Tag Archives: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

Moving Quickly In The Wrong Direction

Posted on by

On Monday, Breitbart posted an article about the renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Somehow the House of Representatives managed to make the law even worse than it was.

The article reports:

Despite the outrage at the passage of the legislation, 110 Republicans also voted for an amendment proposed by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) and committee Ranking Member Jim Himes (D-CT) that would seek dramatically expand the ability for the government to surveil Americans’ communications.

The measure updates the definition of electronic service provider to also include “any other service provider who has access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications.”

The amendment would significantly expand the number of businesses and their employees who could be compelled to spy on their customers and provide warrantless access to their communications systems in accordance to this controversial FISA provision.

This provision has been referred to by privacy advocates as a “trojan horse” for “PATRIOT Act 2.0.”

Steve Bradbury, a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department under George W. Bush, told Breitbart News during a press conference on Monday that the Turner-Himes is so vast in scope that experts may not truly understand how many companies, staffers, and other entities may be forced to surveil Americans.

The article concludes:

Those on the left have also cried foul at the Turner-Himes proposal, referring it to as the “Everybody Is a Spy” amendment.

Demand Progress Policy Director Sean Vitka said in a written statement on Monday:

These moves from the Intelligence Committee add up to a brazen and deliberate attempt to sneak through one of the most terrifying expansions in the history of government surveillance. This is not speculative: the amendment clearly allows the government to secretly conscript uninvolved Americans and American businesses to spy on each other. These KGB-style powers pose an existential threat to our civil liberties. The Senate must block this provision.

If the Senate fails to remove this amendment from the bill, it will be handing the president, and whoever the next president is, a knife to ram through the back of democracy. [Emphasis added]

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), after the House passed RISAA, said in no uncertain terms:

The House bill represents one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history. It allows the government to force any American who installs, maintains, or repairs anything that transmits or stores communications to spy on the government’s behalf. That means anyone with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a wifi router, or a phone. It would be secret: the Americans receiving the government directives would be bound to silence, and there would be no court oversight. [Emphasis added]

He added, “I will do everything in my power to stop this bill.”

Congress took a bad bill and made it worse.

This Is Called Changing The Subject

Posted on by

A lot of us are very unhappy that the law allowing warrantless surveillance of Americans was extended. FISA stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Most of us would be okay if the act was strictly used to surveil foreigners, but history tells us that it has been used illegally to spy on innocent Americans. The fact that many Republicans voted to extend the act is unfortunate. That is not what they were elected to do. Unfortunately, according to the list of people who voted for the extension that I have seen, our own Representative, Greg Murphy, voted for the extension. I can only assume that these Representatives were told that if there were a terrorist attack and the bill was not extended, they would be held responsible by the media. Knowing the intelligence community’s ability to stage false-flag events and the media’s ability to mislead the public, this might have been the tactic used. That is simply my opinion.

President Trump, who did not support the extension but wanted to save the day for the Republicans, held a press conference with Speaker Johnson at Mar-a-Lago.

On Friday, The Epoch Times reported:

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and former President Donald Trump are urging support for a bill aimed at preventing non-citizens from voting in federal elections.

At a Friday, April 12, press conference at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence, the Republican leaders announced the bill as part of larger efforts to bolster election integrity.

“What we’re going to do is introduce legislation to require that every single person who registers to vote in a federal election must prove that they are an American citizen first,” Mr. Johnson said.

This is a great idea, but will create some problems. What will be required of voters in order to prove their citizenship? I was talking to someone today who does not have a birth certificate–the person was born at home in rural America and the birth was recorded in the family Bible. How can that person prove that they are an American? How many elderly Americans do not have birth certificates, passports, or documents to prove they are Americans? Does your social security card prove you are an American (those can be counterfeited)? It will be interesting to watch what happens to this plan as it moves forward.

Listening To The People

Posted on by

I recently posted three articles (here, here, and here) about the renewal of FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Section 702. Note that the law is called “foreign intelligence surveillance” act–not the spying on your political opponents act. Unfortunately the act has been used 278,000 times to conduct illegal searches on Americans. That is why I oppose the renewal of Section 702.

On Wednesday, The Hill reported:

A group of House Republicans on Wednesday tanked a procedural vote to begin debate on a bill to reauthorize the nation’s warrantless surveillance powers, leaving the chamber scrambling on how to address the important spy tool before it expires next week.

Nineteen Republicans joined Democrats in voting against a rule for legislation to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), blocking the measure from advancing 193-228.

The move comes after former President Trump on Wednesday urged Republicans to “KILL FISA” — throwing a wrench in an already contentious debate.

The failed vote marks yet another instance of members of the GOP tanking what is typically a routine party-line vote to protest legislation put forward by leadership.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, The Hill is part of the Operation Mockingbird media. The public has also urged Congress to kill FISA, but the author of the article chooses to overlook that.

On Wednesday, The Hill also reported:

Former Attorney General Bill Barr on Wednesday denounced former President Trump’s exhortation for Congress to kill the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) as “crazy and reckless” and warned there will be “blood on people’s hands” if the intelligence community’s surveillance authority expires and there’s a terrorist attack on the United States.

Barr, who served in Trump’s Cabinet in 2019 and 2020, noted that Trump at one time supported the expanded surveillance powers authorized under Section 702 of FISA and warned that political “posturing” against extending that authority would be dangerous to national security.

“I think it’s crazy and reckless to not move forward with FISA. It’s our principal tool protecting us from terrorist attacks. We’re living through a time where those threats have never been higher, so it’s blinding us, it’s blinding our allies,” Barr told The Hill in an interview.

You mean those allies that aided in the Russia Hoax?

Section 702 is a step toward a government that can surveil its political opponents without any limitations. They don’t need a warrant and the people surveilled don’t have to know they are being watched. That is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which states:

Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Bill Barr is a lawyer. He is supposed to know the U.S. Constitution.

This Is A Reminder

Posted on by

This is another reminder that Section 702 needs to be unauthorized instead of approved by April 19.

On Monday, Just the News posted the following:

Conservative lawmakers are calling for an end to warrantless surveillance of Americans ahead of a House floor vote on Wednesday to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

The bill, titled the “Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act,” would extend section 702 of FISA, which “authorizes the targeted collection of foreign intelligence information from non-U.S. persons located abroad,” according to the FBI.

Conservative Republicans and some Democrats such as Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, have teamed up to push for a warrant requirement as a condition for reauthorizing FISA. However, the legislation up for a vote on Wednesday does not include a warrant requirement in its current form. 

“No matter how hard the deep state cries, Congress must NOT reauthorize FISA 702 without requiring a warrant to search U.S. citizens,” wrote Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, on X.

