Tag Archives: Kevin Clinesmith

The Real Purpose Of The Raid At Mar-a-Lago?

Posted on by

If you don’t have your conspiracy hat on, you are probably going to need it for this article.

An animal is most dangerous when it is cornered. On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about the illegal spying on President Trump during the presidential campaign of 2016 and afterward. Obviously, that was illegal, but it seems as if Democrats are not required to abide by laws.

The article reports:

The US Intelligence Community asked foreign spy agencies to surveil 26 associates of Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election, which triggered the allegations that the former president’s campaign had been colluding with Russia, according to a report. 

Former CIA Director John Brennan identified and presented the targets to the US’s intelligence-sharing partners in the so-called “Five Eyes” agencies – the intelligence-gathering organizations in the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – according to a report published Monday on Michael Shellenberger’s Public Substack. 

The report by independent journalists Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag has not been confirmed by The Post.

They cite multiple unnamed sources, including ones close to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, led by Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio). 

The article concludes:

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to probation in 2021 after admitting that he falsified an e-mail to renew a wiretap against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. 

​​Page had been wiretapped after intelligence sources suspected he might have been targeted by Russian spies. The wiretap, which was approved by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, was renewed several times after it was first granted.

Last March, Special Counsel John Durham concluded that the FBI investigation of Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia was “seriously flawed” and had no basis in evidence, after a four-year review of the probe. 

In response, the FBI said it had “implemented dozens of corrective actions” since the improper Trump probe and that “the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented” had the reforms been in place in 2016. 

In 2022, Taibbi and Shellenberger were involved in the publishing of the Twitter Files expose, which detailed how the social media giant’s previous management team sought to silence controversial voices and suppress news items such as The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Do you really believe all necessary corrective actions have been taken? What if there is more to this than meets the eye? What if documents detailing exactly who was involved in this illegal activity exist and the FBI does not know where they are? Would they logically be at Mar-a-Lago or in President Trump’s possession? Is it possible that was what the raid at Mar-a-Lago was really about since other Presidents have never been treated that way?

President Trump is a smart man. I suspect (and I would also suggest that the parties who broke the law spying suspect) that somewhere in a very secret place the documents showing the abuse of our justice system are in President Trump’s possession. I also think that those who engaged in the illegal spying will be brought to justice if President Trump is re-elected. That is why the deep state is working so hard to prevent President Trump from being our next President.

The Company Town

Posted on by

On Saturday, American Greatness posted an article about how Washington, D.C., currently functions (or does not function). The article is titled, “Dismantle the D.C. Company Town.” What a great idea.

The article reports:

Gertrude Stein famously warned that it was important to know how far to go when going too far. 

It pains me to admit that Democrats seem to have a far better sense of all that than do Republicans. Perhaps it’s because Democrats have a visceral appreciation of William Hazlitt’s observation that “those who lack delicacy hold us in their power.” The Democrats, that is to say, long ago became expert at the game of holding their opponents to standards that they themselves violate not just with impunity but with ostentatious glee. 

The news last week that Michael Sussmann was found not guilty by a D.C. jury of his ideological peers was another thumb in the eye of the American so-called system of justice. Scary-looking super-cop John Durham had indicted Sussmann for the same thing that brought down Trump’s flash-in-the-pan National Security Advisor Mike Flynn—lying to the FBI—but no one who has been paying attention thought the two men would be treated the same way. Flynn was close to Donald Trump, therefore he must be considered a sacrificial beast, someone to be made an example of, a pariah. And so he was. 

Sussmann, by contrast, was a covert employee of the Hillary Clinton campaign. He helped get the Russian Collusion Delusion going and lied to the FBI in the process. But he was on the side of the regime party, so, as Jonathan Turley observed as the Sussmann case unfolded, he was afforded every consideration while Flynn found himself ruined. In this tale of two trials, we got a textbook illustration of how you can deploy a two-tier system of justice in which, as George Orwell put it in Animal Farm: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. 

