The Fix Is In

The Justice Department of the Biden administration is not known for its even-handed justice. The way the January 6th protesters were treated versus the way the rioters from the summer were treated is a glaring example of that. Now the Justice Department is attempting to cover their tracks on the scandals involved in surveillance of President Trump’s campaign.

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about Carter Page’s civil lawsuit against those who illegally obtained a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Warrant and spied on him.

The article reports:

Today the civil lawsuit Carter Page -vs- James Comey, former FBI Director at the time when Page was targeted, was assigned to a new judge….. and who do you think the judge “randomly selected” was?

Yup…. James Boasberg, current presiding judge over the FISA Court.

Wow. What an incredible coincidence.

The article continues:

Randomly reassigned my ass.

Judge James Boasberg is up to his neck in this.

OK, bear with me and remember, this “random assignment” is a civil case against James Comey.

Not only was Judge James Boasberg the judge that signed off on the third extension of the search warrant that contained the fraudulent Steele dossier as its primary evidence to support it…..  James Boasberg was also the “randomly selected” presiding judge in the criminal case against Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who doctored emails to deny that Carter Page was a CIA asset in order to justify the warrant.

Judge James Boasberg was also the presiding judge in the media lawsuit seeking the James Comey memos the FBI and DOJ refused to release.  It was Judge Boasberg who ruled the DOJ could keep the Comey memos hidden from the public (link) to protect the integrity of the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation.  Robert Mueller was also put in place to cover up the illegal political surveillance (ie. “Spygate”) that was also the primary purpose of the fraudulent search warrant.

But wait, it gets worse… Robert Mueller filed the final renewal of the fraudulent warrant (June 29, 2017), and it was Judge James Boasberg signed it.

Let’s be really clear here. The FISA court is a small unit. The judges in/around Washington DC are also a small unit. They know everything that is going on in and around their DC network. A FISA judge inside that DC system knows every granular detail of everything that comes into their purview. All of it. Judge Boasberg even wrote the last two FISA court opinions (2019 and 2020) about the FBI abuses of the FISA-702 process and warrantless, illegal violations of the NSA database.

Now we are to believe it is just another random coincidence that James Boasberg is selected to be the judge in the civil case between Carter Page and James Comey?

Don’t bet on a fair decision in this case. This is the stuff of banana republics. I don’t know if we will be able to put the blindfold back on lady justice.

 

A Democrat Senator Who Is Obviously Aware Of The Polls

The Daily Caller posted an article today about some recent statements by Virginia Senator Mark Warner. Senator Warner is the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The article reports:

The top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence acknowledged in a recent interview that contacts between Trump campaign associates and Russians could be “a set of coincidences” rather than collusion.

“I’m reserving my final judgement until we’ve seen all the witnesses we need to see, and we’ve gotten all the facts. So I’m going to hold off,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said in an interview with The New Yorker’s David Remnick when asked whether he believes that Trump associates conspired with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 presidential election.

…“I’m anxious for this to come to a conclusion,” Warner said of the investigation, adding that he is “hopeful” that the committee will be able to release sections of its final report every 30 to 45 days.

The committee plans to release four separate reports about various aspects of its investigation. The first, which dealt with election security, was released earlier this week.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has already released a report on its own Russia investigation. The report said that investigators found no evidence of collusion.

On Thursday, May 10, CNN posted the following:

Note that Democrat approval of the Mueller investigation has also dropped (as well as Republican approval). Independent approval has increased, but is still below 50 percent. I hate to be cynical here, but I believe that Senator Warner is simply responding to what his internal polls are telling him–Americans are beginning to realize that Mueller’s investigation was a sham from the beginning. I suspect you will hear more Democrats become reluctant to accuse President Trump of anything as his popularity ratings soar. It is going to be an interesting summer–for many reasons.

 

We Were Very Close To Losing Our Republic

When the entire apparatus of government is used for political purposes, the freedom of Americans is in danger. Evidently there was a lot of that going on during the Obama Administration. It became particularly rampant during the 2016 campaign–electronic surveillance, the FBI’s ‘insurance policy’ in case Donald Trump got elected, etc. However, it was evident long before 2016.

In December 2017, I posted an article about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which funneled penalties they levied on corporations into Democrat aligned community organizer groups. We all know about the IRS’s targeting of conservative political groups to stifle free speech during the 2012 election. In 2008 most Americans watched a video of the New Black Panthers standing outside a polling place in Philadelphia with billy clubs looking very menacing. Despite the video evidence, they were never convicted of voter intimidation. There has been a problem with our federal justice system for a while.

Scott Johnson posted an article today at Power Line which cites the latest example of misuse of the government for political purposes. The article is based on a Wall Street Journal article (which is behind the subscriber wall).

Kimberley Strassel writes in The Wall Street Journal:

The Department of Justice lost its latest battle with Congress Thursday when it allowed House Intelligence Committee members to view classified documents about a top-secret intelligence source that was part of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. Even without official confirmation of that source’s name, the news so far holds some stunning implications.

Among them is that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation outright hid critical information from a congressional investigation. In a Thursday press conference, Speaker Paul Ryan bluntly noted that Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes’s request for details on this secret source was “wholly appropriate,” “completely within the scope” of the committee’s long-running FBI investigation, and “something that probably should have been answered a while ago.” Translation: The department knew full well it should have turned this material over to congressional investigators last year, but instead deliberately concealed it.

House investigators nonetheless sniffed out a name, and Mr. Nunes in recent weeks issued a letter and a subpoena demanding more details. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s response was to double down—accusing the House of “extortion” and delivering a speech in which he claimed that “declining to open the FBI’s files to review” is a constitutional “duty.” Justice asked the White House to back its stonewall. And it even began spinning that daddy of all superspook arguments—that revealing any detail about this particular asset could result in “loss of human lives.”

This is desperation, and it strongly suggests that whatever is in these files is going to prove very uncomfortable to the FBI.

The bureau already has some explaining to do. Thanks to the Washington Post’s unnamed law-enforcement leakers, we know Mr. Nunes’s request deals with a “top secret intelligence source” of the FBI and CIA, who is a U.S. citizen and who was involved in the Russia collusion probe. When government agencies refer to sources, they mean people who appear to be average citizens but use their profession or contacts to spy for the agency. Ergo, we might take this to mean that the FBI secretly had a person on the payroll who used his or her non-FBI credentials to interact in some capacity with the Trump campaign.

This would amount to spying, and it is hugely disconcerting.

Congress has legal oversight over the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice was created by Congress in 1870. Originally, there was simply an Attorney General who gave legal advice to Congress and the President. Eventually that was limited to Congress because of the workload. The Department of Justice is a creation of government.

Either Congress has not been properly exercising its oversight authority over the Justice Department or Congress is as corrupt as the Justice Department. It is one of the other. All of the information regarding the relationship between the Justice Department’s spying and otherwise interfering with the Trump campaign needs to be made public–immediately. The American voters are entitled to see where the corruption was (and is).

Why A Federal Judge Is Questioning Mueller’s Actions

I am not a lawyer. Please understand that I do not fully understand all of the nuances of what I am about to write. The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about some of the legal irregularities in the investigation being done by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.

The article reports:

Today U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III appears to have caught on to an explosive issue CTH noted yesterday.  In building the case against Paul Manafort, special counsel Robert Mueller’s team used the pre-existing FISA Title-1 warrant that was originally applied to U.S. person Carter Page and the Trump campaign.

Under normal criminal investigation any search warrant or surveillance warrant would normally proceed through U.S. courts, under Title-3, where the Mueller team would need to show probable cause for a warrant.  However, by using the Title-1 warrant from the FBI counterintelligence operation, as extended by AAG Rod Rosenstein, Robert Mueller was able to use far more intrusive and unchecked searches and seizures for his criminal probe.

In essence, Mueller’s investigation is using methods that are not within the bounds of the law.

The article details the events in the courtroom:

“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III told Mueller’s team. “You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you to lead you to Mr. Trump and an impeachment, or whatever.”

Further, Ellis demanded to see the unredacted “scope memo,” a document outlining the scope of the special counsel’s Russia probe that congressional Republicans have also sought. […] The Reagan-appointed judge asked Mueller’s team where they got the authority to indict Manafort on alleged crimes dating as far back as 2005.