“The SAFE Act contains a warrant requirement, the Lee-Leahy reforms, language ensuring that our Fourth Amendment rights can’t be bought and sold, and a handful of other protections necessary to protect Americans’ privacy,” he also wrote.

The article concludes:

The Brennan Center for Justice and other organizations wrote a letter on April 5 urging lawmakers to vote in favor of amendments to the bill up for a vote that will require a warrant.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, a proponent of the legislation up for a vote on Wednesday, predicted the bill will pass.

“I think it will,” Turner said Sunday on CNN. “I think that those who mischaracterize this are small compared to those who understand that this goes to the heart of our ability to get intelligence. It allows us to be able to keep Americans safe. This is not a warrantless surveillance of Americans.”

Biggs argued that the bill Turner supports is “very modest, very incremental” and does not contain significant reforms to Section 702.

“Quite frankly, it’s going to be who’s watching the henhouse. It’s going to be the FBI still watching the henhouse,” he said. 

It has become obvious that the people in charge cannot be trusted with warrantless surveillance. Let’s not give them the right to do warrantless surveillance.

I Know Things Are Getting Strange When I Agree With The ACLU

Posted on by

The following statement is posted at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) website:

Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. government engages in mass, warrantless surveillance of Americans’ and foreigners’ phone calls, text messages, emails, and other electronic communications. Information collected under the law without a warrant can be used to prosecute and imprison people, even for crimes that have nothing to do with national security. Given our nation’s history of abusing its surveillance authorities, and the secrecy surrounding the program, we should be concerned that Section 702 is and will be used to disproportionately target disfavored groups, whether minority communities, political activists, or even journalists.

Section 702 is set to expire at the end of 2023. We call on Congress to significantly reform the law, or allow it to sunset.

The phone number of the Congressional switchboard is (202) 224-3121.

Congress Needs To Say “No”

Posted on by

Congress has until April 19th to reauthorize  Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This is the law that allows warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens. It was passed after 9/11 in the hope that it would make America more secure from terrorist attacks. Instead it has been used as a political weapon to move America toward Banana Republic status.

On Monday, The Conservative Review posted an article about Section 702.

The article notes:

The FBI is attempting to rehabilitate the public image of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as Congress has until April 19 to reauthorize it. The bureau recently posted a video to X that features FBI Director Christopher Wray attempting to put a gloss on Section 702 as part of this monthslong campaign.

The bureau’s timely propaganda did not escape the attention of critics on X, where the post received a community note that read, “The FBI violated American citizens’ 4A rights 278,000 times with illegal, unauthorized FISA 702 searches.”

Among the critics was Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who wrote, “FBI just got called out in a community note on X. Congress — take note. FISA 702 has been used for warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of times. Yet FBI demands 702 be reauthorized by April 19 WITHOUT a warrant requirement for searches of U.S. citizens.”

“Many in Congress will want to reauthorize FISA 702 — which is set to expire April 19th — either without modification or (more likely) with fake reforms that fail to impose a warrant requirement for searches directed at Americans,” added the senator.

The article notes:

In his March 11 testimony, Wray stated, “The FISA Court itself most recently found 98% compliance and commented on the reforms working. The most recent Justice Department report found the reforms working, 99% compliance. And so, I think legislation that ensures those reforms stay in place but also preserves the agility and the utility of the tools, what we need to be able to protect the American people.”

The FBI’s March 25 social post containing an excerpt from Wray’s testimony was not well-received.

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) wrote, “The FBI was correctly called out in a community note for lying about its unconstitutional, warrantless surveillance of Americans. Congress must eliminate FISA abuse and protect the American people’s privacy.”

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) tweeted, “The FBI has been corrected in community notes and rightfully so.”

FBI whistlelower Steve Friend reiterated that the FBI “violated constitutional rights and abused FISA Section 702 over 278,000 times in a single year.”

The article concludes:

“While only foreigners overseas may be targeted, the program sweeps in massive amounts of Americans’ communications, which may be searched without a warrant. Even after implementing compliance measures, the FBI still conducted more than 200,000 warrantless searches of Americans’ communications in just one year — more than 500 warrantless searches per day,” said Durbin.

Durbin figured this legislation would make reauthorizing Section 702 palatable.

Section 702 needs to go away. We have seen that there is too much temptation for those in power to misuse the law to target their political opponents.

Sometimes Congress Actually Does Something When It Directly Impacts Them!

Posted on by

On Tuesday, The Daily Wire posted an article about the Department of Justice’s spying on members of Congress.

The article reports:

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) announced on Tuesday that he subpoenaed Attorney General Merrick Garland for information on alleged efforts to surveil members of Congress and congressional staff — including during the Russiagate controversy that rocked former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and administration.

In a cover letter to Garland, which noted potential legislative reforms could follow, Jordan said his panel “must resort to compulsory process” because of the “inadequate response to date” by the Department of Justice (DOJ) following his request for details about the apparent use of subpoenas to obtain private communications of Legislative Branch employees.

The DOJ previously informed the committee that the legal process it used related to an investigation into the “unauthorized disclosure of classified information in a national media publication,” the letter said. Jordan cited news reporting that indicated the inquiry pertained to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance of one-time Trump campaign associate Carter Page, reliant on an effort to get FISA warrants that the DOJ inspector general heavily criticized and the DOJ itself later conceded had relied on “insufficient predication” to last as long as it did.

The article concludes:

The Executive Branch appears to have used its “immense law-enforcement authority to gather and search the private communications of multiple Legislative Branch employees who were conducting Constitutional oversight of the Department’s investigative actions — actions that were later found to be unlawful,” Jordan wrote.

“Because the Department has not complied in full with our requests, we cannot independently determine whether the Department sought to alleviate the heightened separation-of-powers sensitivities involved or whether the Department first sought the information through other means before resorting to legal process,” Jordan added. “The Committee also has concerns that aspects of the Department’s investigation may have been a pretext to justify piercing the Legislative Branch’s deliberative process and improperly access data from Members and staff involved in conducting oversight of the Department.”

After watching the Department of Justice in recent years, I have concluded that the upper management of the Department has very little respect for the rule of law. They need to be replaced.

More Shenanigans On The FISA Renewal

Posted on by

On Monday, The Washington Examiner reported the following:

Neither of the two bills to reauthorize and reform a powerful spy tool used by American intelligence agencies will be voted on this week after the Rules Committee pulled the legislation amid intense backlash.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who sits on the Rules Committee, confirmed to the Washington Examiner that neither the House Judiciary Committee nor Intelligence Committee bills to reauthorize and reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would be voted on this week.