The article also notes the recent arrest of Peter Navarro:

Sussmann joins a long list of Hillary cronies and Department of Justice lackeys (but I repeat myself). In any just world Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, James Comey, Kevin Clinesmith, Loretta Lynch, and indeed Hillary herself would be behind bars. But this is our world, not any just world. 

And here’s some salt to rub in the wound. Peter Navarro, a former Trump economic advisor, was held in contempt of Congress because he refused to hand over documents to the Kangaroo Court, er . . . the Democrat-controlled January 6 inquisition. Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s self-declared “wingman” and Attorney General was also held in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over documents. But not to worry. As CNN reported soon after the affront, “The White House and the Justice Department made clear Friday what had been expected all along: Attorney General Eric Holder will not face criminal prosecution under the contempt of Congress citation passed by the U.S. House.”

The article concludes:

In his Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein says “all philosophical problems have the form ‘I have lost my way.’” The first response to being lost should be to retrace one’s steps in order to escape the maze. It’s time that Americans faced up to the reality that their governing apparat is a corrupt, self-engorging Leviathan. This is not, or not only, a partisan issue. Sure, Washington, D.C. is a fully paid-up concession of the Democratic Party, regularly voting some 93 to 95 percent Democratic. Sussmann was never going to be convicted there.

So a preliminary antiseptic, as I have argued elsewhere, would be to downgrade Washington in the political metabolism of the country. Indeed, I think the capital, if not the Capitol, ought to be dispersed. Washington, D.C., could continue to function as what it has already in part become: a sort of stage set where functionaries preen and simper before the cameras of a preposterous media and press corps. 

Donald Trump made a few half-hearted stabs at dismantling the lumbering machine that is the Washington establishment, but that seems like a long time ago and, besides, the swamp closed almost instantly to reassert its prerogatives. In his next term, however, he should make the destruction of the Washington machine one of his highest priorities. It won’t be easy. To be frank, I am not sure, absent some world-shaking calamity, it is even possible. But it is nevertheless necessary if anything resembling the republic as envisioned by the founders is to be salvaged.

We have wandered far from the republic the Founding Fathers created. I pray it is not too late to get it back.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article.

The Timeline Of The Coverup

Posted on by

As Kevin Clinesmith pays no real price for ruining Carter Page’s life and for kneecapping the Trump presidency, it is time to look at the timeline of one of the biggest scandals in American history. It’s also time to examine why those responsible are still peacefully continuing on in the Washington swamp.

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article titled, “Systemic Contingencies – The Need For Bill Barr’s Positioning Revealed, 2018.” The article illustrates how the deep state managed to avoid responsibility for what they did to President Trump and many of his supporters. It’s a complex article, so I suggest that you follow the link and read it for yourselves. My summary will be woefully inadequate.

Some highlights from the article:

By mid-2018 there was a concern amid the deepest part of the deep state.  Congress was asking President Trump for declassification of key documents, the Weissmann/Mueller special counsel held control authority over those documents, and -during the prior five months- Weissmann and team had been working through a careful process to diffuse a dangerous sunlight situation…. the communication amid the players was critical.

At the same time President Trump was frustrated. Openly and publicly frustrated. The OIG, Michael Horowitz had released a report saying the FBI did nothing wrong in the Clinton investigation (no bias).  President Trump was railing against the ineffectual AG Jeff Sessions and contrasting ever increasing research by those outsiders starting to put the puzzle together. 

In the background, and unbeknownst to the public, Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein was working to facilitate the needs of Robert Mueller, quietly expand the scope of authorities to assist Mueller’s attack-dog Andrew Weissmann, and secretly was in direct communication with a man named Bill Barr to work the control angle against the office of the President, Donald J Trump…..

In mid 2018 it was apparent and predictable -as more information surfaced- the president would move to remove his ineffectual Attorney General, Jeff Sessions.  It wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ Sessions would be removed, it was a matter of ‘when’ Trump would pull the trigger.  Sessions recusal was a key element to the activity of the DC operation against Trump; if Sessions was removed, all of those in charge of constructing the cover-up operation would be at risk.  Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein and now Bill Barr were developing a plan of action.

