How To Improve Election Integrity

On December 30, Tom Fitton posted the Judicial Watch Weekly Update.

The Update reports some good news about election integrity:

New York City Removes 441,083 Ineligible Names from Voter Rolls Thanks to Judicial Watch!

We just settled a federal election integrity lawsuit against New York City after the city removed 441,083 ineligible names from the voter rolls and promised to take reasonable steps to clean its voter registration lists in the future.

We filed the lawsuit in July after the city failed to clean voter rolls for years. The lawsuit, filed under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), pointed out that New York City removed only 22 names under federal law over six years (Judicial Watch v Valentine et al. (No.1:22-cv-03952)).

Our suit detailed how New York City’s “own recent data concedes that there were only 22 total” removals under this provision “during a six-year period, in a city of over 5.5 million voters. These are ludicrously small numbers of removals given the sizable populations of these counties.”

Moreover, the “almost complete failure of Kings, Queens, New York, Bronx, and Richmond Counties, over a period of at least six years, to remove voters” under a key provision of federal law “means that there are untold numbers of New York City registrations for voters who are ineligible to vote at their listed address because they have changed residence or are otherwise ineligible to vote.”

The settlement details how the city responded to our notice about its voting roll deficiencies with a massive clean-up:

[The Board of Elections] notified Judicial Watch that, in February 2022, they removed, pursuant to Section 8(d)(1)(B) of the NVRA, 82,802 registrations in Bronx County, 128,093 in Kings County, 145,891 in New York County, 66,010 in Queens County, and 18,287 in Richmond County, for a total of 441,083 registrations.

[The Board of Elections] notified Judicial Watch that going forward they intend to cancel registrations pursuant to Section 8(d)(1(B) in each odd-numbered year in the months following a federal election.

Specifically, the city also agrees to track in detail and report its voter roll maintenance efforts through 2025:

For both 2023 and 2025 … the [Board of Elections] will notify Judicial Watch … on or before March 31, by means of separate excel spreadsheets for Bronx County, Kings County, New York County, Queens County, and Richmond County, of the number of removals, including removals pursuant to … the NVRA, made during the previous two years.

The NVRA requires states to “conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove” from the rolls “the names of ineligible voters” who have died or changed residence. Among other things, the law requires registrations to be cancelled when voters fail to respond to address confirmation notices and then fail to vote in the next two general federal elections. In 2018, the Supreme Court confirmed that such removals are mandatory (Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Inst. (138 S. Ct. 1833, 1841-42 (2018)).

This historic settlement is a major victory for New York voters who will benefit from cleaner voter rolls and more honest elections. We are pleased that New York City officials quickly acted to remove 441,000 outdated registrations from the rolls. We look forward to working together under this federal lawsuit settlement to ensure New York City maintains cleaner rolls for future elections.

We are a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of our work, we assembled a team of highly experienced voting rights attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls in California, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, among other achievements.

Please follow the link above to read the entire post. There is some good news here about the future of America’s elections.

This Is Not Suprising

On Saturday, The American Thinker posted an article about the dwindling revenue going toward the Clinton Foundation.

The article reports:

According to Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton:

When one of the most recognizable nonprofits in the world loses 75% of its contributions over a four-year period, there are typically investigatory reports written into what has gone wrong. That isn’t the case with the Clinton Foundation. The Foundation received $62.9 million in 2016 but only $16.3 million in 2020, and very few people seem to have notice[d].

That is because most Beltway insiders know the Clinton Foundation’s primary purpose: to serve as a platform for Hillary Clinton’s political operation while lining the Clintons’ pockets by trading influence for money. That is why donations spiked when Hillary was secretary of state and most of the world thought she was destined to become president — and why they cratered after she lost.

The article continues:

It’s always been a political influence-peddling operation.  As Fitton notes, donations spiked when Hillary Clinton was riding high on the hog as President Obama’s secretary of state.  After she left office and lost the 2016 presidency to Donald J. Trump, she got “defunded,” big.  Trump cost the harridan a lot of baksheesh she had been counting on.  Issues & Insights has an excellent chart here demonstrating the trajectory along with a good editorial to go with it.