…Now, with the bills being punted until next year, it theoretically gives committees the time to work out the differences. The House is also expected to vote on the National Defense Authorization Act on Thursday, which includes a short-term extension of FISA until April 19, 2024, something certain members also oppose.

“I’m really disappointed that we’re talking about a four-month extension in the authorities of FISA,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), who helped author the Judiciary Committee bill. “So we should be laboring through to get this thing done, in my opinion.”

Under Section 702 of FISA, the federal government can surveil foreigners without a warrant for national security purposes. The collected information becomes part of a vast database of foreign intelligence that incidentally includes information about U.S. citizens who may have been communicating with people overseas.

There have been documented abuses of FISA. Because of this, most members want reforms but disagree on what those reforms should be.

I personally think that we have seen enough abuses and misuses of FISA to want it to go away. Obviously Washington politicians and bureaucrats do not have the maturity to use it wisely.

On Monday, The Conservative Treehouse reported:

For those confused. There are two bills to modify the FISA702 reauthorization in the House.  (1) HR 6611 from the House Intel Committee and (2) HR 6570 from the House Judiciary Committee.  The intel committee bill expands domestic surveillance authority under the modifications; the judiciary committee bill requires the DOJ to get a search warrant before they can look at the incidental collection of American citizens.

Both bills came out of committee and were scheduled for a floor vote tomorrow, which has been cancelled due to public outcry (good job).  Speaker Mike Johnson initially planned to let both bills get voted tomorrow and the bill with the most votes advances to the Senate.  😬That’s a hot mess.

The House Intel Committee bill organized by Chairman Mike Turner is absolutely horrible. It expands FISA702 surveillance and makes things much worse.  The House Judiciary Bill organized by Chairman Jim Jordan is not structurally that much better, but it does put strong curtailments on the 702 surveillance authority by forcing the DOJ to get actual court approved search warrants on American citizens.

It should not come as a surprise to see a panel of 46 experts in Deep State weaponization come out in support of the Intelligence Committee bill, and then decry the insufferable 702 limitations put into place in the Judiciary Committee bill.   The bad guys want the House Intel version.

As I stated, it’s time for FISA to go away.

More Spying On American Citizens

Posted on by

Periodically I highlight an article I don’t fully understand. This is one of those times. On Saturday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the changes made to  HR 6611, the 2023 FISA reauthorization bill. The changes don’t protect innocent Americans from being spied upon–they make things worse. The article includes a link to the bill.

The article reports:

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Chairman Mike Turner is celebrating the passage of HR 6611, the 2023 FISA reauthorization bill.

Chairman Turner would have granted a clean FISA renewal, he’s that kind of Republican; however, several Republicans demanded changes to the FISA-702 authorities that capture the data of American citizens without a warrant.  Thus, the HPSCI modified the authorities within HR 6611, but they made it worse.

(Via CDT) (Center for Democracy & Technology) – Tucked away near the end of the bill the House Intelligence Committee reported on December 7 (H.R. 6611, the “HPSCI bill”) is a provision that would dramatically expand surveillance under the controversial Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”), which sunsets on December 31 unless reauthorized. Section 504 of the bill, innocuously captioned “Definition of Electronic Communications Service Provider,” would expand the types of entities that can be compelled to disclose internet communications whether in storage or in transit.

FISA 702 permits the U.S. government to compel communication service providers to disclose for foreign intelligence purposes the communications of persons reasonably believed to be non-U.S. persons abroad. No warrant is required; a belief that the communications relate to U.S. foreign affairs or national security is sufficient.  Under current FISA 702, only entities that provide communication services like email, calls, and text messaging can be compelled to disclose these communications. 

As FISA Court amicus and longtime practitioner Marc Zwilligener and his colleague Steve Lane have already noted, the HPSCI bill would upend the current system, enabling the government to compel anyone with mere access to the equipment on which such communications are stored or transmitted to disclose those communications.  That could include personnel at coffee shops that offer WiFi to their customers, a town library that offers public computer internet services, hotels, shared workspaces, landlords and even AirBNB hosts that offer WiFi to the people who stay there, cloud storage services that host but do not access data, and large data centers that rent out computer server space to their clients.

At this point, the only way to stop the formation of a full-scale Stasi in America is to vote all Democrats out of office and drain the swamp. President Trump is the only person who even remotely has a chance of draining the swamp–that’s why the deep state is coming against him so hard.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Our privacy as Americans is at stake.

Spied On Again

Posted on by

On Wednesday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted the following headline:

Congress demands answers from White House over ‘invasive’ surveillance program known as Hemisphere that has tracked TRILLIONS of phone records for Americans each year – even if they are not suspected of a crime

Who authorized this surveillance?

The article reports:

Congress is demanding answers from the Biden administration about a secret spying program that tracks more than a trillion phone records from innocent and unsuspecting Americans each year.

The under-the-radar system, known as Data Analytical Services or ‘Hemisphere,’ has been in operation for over a decade. It allows federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to tap into the phone records of U.S. citizens who have not been accused of any crime.

Under the Hemisphere program the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) pays phone service provider AT&T to hand over phone records as far back as 1987.

The deal first came to light in 2013 after a bombshell New York Times report, but it has since been expanded.

The article notes that Congress is ready to investigate why the government is spying on innocent Americans.

The article reports:

Republican congressman Andy Biggs, Ariz., accused the government of spying on Americans.

Hemisphere is ‘invasive’ and allows ‘government agents warrantless access to trillions of Americans’ domestic communications records,’ he said.

Biggs went on: ‘The federal government doesn’t care about your privacy and it’s long past time we end these abuses and hold rogue actors accountable.

‘The Hemisphere Project highlights major loopholes in federal law through which the government is able to spy on Americans without judicial oversight, such as the purchase of personal data.’

Congress is currently considering renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702.

That allows for warrantless surveillance of foreigners but often catches the conversations of Americans.

Biggs said it must also look at the Hemisphere program.

The article concludes:

The program is run primarily by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Its stated purpose is to help investigate drug traffickers and other complex criminal enterprises.

However, it has also been used to arrest jewelry store robbers, a murder suspect and even a woman who was making nuisance bomb threats.

The program bypasses usual privacy regulations through a complex network of funding.

Rather than directly funding the surveillance, the ONDCP provides a grant to the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, which in turn pays AT&T to operate the program.

Because of this Hemisphere is not subject to a federal Privacy Impact Assessment like most projects funded by federal agencies.

The program is obviously not successful in stemming the drug problem; why is it still in place?