The article then details some of that plan.

The article notes:

By September 2018 the pressure from legislative supporters for Trump to declassify documents controlled by the special counsel (they held authority over all documents) was at a fever pitch.  Congress was begging Trump to declassify.

When it looked like President Trump was going to take unilateral action, DAG Rod Rosenstein stepped in and told President Trump if he declassified any documents the special counsel would look upon that action as direct evidence of his interfering with their investigation.  Declassification would be weaponized against him.

Rosenstein’s threat worked…. Trump backed down (September 21st)…

The article concludes:

During the early December remembrances and private meetings, former President George “Dubya” Bush put the finishing touches on the plan.  President Bush recommended his friend Bill Barr to be the permanent replacement for Jeff Sessions.  The June 8th letter to Rod Rosenstein was referenced as a baseline to solidify the recommendation.

Once again, President Trump trusted…. The bad actors had now successfully executed the Bill Barr (insurance policy) part of the strategy against the office of the president.   Barr knew if he spoke a good game he would keep President Trump satiated… so he did.

Almost everyone fell for it and the media played their part in railing against Barr.

In addition to the hindsight timeline, one of the “tells” inside the scheme was how Bill Barr talked about the honor and integrity of Robert Mueller and DAG Rod Rosenstein.   By heaping praise upon them he was affirming their status as not being questioned.  The actions, actual behaviors by Mueller and Rosenstein, were being overlooked.

The rest, as they say, is history…

ps. Bill Barr quietly appointed John Durham on October 19th 2020, just outside the 90 day window of reversal, for the exact same reason as the appointment of Robert Mueller. A special counsel insurance policy to protect the deep state.

After watching what has gone on in Washington for the past five years, I am not optimistic about the future of our country. I am also not optimistic about the future of this blog. At some point, after censoring the big guys, the friends of the Biden administration will begin to shut down the little guys. So much has happened in this country so quickly, I won’t even hazard a guess as to how much longer conservative bloggers (even the little ones) will be free to express their ideas.

Two Systems Of Justice

Posted on by

Yesterday BizPac Review reported that Kevin Clinesmith, who was found guilty of falsifying a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) court document will not spend any time in jail.

The article notes:

An FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to falsifying a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) court document in an application seeking a warrant to spy on a 2016 Trump campaign adviser will not spend any time behind bars.

Rather, Kevin Clinesmith will serve 12 months of probation and perform 400 hours of community service as part of the only criminal case thus far linked to Special Counsel John Durham’s probe into the origins of the so-called ‘Russiagate’ case.

In August, Clinesmith pleaded guilty to one count of making a false statement within the jurisdiction of the Executive Branch and Judicial Branch of the federal government. The offense carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

But the former FBI lawyer did not receive a sentence remotely as serious.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge for the D.C. District James Boasberg, an Obama appointee, said ahead of sentencing that Clinesmith had already suffered enough from losing his job as well as his status due to intense media scrutiny.

Federal prosecutors pressed Boasberg — who, ironically, has served as a member of the secretive FISC and was named its Presiding Judge Jan. 1, 2020 — to sentence Clinesmith to at least several months in prison, Fox News reported.

Clinesmith was referred to the Justice Department for potential prosecution by the DoJ’s inspector general after the office conducted its own review of the origins of the Russiagate operation which targeted former President Trump’s 2016 campaign. A foreign policy adviser to the campaign, Carter Page, was the subject of at least four FISA court spy warrants.

Though not by name, the inspector general accused Clinesmith of changing an email about Page to say he was “not a source” for another government agency. However, Page has said he was an asset for the CIA.

This infuriates me. Contrast the way Clinesmith was treated with the way Roger Stone was treated.