The Foundation, laughably enough, attributed the drop-off in donations to the pandemic.  Fitton shot that down with this:

This argument doesn’t explain the tens of millions the Foundation lost between 2016 and 2019 and ignores that charitable giving was up by 5.1% in America last year.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It includes a list of large honorariums paid to Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton for their speeches. Although the donations have dwindled, they are still coming in. The list of where the donations are coming from is very interesting. There evidently are some people who are betting that the Clintons still wield significant influence in American politics.

He Probably Meant Well

The following is a post that appeared on the Judicial Watch website:

How The Barr DOJ Failed

“They’ve been protecting Hillary Clinton, they’ve been protecting Obama, they’ve been protecting the Deep State,” Fitton (Tom Fitton) stated last Friday.

Attorney General Barr’s resignation amidst a contested presidential election dominated last week’s political airwaves. On Friday, Fitton reminded viewers that “AG Barr or at least the Justice Department under AG Barr has been a black hole in terms of responding to Judicial Watch.” As Fitton reported, “they recently went to court to shut down all of our Clinton email investigations, discovery, and FOIA lawsuits – they don’t want us to do anything.”

Fitton believes that the Justice Department has turned a blind eye to scandals surrounding VP Joe Biden, especially material evidence discovered on Hunter Biden’s laptop last year. The scandals, which he has described as “obvious criminal conduct,” were largely set aside by the Department of Justice, according to Fitton. “They [the DOJ] protected Joe Biden and interfered in the election by doing nothing about the Joe Biden scandals.”

Those defending the DOJ’s decision to not investigate the Bidens are, in Fitton’s estimation, misunderstanding the role the Agency plays in investigating corruption surrounding presidential candidates. While it is correct that the DOJ should not investigate candidates in a bid to influence the outcome of an election, Fitton believes that the Agency is doing just that – but in a different way: “this person is running for office and they get a get of jail free card.” Likening the policy to a game of Monopoly, Fitton contrasts this approach with that employed by the DOJ against President Trump, when “they specifically targeted Trump because he was running for office.

As Fitton concluded, “it doesn’t matter who the next AG is, I don’t expect any difference coming January. We just have to keep doing the work we’re doing. We can’t trust them to investigate Biden, so we’ll do it instead.”

The fact that no one in authority was charged in the overt violation of the civil rights of the people involved in the Trump campaign and the Trump transition team says a lot about the corruption in our federal law enforcement agencies. The fact that a senior administration official can totally mishandle classified information and pay no price while a sailor goes to jail for taking a picture of his workplace is disturbing. Somewhere along the line we have lost the concept of equal justice under the law. Until someone has the courage to clean out the agencies that are supposed to be working for all Americans–not just those of one political persuasion–our country will be in danger of becoming a banana republic. We are already hearing cries from some Democrats of investigating the President when he leaves office with the goal of arresting him. That shouldn’t happen in America. An honest justice department and related agencies is needed. Unfortunately, William Barr was not able to deliver that.

About That Voter Fraud Thing…

On October 16th, Judicial Watch posted the following Press Release:

New Judicial Watch Study Finds 353 U.S. Counties in 29 States with Voter Registration Rates Exceeding 100%

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that a September 2020 study revealed that 353 U.S. counties had 1.8 million more registered voters than eligible voting-age citizens. In other words, the registration rates of those counties exceeded 100% of eligible voters. The study found eight states showing state-wide registration rates exceeding 100%: Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

The September 2020 study collected the most recent registration data posted online by the states themselves. This data was then compared to the Census Bureau’s most recent five-year population estimates, gathered by the American Community Survey (ACS) from 2014 through 2018. ACS surveys are sent to 3.5 million addresses each month, and its five-year estimates are considered to be the most reliable estimates outside of the decennial census.

Judicial Watch’s latest study is necessarily limited to 37 states that post regular updates to their registration data. Certain state voter registration lists may also be even larger than reported, because they may have excluded “inactive voters” from their data. Inactive voters, who may have moved elsewhere, are still registered voters and may show up and vote on election day and/or request mail-in ballots.

Judicial Watch relies on its voter registration studies to warn states that they are failing to comply with the requirements of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires states to make reasonable efforts to clean their voter rolls. Judicial Watch can and has sued to enforce compliance with federal law.