This Could Get Very Interesting

Posted on by

Yesterday Julie Kelly at  American Greatness reported that Lin Wood, the attorney who represented Nick Sandmann and the other Covington High School students in their defamation lawsuits against various media outlets, has been hired by Carter Page.

The article reports:

On Sunday, Wood confirmed he will represent another innocent person maligned and defamed by the American news media: Carter Page, the Trump campaign associate who James Comey’s FBI accused of acting as an agent of Russia. 

Page was the target of four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants. The most powerful, invasive government tools—usually reserved for suspected foreign terrorists—were unleashed against Page as a way to infiltrate and spy on Team Trump.

But the FISAs were only part of Page’s personal hell. Tipped off by Democratic operatives as a way to seed the concocted Trump-Russia collusion hoax before the presidential election, journalists started harassing Page in the summer of 2016. 

His first call, Page told me in 2018, was from a Wall Street Journal reporter hounding Page about an alleged meeting with a “senior Kremlin official” and the existence of compromising material that Russia allegedly had on Trump and Hillary Clinton. (Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson was a Journal reporter for years.)

In an interview with Page in 2018, he told me that his real nightmare began in September 2016 after Michael Isikoff, a veteran political journalist and writer for Yahoo News, reported that Page was under federal investigation for his ties to the Kremlin. 

“U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials—including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president,” Isikoff disclosed on September 23, 2016. “The activities of Trump adviser Carter Page, who has extensive business interests in Russia, have been discussed with senior members of Congress during recent briefings about suspected efforts by Moscow to influence the presidential election.”

The article includes a tweet from Lin Wood which lists the targets of the lawsuits he is planning. Please follow the link to the article to see a list of targets the author of the article thinks should be added to the current list.

The Five Questions That Will Determine The Presidential Election In November

Posted on by

The New York Sun posted an article yesterday by Conrad Black. The article lists the five things that will determine who wins the presidential election in November.

These are the five things listed in the article:

    • Can the President override the Democratic press’s thunderous campaign to terrorize the country over the coronavirus?

    • Can the president successfully connect Vice President Biden’s campaign to the hooligans, anti-white racists, and urban guerrillas who effectively are being encouraged by the corrupt Democratic mayors of many of the nation’s largest cities?

    • Will the economic recovery and the decline in the unemployment generated by the COVID-19 shutdown continue at its recent pace and strengthen the economy as a pro-Trump electoral argument?

    • Will the Republicans make adequately clear to the country the authoritarian and Marxist implications of the Biden-Sanders unity document?

    • Will special counsel John Durham indict senior members of the Obama Administration over their handling of the spurious allegation of collusion between Donald Trump and the Russian government in the 2016 election and Justice Department violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and how will Mr. Biden himself come through it?

The coronavirus has given us some insight into what unbridled government authority can do. Some of the regulations put in place by governors and mayors were based on common sense–things your mother told you when you were young like wash you hands, cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, and don’t hang around with sick people. Other regulations were simply power grabs to prevent Americans from exercising their First Amendment rights–churches in Nevada restricted to a lower percentage of occupancy than casinos, protests to open businesses criticized and shut down while other protests (that included looting and riots) were allowed to continue. We have had a taste of out-of-control government in recent months. A vote for Joe Biden and whoever he chooses as his running mate will give us more of the same. Joe Biden has already stated that he wants to reassemble the Obama team–the group that gave us anemic economic growth, Benghazi where our ambassador was murdered followed by lying about it on television, ISIS, politicization of the Justice Department, and too many other scandals to mention.

The voters will choose. We need to pray for wisdom in voting and an honest election.

How The Russia Hoax Unraveled

Posted on by

John Solomon posted an article at Just The News today that details some of the research he has done over the last three years and also lists the twelve revelations that destroyed the carefully-crafted narrative that President Trump was colluding with the Russians.

This is the list. Please follow the link to the article for details and the sources:

1. Flynn’s RT visit with Putin wasn’t nefarious.

2.  (Flynn was) Not a Russian agent.

3. Case closed memo.

4. DOJ heartburn.

5. Logan Act threat wasn’t real.

6. Unequal treatment.

7. Disguising a required warning.

8. “Playing games.“

9. No deception.

10. No actual denial.

11.) Interview Reports Edited.

12.) Evidence withheld.

The article also notes how John Solomon’s investigation began:

Shortly after my colleague Sara Carter and I began reporting in 2017 on the possibility that the FBI was abusing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Americans during the Russia investigation, I received a call. It was an intermediary for someone high up in the intelligence community.

The story that source told me that day — initially I feared it may have been too spectacular to be true — was that FBI line agents had actually cleared former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn of any wrongdoing with Russia only to have the bureau’s leadership hijack the process to build a case that he lied during a subsequent interview.

In fact, my notes show, the source used the words “concoct a 1001 false statements case” to describe the objections of career agents who did not believe Flynn had intended to deceive the FBI. A leak of a transcript of Flynn’s call with the Russian ambassador was just part of a campaign, the source alleged.

The tip resulted in a two-and-a-half-year journey by myself and a small group of curious and determined journalists like Carter, Catherine Herridge, Greg Jarrett, Mollie Hemingway, Lee Smith, Byron York, and Kimberly Strassel to slowly peel back the onion.

The pursuit of the truth ended Thursday when the Justice Department formally asked a court to vacate Flynn’s conviction and end the criminal case, acknowledging the former general had indeed been cleared by FBI agents and that the bureau did not have a lawful purpose when it interviewed him in January 2017.

Attorney General William Barr put it more bluntly in an interview Thursday: “They kept it open for the express purpose of trying to catch, to lay a perjury trap for General Flynn.”

To understand just how dramatic a turnaround Thursday’s action was, one has to go back to the headlines of 2017 fanned by the likes of The Washington Post, The New York Times, MSNBC, CNN and others and told by a host of former Obama administration officials and their Democratic allies in Congress.

Flynn was suspected of violating the Logan Act by talking with the Russian ambassador. He may have been compromised by a 2015 visit with Vladimir Putin at a Russia Today event. He lied to the FBI. He may have been an agent of Russia and involved in colluding to hijack the election. He betrayed his country.

All of that was alleged, it turns out, without proof. And then Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team pressured Flynn to plead guilty to falsely telling FBI agents that he did not discuss sanctions with Russia’s ambassador. It turns out that wasn’t true either.

Thank God for the honest reporters who were willing to pursue this story. They were a necessary part of finding out the truth.

How To Navigate The Media Spin

Posted on by

The Epoch Times posted an article yesterday about the report of the Justice Department Inspector General. The report found that the FBI failed to document facts correctly in 29 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications that were reviewed. A rational person would take that as an indication that all was not well at the FBI and that Americans were being unlawfully surveilled. However, the mainstream media did not necessarily see it that way.