In January 2019, The American Thinker noted:

After news broke of the pre-dawn raid on Roger Stone’s home Friday morning in Florida by twenty-nine heavily-armed agents in nineteen vehicles, lights flashing, CNN serendipitously on hand to film the raid, millions of us realized once and for all that we are no longer living in the America we knew and loved.

Those same millions of us have known for over two years that the Mueller “probe” is a huge and well orchestrated cover-up.  There are now at least two books, Gregg Jarrett’s and Dan Bongino’s, and well researched investigative articles that prove this beyond doubt.

Mueller was appointed by Rod Rosenstein not to investigate Trump collusion with Russia.  The principals all knew that was not remotely true.  He was appointed to conceal and obliterate the volumes of evidence of crimes committed by Hillary Clinton; her campaign; and a group of higher-ups in the FBI, DOJ, and CIA, all of whom were involved in a scheme to prevent Trump from being elected.  All of them have lied under oath and before Congress.  Mueller himself was involved in the Clinton scheme to sell 20% of U.S. uranium to Russia.

All of these felons are walking free; their homes are not being raided in the wee small hours of the morning, but their crimes are far more serious than anything Roger Stone or Paul Manafort might have committed.

That such an aggressive show of force could be visited upon a non-violent person accused of alleged verbal crimes is truly frightening.  That so many in the media are celebrating the use of such a Gestapo tactic is horrifying.  Suddenly, it is catastrophically clear that America is no longer a constitutional republic, a nation of laws and justice.  An unelected, tangential officer of the DOJ has for two years abused his position of power to destroy many lives in the cruelest of ways with impunity.  No one is stopping him and his band of legal bullies. 

The article at BizPac Review concludes:

In December, then-Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham as a special counsel so he could continue his investigation into the origins of the Russiangate operation.

In a scope order leaked to Fox News, Barr wrote that Durham “is authorized to investigate whether any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump, including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.”

As the November election drew close, Trump grew increasingly frustrated that there would not be at least a report from the DoJ and Durham regarding his findings.

It’s not clear whether Durham is planning to charge anyone else in connection with the Russiagate scandal.

Our Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves.

Gradually The Truth Emerges

Posted on by

The treatment of retired General Flynn by the FBI has alarmed many Americans. It has become increasingly apparent to people who don’t rely on the mainstream media for their news that the treatment of the General was an attempt to cripple the Trump administration. Information on what was actually going on has remained secret because career people in the FBI have a vested interest in hiding the truth. On September 25th, The Epoch Times posted two articles highlighting information that is coming from people involved in the investigation (here and here).

The first article reports:

FBI agent William Barnett told government investigators last week that he heard other FBI agents at the special counsel’s office (SCO) “comically talk about wiping cellular telephones,” according to a summary of the interview released as part of the court proceedings in the case involving former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

“Barnett had a cellular telephone issued by the SCO which he did not ‘wipe.’ Barnett did hear other agents ‘comically’ talk about wiping cellular telephones, but was not aware of anyone ‘wiping’ their issued cellular telephones,” the summary (pdf) states.

The article also notes:

Two well-known members of the Mueller team, FBI attorney Lisa Page and Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok, mentioned sending and clearing iMessages from their SCO iPhones on more than one occasion.

“Clear imsg …” Strzok wrote to Page on June 5, 2017, and again on June 8.

The records officer, who isn’t identified in the documents, noted that Strzok’s phone contained “no substantive texts, notes or reminders.” Page’s phone went missing under questionable circumstances after she left the Mueller team. When it was recovered more than a year later, the device was already wiped.

The second article reports:

An FBI agent assigned to the investigation of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn wanted to be taken off the case, he recently told FBI investigators, saying the prosecution of Flynn was being used as a means to “get Trump.”

FBI agent William Barnett was assigned to the Flynn case shortly after it was opened in August 2016, as part of the FBI’s probe into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, which was dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane.” But the case was “opaque,” lacking much detail of specific evidence of any crimes, Barnett told FBI and DOJ investigators on Sept. 17 (pdf).