Earlier this month, Judicial Watch sued Colorado over its failure to comply with the National Voter Registration Act. In Judicial Watch’s new study, 42 Colorado counties—or two thirds of the state’s counties—had registration rates exceeding 100%. Particular data from the state confirms this general picture. As the complaint explains, a month-by-month comparison of the ACS’s five-year survey period with Colorado’s own registration numbers for the exact same months shows that large proportions of Colorado’s counties have registration rates exceeding 100%. Earlier this year, Judicial Watch sued Pennsylvania and North Carolina for failing to make reasonable efforts to remove ineligible voters from their rolls as required by federal law. The lawsuits allege that the two states have nearly 2 million inactive names on their voter registration rolls. Judicial Watch also sued Illinois for refusing to disclose voter roll data in violation of Federal law.

“The new study shows 1.8 million excess, or ‘ghost’ voters in 353 counties across 29 states,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The data highlights the recklessness of mailing blindly ballots and ballot applications to voter registration lists. Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections.”

Judicial Watch’s study updates the results of a similar study from last year. In August 2019, Judicial Watch analyzed registration data that states reported to the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in response to a survey conducted every two years on how states maintain their voter rolls. That registration data was compared to the then-most-recent ACS five-year survey from 2013 through 2017. The study showed that 378 U.S. counties had registration rates exceeding 100%.

Judicial Watch is a national leader for cleaner elections.

In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld a voter-roll cleanup program that resulted from a Judicial Watch settlement of a federal lawsuit with Ohio. California settled a NVRA lawsuit with Judicial Watch and last year began the process of removing up to 1.6 million inactive names from Los Angeles County’s voter rolls. Kentucky also began a cleanup of hundreds of thousands of old registrations last year after it entered into a consent decree to end another Judicial Watch lawsuit.

In September 2020, Judicial Watch sued Illinois for refusing to disclose voter roll data in violation of Federal law.

Judicial Watch Attorney Robert Popper is the director of Judicial Watch’s clean elections initiative.

The press release also includes a list of the counties with more voters registered than residents. Please follow the link above to see that information.

It is possible that a lot of the extra voters are simply people who moved or passed away and the Board of Elections was never notified. However, not maintaining accurate voter rolls provides a pathway for voter fraud. One of the tricks of people who want to fraudulently vote is to read recent obituaries and pretend to be a person that recently passed away—assuming that the relatives would not have had time to notify the Board of Elections. Cleaning up voter rolls should be a priority in every state. All Americans want their vote to count–not to be cancelled by a fraudulent vote.

This Isn’t Politics–It’s Illegal Activity

Yesterday Just the News posted an article about the information found in some recently declassified emails. The one thing we are learning from the recent release of newly declassified documents is that the documents were classified solely to protect those in the intelligence community who were breaking the law.

The article reports:

Donald Trump was president for only 24 hours when then-FBI supervisor Peter Strzok sent an angry missive to his boss. A colleague had given the new White House a counterintelligence briefing and hadn’t consulted on how to use the meeting to further the Russia collusion investigation.

“I heard from [redacted] about the WH CI briefing routed from [redacted],” Strzok wrote on Jan. 21, 2017, a day into the new Trump presidency after learning fellow agent Jennifer Boone had given the White House a briefing without his knowledge.

“I am angry that Jen did not at least cc: me, as my branch has pending investigative matters there,” Strzok added in his email to Assistant Director for Counterintelligence William Priestap. “This brief may play into our investigative strategy, and I would like the ability to have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the briefing.

The article continues with the relevant timeline:

“When Strzok found out those briefings were already conducted without his knowledge, he got upset. Since the CI briefings apparently were no longer available as a subterfuge, soon thereafter Deputy Director McCabe reached out to Flynn directly to set up an interview appointment,” he added. “Director Comey admitted later they took advantage of the disorganization of a new administration to avoid the protocols that would normally be in place to control access to senior WH personnel like Flynn.”

The article concludes:

“Because Flynn was expected to attend the first such briefing for members of the Trump campaign on August 17, 2016, the FBI viewed that briefing as a possible opportunity to collect information potentially relevant to the Crossfire Hurricane and Flynn investigations,” Horowitz wrote. “We found no evidence that the FBI consulted with Department leadership or ODNI officials about this plan.”

Tom Fitton, the head of Judicial Watch, said the FBI’s conduct during the investigation reeked of politics.

