversely, on the other side of the political continuum, Tony and John Podesta are just now entering the process of being leveraged toward compliance on the Clinton side of the equation. Like Manafort, Tony Podesta most likely will not face legal jeopardy beyond a similar outcome.

In the backdrop to the Clinton dynamic you have Mueller putting the deeper part of the Deep Swamp and remaining black hat intelligence community, on notice to knock-it-off with the selling of U.S. policy toward gaining their own financial indulgences.

The article concludes:

Senator Schumer wants to keep his leverage right where it is currently; and stop ‘his side’ from feeling the effects of Mueller’s omnidirectional legal admonishments. If Mueller indicts Tony Podesta senator Schumer loses political leverage.

Nothing about the current dynamic is factually encompassing President Trump; it is all about optics, narratives and political leverage. However, everything about this dynamic is factually encompassing the existential threat that outsider Trump represents to the established way of life in the DC Swamp.

Toward the end goal of disrupting DC swamp-life, Mueller and Trump appear aligned in common cause. Robert Mueller from the perspective of trying to get the external influence agents to the U.S. stopped; and President Trump from the policy perspective of America-first, which coincidentally is in alignment with Mueller’s patriotic goals to stop influence agents.

That’s the bigger part of the BIG picture. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.

Washington is all about power (and a swamp that does not want to be drained).

Wait For The Boomerang

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The headlines are screaming today–“Paul Manafort Indicted.” Well, before the Democrats celebrate too loudly, they might want to take a look at the indictment.

The New York Post posted an article today listing the charges:

The indictment says Manafort and Gates worked as “unregistered agents” for Ukraine and the Party of Regions, a political party run by Yanukovych.

​They “generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of their Ukraine work” and hid the payments from US authorities, the indictment says.

From 2006 through 2016, Manafort and Gates laundered $75 million through “scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships and bank accounts,” it says.

The 31-page indictment does not mention Trump or the 2016 election.

There are a few things that need to be noted about the indictment of Paul Manafort. Wikipedia lists a few positions Paul Manafort held in the past. Between 1978 and 1980, Manafort was the southern coordinator for Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, and the deputy political director at the Republican National Committee. After Reagan’s election in November 1980, he was appointed Associate Director of the Presidential Personnel Office at the White House. Paul Manafort worked as an advisor to the presidential campaigns of George H.W. Bush in 1988 and Bob Dole in 1996. Manafort was someone used by the Republican establishment in the past, it is quite likely that establishment Republicans had something to do with Manafort being chosen to work on the Trump campaign. It is also important to note that Manafort was hired in March 2016 and fired in August 2016.

So what can we conclude from this? It is quite likely that Robert Mueller has indicted Manafort as an attempt to bring down President Trump. All Mueller has to do is promise leniency to Manafort if Manafort will blow the whistle on the President.

The fact that the special prosecutor indicted someone who worked on the Trump campaign for a matter of months on charges that were in no way connected to the campaign or Donald Trump is an indication that Mueller is not finding what he needs to find in order to go after President Trump. It is becoming very obvious that Mueller is conducting an extensive witch hunt that is only yielding shady characters not related to the President.

In a nutshell, if this is all Robert Mueller can come up with, he needs to go away. He is a very expensive distraction.

 

Whatever Happened To Elliot Ness?

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In case you are too young to remember, Elliot Ness was:

…the man most often recognized for destroying the multimillion-dollar breweries operated by Al Capone. Also responsible, in part, for Capone’s arrest and conviction of tax evasion, Ness was instrumental in ceasing the power Capone had over the city of Chicago.

Ness was also responsible for turning around Cleveland, Ohio, in the mid-1930s, when the city was overcome with crime and corruption. Weeding out 200 crooked police officers and bringing 15 other officials to trial for criminal behavior, Ness set many precedents. One such milestone was Ness’s efforts to correct Cleveland’s traffic problems, establishing a separate court in which all traffic cases were heard.  (quoted from biography.com)

Elliot Ness worked in law enforcement from 1927 to 1944. He was known as an corruptible example of integrity that was totally trustworthy. This was a man who successfully drained his local swamps. We need him now.

Investor’s Business Daily posted an article yesterday listing a few of the Democratic scandals in the Obama Administration that have somehow not had consequences.

Here are a few highlights:

Exonerating Clinton before the facts were in. First was the fact that former FBI director James Comey had, contrary to what he told Congress, drafted what amounted to an acquittal letter for Hillary Clinton months before he’d even interviewed her regarding her unsecured private email server.

Comey interviewed Clinton on July 2, 2016, and three days later announced that he was closing the case because “no reasonable prosecutor” would pursue it.

…Setting up a liberal slush fund. Next, we learned that Justice was using settlement money as a slush fund to support liberal groups, to the explicit exclusion of any non-liberal ones. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte released what he called “smoking gun” emails to that effect.

Under Obama, the Justice department started sending money from legal settlements to third parties not involved directly in the litigation. At the time, there were lots of complaints (including in this space) that the money was being poured into left-wing groups. And Trump ended the practice when he took office.