The special counsel argues that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein granted them broad authority in his May 2, 2017 letter appointing Mueller to this investigation. But after the revelation that the team is using information from the earlier DOJ probe, Ellis said that information did not “arise” out of the special counsel probe – and therefore may not be within the scope of that investigation.

“We don’t want anyone with unfettered power,” he said.

Mueller’s team says its authorities are laid out in documents including the August 2017 scope memo – and that some powers are actually secret because they involve ongoing investigations and national security matters that cannot be publicly disclosed.

Ellis seemed amused and not persuaded.

He summed up the argument of the Special Counsel’s Office as, “We said this was what [the] investigation was about, but we are not bound by it and we were lying.”

He referenced the common exclamation from NFL announcers, saying: “C’mon man!” 

I understand the concept of a Special Prosecutor, but I feel like the office has been totally abused when it is called into play. It is time for Robert Mueller to write a summary of what he has found regarding Russian collusion during the election and shut the investigation down. He might also want to take a look at the collusion with Russia regarding the GPS Fusion documents, but somehow he seems to have overlooked those.

Blindly Stumbling On The Truth

One of the loudest anti-Trump Democrats is Adam Schiff. However, he recently said something most of us can agree with. Hot Air posted an article today about one of his recent statements. Representative Schiff is warning his fellow Democrats that planning to impeach President Trump simply for political reasons might not be a good move politically.

The article includes his statement:

The legal standard for what constitutes a high crime or misdemeanor is less important than the practical and political standard that must be met in any impeachment case. And while that political standard cannot be easily or uniformly defined, I think in the present context, it means the following: Was the president’s conduct so incompatible with the office he holds that Democratic and Republican members of Congress can make the case to their constituents that they were obligated to remove him?

If they cannot, if impeachment is seen by a substantial part of the country as merely an effort to nullify an election by other means, there will be no impeachment, no matter how high the crime or serious the misdemeanor…

Should the facts warrant impeachment, that case will be made more difficult politically if part of the country feels that removing Mr. Trump was the result that some of their fellow Americans were wishing for all along…

Given the evidence that is already public, I can well understand why the president fears impeachment and seeks to use the false claim that Democrats are more interested in impeachment than governing to rally his base. Democrats should not take the bait.

The statement that impeachment for no apparent reason would be seen as an attempt to overturn an election is the first intelligent thing I have heard this man say. The Democrats need to keep in mind that after the Republicans tried to impeach President Clinton, they lost Congress and didn’t get it back for a while. Most Americans have a sense of fairness, and the Democrats’ actions toward this President since he won the nomination in 2016 have not been praiseworthy. Those Americans who are aware of the emails between FBI Agents Page and Strzok have reason to be suspicious of the actions of the Democrats.

Just for the record, it is my belief that if the Democrats retake Congress, one of their first items of business will be impeachment. That will destroy the economic prosperity we have seen under President Trump (and the Democrats know that), but they will do it anyway.

Using The Government To Intimidate Those With Differing Views

Scott Johnson at Power Line posted an article today about Michael Caputo. Michael Caputo is an ordinary citizen who worked on the Trump presidential campaign. On Tuesday, he appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee and gave his testimony. Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is chilling to anyone who believes that Americans should be free to volunteer for any candidate’s campaign they choose without facing enormous negative consequences.

The article reports on Michael Caputo’s interview with Tucker Carlson These are some quotes from that interview:

“They’re still looking at Russian collusion, still looking for it…In my mind, if anybody thinks that Russia collusion is off the table, they haven’t visited with the Mueller team.”

 “They know more about the Trump campaign than anybody that worked there and they know more about what I did in 2016 than I do myself.”

” What are they looking at? “I don’t want to interfere with the investigation. I was warned about that.”

“Did he construe that as a threat? “I’m not going to be friending them today on Facebook, if that’s what you’re asking.”

 “It’s not nice but it’s nothing compared to the $125,000 in legal bills that I’ve stacked up for nothing.”

 “What’s happening to me and my family is happening to many other people in this investigation and I’m just a witness. I can’t imagine if somebody’s a subject or a target what they’re going to go through.”

This is the statement from the interview that I find chilling:

“I certainly didn’t sign up for this when I went to work for the Trump campaign and I will never, ever work on another Republican campaign for as long as I live…and I think that’s part of this, Tucker. This is a punishment strategy. I think they want to destroy the president, they want to destroy his family, they want to destroy his businesses, they want to destroy his friends so that no billionaire, say, in 15 years wakes up and tells his wife, you know what, they country’s broken and only I can fix it….His wife will say, ‘are you crazy Did you see what happened to Donald Trump?’ That’s what this is about.”

Mr. Caputo explains that he thinks this is the Democrat’s new strategy–intimidate people who work on Republican campaigns so that no one will be willing to work on them.

Mr. Caputo concludes:

“I think the president should not go anywhere near this [Mueller team]. I think in a lot of ways it’s a trap. I think the president is clear on potential Russian collusion. I think the campaign is in the clear. In the end if they want to get the president, they’re going to try to trip him up in an interview like this and my advice, after being through it, is stay away.”

 “I have a lot of respect for Director Mueller. When this thing first started I had some faith that it was going to be done fairly. I’m not so sanguine about it anymore.”

 “I’m very confident there was no Russian collusion. I’m very confident that the president is in the clear here. I’m very confident that in the end they’re going to find the holes that they’re digging to be empty, but they are digging and they’re going to continue to dig.”

It is long past time to send Mr. Mueller packing. There was no Russian collusion on the part of the Republicans, and he is obviously not interested in the Russian involvement in the GPS Fusion dossier that the Democrats put together. There is no way this can be considered a fair or legitimate investigation.

 

In Case You Had Any Illusions About The Goal Of The Mueller Investigation

The supposed theory behind the Special Prosecutor is that he is supposed to be looking for Russian interference in the 2016 election. Theoretically Robert Mueller would follow the trail of Russian interference wherever it led. Well, he seems to have overlooked a few things.

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article with the following headline, “Mueller Investigation Trump Over $150K Donation From Ukrainian Who Gave Clintons $13 Million.”

Seems a little odd.

The article reports:

The special counsel’s office is investigating a $150,000 donation a Ukrainian businessman made to President Donald Trump’s charity in 2015, according to a new report.

The donation, from steel magnate Victor Pinchuk, pales in comparison to contributions he gave to the charity Bill and Hillary Clinton set up. The billionaire has contributed $13 million to the Clinton Foundation since 2006 and had access to Hillary Clinton while she served as secretary of state.

But Special Counsel Robert Mueller is not investigating The Clintons. Instead, he is conducting a broad investigation of Donald Trump, including the flow of foreign money into various Trump-controlled entities.

Mueller began investigating the Pinchuk donation after receiving documents in response to a subpoena issued to the Trump Organization — the real estate company Trump ran before entering politics.

In September 2015, Trump appeared via video link at a conference Pinchuk hosted in Kiev. Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, negotiated details of the event with Douglas Schoen, a former consultant for Bill Clinton, according to The New York Times. Trump did not initially request payment for the appearance, but Cohen contacted Schoen at one point to request a $150,000 honorarium, The Times reported.

The last sentence of the article states:

The FBI reportedly investigated the Clinton Foundation over its foreign donations. The status of that investigation is unclear.

I may be cynical, but I suspect that 50 years from now the status of that investigation will still be unclear. If the FBI wants any credibility with the American people, they need to get their act together quickly. Right now their actions would be more appropriate in a banana republic than in an America that has a Constitution.

 

Getting Closer To The Truth

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the ongoing struggle to get documents requested from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to the House Judiciary Committee.

The article reports:

Tomorrow Attorney General Jeff Sessions will announce the assignment of U.S. Attorney John Lausch to facilitate the production of documents from the DOJ (Horowitz/Huber) to the House Judiciary Committee, and Chairman Bob Goodlatte.

Mr. Lausch is a Trump appointed U.S. Attorney from outside Washington DC.  John Lausch currently heads the Northern District of Illinois which includes Chicago, and this specific U.S. Attorney has extensive experience in complex cases of conspiracy and political corruption; a key skill-set given the issues within the Horowitz/Huber investigation of potential politicization of the FBI and DOJ offices.