“These documents suggest that President Trump was targeted by the Comey FBI as soon as he stepped foot in the Oval Office,” Fitton said.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is becoming obvious that many of the people in the intelligence community during the Obama administration considered themselves above the law and had no problem violating the civil rights of American citizens. Those people belong in jail. Hopefully that will happen someday soon.

Very Interesting

On Monday, Judicial Watch posted the following Press Release:

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of the Daily Caller News Foundation against the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) for communications and other records of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and Deputy Director H. Clifford Lane with and about the World Health Organization (WHO) concerning the novel coronavirus (Daily Caller News Foundation v. U.S. Department Justice (No. 1:20-cv-01149)).

The suit was filed after HHS failed to respond to an April 1, 2020, FOIA request seeking:

  • Communications between Dr. Fauci and Deputy Director Lane and World Health Organization officials concerning the novel coronavirus.
  • Communications of Dr. Fauci and Deputy Director Lane concerning WHO, WHO official Bruce Aylward, WHO Director General Tedros Anhanom, and China.

The time period for the request is January 1, 2020 to April 1, 2020.

Additionally, the DCNF requested and was granted expedited processing of its request.

In March 2020, Fauci praised the work of the WHO and their chairman, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, saying: “Tedros is really an outstanding person … I mean, obviously, over the years anyone who says that the WHO has not had problems has not been watching the WHO. But I think under his leadership they’ve done very well.”

In April, President Trump announced a halt to funding the World Health Organization. According to the president, the WHO put “political correctness over lifesaving measures.” Additionally, President Trump said: “The WHO failed in this duty, and must be held accountable,” adding that the WHO ignored “credible information” in December 2019 that the virus could be transmitted from human to human.

Daily Caller News Foundation Co-Founder and President Neil Patel said: “This virus has killed hundreds of thousands of people and turned the whole world upside down. We know that China and WHO could have done a lot more to prevent or reduce this catastrophe. We therefore have a legitimate and urgent news purpose for seeking these documents regarding U.S. officials’ communications with WHO and demand that the agencies in question stop stalling and start following the law that entitles us to this vital information.”

“It is urgent that the NIH follow transparency law during the coronavirus crisis,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is of significant public interest to learn what WHO was telling our top medical officials about the coronavirus that originated in China.”

The Networks Are Slowly Becoming Obvious

Yesterday One America News reported the following:

New documents have exposed a former Department of Justice official’s alleged involvement in the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

According to newly released notes from a 2017 interview, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein sought out James Comey’s advice about appointing a special counsel. These notes, in addition to 300 pages of witness interviews, suggest McCabe told investigators Rosenstein asked him to get Comey’s opinion on whether a special counsel should be appointed.

Comey was stripped of his role as leader of the Russia investigation after the president determined he was unfit to to lead the bureau. Rosenstein then appointed Robert Mueller to take on the Russia probe, who’s investigation did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

The article includes a quote from Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch:

“You notice this with the Ukraine argument, they don’t want the President to investigate what went on. Its now expanded from Ukraine to the President wasn’t allowed to make entrees to his attorney general, who is investigating this spying operation on candidate Trump…it’s incredible. They want to criminalize investigations of this activity.”

— Tom Fitton, President – Judicial Watch

It is becoming more obvious every day that the ‘insurance policy’ was set up before President Trump was sworn in and planned carefully with the goal of taking him out of office. The people responsible need to face justice.

 

This Case Is Still Relevant

On Tuesday The Epoch Times posted an article about the Awan scandal. In case you have forgotten, various members and friends of the Awan family were IT aides to more than 40 Democratic members of key national security and foreign policy committees in the House of Representatives. Their positions gave the aides access to all of the members’ digital communications and documents.

The article reminds us:

With the exception of Imran Awan, all of the Awan network members lost their access to the House IT network in February 2017, as a result of a report by the top House administrative officials that said the aides “are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems and thereby members’ capacity to serve constituents.”

Imran Awan was kept on the House payroll by then-Democratic National Committee Chairman Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.) until he was arrested by federal agents while trying to leave the United States.

Awan was subsequently charged with bank fraud in connection with a loan from the Congressional Federal Credit Union.

The article reports the current activities on the case:

An apparently frustrated federal judge ordered attorneys for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to appear Jan. 15 for a “snap” hearing to explain why the government isn’t producing documents sought by Judicial Watch concerning former Democratic information technology aide Imran Awan.