The case theory was “supposition on supposition,” he said.

The second article concludes:

The lawyers were convinced Trump aide K.T. McFarland was the “key to everything” who had conveyed Trump’s orders for Flynn to talk to Kislyak. The “ground just kept being retreaded,” but it was just “astro projection,” he said. No evidence was found.

On multiple occasions, when Mueller lawyers interviewed people from Trump’s circle, it was Barnett who stepped in with clarifying and follow-up questions, such as, “Do you know that for a fact or are you just speculating?”

One time, the lawyers tried to kick Barnett off a McFarland interview. He had to threaten he’d report them to the inspector general before they allowed him in. When he started to ask clarifying questions, he said, they paused the interview and warned him, “If you keep asking these questions, we will be here all day.”

He called the lawyers in question the “obstruction team.”

In one interview, Flynn said something that suggested Trump knew about the calls to Kislyak. Barnett had the impression Flynn was just trying to say what the lawyers wanted to hear. He had to step in with a follow-up question and Flynn clarified that Trump wasn’t aware of the calls.

Flynn said in court papers his lawyers told him after the first special counsel interview that the investigators weren’t happy with his answers. For the subsequent session, his lawyers coached him to use words he wouldn’t have used himself, he said. He eventually fired the lawyers and accused them of ineffective counsel due to a conflict of interest.

The dismissal of his case is scheduled for a hearing on Sept. 29 before District Judge Emmet Sullivan after Flynn’s bid to have a higher court force the judge to accept the dismissal without further proceedings failed in August.

The FBI is out of control and will remain so until some of the people involved in this scandal are held accountable. So far only Kevin Clinesmith has been charged with anything. This is a disgrace.

Posted on by

Yesterday Just the News reported the following:

…Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty to a single false statement charge, admitting that he doctored an email that the FBI relied on as it sought court approval to eavesdrop on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in 2017, according to the Associated Press.

The article notes:

Clinesmith, who resigned from the FBI before an internal disciplinary process was completed, faces a maximum six months in prison, according to sentencing guidelines.

He was charged Friday, in documents that show Clinesmith altered the email from another government agency to say that Page was “not a source” for that agency.

Page has publicly said that he had worked as a source for the CIA.

The FBI relied on Clinesmith’s representation in the email when it applied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to renew its secret surveillance of Page on suspicions that he was a potential Russian agent, the wire service also reports.

Stay tuned. This may actually be like pulling a loose thread on a sweater.

More Spin

Posted on by

Mollie Hemingway posted an article at The Federalist today that illustrates how the media manipulates information in order to fit a pre-planned narrative.

The article reports:

Adam Goldman broke, and cushioned, the news that former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was to plead guilty to fabricating evidence in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application to spy on Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page.

His job was to present the news as something other than an indictment of the FBI’s handling of the Russia collusion hoax, to signal to other media that they should move on from the story as quickly as possible, and to hide his own newspaper’s multi-year participation in the Russia collusion hoax. One intelligence source described it as an “insult” to his intelligence and “beyond Pravda,” a reference to the official newspaper of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. Here’s how Goldman did it.

The New York Times used to put every Russia collusion story it had on the front page. Then, when the narrative fell apart, the Times moved on to a new narrative of redefining America as irredeemably racist.

Even though Clinesmith’s guilty plea is directly relevant to the false story the Times peddled for years, and even though it broke the news of his guilty plea, the publication hid the story deep in the paper and put a boring headline on it. “Ex-F.B.I. Lawyer Expected to Plead Guilty in Durham Investigation,” as if begging readers to move on. If they didn’t, the subhead told them that the news really wasn’t such a big deal. “Prosecutors are not expected to reveal any evidence of a broad anti-Trump conspiracy among law enforcement officials,” it claimed, without, well, evidence.