So what does this mean? This is the next step toward the release of the Inspector General‘s (IG) report and an effort to make sure the report that comes out is free of political meddling by the FBI and DOJ.

The article explains some of the process involved in releasing the IG report:

There’s a phase in the OIG report process where statements of fact go through an exhaustive draft vetting process within agency. The “source vetting” or “reference-audit” phase is part of the target -and internal review audit- prior to final draft & ultimately publication.

The raw investigative information, used as the foundation for the report, has to be vetted, re-checked, verified and reviewed for placement and footnotes in the draft report, before ANY of that source information is released.

FBI Director Christopher Wray previously assigned 54 staff to go through the IG source draft information (investigative documents) to validate baseline facts prior to release to congress. This process also scans for classified information.

These FBI staff are vetting the underlying evidence that’s noted in Horowitz’s draft notification document. Remember, many of these elements are also potentially criminal actions individually; and quite likely, in the aggregate, also the broad outlines of a criminal conspiracy amid all of the participants.

The activities illustrated by the already released emails indicate some criminal actions. There was a group of people working within the government to unseat a duly-elected President. That is not legal activity and needs to be dealt with by the appropriate authorities.

The article describes the activities under investigation:

However, given the reality that politicization of the FBI and DOJ underpins the origination of the investigation that generated the underlying evidence, in order to ensure any internal FBI conflicts do not arise amid document selection, John Lausch will be involved.

U.S. Attorney Lausch review will ensure the FBI does not hide, or marginalize any OIG investigative findings.

You can call it a soft-coup, or you can call it politicization of the DOJ and FBI, but the end result is the same – the intentional effort to manipulate, influence, and ultimately subvert an election for the presidency of the United States.

This needs to be dealt with severely so that it never happens again.

News From The Coming Week

Clarice Feldman posted an article at The American Thinker today highlighting things that will be in the news in the coming week. That’s not as much of a challenge as it sounds as many of these stories were breaking late Friday and early Saturday.

The first story deals with the recent budget fiasco.

The article reports:

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, unhampered because of the filibuster rule, which allows them to block any budget not supported by a Senate supermajority of 60, and aware of the desperate need of our military for funding, publicly rejoiced that they were able to force through Congress a ridiculously extravagant budget.  Fiscal conservatives were furious, but the president had little choice but to sign the bill into law.  “He who laughs last laughs best” is the saying, and in this case, there may be no joy in Demville.  James Freeman at the Wall Street Journal explains:

The political left is getting nervous because a virtuous and lawful reduction in federal spending is suddenly looking much more likely.  This column is told that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) is now on board.

Specifically, Mr. Ryan likes the idea of paring back the huge spending hikes in the recently enacted budget bill.  While the budget required 60 votes in the Senate and therefore Democratic support, a “rescission” bill to repeal the spending increases needs only a simple majority in each house.

If the Republicans plan to remain in the majority, they have no choice but to cut this budget. Otherwise the conservative wing of the party will happily vote them out of office for reneging on every promise they made while running for office.

The second story to watch for will be the beginning of criminally prosecuting illegal aliens as they cross the border. Crossing the border is no longer going to be taken lightly.

The third story is the end of the standoff between Congress and the FBI and DOJ.

The article reports:

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse broke the welcome news early Saturday morning.

Until today the only people allowed to review the full Title-1 FISA application were Trey Gowdy, Adam Schiff, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Rep John Ratcliffe.

In an interesting development, the Department of Justice has responded to HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes notifying him the DOJ will allow all members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees full access to review the unredacted FBI/DOJ FISA application used to gain a Title-1 surveillance warrant against U.S. citizen Carter Page.

According to CNN: ‘Separately, Justice Department spokesman Ian Prior said the department on Monday will supplement its document production to the House Judiciary Committee by producing another 1,000 pages of materials in response to a subpoena issued by committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.’

This will probably lead to the declassification of the FISA applications. That will probably tell us all we need to know about the Russian collusion investigation and its roots.

The final news article for the coming week will be information about the investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

The article reports:

The story of the Clintons’ misuse of charity solicitation, reporting, and accounting laws begins in 1997 and continues on past Clinton’s term as president where people familiar to us in the present DOJ-FBI investigations failed to prosecute the Clintons for obvious charity fraud and violation of federal and state law on charitable solicitations.  The most recent investigation of the Clinton foundation took place under Rod Rosenstein, then U.S. attorney for Baltimore.  He utterly flubbed the task, as Ortel (Charles Ortel, a retired investment banker) notes.

…At the moment, some state attorneys general are investigating Clinton foundation fraud and illegality.  So are some foreign governments whose laws were violated by the foundation.  While in the U.S. opportunities to prosecute longstanding frauds may be barred by the passage of time and the statute of limitations, this latest Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund transaction seems not to be.  If I were to speculate, I’d suggest that it is not unlikely (now that the Clintons are fairly politically neutered) that whistleblowers inside the foundation, the donors’ offices, and the government – particularly the IRS – may come forward, at long last, to expose the frauds which Rosenstein, Mueller, and Comey seem to have lacked the integrity and guts to do.

This week may be the week that some of the swamp gets drained.t

Getting Through The Establishment In Washington Is A Fight

Yesterday Byron York posted an article at The Washington Examiner that shows how slowly and frustratingly things can move in Washington.

The article reports:

Last week the House Judiciary Committee sent a subpoena to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein demanding documents from the Justice Department and the FBI “regarding charging decisions in the investigation surrounding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s private email server, potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility recommendation to fire former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe,” according to a committee press release.

In a letter accompanying the subpoena, Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told Rosenstein the committee had asked for the documents months ago and received little or nothing in response. “Given the department’s ongoing delays in producing these documents, I am left with no choice but to issue [a] subpoena to compel production of these documents,” Goodlatte wrote.

We have a problem right now in Washington. There is a very powerful group of people entrenched in the Washington bureaucracy that would very much like to undo the results of the 2016 election, and they are trying very hard to use any means at their disposal to do that. This group is composed of both Republicans and Democrats. Many have grown used to accepting perks from lobbyists and other groups and don’t want to give those perks up. Others simply do not believe in the principles that established America and want to undo them in favor of one-world government (with them in charge of course).

The article concludes:

In recent days Jordan and Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the House Oversight Committee‘s subcommittee on government operations, have been sending staff to the Justice Department to view less redacted copies of key documents in the various investigations under review. The presence of those congressional investigators sent a clear message to the Justice Department that the House was not going to give up.

Now, the Justice Department is promising to do better — and the attorney general has signaled that he is not happy with the FBI director’s performance. Now, lawmakers will wait to see what that means.

Voting according to political party is not going to work anymore–both parties have elements of corruption in them. The only real answer to the corruption in Washington is for more Americans to become informed voters and vote out those politicians who represent groups other than the voters. All of us need to pay more attention to the votes our Congressmen have cast and who is donating to their campaigns. Congress.gov and Open Secrets.org are good places to begin your research.

Getting Rid Of The Deep State Is A Slow Methodical Process

I am sure that I am not the only person who gets discouraged and impatient about the seeming lack of speed in dealing with the corruption that seems to run rampant in Washington. However, it seems like things are happening outside the public eye that should give us all hope that the mess in the Justice Department, FBI, and other places will be cleaned up. One of the major problems is leaks to the media, which can seriously hamper an investigation. Unfortunately we have seen a lot of leaks, generally from people with a political agenda.

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the investigation into Washington corruption. The article included some things that should cause the average America to be mildly optimistic.

The article reports:

Today chairman Bob Goodlatte sends a formal subpoena to the DOJ (Inspector General Michael Horowitz) for documents regarding the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server, potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility recommendation to fire former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

The article notes the response:

You can read the Goodlatte Subpoenas – HERE – along with the letter that accompanies his demand.   However, more important is the response from the DOJ as communicated by Fox News journalist Chad Pergram (emphasis mine):

So exactly what is going on here?  The article explains:

Oh, what’s that? Yes, the DOJ has to review the demand for evidence because release of those documents might conflict with ongoing Grand Jury information (evidence). Yes, that means a Grand Jury is impaneled, exactly as we expected.

Yes, that also means there are “law enforcement actions” currently ongoing as a result of the prosecutor assigned to reviewing the evidence discovered by Inspector General Horowitz.