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amit Mehta’s unusual order followed a sealed submission by DOJ attorneys Jan. 10 in the case prompted by the nonprofit government watchdog’s November 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

Such hastily convened hearings are extremely unusual in a federal judicial system so jammed that months can pass before cases are litigated in courtrooms.

“In a hearing last month, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta expressed frustration and ordered the Justice Department to explain its failure to produce records by January 10 and to provide Judicial Watch some details about the delay,” Judicial Watch said in a statement Jan. 14 about the snap hearing.

“Instead, the Justice Department made its filing under seal and has yet to provide Judicial Watch with any details about its failure to produce records as promised to the court,” Judicial Watch said.

Federal attorneys previously said in December 2019 that they were unable to provide the documents sought in the Judicial Watch FOIA requests because they include materials from a “related sealed criminal matter.”

Thank God for Judicial Watch.

The article concludes:

The Awan scandal was first exposed by Daily Caller investigative journalist Luke Rosiak, who subsequently published a book on his findings, titled “Obstruction of Justice: How the Deep State Risked National Security to Protect the Democrats.”

None of the Awan network members were reportedly required to undergo security background checks prior to being employed on congressional staffs.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in the nonprofit’s statement that “the DOJ’s handling of the Awan brothers case has long been an issue of concern and now we are expected to believe some secret investigation prevents the public from knowing the full truth about this scandal. We are skeptical.”

Just another example of inexplicable actions by the Justice Department.

Protecting Americans From Unlawful Surveillance

Yesterday Judicial Watch posted the following Press Release:

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced it today filed a lawsuit against Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the House Intelligence Committee for the controversial subpoenas issued for phone records, including those of Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s lawyer. The phone records led to the publication of the private phone records of Giuliani, Congressman Devon Nunes, journalist John Solomon, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow, attorney Victoria Toensing, and other American citizens.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit under the public’s common-law right of public access to examine government records after it received no response to a December 6, 2019, records request (Judicial Watch v Adam Schiff and U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (No. 1:19-cv-03790)):

    1. All subpoenas issued by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on or about September 30, 2019 to any telecommunications provider including, but not limited to AT&T, Inc., for records of telephone calls of any individuals;
    2. All responses received to the above-referenced subpoenas.

Schiff is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, currently serving as Chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Schiff is being sued in his capacity as Chairman of that committee. The new lawsuit states:

The records are of critical public importance as the subpoenas were issued without any lawful basis and violated the rights of numerous private citizens.

Disclosure of the requested records would serve the public interest by providing information about the unlawful issuance of the subpoenas.

The requested records fall within the scope of the public’s right of access to governmental records as a matter of federal common law.

“Adam Schiff abused his power to secretly subpoena and then publish the private phone records, in potential violation of law, of innocent Americans. What else is Mr. Schiff hiding?” asked Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Schiff and his Committee ran roughshod over the rule of law in pursuit of the abusive impeachment of President Trump. This lawsuit serves as a reminder that Congressman Schiff and Congress are not above the law.”

What Adam Schiff did is inexcusable. Private phone records are private unless subpoenaed. What was the basis for the subpoena? This is simply another instance where someone aligned with the deep state chose to ignore the rights of American citizens for his own purposes. If this is not stopped and people held accountable, Americans will continue to be subject to unwarranted violations of their constitutional rights.

Judicial Watch Uncovers Information That Leads To More Questions

Judicial Watch posted the following Press Release yesterday:

Logs Also Show DNC Contractor Who Allegedly Worked with Ukraine to Investigate Trump/Manafort Visited Obama White House 27 times

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today analysis of Obama-era White House visitor logs that detail meetings of controversial CIA employee Eric Ciaramella, who had been assigned to the White House. Ciaramella reportedly was detailed to the Obama White House in 2015 and returned to the CIA during the Trump administration in 2017. The logs also reveal Alexandra Chalupa, a contractor hired by the DNC during the 2016 election who coordinated with Ukrainians to investigate President Trump and his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, visited the White House 27 times.

The White House visitor logs revealed the following individuals met with Eric Ciaramella while he was detailed to the Obama White House:

    • Daria Kaleniuk: Co-founder and executive director of the Soros-funded Anticorruption Action Center (AntAC) in Ukraine. She visited on December 9, 2015

The Hill reported that in April 2016, during the U.S. presidential race, the U.S. Embassy under Obama in Kiev, “took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and (AntAC).”