In fact, while the charging document was brief, it revealed that while Clinesmith deliberately fabricated evidence in the fourth warrant to spy on Page, all four warrants failed to mention the information the CIA gave the FBI months before the first warrant was filed. That information was that Page, a former Marine officer who graduated from the Naval Academy, had been a source for the agency, sharing information about Russians the agency was interested in. In fact, he’d done it for five years.

The article notes:

Goldman claims, without evidence, that Trump “has long been blunt about seeing the continuing investigation by the prosecutor examining the earlier inquiry, John H. Durham, as political payback.” In fact, Trump has said that no president should go through what he went through: the weaponization of a political opponent’s conspiracy theory to undermine a duly elected president.

Is it payback when you are trying to find the truth and prevent future wrongdoing?

The article concludes:

Had the FBI been properly informed that Steele was working both for the Clinton-funded operation and the Russian oligarch, they said they would have been much more sensitive to the possibility his entire operation was related to Russian disinformation. Also, Steele’s two most explosive claims — about Michael Cohen being in Prague and the “pee tape” claim — were both thought to have been part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

The dossier was key to securing the wiretap on Page, which Goldman doesn’t mention. He instead writes, “Investigators eventually suspected that Russian spies had marked Mr. Page for recruitment” as the reason they were able to get a wiretap.

All of which to say, in a story about malfeasance on Carter Page’s FISA warrants, Goldman doesn’t mention the dossier until the penultimate paragraph of a 30-paragraph story.

These are just a few of the ways Goldman manipulates the story to protect the Russia collusion hoax he participated in. Because they were co-conspirators in the hoax, too many in the corporate media are serving as obstacles to holding the FBI and other powerful government agencies accountable for their actions.

Be prepared for much more silly-season spin.

The RussiaGate Scandal Begins To Unravel

Posted on by

Yesterday The Washington Examiner reported that Kevin Clinesmith will plead guilty to charges of altering evidence involved in the surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2016.

The article reports:

Kevin Clinesmith, who worked on both the Hillary Clinton emails investigation and the Trump-Russia inquiry, will admit that he falsified a document during the bureau’s targeting of Carter Page, according to multiple reports. Clinesmith, 38, claimed in early 2017 that Page was “not a source” for the CIA when the CIA had actually told the bureau on multiple occasions that Page was an operational contact for them — a falsehood used to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act renewal against Page. Durham submitted a five-page filing to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday, noting Clinesmith was being charged under 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(3) for “False Statements.”

Attorney General William Barr had hinted at a “development” in Durham’s investigation during a Fox News interview on Thursday night.

Clinesmith’s responsibilities during the Trump-Russia investigation included communicating with “another specific United States government agency,” which is believed to be the CIA, as well as providing support to the FBI special agents working with the Justice Department’s National Security Division to pursue FISA warrants and renewals against Page.

Why is this important? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed to allow the FBI to track terrorists more easily. It was never intended to be used against American citizens who were not breaking the law. The falsifying of a document to allow the surveillance of Carter Page resulted in the violation of Carter Page’s civil rights (and unauthorized spying on the Trump campaign) . The use of FISA to spy on an opposition political campaign was simply Watergate using government surveillance warrants that were unjustified.

The article also notes:

In a scathing July 2018 inspector general report on the FBI’s Clinton emails investigation, Clinesmith was mentioned — again, not by name — numerous times as being one of the FBI officials who conveyed a possible bias against Trump in instant messages, along with Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, both of whom have left the bureau.

In a lengthy instant message exchange between Clinesmith and another FBI employee on Nov. 9, 2016, the day after Trump’s presidential victory, he lamented Trump’s win and worried about the role he played in the investigation into Trump and his campaign. “My god damned name is all over the legal documents investigating his staff,” Clinesmith said, adding, “So, who knows if that breaks to him what he is going to do?”

Other messages showed Clinesmith, listed in Horowitz’s report as “FBI Attorney 2,” expressed favor toward Clinton and said “Viva le resistance” in the weeks after Trump’s win.