Eli Lake posted the following comments at Bloomberg News:

In the twisted politics of the Trump Era, some of bureau’s defenders might actually view this report as good news: It shows that the investigation of the Trump campaign was not necessarily politically motivated. The bureau made the same kinds of mistakes with suspects who were not connected to the Trump campaign.

That’s hardly reassuring — and the malpractice that the report uncovers is a much larger problem than the FBI and its defenders may wish to admit. So far, the response to Horowitz’s December report has been a series of administrative reforms, such as a requirement that FBI field offices preserve their “Woods files” and a mandate for new FISA training for FBI lawyers and agents. That’s all well and good. But one need not go back to the bad old days of J. Edgar Hoover to see that the bureau has been careless in its monitoring of U.S. citizens.

The Woods procedures were issued in 2001 after Congress obtained a memo from the FBI’s counterterrorism division detailing surveillance abuse in the late 1990s. One target’s cell phone remained tapped after he gave it up and the number was reassigned to a different person. Another FBI field office videotaped a meeting, despite a clear prohibition on that technique in its FISA warrant. In 2003, an interim report from the Senate Judiciary Committee concluded that the 2001 memo showed “the FBI was experiencing more systemic problems related to the implementation of FISA orders” than a problem with the surveillance law itself.

Very little has changed in the intervening 17 years. That’s why it’s foolish to expect new and better procedures will work this time. A better approach would be an aggressive policy to prosecute FBI agents and lawyers who submit falsehoods to the surveillance court. The best way to prevent future violations is to severely punish those who commit them in the present.

Scott Johnson posted an article today at Power Line Blog that included the following quote (follow the link to the article for the audio of the answer to the question):

The New York Times is illustrative of “the twisted politics of the Trump era.” Daniel Chaitin covers the Times angle in his Examiner article “‘Biased and out of control’: Devin Nunes rips New York Times reporting on FISA memo.” Chaitin reports on Rep. Devin Nunes’s interview with Larry O’Connor:

Radio host Larry O’Connor read a passage from the [Times’s] report [on the Horowitz memo] to Nunes during the Examining Politics podcast on Tuesday. It said DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report “helps the FBI politically because it undercuts the narrative among President Trump and his supporters that the bureau cut corners to surveil the adviser, Carter Page, as part of a politically motivated conspiracy.”

“So, the good news for the FBI is that they trampled on people’s rights all over the place, not just people who worked with Donald Trump’s campaign,” O’Connor said. “Is that the takeaway we should have here congressman?”

I agree with Eli Lake–severe punishment for those guilty of illegal spying on American citizens is the only way to prevent future abuse by the FBI.

 

Don’t Pass It Until People Are Held Accountable

Posted on by

One America News posted an article today about Congressional attempts to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Frankly, I don’t think it should be extended until those who abused it in the past are held accountable for their actions. FISA was used (just as the Watergate break-in was attempted to be used) to spy on an opposing political campaign. If the act is extended and no one is held accountable, it is a pretty safe bet that political parties that are in power could do the same thing that the Obama administration did–use the law to spy on the political campaign of their opposition. That is not acceptable. That sort of action puts us on the road to having a two-tiered justice system with the government having almost unlimited authority to spy on Americans.

The article reports:

The Senate voted on a temporary extension of recently lapsed intelligence programs to provide time for discussion on major provisions in the renewal process. The extension was passed Monday, just minutes before a scheduled procedural vote on the matter.

The move came as a way to give lawmakers more time to consider the bill, which would reauthorize the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, the extension for the Senate was unanimously agreed to in order to give members more time to debate on the House’s revisions.

Specifically, there is bipartisan push-back to FISA, which senators on both sides of the aisle fear violates people’s privacy rights. Two of the most vocal opponents to the act are Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah).

“The secret FISA court should be forbidden from allowing spying on political campaigns ever again, period,” said Sen. Paul. “…History has proven just how dangerous it can be when we sacrifice our rights to create a temporary and ultimately false sense of security.”

Until I see indictments of people who knowingly lied to the FISA court, I don’t want to see FISA renewed.

Refusing To Continue A Practice That Was Abused

Posted on by

Townhall posted an article this morning stating that the House Freedom Caucus will refuse to reauthorize the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court unless serious reforms are made. The FISA court was the vehicle used by the Obama administration to spy on the Trump campaign and the early days of the Trump administration. The authorization to spy was gained by misleading the court, specifically by omitting the fact that Carter Page was a CIA asset–not a Russian asset and omitting the fact that Joseph Mifsud was an American asset–not a Russian spy.

The article reports:

Members of the House Freedom Caucus released a statement Wednesday morning vowing to vote against any reauthorization of the FISA court unless serious and substantial changes are made to the spying program. 

“Members of the Freedom Caucus have long called for reforms to FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). Recent revelations that FISA was severely and repeatedly used to spy on a presidential campaign are beyond the pale—if the government can misuse this system to spy on a presidential campaign, they can surely do it to any other American citizen,” members of the caucus said. “As Congress considers reauthorizing FISA, anything short of significant and substantive reforms would betray the trust of the American people. The House Freedom Caucus will oppose any bill that does not meet a Constitutional standard for the protections of American citizens’ rights. We will also oppose any ‘clean’, short-term reauthorization of the current, harmful version of FISA.”

Members of the Freedom Caucus include House Oversight Committee Ranking member Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, Chip Roy and other long time critics of FISA. 

The FISA court was misused by the Obama administration, and unless it is seriously reformed, could easily be used for political purposes again. There needs to be a limitation so that the court could only use surveillance on foreign citizens–not Americans. Unfortunately, FISA misuse was one of many traps set in place by the Obama administration to hinder the progress of the Trump administration.

The article continues:

“Enhanced penalties for abusing the system and additional layers of certification from the Department of Justice and the FBI are insufficient to gain our support, particularly when, to date, no one has been charged with a crime for previous abuses,” the statement continues. “A proposal for additional scrutiny when elected officials and candidates are the target of investigations similarly misses the point: politicians don’t need more protection from government spying than their fellow citizens. More fundamental changes to standards of evidence and process that mirror as closely as possible our Article III courts are needed to gain our support.”

Yesterday the House reached a compromise on how to move a bill, sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, forward for reauthorization of the program. It does not reform the system that was used as a political weapon against President Trump in 2016 and well into his presidency.

Until people are held accountable for past abuses of FISA, it should not be reauthorized.

Refusing To Acknowledge Or Deal With The Problem

Posted on by

The Federalist is reporting today that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) presiding Judge James Boasberg  has chosen David Kris to review the FBI’s proposed changes to its surveillance application process.