Congress keeps asking for another Special Counsel. The author of the article at The Conservative Treehouse opines that he believes that Congress has not been informed that there is a Grand Jury investigating the corruption at the DOJ and FBI.

The article further reports:

Within this specific investigation there is a triple role. ¹A DOJ Inspector General conducting an internal investigation; ² Appropriate congressional oversight; and ³ the collection of evidence that might also be used in criminal indictments.

Within the IG collection of evidence there are two competing issues: #1) Evidence of misconduct and political bias (shared openly with congress and oversight); and #2) evidence of illegal activity (retained from congress to preserve integrity of evidence for later used in criminal proceedings); this is where the “outside DC prosecutor” comes in.

The article reminds us where this is leading and of the uproar we can expect from the media when it comes together. The article also encourages us to be patient:

You and I might be frustrated with the pace of the activity for a myriad of righteous reasons.  However, we must also remind ourselves of the scale and scope of the corruption here that is inherent within the BIG PICTURE.  All of this was done on purpose.  None of this was accidental.

The prosecutor could, likely would, be having to outline the biggest political conspiracy in the history of politics.  It is entirely possible officials within the CIA, NSA, DOJ, FBI, State Department, ODNI, and national security apparatus along with the Obama White House, Clinton campaign officials, politicians, career bureaucrats and possibly judges are all entwined and involved.

Add into this likelihood the complicit ideological media who will go absolutely bananas about any single member of their team being indicted; and a better than average chance the media will follow instructions from their leadership and send tens-of-thousands of low-info sycophants into the streets in protest, and well… you see the picture.

The left only know one narrative: “Jeff Sessions is doing Trump’s evil bidding.” That’s it. That’s the drumbeat. 24/7/365 That’s the narrative pushed over and over.

Just look at the media reaction to Andrew McCabe’s simple firing, which Trump had nothing to do with, and think about what their response would be to indictments?

Get out the popcorn.

Washington Incest?

A website called THEYIG posted an article yesterday about Lisa Barsoomian. She is a lawyer who graduated from Georgetown Law School and is a protege of James Comey and Robert Muller. She and her boss R Craig Lawrence have a very interesting portfolio. They represented Bill Clinton 40 times, Robert Mueller 3 times, James Comey 5 times, Barack Obama 45 times, Hillary Clinton 17 timesand Kathleen Sebelius 56 times. She represented the FBI at least 5 times. Actually, that is a pretty impressive resume. It is also a somewhat politically biased resume, but there are no laws against that. A lawyer has every right to pick and choose who they represent.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The article reports:

Someone out there cares so much that they’ve purged all Barsoomian court documents for her Clinton representation in Hamburg vs. Clinton in 1998 and its appeal in 1999 from the DC District and Appeals court dockets

 Someone out there cares so much that the internet has been purged of all information pertaining to Barsoomian.

 Historically this indicates that the individual is a protected CIA operative.

 Additionally Lisa Barsoomian has specialized in opposing Freedom of Information Act requests on behalf of the intelligence community

 And although Barsoomian has been involved in hundreds of cases representing the DC Office of the US Attorney her email address is Lisa Barsoomian at NIH gov.

 The NIH stands for National Institutes of Health.

This is a tactic routinely used by the CIA to protect an operative by using another government organization to shield their activities.

It’s a cover, so big deal right, I mean what does one more attorney with ties to the US intelligence community really matter.

It wouldn’t under normal circumstances. However, she is Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s WIFE.

This is a blatant example of the incest that is the swamp in Washington, D.C. There is no way Rod Rosenstein should be anywhere near anything involving the Clintons, Robert Mueller or James Comey. It’s time to bring new people into the FBI, DOJ, and CIA. The ones who are there now have too many interconnections.

 

The Inspector General’s Report And Real Collusion

Kevin McCullough posted an article at Townhall today about the investigation into Russian collusion and the upcoming Inspector General‘s report. Anyone who is following the Russian collusion story on their own rather than listening to the mainstream media, is aware that there has been some serious wrongdoing in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ). The corruption goes back a long time. I first became aware of the corruption in the DOJ when I watched how the voter intimidation case involving the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia was handled. There was a video that showed voter intimidation, and the Justice Department dropped the charges against them (article here). The leaks coming from the FBI that undermine the presidency have been numerous, and no one seems to be held responsible. Congress is no better–one Congressman said that the House Intelligence Committee leaks like a sieve. So where do we go from here.

The firing of Andrew McCabe is the first step, but there is much more to come.

The article at Townhall reports:

Few remember, though my radio show discussed at length, the reports that surfaced in October of 2016. In reaction to the bizarre July 5th announcement by then FBI director James Comey, FBI officials revealed that members of the DOJ and FBI investigative teams that had worked the Hillary email case were “angered & disgusted” that the co-opted DOJ and FBI leadership ignored the very real analysis of evidence and decided against bringing criminal indictment against Hillary Clinton for the handling of top secret information. More than 100 FBI agents that worked the case, and more than 6 DOJ attorneys expressed their disgust, according to a source within the group. 

It was later revealed that Comey had been prepared to exonerate Clinton in February of that year when he would yet not interview her until months later. She was also granted an interview, instead of being asked to testify under oath.

The article goes on to list various misdeeds of people in the FBI regarding the handling and leaking of information to damage the President.

The article concludes:

There was collusion in the election of 2016. It involved Russians, a British ex-spy, law firms, FBI agents, DOJ attorneys, an FBI director that prejudged evidence, an Attorney General that had an unethical meeting with the spouse of a target, FISA warrants obtained on faulty information that stemmed from political sources, a Deputy Director whose wife received monetary support in an election, an FBI director who lied to Congress, an FBI Deputy Director who lied to the Justice Department’s Inspector General, loads of classified materials that were mishandled and criminally passed to those without clearances, and partisan hacks spearheading inquiries aiming for political outcomes. The scope of this collusion is overwhelming, the attempts are a damning indictment of political operatives that have lost all integrity, and sadly an administration, a major political party, and agents of a deep state that attempted in a wide sweeping number of ways to undo an election that they lost.

Former high-ranking FBI officials (like Chris Swetzer who appeared with Harris Faulkner’s FoxNews broadcast on Friday) believe that the Inspector General’s coming report will be explosive.

For the sake of justice, above all else, I hope it brings clarity to a story our modern media landscape is highly invested in keeping as convoluted as possible.

The Inspector General’s report is due out in a matter of weeks. Although the Inspector General does not have the right to prosecute crimes or to interview witnesses outside of the government. That is why many Republicans are asking for an additional Special Prosecutor to cover areas outside the areas covered by the Inspector General.

It is becoming obvious that some of the upper levels of the FBI and DOJ have become politicized. Hopefully the firing of Andrew McCabe is the beginning of solving that problem.

All Americans Are Equal Under The Law…Except Those Who Are Not

Yesterday Tablet Magazine posted an article about the ongoing Robert Mueller investigation. The magazine has a unique take on the investigation and cites numerous events that illustrate why they drew the conclusions they did.

The article reminds us of some of Robert Mueller’s recent activities:

News that special counselor Robert Mueller has turned his attention to Erik Prince’s January 11, 2017 meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian banker, a Lebanese-American political fixer, and officials from the United Arab Emirates, helps clarify the nature of Mueller’s work. It’s not an investigation that the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading—rather, it’s a cover-up.

After all, Mueller took his job not at the behest of the man who by all accounts he is likely to professionally and personally disdain, Donald Trump, but of the blue-chip Beltway elite of which he is a charter member. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed him nearly a year ago to lead an investigation without parameters. That’s because Mueller’s job is to obscure the abuses of the US surveillance apparatus that occurred under the Obama administration.

The fact that someone at the level of former FBI director was called in to sweep up the mess left by bad actors in the bureau and Central Intelligence Agency and other parts of the intelligence bureaucracy suggests that the problems are even worse than previously thought. And that means the constituency for Mueller’s political intervention is enormous.

Mueller is said to believe that the Prince meeting was to set up a back channel with the Kremlin. But that makes no sense. According to the foundational text of the collusion narrative, the dossier allegedly written by former British spy Christopher Steele, the Kremlin had cultivated Trump himself for years. So what’s the purpose of a back channel, when Vladimir Putin already had a key to the front door of Mar-a-Lago?