The July 2018 report shows Clinesmith claimed his messages reflected only his personal views and that his work was unaffected by them; Horowitz ultimately was unable to find that “improper considerations, including political bias,” influenced any investigative decisions.

Horowitz’s December report criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the FISA warrants against Page and for the bureau’s reliance on the Democrat-funded discredited dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele. Declassified footnotes from Horowitz’s report indicate the bureau became aware that Steele’s dossier may have been compromised by Russian disinformation.

The DOJ watchdog called the FBI’s explanations for these mistakes “unsatisfactory across the board” and testified he wasn’t sure if the errors were “gross incompetence” or “intentional.”

In January, the Justice Department determined that the final two of the four Page FISA warrants “were not valid.” The FBI told the court it was working to ” sequester” all the information from the Page wiretaps, and FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress he was working to ” claw back” that intelligence. The FBI director also testified that the bureau likely illegally surveilled Page.

“After several years, Kevin Clinesmith is finally being held accountable and pleading guilty to committing a felony for his involvement in the plot to falsely portray me and, by implication, the Trump administration as traitors. The actions by the full band of government officials and Democrat operatives involved in the creation of the false applications for my FISA surveillance warrants were entirely unconscionable,” Page said in a statement shared with the Washington Examiner.

I am sure there is more to come. The fact remains that the trial will probably be held in a Washington, D.C. court. It will be very interesting to see how the court rules. We may be about to find out if we actually do have equal justice under the law in America.

Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop

Posted on by

The Gateway Pundit reported yesterday that according to a Sean Hannity podcast, John Solomon has stated that he knows of few witnesses who have appeared before a DC grand jury.

The article reports:

John Solomon told Hannity he believes that Durham’s charges will start with Kevin Clinesmith, the lawyer who fraudulently changed a document to deceive the FISA court.

“What about all the people that signed the FISA applications knowing…none of it was verified?” Hannity asked Solomon.

John Solomon said he doesn’t believe Comey, McCabe, Rosenstein, Yates and others will be prosecuted for signing the FISA applications, however they still may not be in the clear.

John Solomon did say that John Durham is focusing on false testimonies based on the grand jury subpoenas.

“It’s possible that some people who gave false representations to Congress could get prosecuted for those false representations,” he added.

The article goes on to list examples of people who perjured themselves before Congress–James Comey, Andrew McCabe and John Brennan. Please follow the link to the article to see the details of that perjury. At this point there is no indication these people will ever be held accountable for their crimes. In order to get a conviction, you would have to have a Washington, D.C., jury that was willing to convict them. I find that highly unlikely.

The Slow Drip Of Investigations Into FISA Abuse Continues

Posted on by

Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article titled, “FISA court orders DOJ to review flawed surveillance applications and provide names of targets.”

The article reports:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court demanded answers about whether FISA applications were invalid after a new Justice Department inspector general report found pervasive issues with the FBI not following fact-checking procedures.

Friday’s ruling came days after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a memo showing FISA flaws were not just limited to the surveillance of Trump campaign associate Carter Page.

The findings of Horowitz’s audit released on Tuesday focused on the FBI’s requirement to maintain an accuracy subfile known as a “Woods file.” Investigators found serious problems in each of the 29 FISA applications they examined.

“We believe that a deficiency in the FBI’s efforts to support the factual statements in FISA applications through its Woods Procedures undermines the FBI’s ability to achieve its ‘scrupulously accurate’ standard for FISA applications,” Horowitz concluded.

The article continues with information that might indicate the FISA court is not happy about being misled:

“It would be an understatement to note that such lack of confidence appears well-founded. None of the 29 cases reviewed had a Woods File that did what it is supposed to do: support each fact proffered to the Court. For four of the 29 applications, the FBI cannot even find the Woods File,” presiding Judge James Boasberg said. “For three of those four, the FBI could not say whether a Woods File ever existed. The OIG, moreover, ‘identified apparent errors or inadequately supported facts’ in all 25 applications for which the Woods Files could be produced. Interviews with FBI personnel ‘generally have confirmed’ those deficiencies, not dispelled them.”