The article notes:

Kris, who served as assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s National Security Division, recently claimed the IG report that catalogued egregious abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) powers actually vindicated the FBI. He also smeared Rep. Devin Nunes in 2018, saying his initial sounding of the alarm about those abuses was incorrect, threatened national security, and should be harshly punished.

Kris appeared in locations that pushed the false Russia collusion narrative, such as Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show, the Lawfare blog, and Twitter, to defend the FBI and attack President Trump and other critics of the harmful surveillance campaign. He once wrote that Trump “should be worried” that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into treasonous collusion with Russia meant “the walls are closing in.”

The appointment of a former official who served as an apologist for the FBI signals that the court isn’t particularly concerned about the civil liberty violations catalogued by Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigation into the year-long surveillance of Carter Page. Page is the Trump campaign affiliate whose phone and email communications federal agents wiretapped, and who had confidential human sources and overseas intelligence assets placed against him. False claims that Page was a Russian spy were leaked to the media by government officials as part of a years-long campaign to paint President Trump as a traitor who had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

This is not good news for our country. It shows that the deep state is still protecting itself and will continue to do so at least in the near future. Dirty cops will not be dealt with as long as they have the right political views. We are at a tipping point–either we are going to have equal justice under the law or we are going to live in a surveillance state. The only way to change this is for voters to vote anyone out of office who hindered in any way the investigations into the corruption that took place at the senior levels of the Department of Justice, FBI, IRS,  etc., under the Obama administration.

Slowly Getting To The Truth

Posted on by

Fox News posted an article today about a recent comment by James Comey. In an interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, James Comey stated that the recently released Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the launch of the FBI’s Russia investigation and their use of the surveillance process showed that he was “overconfident” when he defended his former agency’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). I don’t mean to be difficult, but I think you could fertilize your garden with that statement. Remember, it was James Comey who leaked information to his friend to leak to The New York Times in order to promote the idea that a Special Prosecutor was needed. It was James Comey who listed all the crimes committed by Hillary Clinton and then said they weren’t really crimes because she didn’t mean to commit them. It was James Comey who briefed the President on the Steele Dossier so that it could be leaked to the press. It was James Comey who paved the way for the entire phony Russia investigation that cost taxpayers millions and prevented Congress from actually accomplishing anything for the good of the country. Keep that in mind as he proclaims he had no idea what was going on.

The article notes:

“He’s right, I was wrong,” Comey said about how the FBI used the FISA process, adding, “I was overconfident as director in our procedures,” and that what happened “was not acceptable.”

Horowitz did make it clear that he believes the FBI’s investigation of Russian election interference and possible connections with the Trump campaign was properly initiated, but he did note that this is based on a “low threshold.” He also concluded that there was no testimonial or documentary evidence to show that the investigation started due to any political bias, but said the issue of bias “gets murkier” when it comes to the various issues with the FISA process.

That process included the reliance on information gathered by former British spy Christopher Steele as part of opposition research conducted by Fusion GPS for the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign. Horowitz’s report stated that government attorneys were hesitant to approve a FISA warrant application until they relied on unverified information from Steele. That information also was used in subsequent renewals for the FISA warrant.

Comey downplayed the role of Steele’s information in obtaining the FISA warrant against Page, claiming Sunday that it was “not a huge part of the presentation to the court,” just part of the information included in the warrant application.

It will be interesting to see if James Comey is included when indictments are handed out. My bet is that he will be. He should at least be held accountable for leaking information.

And Now We Wait…

Posted on by

The elephant in the room right now is the Inspector General’s Report on the surveillance of the Trump campaign during 2016. As we await the report, many people named in the report are attempting to blunt the impact of the report, and others are reiterating its importance.

The Washington Times posted an article yesterday with its views on the report. The headline of the article is, “‘Dirty cops’: FBI leaves trail of lies, leaks, lapses in Trump era.”

The article reports:

The FBI already has amassed a record of misconduct by top officials leading up to Monday, when the Justice Department inspector general is scheduled to release conclusions on whether agents also abused the bureau’s intrusive wiretapping powers.

To date, four inspector general reports and internal Justice Department documents have found senior FBI officials guilty of lying, insubordination, security violations, mishandling confidential material and personal biases against President Trump.

Rep. Devin Nunes, the California Republican who discovered that the FBI had used a Democratic Party-financed dossier as evidence, often refers to bureau leaders as “dirty cops.”

Lisa Page, a former FBI senior counsel and one of those singled out, portrayed herself this week as an innocent victim of FBI betrayal.

Meanwhile, news media stories have downplayed the significance of the upcoming inspector general’s report on how the FBI spied on the Trump campaign through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other means.

There will be a lot of charges and counter-charges when the report comes out, but there are two basic facts to remember. First, it is illegal to conduct surveillance on a political opponent using government agencies and foreign sources (there is some question as to whether the FBI farmed out some of the surveillance to the CIA and foreign sources to avoid American laws). Second of all, the FBI did not inform the Trump campaign that they were concerned about Russian interference (as they are required to do and as they did in the case of Diane Feinstein and her Chinese driver).

What was done to President Trump was a government Watergate burglary. It was unacceptable, and unless those responsible are held accountable, it will happen again.

Going To The Courts

Posted on by

Those of us who have followed the Russian collusion story closely are waiting for someone to actually be held accountable for the violations of civil liberties of Americans that went on during the Obama administration. It seems as if it is nearly impossible to get information on what went on and even when we have the information that things were not done properly, there is no accountability. The Russia hoax is actually following the pattern of many of the Clinton scandals–delay, delay, delay, and when damaging information finally surfaces, you say ‘that’s old news.’ Well, some of the people who actually know the truth are not willing to settle for delay, delay, delay.

The Washington Examiner reported the following yesterday:

Congressman Devin Nunes filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against opposition research firm Fusion GPS, its founder Glenn Simpson, and left-leaning watchdog group Campaign for Accountability, accusing them of “racketeering” and interfering with his congressional Trump-Russia investigation.

Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until Democrats won the majority in 2018, claimed that Simpson, Fusion GPS, and the Campaign for Accountability illegally conspired to “harass” him in an attempt to “hinder, delay, prevent, or dissuade” him from looking into issues surrounding the federal investigation into the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and to scare him off from investigating possible wrongdoing by Simpson and Fusion GPS.

The California Republican is asking the judge to award him $9.9 million in damages.