    • Gina Lentine: Now a senior program officer at Freedom House, she was formerly the Eurasia program coordinator at Soros funded Open Society Foundations. She visited on March 16, 2016.
    • Rachel Goldbrenner: Now an NYU law professor, she was at that time an advisor to then-Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. She visited on both January 15, 2016 and August 8, 2016.
    • Orly Keiner: A foreign affairs officer at the State Department who is a Russia specialist. She is also the wife of State Department Legal Advisor James P. Bair. She visited on both March 4, 2016 and June 20, 2015.
    • Nazar Kholodnitzky: The lead anti-corruption prosecutor in Ukraine. He visited on January 19, 2016.

On March 7, 2019, The Associated Press reported that the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch called for him to be fired.

    • Michael Kimmage: Professor of History at Catholic University of America, at the time was with the State Department’s policy planning staff where specialized in Russia and Ukraine issues. He is a fellow at the German Marshall Fund. He was also one of the signatories to the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group Statement of Principles. He visited on October 26, 2015.
    • James Melville: Then-recently confirmed as Obama’s Ambassador to Estonia, visited on September 9, 2015.

On June 29, 2018, Foreign Policy reported that Melville resigned in protest of Trump.

    • Victoria Nuland: who at the time was assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs met with Ciaramella on June 17, 2016.

(Judicial Watch has previously uncovered documents revealing Nuland had an extensive involvement with Clinton-funded dossier. Judicial Watch also released documents revealing that Nuland was involved in the Obama State Department’s “urgent” gathering of classified Russia investigation information and disseminating it to members of Congress within hours of Trump taking office.)

    • Artem Sytnyk: the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Bureau director visited on January 19, 2016.

On October 7, 2019, the Daily Wire reported leaked tapes show Sytnyk confirming that the Ukrainians helped the Clinton campaign.

The White House visitor logs revealed the following individuals met with Alexandra Chalupa, then a DNC contractor:

    • Charles Kupchan: From 2014 to 2017, Kupchan served as special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) in the Barack Obama administration. That meeting was on November 9, 2015.
    • Alexandra Sopko: who at the time was a special assistant and policy advisor to the director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, which was run by Valerie Jarrett. Also listed for that meeting is Alexa Kissinger, a special assistant to Jarrett. That meeting was on June 2, 2015.
    • Asher Mayerson: who at the time was a policy advisor to the Office of Public Engagement under Jarrett had five visits with Chalupa including December 18, 2015, January 11, 2016, February 22, 2016, May 13, 2016, and June 14, 2016.

Mayerson was previously an intern at the Center for American Progress. After leaving the Obama administration, he went to work for the City of Chicago Treasurer’s office.

Mayerson met with Chalupa and Amanda Stone, who was the White House deputy director of technology, on January 11, 2016.

On May 4, 2016, Chalupa emailed DNC official Luis Miranda to inform him that she had spoken to investigative journalists about Paul Manafort in Ukraine.

“Judicial Watch’s analysis of Obama White House visitor logs raises additional questions about the Obama administration, Ukraine and the related impeachment scheme targeting President Trump,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Both Mr. Ciaramella and Ms. Chalupa should be questioned about the meetings documented in these visitor logs.”

Spreadsheets of visitor records are grouped alphabetically by last name and available below:

A – Coi
Coig – Gra
Graz – Lau
Laug – Pad
Padd – Sor
Sorr – Zyz

It is looking like the impeachment of President Trump was not a spur-of-the-moment activity. Those involved in the planning needs to face the consequences of their actions.

Who Is Felix Satar?

On September 16th Judicial Watch posted the following:

Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Justice seeking all records of communications, including FBI 302 interview reports and offer agreements between former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office and Felix Sater, a former Trump organization official who was recently confirmed to be an informant for the FBI and CIA. Sater reportedly pushed a Russian real estate deal in 2016 while working at the Trump organization.

Sater reportedly “began working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1998, after he was caught in a stock-fraud scheme.” It was Andrew Weissmann who, as supervising assistant U.S. attorney, signed the agreement that brought Sater on as a government informant. Federal prosecutors wrote a letter to Sater’s sentencing judge on August 27, 2009, in an effort to get him a lighter sentence: “Sater’s cooperation was of a depth and breadth rarely seen.”