The group behind the goals of this investigation are counting on the American people to get bored and stop paying attention. They are also hoping that we are not asking questions about the cost and strange direction the investigation has taken.

The article also reveals that some of the information the investigation is using could have only come from illegal unmasking of the people involved:

Prince was thrown into the middle of Russiagate after an April 3, 2017 Washington Post story reported his meeting with the Russian banker. But how did anyone know about the meeting? After the story came out, Prince said he was shown “specific evidence” by sources from the intelligence community that the information was swept up in the collection of electronic communications and his identity was unmasked. The US official or officials who gave his name to the Post broke the law when they leaked classified intelligence. “Unless The Washington Post has somehow miraculously recruited the bartender of a hotel in the Seychelles,” Prince told the House Intelligence Committee in December, “the only way that’s happening is through SIGINT [signals intelligence].”

Mueller presumably knows whether Prince’s name was indeed unmasked and then leaked to the press—and that the leak was a crime. Mueller certainly knows that most of the case he has regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election was built by abuses of the foreign intelligence surveillance apparatus and other related crimes that are punishable with jail time. The identity of Trump’s short-tenured National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was swept up and leaked to the press in the same way as Prince’s. It was leaked to the same newspaper, the Washington Post.

As I explained last week, the identity of Attorney General Jeff Sessions was also unmasked from intelligence intercepts and leaked to the Washington Post. The fact that the FBI had secured a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on Carter Page was also leaked to the Post. The warrant on Page was secured on the basis of the findings in the Steele dossier, an unverified piece of opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.

One of the main conclusions in the article:

The purpose of the Mueller inquiry is therefore not to investigate the mostly ludicrous-seeming charges in the Steele dossier, but to protect the institution of the FBI, former colleagues, as well as the national security surveillance system. Therefore the inquiry has to cover up the sinful origins of the collusion narrative itself—which was born in repeated abuses of power and subsequent crimes committed by US officials in the intelligence bureaucracy and the Obama administration.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It reveals some of what President Trump is up against in trying to reclaim America for the average American.

The Names That Keep Reappearing

Yesterday Front Page Magazine posted a story related to the Fox News “Scandalous” television series. I guess I really wasn’t paying a lot of attention during the Clinton years–I didn’t realize that in some cases, the same names keep appearing in matters related to the Clintons.

The article includes a number of names we have heard lately:

Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal has recently emerged in the DNC dossier affair. Republican James Rogan, a hawk for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, has given way to Democrat Adam Schiff, whose evidence of Russian collusion has an existential problem. Other links emerged in the 140 pardons Bill Clinton issued on his last day in office.

President Clinton pardoned his brother Roger, busted for distributing cocaine, and Whitewater crony Susan McDougal. He pardoned former HUD boss Henry Cisneros and Patty Hearst who became a partisan of the murderous Symbionese Liberation Army. Clinton also pardoned fugitive financier Mark Rich, but this was not the president’s most controversial last-day reprieve.

John Deutch had been CIA director in 1995 and 1996 and the White House said he was pardoned “for those offenses described in the information dated January 19, 2001.” The precise nature of the DOJ charges remained unclear but, as it emerged, the man in charge of the nation’s secrets had mishandled classified information.

According to ABC News, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder was unaware of the pending presidential pardon when “Attorney General Janet Reno gave the approval for investigators to make a deal with Deutch.” The former CIA boss had been “under investigation for sloppy handling of secret files.”

…As Hans A. von Spakovsky recalled in National Review, the IG did not let Deutch pick and choose what information he was going to hand over. Instead they sent in a team to grab everything and found that Deutch “continuously processed” classified data “for unclassified use.” This took place on computers that were “vulnerable to attacks by unauthorized persons,” and the information included “Top Secret communications intelligence,” and information on the “National Reconnaissance Program.”

That was a violation of 18 U.S.C. §793, which makes it a criminal offense “through gross negligence” to allow classified information “to be removed from its proper place of custody.”

As von Spakovsky notes, “no intentional misconduct is required; just gross negligence,” and offenders can be fined or imprisoned for violations.

The article continues:

Deutch duly returned to his teaching post at MIT and more than two years later was stripped of his security clearances. What classified information might have been stolen by hostile actors remained uncertain, but with the pardon from Clinton the grossly negligent Deutch would not be taking a fall. This all proved instructive to former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

She kept government information, including classified materials, on a private, unsecured server in her home, and POTUS 44 emailed her through that unsecured network. Hillary Clinton said it was all about Chelsea’s wedding, yoga classes, and no classified material was involved. When government investigators wanted to have a look, Clinton promptly destroyed more than 30,000 emails, bleached the server clean, and smashed up electronic devices.

Trump-hating James Strzok of the FBI changed “gross negligence” to “extremely careless” and FBI boss James Comey said no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges. In similar style, as a deputy attorney general, Comey cut a sweetheart deal with former Clinton national security advisor Sandy Berger, who stole and destroyed classified documents.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch told Comey to call whole thing a “matter” and Hillary Clinton paid no penalty. After she lost the 2016 race, her FBI-DOJ team set about framing the winner, Donald Trump, on the charge that he colluded with Russia to steal the election.

I had forgotten that James Comey had made the deal with Sandy Berger after Berger was caught with classified documents in his socks. This was attributed to sloppiness on Berger’s part!

An article at the Conservative Base posted on November 16, 2016, states the following:

Several law-enforcement officers believe the documents stolen told the true story about the LAX plot, but the Clintons sent their henchman Sandy Berger to get rid of the evidence.

“The Clintons have a history of playing by their own rules which means committing acts that would get anyone else — including Berger — convicted of malfeasance,” said former police detective sergeant Walter Fendner. “Berger fell on his sword for the Clintons and he was rewarded with probation and a slap on the wrist,” Fendner added.

As luck would have it, before the FBI or Justice Department prosecutors could talk to him, Sandy Berger died on Dec. 1, 2015. The cause of death was listed as cancer. He was 70-years-old, said a statement by his consulting firm, the Albright Stonebridge Group. 

The article at the Conservative Base includes evidence that Sandy Berger had been acting as an advisor to Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State.

The article at The Conservative Base reports:

His (Sandy Berger) email correspondence with Clinton was stored on her private server and it’s yet to be reported whether or not he — a convicted thief of classified documents — had access to emails containing classified intelligence.

The release of the Clinton/Berger email was part of a batch of email messages released by the State Department.

Again, James Comey was the person who made the deal with Sandy Berger–Berger was sentenced to community service and probation and fined $50,000 for illegally removing highly classified documents from the National Archives and intentionally destroying some of them.

Hillary Clinton wasn’t even charged for mishandling classified information. I guess she learned from the mistakes of those who came before her.

All The Roads Seem To Lead To The Same Place

John Solomon and Alison Spann posted an article at The Hill yesterday (updated today) about a new development in the Russia-Trump-Collusion investigation. It seems that every lead that formed the basis for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor goes back to the Clintons. Somehow that does not seem like an incredible coincidence.

The article is detailed with a lot of reference information, so I strongly suggest that you follow the link above and read the entire article. It really is chilling to see how the power of government could be abused so totally as to be turned against one man.

The article reports:

The Australian diplomat whose tip in 2016 prompted the Russia-Trump investigation previously arranged one of the largest foreign donations to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s charitable efforts, documents show.

Former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer’s role in securing $25 million in aid from his country to help the Clinton Foundation fight AIDS is chronicled in decade-old government memos archived on the Australian foreign ministry’s website.

Downer and former President Clinton jointly signed a Memorandum of Understanding in February 2006 that spread out the grant money over four years for a project to provide screening and drug treatment to AIDS patients in Asia.

We know that the dossier had ties to the Clintons. Now we know that the other basis for the investigation also had ties to the Clintons.

The Clintons handled the money with their usual level of integrity:

In the years that followed, the project won praise for helping thousands of HIV-infected patients in Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, China and Indonesia, but also garnered criticism from auditors about “management weaknesses” and inadequate budget oversight, the memos show.

The article observes:

Downer, now Australia’s ambassador to London, provided the account of a conversation with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos at a London bar in 2016 that became the official reason the FBI opened the Russia counterintelligence probe.