The 35-page complaint Nunes filed in the Eastern District of Virginia today pointed to a Daily Caller article from early August that revealed the Campaign for Accountability hired Fusion GPS as an “independent contractor” in 2018 and paid the firm close to $140,000 for research. And the Nunes lawsuit alleged the watchdog group and the opposition research firm then colluded to target him and stymie his efforts, pointing to three ethics complaints filed by the Campaign for Accountability allegedly “in concert with” Fusion GPS in an effort to “chill reporting of Fusion GPS and Simpson’s wrongdoing” and to dissuade Nunes from making criminal referrals to the Justice Department.

Nunes described Fusion GPS as “a political war room for hire that specializes in dirty tricks and smears” and the Campaign for Accountability as a “dark money, partisan, left-wing” nonprofit that he said targets mainly conservatives.

The article continues:

Nunes said Simpson and Fusion GPS “shared a common goal” with the Clinton campaign of “using the false and defamatory statements in the Steele dossier to poison the minds of voters.”

“Fusion GPS and Simpson harbored spite and ill-will towards [Nunes] and decided to smear [him] as a result of his tenacious efforts in 2017 to expose Fusion GPS’ nefarious activities,” the lawsuit alleges.

Nunes said Fusion GPS retaliated through the Campaign for Accountability because of subpoenas he issued in 2017 to the FBI and DOJ for information on their relationship with Steele, to Simpson and other Fusion GPS partners to compel their testimony, and to the bank Fusion GPS used, which “revealed that the Clinton campaign, the DNC and Perkins Coie paid for Fusion GPS’ anti-Trump research.”

Nunes claimed that “corrupt acts of racketeering are part of [Fusion GPS’] regular way of doing business” and said “that way of doing business must end here and now.”

Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz’s report on the use of Steele’s dossier and alleged abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which started more than a year ago, is expected in September or early October. The DOJ watchdog’s report harshly criticizing former FBI Director James Comey over the mishandling of his memos was released last week.

The deep state is somewhat like an octopus–it has many tentacles. The entire ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ operation was illegal from the start and should be tried under RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act). There are now stories that James Comey placed spies in the White House in the early days of the Trump administration until Comey was fired in May 2017. More on that when I can confirm it.

The Reason It Is Taking So Long

Posted on by

Yesterday Catherine Herridge posted an article at Fox News about the investigation into the FISA abuses that occurred during the final months of the Obama administration.

The article reports:

Key witnesses sought for questioning by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz early in his investigation into alleged government surveillance abuse have come forward at the 11th hour, Fox News has learned.  

Sources familiar with the matter said at least one witness outside the Justice Department and FBI started cooperating — a breakthrough that came after Attorney General William Barr ordered U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead a separate investigation into the origins of the bureau’s 2016 Russia case that laid the foundation for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

While the investigative phase of the inspector general’s long-running probe is said to be complete, the sources said recent developments required some witnesses to be reinterviewed. And while Barr testified that he expected the report into alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse to be ready in May or last month, multiple sources said the timeline has slipped.

I can’t help but wonder if the delay is a stall tactic. I think the Democrats are still hoping for a presidential victory in 2020 that will allow them to sweep the FISA abuse investigation under to rug never to return. That may be wishful thinking on their part, but if enough illegal immigrants somehow manage to vote, I suspect they can do it.

The article concludes:

A spokesman for Horowitz would not comment on the report’s status. But during largely unrelated testimony in November, Horowitz offered some guidance for the timeline of the FISA abuse probe in response to questions from GOP Rep. Jim Jordan.

“What I can say is given the volume of documents we’ve had and the number of witnesses it looks like we’ll need to interview, we are likely to be in the same sort of general range of documents and witnesses as the last report,” Horowitz said, referring to his team’s review of the Clinton email case. “It wouldn’t surprise me if we are in that million or so plus range of documents and a hundred-ish or so interviews. The last review, as you know, took us about … 16 months or so.”

If that same guidance holds, the window for completion would begin this month, though it remains unclear how much the DOJ/FBI review and the additional interviews could delay the process.

It would be nice to see all investigations end. The testimony of Robert Mueller on July 17th should be an indication of whether or not an end is in sight.

What Does This Say About The Candidate?

Posted on by

Kamala Harris is currently considered the up-and-coming Democrat candidate for President in 2020. She achieved that status after an attack on Joe Biden that stretched the truth more than a little. Well, Ms. Harris is serious about her campaign. The Washington Examiner is reporting today that the Harris campaign hired Marc Elias, who heads Perkins Coie’s political law group.

The article reports:

…Elias, who held the same position in Clinton’s campaign, is named in two pending Federal Election Commission complaints and in a recent federal lawsuit alleging that the Clinton campaign broke campaign finance laws when it used Perkins Coie to hire Fusion GPS.

Fusion GPS went on to hire British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who compiled an unverified dossier allegedly based on sources close to the Kremlin which was disseminated to the media and used by the FBI to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants targeting former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is reviewing alleged FISA abuse related to the dossier and Attorney General William Barr launched his “investigation of the investigators” earlier this year.

Clinton’s former presidential campaign manager Robby Mook said in 2017 that he authorized Elias to hire an outside firm to dig up dirt on Trump’s connections with Russia. “I asked our lawyer and I gave him a budget allocation to investigate this, particularly the international aspect,” he said.

Mook said Elias was receiving information from Fusion GPS or directly from Steele himself about the research into Trump and Russia in 2016, and that Elias then periodically briefed the Clinton campaign about the findings.

The article concludes:

Elias is a fixture in Democratic politics. Aside from working for Harris, Clinton, and the DNC, Elias has said that he and his colleagues at Perkins Coie have represented the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, various Democratic PACs, the pro-abortion EMILY’s List, dozens of Democratic senators, and more than a hundred Democratic members of the House.

Neither the Harris campaign nor Elias responded to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.

I wonder if Mr. Elias’ name is going to come up during the release of the Inspector General’s Report or the questioning of Robert Mueller. Stay tuned.

What Are The “Bucket 5” Documents?

Posted on by

Below is a video of Sean Hannity’s interview of John Solomon last night about the release of “Bucket 5” Documents. The video was posted today at a website called “The National Sentinel.” John Solomon has stated that the “Bucket 5” Documents will be released some time in the next week or ten days.

So what is significant about the “Bucket 5 Documents”?

The article reports:

Ace investigative columnist John Solomon told Fox News‘ Sean Hannity Tuesday night during his show that, according to Solomon’s sources, POTUS Donald Trump is expected to begin declassifying a series of documents exposing President Obama’s deep state “Spygate” plot to undermine his presidency.

In particular, Solomon noted, the president will begin with with the release of “Bucket 5” documents, otherwise known as exculpatory statements the FBI possessed about its targets before agents went to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to get warrants to spy on them.