Boasberg said the wide-ranging problems “provide further reason for systemic concern” about the FBI’s FISA process and “reinforces the need for the Court to monitor the ongoing efforts of the FBI and DOJ to ensure that, going forward, FBI applications present accurate and complete facts.” The judge said, “When problems are identified in particular cases, furthermore, the Court must evaluate what remedial measures may be necessary.”

The article concludes:

In a rare public order last year, the FISA court criticized the FBI’s handling of the Page applications as “antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above” and demanded an evaluation from the bureau. The FISA court also ordered a review of all FISA filings handled by Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who altered a key document about Page in the third renewal process. He is now under criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham, a prosecutor from Connecticut who was tasked by Attorney General William Barr with investigating the origins and conduct of the Russia inquiry.

I will not be impressed with any of this until people actually go to jail for violating the civil rights of American citizens. I am still not convinced that will ever happen.

 

Some People In Our Government Should Have Had The Grace To Resign When President Trump Was Elected

Posted on by

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about some comments made by our supposedly neutral federal employees.

The article reports:

The WaPo reported this weekend and it was quickly uncovered that former Mueller gang members Kevin Clinesmith was involved in altering documents used to obtain a FISA warrant to legitimize spying on candidate and President Trump.  The WaPo claims that this will be coming out in the upcoming IG report in December.

We know Clinesmith was mentioned in the IG’s Clinton email report.  Attorney 2 from that report was identified by House member Mark Meadows as Kevin Clinesmith.  Meadows revealed his identity over the objection of the FBI during a hearing on the IG’s findings.  The FBI wanted to keep Clinesmith’s name anonymous claiming he was a counterintelligence specialist –

Horowitz testified that the FBI was withholding the names of the other rogue agents from Congress and the public because “they work on counterintelligence” and can’t be exposed.

But Meadows argued that other agents for the FBI’s office of legal counsel, and are no longer in “counterintelligence,” as the FBI claimed.

“They don’t work in counterintelligence,” Meadows said in an exchange with Horowitz. “If that’s the reason the FBI is giving, they’re giving you false information, because they work for the general counsel.”

Clinesmith was caught texting anti-Trump emails while working on the Hillary and Trump investigations –

Clinesmith sent a number of pro-Clinton, anti-Trump political messages over the FBI’s computer system, which the report said “raised concerns about potential bias” that may have impacted the investigation.

On page 445 of the DOJ’s IG report on Hillary Clinton’s emails, there is a discussion of what Attorney 2 (Clinesmith) from the FBI texted on October 28, 2016  –

Among the general discussion of political issues by FBI Attorney 2, we identified three instant message exchanges that raised concerns of potential bias.  The first of these exchanges was on October 28, 2016, shortly after Comey’s October 28 letter to Congress that effectively announced the reopening of the Midyear investigation.  FBI Attorney 2 sent similar messages to four different FBI employees. The timestamps of these messages are included below. The messages stated:

13:44:42, to FBI Employee 1: “I mean, I never really liked the Republic anyway.”
13:44:52, to FBI Employee 2: “I mean, I never really liked the Republic anyway.”
14:01:52, to FBI Employee 3: “As I have initiated the destruction of the republic…. Would you be so kind as to have a coffee with me this afternoon?”
15:28:50, to FBI Employee 4: “I’m clinging to small pockets of happiness in the dark time of the Republic’s destruction”

Notice that the IG’s report notes that this is the same time Comey initiated the second review of Hillary’s emails after finding them on pervert Anthony Weiner’s laptop.  But what the IG does not say (perhaps because they did not know it at the time) is that this was right after the initial FISA application to spy on Carter Page and then candidate Trump was initiated! 

I suspect we will see more of this when the IG report is released in the next few weeks. It is sad that a government employee thinks he is doing the right thing by bringing down the republic.