But lawmakers say the FBI didn’t tell Congress about Downer’s prior connection to the Clinton Foundation. Republicans say they are concerned the new information means nearly all of the early evidence the FBI used to justify its election-year probe of Trump came from sources supportive of the Clintons, including the controversial Steele dossier.

“The Clintons’ tentacles go everywhere. So, that’s why it’s important,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) chairman of a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that has been taking an increasingly visible role defending the Trump administration in the Russia probe. “We continue to get new information every week it seems that sort of underscores the fact that the FBI hasn’t been square with us.”

The Democrats of course replied with their usual spin:

Democrats accuse the GOP of overreaching, saying Downer’s role in trying to help the Clinton Foundation fight AIDS shouldn’t be used to question his assistance to the FBI.

“The effort to attack the FBI and DOJ as a way of defending the President continues,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence panel. “Not content to disparage our British allies and one of their former intelligence officers, the majority now seeks to defame our Australian partners as a way of undermining the Russia probe. It will not succeed, but may do lasting damage to our institutions and allies in the process.”

Nick Merrill, Hillary Clinton’s spokesman, said any effort to connect the 2006 grant with the current Russia investigation was “laughable.”

I guess it’s reassuring to know that the Clintons’ corruption is not merely limited to America.

The Clintons also responded to the implication that the money might not have been spent exactly as warranted:

Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, said the focus should be on the foundation’s success helping tens of thousands of AIDS patients.

It really is time to send Mr. Mueller packing and clean out the upper levels of the FBI and Department of Justice. They have been hopelessly compromised. Every one of the people who provided the foundation for the investigation of President Trump has ties to the Clintons. There is no way that the Special Prosecutor should ever have been appointed. Unless Robert Mueller is fired and the investigation ended, we will never see equal justice under the law in America. Note that the questionable activities of the Clinton Foundation or the various scandals of the Clintons have never been fully investigated or prosecuted.

Some Perspective From Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at National Review today about Russia’s relationship to American politics. The timeline of the article begins about 2009.

The article begins with the following:

Start with two givens: Vladimir Putin is neither stupid nor content to watch an aging, shrinking, corrupt, and dysfunctional — but still large and nuclear — Russia recede to second- or third-power status. From 2009 to 2015, in one of the most remarkable and Machiavellian efforts in recent strategic history, Putin almost single-handedly parlayed a deserved losing hand into a winning one. He pulled this off by flattering, manipulating, threatening, and outsmarting an inept and politically obsessed Obama administration.

Under the Obama presidency and the tenures of Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, Russia made astounding strategic gains — given its intrinsic economic, social, and military weaknesses. The Obama reaction was usually incoherent (Putin was caricatured as a “bored kid in the back of the classroom” or as captive of a macho shtick). After each aggressive Russian act, the administration lectured that “it is not in Russia’s interest to . . . ” — as if Obama knew better than a thuggish Putin what was best for autocratic Russia.

A review of Russian inroads, presented in no particular order, is one of the more depressing chapters in post-war U.S. diplomatic history.

The article lists the missteps of the Obama Administration regarding Russia. It notes that Russia successfully annexed Crimea with little response from NATO. Russia essentially took control of eastern Ukraine. Russia also exerted enough pressure to prevent America from supplying the Czech Republic and Poland the missile defense systems they had been promised.

The article reminds us:

Russia since 2013 had sought to interfere in U.S. elections with impunity, so much so that as late as October 18, 2016, on the eve of the anticipated Clinton landslide, Obama mocked any suggestion that an entity could ever successfully warp the outcome of a U.S. election. (“There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections. There’s no evidence that that has happened in the past or that it will happen this time, and so I’d invite Mr. Trump to stop whining and make his case to get votes.”)

After a near 40-year hiatus, Russia was invited into the Middle East by the Obama administration. It soon became the power broker in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq and to some extent offered passive-aggressive support for Israel and Turkey — a position of influence that it retains to this day and that would now be hard to undo. It posed as a “helper” to the Obama administration with Iran and helped broker the disastrous Iran deal — and then used U.S. acquiescence to Iran to fuel the ascendance of the Iran-Hezbollah-Assad crescent.

Inviting Russia into the Middle East is not a recipe for peace. The article also cites other instances of Russia managing to create chaos in America. Please follow the link to read the entire article for the full picture.

The article concludes:

The verdict on Russia, the Obama administration, and the Clinton campaign is now becoming clearer. Russian reset resurrected Putin’s profile and hurt U.S. interests. It grew out of a partisan rebuke of the Bush administration’s perceived harshness to Russia and was later massaged to help Barack Obama’s reelection campaign by granting Russia concessions in hopes of a foreign-policy success that would lead to perceived calm. Russia deliberately inserted itself into the 2016 election, as it had in previous elections, because 1) it had suffered few if any prior consequences, 2) it wanted to sow chaos in the American political system, and 3) it saw a way to warp Clinton’s efforts to smear Donald Trump, first, no doubt to compromise a likely President Clinton, and, in unexpected fashion, later to undermine an actual President Trump.

 At very little cost, Russia has embarrassed American democracy, played the media for the partisans they are, completely discredited the Clinton campaign and name, and created a year of nonstop hysteria to undermine the Trump administration.

And it is not over yet.

I would disagree that the Russia has embarrassed American democracy–I think we have done that ourselves. The election of President Trump so unhinged the media and the Democratic Party that they forgot the rules of fair play. I understand that during political campaigns sometimes things go on that shouldn’t, but the Clinton campaign overstepped the bounds of running for office in ways that we have not seen before. At least during the Nixon administration when Nixon tried to use the government to collect information or government agencies as political weapons there were enough people in government agencies with integrity to tell him no. Evidently that is no longer the case.

 

 

Annoying Things Done By Politicians

Representative Adam Schiff released the Democratic memo about FISA surveillance on Saturday (when he assumed no one would be paying attention). The memo is an effort to deflect charges that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) were weaponized for political purposes during and after the 2016 presidential campaign. The memo itself was a purely political move, and the release of the memo on a Saturday night was also a political move. The release of the memo is interesting bercause the memo does not help the Democrats’ case.

Yesterday Andrew McCarthy posted an article at National Review explaining that the memo does more damage to the Democrats’ arguments than helps them. Because of his extensive legal background, Andrew McCarthy is the perfect person to dissect this memo.

The article is detailed, and I suggest that you follow the link to read the entire article, but I will try to summarize it.

The article reports:

The memo concedes that the FISA-warrant application relied on allegations by Steele’s anonymous Russian hearsay sources that:

Page met separately while in Russia with Igor Sechin, a close associate of Vladimir Putin and executive chairman of Roseneft, Russia’s state-owned oil company, and Igor Divyekin, a senior Kremlin official. Sechin allegedly discussed the prospect of future U.S.-Russia energy cooperation and “an associated move to lift Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia.” Divyekin allegedly disclosed to Page that the Kremlin possessed compromising information on Clinton (“kompromat”) and noted the possibility of its being released to Candidate #1’s [i.e., Donald Trump’s] campaign. . . . This closely tracks what other Russian contacts were informing another Trump foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos.

1) This was obviously the most critical allegation against Page. The Democrats attempt to make much of Page’s trip to Moscow in July 2016, but the uncorroborated Sechin and Divyekin meetings, which Page credibly denies, are the aspect of the Moscow trip that suggested a nefarious Trump–Russia conspiracy. That’s what the investigation was about. Far from clandestine, the rest of Page’s trip was well publicized and apparently anodyne.

2) Democrats implausibly insist that what “launched” the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was not Steele’s allegations but intelligence from Australia about George Papadopoulos’s contact with what Democrats elusively describe as “individuals linked to Russia.”

…Even if we assume for argument’s sake that these characters had solid regime connections — rather than that they were boasting to impress the credulous young Papadopoulos — they were patently not in the same league as Sechin, a Putin crony, and Divyekin, a highly placed regime official. And that, manifestly, is how the FBI and the DOJ saw the matter: They sought a FISA warrant on Page, not Papadopoulos. And, as the above-excerpted passage shows, they highlighted the Steele dossier’s sensational allegations about Page and then feebly tried to corroborate those allegations with some Papadopoulos information, not the other way around. (More on that when we get to Schiff’s notion of “corroboration.”)