Meanwhile, investigative reporter Sara A. Carter added that Bucket 5 also includes transcripts and tapes of former Trump advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page saying that there was no way the 2016 campaign was working with Russians — information that Obama’s FBI and Justice Department did not share with the FISA court.

Solomon noted that the release could begin within a week to 10 days. He also added that “this is the first time that we know for sure the FBi was in possession of a piece of intelligence from Christopher Steele [author of the infamous ‘Steele Dossier’ used to get a warrant to spy on Page] that had been debunked before they went to the FISA court.”

He added that the FBI wasn’t in the process of verifying it — they had already debunked it.

So why is this important? This is the root of the investigation into charges of a Trump-Russia conspiracy. If the root is rotten, then the FBI had no right to spy of the Trump campaign. If the FBI knew the root was rotten, they abused their power and violated the civil rights of several American citizens.

In Watergate, a second-rate burglary was exalted into a high crime and a President was impeached. In this case, government bureaucracies were used for political purposes, and no one has been held accountable. Because of stonewalling by the deep state, the investigation into the surveillance of President Trump’s campaign and transition team has taken forever. That is what those responsible are counting on. The hope is that if the investigation continues ad infinitum, the public will lose interest and no one will be held accountable. If that happens, we can expect to see more bad behavior on the part of the political left in the future.

 

Uncovering The Early Fraud

Posted on by

John Solomon at The Hill posted an article today that reveals that much of what the FBI has put forth about the spying on the Trump campaign is untrue.

The article reports:

Newly unearthed memos show a high-ranking government official who met with Steele in October 2016 determined some of the Donald Trump dirt that Steele was simultaneously digging up for the FBI and for Hillary Clinton’s campaign was inaccurate, and likely leaked to the media.

The concerns were flagged in a typed memo and in handwritten notes taken by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec on Oct. 11, 2016.

Her observations were recorded exactly 10 days before the FBI used Steele and his infamous dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the campaign’s contacts with Russia in search of a now debunked collusion theory.

The article points out one obvious lie in the dossier:

That’s a pretty remarkable declaration in Footnote 5 on Page 15 of the FISA application, since Kavalec apparently needed just a single encounter with Steele at State to find one of his key claims about Trump-Russia collusion was blatantly false.

In her typed summary, Kavalec wrote that Steele told her the Russians had constructed a “technical/human operation run out of Moscow targeting the election” that recruited emigres in the United States to “do hacking and recruiting.”

She quoted Steele as saying, “Payments to those recruited are made out of the Russian Consulate in Miami,” according to a copy of her summary memo obtained under open records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United. Kavalec bluntly debunked that assertion in a bracketed comment: “It is important to note that there is no Russian consulate in Miami.”

We are supposed to believe that the FBI is too stupid to pay attention to an obvious lie that was noted in the summary.

The fiction in the dossier continues:

Steele offered Kavalec other wild information that easily could have been debunked before the FISA application — and eventually was, in many cases, after the media reported the allegations — including that:

    • Trump lawyer Michael Cohen traveled to Prague to meet with Russians;
    • Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort owed the Russians $100 million and was the “go-between” from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Trump;
    • Trump adviser Carter Page met with a senior Russian businessman tied to Putin;
    • The Russians secretly communicated with Trump through a computer system.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, released last month, dispelled all those wild theories while hardly mentioning Steele, except for a passing reference to his dossier being “unverified.” That’s significant, because the FISA request from October 2016 that rested heavily on Steele’s information was marked “verified application” before the FBI submitted it to the court.

It will be interesting to see if anyone is held accountable for misleading the FISA Court.

I suggest that you follow the link above to read the entire article. The misuse of our intelligence community for political purposes is totally unacceptable.

The Ultimate October Surprise

Posted on by

John Solomon at The Hill reported the following last night:

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec’s written account of her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele shows the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence operative admitted that his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline.

And that confession occurred 10 days before the FBI used Steele’s now-discredited dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the campaign’s ties to Russia.

Steele’s client “is keen to see this information come to light prior to November 8,” the date of the 2016 election, Kavalec wrote in a typed summary of her meeting with Steele and Tatyana Duran, a colleague from Steele’s Orbis Security firm. The memos were unearthed a few days ago through open-records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United.

Kavalec’s notes do not appear to have been provided to the House Intelligence Committee during its Russia probe, according to former Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). “They tried to hide a lot of documents from us during our investigation, and it usually turns out there’s a reason for it,” Nunes told me. Senate and House Judiciary investigators told me they did not know about them, even though they investigated Steele’s behavior in 2017-18.

How much money did we spend on this investigation into President Trump without investigating the source for the FISA Warrants?

The article concludes:

Documents and testimony from Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie worked for Fusion GPS, show he told the FBI in August 2016 that Steele was “desperate” to defeat Trump and his work had something to do with Clinton’s campaign.

Kavalec’s notes make clear the DNC was a likely client and the election was Steele’s deadline to smear Trump.

Likewise, there is little chance the FBI didn’t know that Steele, then a bureau informant, had broken protocol and gone to the State Department in an effort to make the Trump dirt public.

That makes the FBI’s failure to disclose to the FISA judges the information about Steele’s political bias and motive all the more stunning. And it makes the agents’ use of his unverified dossier to support the warrant all the more shameful.

Kavalec’s notes shed light on another mystery from the text messages between the FBI’s Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, which first revealed the politically-biased nature of the Trump collusion probe.

Strzok, the lead FBI agent on the case, and Page, a lawyer working for the FBI deputy director, repeatedly messaged each other in October 2016 about efforts to pressure and speed the review of the FISA warrant.

For instance, on Oct. 11, 2016, Strzok texted Page that he was “fighting with Stu for this FISA,” an apparent reference to then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stu Evans in DOJ’s national security division.

A few days later, on Oct. 14, Strzok emailed Page he needed some “hurry the F up pressure” to get the FISA approved.

If the evidence is good and the FISA request solid, why did the FBI need to apply pressure?

The real reason may be the FBI was trying to keep a lid on the political origins, motives and Election Day deadline of its star informant Steele.

And that would be the ultimate abuse of the FBI’s FISA powers.

This (and many other things like it) are what the Mueller team should have been investigating–the abuse of the FISA Warrant. However, the team of Democrat donors Mueller assembled to handle to investigation somehow managed to look the other way during the investigation. That is so unfortunate for our country. Not only was their report totally biased in what it left out; because of those omissions, the country is further divided even after the report was released. A man who could have done his patriotic duty to America chose instead to serve crooked politicians. I suspect that decision is about to catch up with him.