…Papering over the Uranium One scandal. We’ve also only recently learned, thanks to intrepid reporters at The Hill, that the FBI had a substantial amount of evidence showing that Russian nuclear officials had been involved in a number of illegal schemes designed to expand its nuclear business in the U.S. — which included bribery, extortion and racketeering.

Worse, they had all this before top Obama administration officials — including Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder — signed off on a deal that gave Russia effective control of 20% of uranium in the U.S. by approving Russia’s purchase of Uranium One.

…Using Democratic-sponsored Russian dirt on Trump. Now that we know the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee — despite repeated denials — financed the so-called Trump dossier, a bigger question arises.

What did the FBI know and when did they know it?

Despite being labeled as “salacious and unverified” by former FBI director James Comey, it has served as a road map for journalists and federal investigators pushing the Trump-Russia meddling story.

The article concludes:

In the end, the FBI didn’t pay Steele, but as York notes, the question remains: “Did the FBI or other agencies use any information from the dossier as a basis for warrant requests before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court?”

House Republicans announced this week that they’ve started a probe into the FBI’s handling of both the Clinton email case and the Uranium One deal. Now they have a fresh angle on the dossier to pursue.

This is a good start. The Justice Department is supposed to be above politics. Obama tried to turn it into a political tool. The public needs to know how far he got.

Who do you trust to investigate this? Are the Justice Department’s hands clean? Are the FBI’s hands clean? Are the Special Prosecutor’s hands clean? Are Congress’ hands clean?

If you look at the cast of characters involved in or signing off on the Uranium One deal, you will see names you recognize as investigating President Trump for Russian connections. In what universe does that make sense?

The swamp is deep, and at this point we need an Elliot Ness who will go after the guilty parties in a manner showing integrity, impartiality, and honesty. This is not a political matter–this is an exercise that will determine whether or not all of us live under the same laws. If there are two sets of laws–one for the Washington elite (swamp) and one for the little people, our republic will not survive.

 

It’s Just Squirrelly!

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I have been known to make up my own words when I consider them appropriate. On Friday, The Daily Caller posted a detailed piece on the timeline and stories surrounding the Uranium One deal. It is a rather long article, and I strongly suggest that you follow the link above and read the entire piece. I will try to hit the highlights here.

The article reports:

New FBI information about corruption in a Clinton-approved uranium deal with Russia raises questions about Clinton’s actions after the FBI broke up a deep-cover Russian spy ring in 2010.

For a decade, the FBI ran an operation called Ghost Stories to monitor and rip apart a deep-cover Russian agent network. Ghost Stories tracked a ring Russian spies who lived between Boston and Washington, D.C., under false identities. It was one of the FBI’s most elaborate and successful counterintelligence operations in history.

After the FBI arrested 10 of the spies in June, 2010, Secretary of State Clinton worked feverishly to return the Russian agents to Moscow in a hastily arranged, lopsided deal with Putin.

Obviously, she did not want the spies hanging around for further questioning.

The story continues:

The day the FBI arrested the Russian agents, on June 28, 2010, the day before the secretary of state’s husband, Bill Clinton, was to give a speech in Moscow. A Kremlin-connected investment bank, Renaissance Capital, paid the former president $500,000 for the hour-long appearance.

An unnamed Hillary Clinton spokesman told ABC News that there was “no reason to think the Secretary was a target of this spy ring.”

That was a lie.

The article concludes:

So here are the key facts: The FBI found that Russian intelligence had targeted Hillary Clinton before and during her time as secretary of state. Clinton’s spokespersons denied that this was so. Clinton opposed the Magnitsky sanctions on officials tied to Putin. After her husband received a half-million dollars in Moscow from a Kremlin-connected investment bank, Clinton moved with unusual speed to whisk the ring of 10 Russian spies out of the country and back to Moscow. She had the lopsided swap take place over a long summer weekend, before the FBI was finished with the spies, and before the spies could stand trial. While the FBI was separately investigating Russians involved with buying Uranium One, she approved the sale of American uranium to Russia’s nuclear weapons agency. Principals in the sale then plowed $145 million into her family foundation and projects.

Several questions come to mind. Precisely what did the FBI know about Russia’s spy service targeting Hillary Clinton and her inner circle? Why did Clinton deny through spokespersons that she had been a Russian target? Why did she work so feverishly to get the spies out of the United States and back to Russia? Why has the FBI leadership not been more vocal in touting one of its greatest counterintelligence successes ever? And why did nobody in the FBI leadership raise this issue during the 2016 Russian election meddling controversy?

The question in my mind is whether or not anyone will be held accountable for the transfer of uranium to Russia or the very strange donations from overseas that the Clinton Foundation received before and during the time that Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. It is also illustrative to note that when Hillary Clinton lost the election for President, much of the overseas money coming into the Clinton Foundation dried up. I truly believe that the Clinton Family is today’s version of Tammany Hall. It will be difficult to hold them accountable for any of their misdeeds.