The article also notes:

…because Page was an American citizen, FISA law required that the FBI and the DOJ show not only that he was acting as an agent of a foreign power (Russia), but also that his “clandestine” activities on behalf of Russia were a likely violation of federal criminal law. (See FISA, Section 1801(b)(2)(A) through (E), Title 50, U.S. Code.) It is the Steele dossier that alleges Page was engaged in arguably criminal activity. The Democrats point to nothing else that does.

Because of the way this whole story has been reported, I am not sure many Americans realize that the constitutional rights of one of their fellow citizens were violated by the FISA Court. All of us need to remember that this could happen to any one of us. We also need to note that if the use of the FBI and DOJ for political purposes is not dealt with and the guilty parties punished, we will see more of this behavior in the future.

The article continues:

How’s this for transparency? The FISA warrant application says that Steele, referred to as “Source #1,” was “approached by” Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, referred to as “an identified U.S. person,” who

indicated to Source #1 that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. Person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1’s [i.e., Trump’s] ties to Russia. (The identified U.S. Person and Source #1 have a longstanding business relationship.) The identified U.S. Person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. Person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. Person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign. [Emphasis in Schiff memo, p. 5]

The first thing to notice here is the epistemological contortions by which the DOJ rationalized concealing that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid for Steele’s reporting. They ooze consciousness of guilt. If you have to go through these kinds of mental gymnastics to avoid disclosing something, it’s because you know that being “transparent” demands disclosing it.

As I stated, it is a very long and detailed article. Please follow the link above to see the other problems with the Schiff memo.

 

It Really Is Time To End This

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the latest maneuver by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. Their legal maneuvers are not illegal, but they are not really what this particular investigation is about.

The article reports:

Nothing about this has any relationship to President Trump; however, the DOJ cronies under Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Greg Andres and Andrew Weissmann, made a slick move today by unsealing indictments in Virginia against Paul Manafort opening up two legal fronts in an effort to wear down Manafort’s financial ability to defend his interests.

The maneuver comes after Team Mueller lost DC District Judge Contreras, who was replaced by a far more critical Emmet Sullivan, and who is forcing Mueller’s team to show all exculpatory evidence (Flynn case). The new indictments against Manafort were not in DC where they filed the first set but in Northern Virginia District Court.

If the new indictments were filed in DC it is likely they would have been consolidated under the current judge. Filing in Virginia makes Manafort fight in 2 separate courts. We’ll have to wait and see if Mueller moves to have the entire case transferred to Northern Virginia or if Mueller drops the initial DC case. Of course Manafort can, likely will, petition the court to move both cases against him into the DC circuit.

This is all about convincing Paul Manafort to testify that there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign–it doesn’t matter that there is no evidence of any collusion of that there was no collusion, if Mueller can get Manafort to testify that there was collusion, then there is a witness to collusion. This case has wandered so far from what was supposed to be investigated it is ridiculous. Hopefully Congress will develop the backbone to put a stop to this charade soon. It is costing American taxpayers endless money and doing nothing but further divide the country. I guess that means the Russians have succeeded in creating the chaos they intended to create.

The Special Prosecutor Indicts…

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted Paul Manafort and Rick Gates according to The Gateway Pundit. As stated in the article below this one, Special Prosecutors indict people. It’s what they do. They indict people for anything they can find whether or not it is related to whatever they are supposed to be investigating.

The article reports:

Dirty Cop Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel indicted former Trump campaign manager with 32 bank fraud charges.
The charges were based on his business ventures from 2006 through 2013 and one from 2015.

The indictment is here.

The Special Counsel of liberal partisans is out to destroy this man.

What in the world does this have to do with Russian collusion in the 2016 election or with President Trump?

The following tweet from Mike Cernovich sums up the situation:

When A Scandal Just Isn’t Sexy

The problem with the Special Council investigation, the electronic surveillance of the Trump campaign and transition team, Hillary Clinton‘s server, and the Uranium One scandal is that none of them are sexy. That and the inherent media bias that currently exists results in the fact that most Americans are thoroughly unaware of the details of any of these scandals. They are difficult to follow and deal with intricacies of law that most of us just really don’t care about or are familiar with. However, there are aspects of all of these scandals that will eventually have an impact on all of us. For instance–what are the guidelines for spying on American citizens, how important is it that those in positions of authority handle classified information correctly, and does it matter how much uranium America has and how much uranium Russia has. Unfortunately all of these are issues that may come back to bite all of us in the future.

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted a story about one aspect of the Robert Mueller investigation. Recent revelations have put certain aspects of the investigation under the spotlight again.

The article reports:

Extraordinary manipulation by powerful people led to the creation of Robert Mueller’s continuing investigation and prosecution of General Michael Flynn. Notably, the recent postponement of General Flynn’s sentencing provides an opportunity for more evidence to be revealed that will provide massive ammunition for a motion to withdraw Flynn’s guilty plea and dismiss the charges against him.

It was Judge Rudolph Contreras who accepted General Flynn’s guilty plea, but he suddenly was recused from the case. The likely reason is that Judge Contreras served on the special court that allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to surveil the Trump campaign based on the dubious FISA application. Judge Contreras may have approved one of those four warrants.

The judge assigned to Flynn’s case now is Emmet G. Sullivan. Judge Sullivan immediately issued what is called a “Brady” order requiring Mueller to provide Flynn all information that is favorable to the defense whether with respect to guilt or punishment. Just today, Mueller’s team filed an agreed motion to provide discovery to General Flynn under a protective order so that it can be reviewed by counsel but not disclosed otherwise.

Judge Sullivan has had some experience with out of control federal prosecutors.

The article reminds us:

Judge Sullivan is the perfect judge to decide General Flynn’s motion. The judicial hero of my book, Emmet Sullivan held federal prosecutors in contempt for failing to disclose evidence, dismissed the corrupted prosecution of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the Department of Justice.

As you may remember, Ted Stevens was found guilty eight days before he was narrowly defeated in a re-election bid. After the election the indictment was dismissed because an investigation of the Justice Department found evidence of gross prosecutorial misconduct. The charges had served their purpose–Senator Stevens lost the election, and Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich (a Democrat) was elected.

The article points out:

Since Flynn entered his guilty plea, we’ve learned that information Mr. Comey leaked deliberately to “trigger” Robert Mueller’s entire investigation was classified. Also, FBI agents Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were working on an “insurance policy” to protect the country against a Trump presidency. It seems plausible that this “insurance policy” included the appointment of a special prosecutor.

It gets worse. One problem with the whole special prosecutor investigation is that Robert Mueller chose Andrew Weissmann as his deputy. Mr. Weissmann’s history as a prosecutor is somewhat spotty.

The article concludes:

Watching guilty pleas evaporate is nothing new for Mr. Mueller’s favored lieutenant Andrew Weissmann. Along with his Enron Task Force comrade Leslie Caldwell, Weissmann terrorized Arthur Andersen partner David Duncan into pleading guilty. (RELATED: Meet The Very Shady Prosecutor Robert Mueller Has Hired For The Russia Investigation)

Weissmann and Caldwell made Duncan testify at length against Arthur Andersen when they destroyed the company and 85,000 jobs only to be reversed by a unanimous Supreme Court three years later. Turns out, the “crime” they “convinced” Mr. Duncan to plead guilty to was not a crime at all. The court allowed Duncan to withdraw his plea. And, that was not the only Weissmann-induced plea to be withdrawn either. Just ask Christopher Calger.

Judge Sullivan is the country’s premiere jurist experienced in the abuses of our Department of Justice. He knows a cover-up when he sees one. Until the Department is cleaned out with Clorox and firehoses, along with its “friends” at the FBI, Judge Sullivan is the best person to confront the egregious government misconduct that has led to and been perpetrated by the Mueller-Weissmann “investigation” and to right the injustices that have arisen from it. Stay tuned for the fireworks.

I believe there are common elements in the cases of Ted Stevens and Michael Flynn. The charges against General Flynn were brought to hurt the Trump Administration and to prop up the idea of some sort of Russian collusion. They have probably done as much damage as they are capable of doing, and I suspect they will be dropped in the near future. My question is what can we do to avoid this sort of political misuse of the justice system in the future.

More Twists And Turns Regarding Fusion GPS

The following video was posted at The Daily Caller today:

It is becoming very obvious that the Democrat‘s plan to use a collusion with Russia charge to end the Trump Administration is not going as planned. Every day some new piece of information comes out that reveals how underhanded some members of the FBI and Justice Department were during the Obama Administration.

The article at The Daily Caller reports:

The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Editor-in-Chief Chris Bedford thinks Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr could face jail time for failing to disclose his connection to Fusion GPS and the Trump dossier.

…“What’s dangerous here, too, for Bruce, who could be in a lot of trouble over here, he could face criminal penalties. He wasn’t even assigned to the case when he would have had the chance to recuse himself. From everything we understand, he took the dossier and put it in front of the FBI of his own volition. He didn’t recuse himself,” Bedford said. “He didn’t say anything like that and he didn’t list the name of Fusion GPS like he should have. That’s punishable, if he just didn’t include the information, and that’s all they can say, it’s punishable by up to a year in prison. But if he knowingly falsified the documents by not telling the FBI about a conflict that really and truly existed, that’s up to five years in prison.”

Stay tuned and get out the popcorn.

Caught In A Boldfaced Lie

The problem with the information superhighway is that you can find anyone saying anything at any given time. If you tell the truth all the time, that is not a problem; however, if you say something untrue, what you said can come back to bite you. That just happened to former President Obama.

PJ Media posted an article today about a discrepancy between what President Obama told Chris Wallace and something that appears in one of the emails between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

The article reports:

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released additional Strzok/Page text messages  on Wednesday as part of a majority staff report titled “The Clinton Email Scandal And The FBI’s Investigation Of It.

One text causing raised eyebrows today seems to implicate the president: “potus wants to know everything we’re doing,” former FBI lawyer Lisa Page texted to her paramour, then-FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, on Sept. 2, 2016.  She said that she had just been in a meeting to discuss “TPs for D” (talking points for the director, i.e. FBI Director James Comey) to brief the president on their investigation.

The rabidly anti-Trump Strzok played a key role in the Clinton email and Russia investigations.

While it’s not clear which investigation Page was referring to in the text, it looks bad for Obama because he had forcefully claimed throughout 2016 that he does not get involved with pending investigations. “FULL STOP.”

Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked him about widespread concerns that the Clinton email case was being handled on political grounds. Obama stressed that there was “a strict line” that he never crossed. “I do not talk to the attorney general about pending investigations. I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations,” he insisted.

“I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department or the FBI — not just in this case, but in any case. FULL STOP. PERIOD. Guaranteed. Nobody gets treated differently when it comes to the Justice Department,” he said.

It will be interesting to see what the Democratic spin is on this. Some of the Congressional oversight committees are getting very close to the truth about the government corruption during the Obama Administration.  An FBI informer testified before Congress today about the Uranium One scandal. It seems as if the noose is tightening on those involved in corruption in our nation’s capital. Voters need to keep in mind that none of this corruption would have been exposed if Hillary Clinton had been elected President. It would have been buried so deep that no one would ever find it. It is time for the voters to ask themselves what kind of government they want for America. Do they want a government that dispenses justice equally or a government that allows a corrupt cabal of crooks to use their offices for their personal enrichment?

The American Thinker Asks A Very Good Question

On January 29th, The American Thinker posted an article with the following title:

Why aren’t the Democrats horrified by the corruption at the FBI and DOJ?

That is a really good question. When the government bureaucracies can be politicized in one direction, there is nothing to say that they can’t be politicized in another direction. What has happened in our upper levels of government is a threat to all of us.

The article reports:

The public has seen only a fraction of the material that, according to those who have seen it, proves higher-ups at the DOJ and FBI colluded to clear Hillary Clinton of any responsibility for her many crimes.   These operatives knew she had ignored all the rules regarding classified material by having her own private server.  They likely all knew the Clinton Foundation was nothing but a pay-to-play outfit to enrich the Clintons (only 6% of its funds went to charity).  And this bunch still thought she was qualified to be President,  this woman with a forty-year history of lying, cheating and scheming!  

Are there no essential values among these persons privileged to wield power over the rest of us?  In collusion with the Clinton campaign,  the DNC, the FBI and DOJ worked together to produce and then use fabricated opposition research to obtain FISA warrants to spy on possibly hundreds of people connected to the Trump family and campaign.  They did this to bring him down by any means necessary.  As many people have observed, this is the stuff of the former Soviet Union and third-world dictatorships.

The article concludes:

What is so distressing is that no elected Democrat,  not one, has expressed shock or concern that these agencies have been so corrupted.  Given what we know so far, every member of Congress and every member of the press should  be equally horrified.  This level of criminality should offend everyone, every citizen and every elected official.  But to the left, it’s just another dust-up created by those rascally Republicans.   Use our law enforcement agencies to destroy a campaign and/or to bring about the impeachment of a President?   “So what” seems to be the attitude on the left.  The Constitution be damned.  

Among these culprits, who include Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Clapper, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Rod Rosenstein, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok,  there is no honor, no respect for the law, the truth or the American people.   

Shouldn’t the Democrats be as angry about this as Republicans?  Has their hatred for Trump so impaired their judgment that they have sacrificed their integrity,  their respect for ethics and the law?   How else to explain their full engagement in the cover-up, fueled by their wholesale denial of the facts? 

Once DOJ IG Michael Horowitz’s report is released,  and if the FISA memo is made public, much more will be clear to everyone.  One has to wonder how the Democrats will recover their lost dignity.  Their many months-long defense of the indefensible will have done significant damage to their brand unless Democrat voters are as unscrupulous, as unconcerned about honor and ethics as their elected representatives have proven to be.

Isn’t the lack of integrity in the upper levels of government under the Obama Administration something all Americans should be concerned about?

Complex Scandals Generally Don’t Make Mainstream Media Headlines–Aside From The Politics, They Are Too Hard To Follow

The Conservative Treehouse has been an excellent source to follow the corruption that was rampant in the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation during the Obama Administration. The mainstream media has largely ignored this story partially for political reasons and partially because it is very complex and hard to follow. The mainstream media is simply hoping that the average American voter will ignore the story rather than sort through it. Hopefully they are wrong–many of the actions taken by the FBI and DOJ under the Obama Administration were illegal and should have jail terms attached to them. Whether or not they will remains to be seen.

These are some highlights from The Conservative Treehouse:

Proving, once again, this is a well thought-out strategy, Chuck Grassley’s newest partly declassified version of the Graham-Grassley memo highlights the DOJ didn’t care about Bruce Ohr meeting with Christopher Steele until Inspector General Michael Horowitz found out.

Page #5 of the Grassley Memo (pg. 7 pdf), highlights the FBI interviewed DOJ Deputy Attorney Bruce Ohr on November 22nd, and December 12th, 2016 [FD-302 Interview Notes], yet didn’t take any action about their discoveries until Inspector General Michael Horowitz found out and revealed the interviews on December 7th, 2017.

The article at The Conservative Treehouse includes screen shots and inserts of memos and letters backing up the claims made in the article.

More highlights:

The Devin Nunes HPSCI memo revealed that Fusion-GPS employee Nellie Ohr, was funneling Clinton Opposition research to her husband Bruce Ohr for use by the DOJ in assembling the ‘Clinton-Steele dossier’; as justification to acquire a FISA “Title 1” surveillance warrant; for retroactive surveillance authority against Carter Page and the Trump Campaign.

…Obviously the ‘small group’ within the DOJ and FBI didn’t have any issue with the activity of Bruce and Nellie Ohr during 2016 until IG Horowitz found out and exposed it in 2017.

After a few feeble attempts at brush back pitches… with the release of the lesser redacted memo, Senator Chuck Grassley took a 3-1 pitch and rocked a solid double off the wall, putting him on Second Base and Devin Nunes confidently standing on Third.

With no-one out, and first base open, the Democrats are stressed.

Adam Schiff calls for a pitching change as House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte steps up to the plate.

However, they can’t pitch around Goodlatte because clean-up hitter Horowitz is on deck. Schiff needs to bring the infield in close and hope for a double-play. They’re down to their last pitcher and he doesn’t look good.

In the next few months we are going to find out if the principle of equal justice under the law still applies in America.

Please follow the link at the beginning of this post to read the entire article. It is chilling that this was going on right under the noses of the oversight committee.