Sater also was reportedly a CIA informant in the mid-2000s for the CIA during his undercover work with Russian military and intelligence officers.

The Mueller report mentions Sater more than 100 times but fails to mention that he was an active undercover informant for the FBI/CIA for more than two decades. In 2017, Sater was the subject of two interviews conducted under a proffer agreement with Mueller’s office according to page 69, footnote 304 of Mueller’s report on his Russian collusion investigation.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after Mueller’s office, a component of the DOJ, failed to respond to a June 12, 2019, FOIA request for FBI “302” interview reports of Sater that are referred to in the Mueller report; any offer agreements between Sater and the U.S. government; and records of communications between Sater and government employees (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:19-cv-02568)).

In a June 25, 2019 report, Judicial Watch chief investigative reporter Micah Morrison highlighted that:

Beginning in late 2015, Sater repeatedly tried to arrange for [Trump attorney Michael] Cohen and candidate Trump, as representatives of the Trump Organization, to travel to Russia to meet with Russian government officials and possible financing partners.

Though his proposal appears to have been rejected by the Trump campaign, Sater persisted. “Into the spring of 2016,” the Mueller Report notes, “Sater and Cohen continued to discuss a trip to Moscow.” Sater emails Cohen that he is trying to arrange a meeting between “the 2 big guys,” Putin and Trump.

Sater’s re-emergence “suggests the possibility of a more sinister counter-narrative: that someone may have been trying to lure Trump into a trap—a politically damaging entanglement with Moscow money,” Morrison wrote.

Sater reportedly testified for eight hours in a closed-door session before the Schiff-led intelligence committee on July 9, 2019. Sater previously said he believes the Trump Tower Moscow project was no different from other Trump real estate projects that were also in the works. “I have worked on probably five or six Trump Tower projects in the United States and at least that many internationally….”

“Was a Russian real estate deal being pushed on the Trump Organization part of a set-up by a FBI/CIA informant?” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “The new Judicial Watch lawsuit attempts to shed light on what could be another aspect of Deep State abusive Spygate operation targeting President Trump.”

This is just ugly. As more of this information comes out, I hope there is a huge outcry from the public to put the people responsible for misusing government agencies in jail. If that does not happen, we no longer have a justice system in America.

When The Department Of Justice Forgets What It Is Supposed To Be Doing

Yesterday Judicial Watch posted an article revealing documents that had received from the Department of Justice through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request.

The article reports:

Judicial Watch today released 14 pages of records from the Department of Justice showing officials’ efforts in responding to media inquiries centering on talks within the DOJ/FBI allegedly invoking the 25th Amendment to “remove” President Donald Trump from office and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offering to wear a “wire” to record his conversations with the president.

The records show that, following a September 21, 2018, report on Rosenstein suggesting he would wear a wire to secretly record Trump and his discussions on using the 25th Amendment, Rosenstein sought to ensure the media would have “difficulty” finding anyone in the DOJ to comment and a concerted effort within the DOJ to frame the reporting as “inaccurate” and “factually incorrect.”

The records show DOJ officials had also discussed characterizing Rosenstein’s reported offer of wearing a wire to record Trump as merely “sarcastic.”

Additionally, the records show DOJ Public Affairs officer Sarah Isgur Flores, after conferring with other top DOJ officials and Rosenstein’s office about her email exchange with New York Times reporter Adam Goldman, waited 12 hours to forward the email exchange to DOJ Chief of Staff Matthew Whitaker. Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly had referred to Whitaker as the president’s “eyes and ears” in the DOJ.

Judicial Watch obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the Justice Department failed to respond to three separate FOIA requests dated September 21, 2018 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:19-cv-00388)). The lawsuit seeks all written and audio/visual records of any FBI/DOJ discussions regarding the 25th Amendment and plans to secretly record President Trump in the Oval Office.

The records obtained by Judicial Watch include a September 21, 2018, email from Assistant U.S. Attorney (DOJ/NSD) Harvey Eisenberg to Rosenstein informing the DAG that Washington Post reporter Ellen Nakashima had called inquiring about a New York Times report on the 25th Amendment/wire discussion, Rosenstein responds: “Thanks! Hopefully we are being successful, and the reporters are having difficulty finding anybody to comment about things. [Remainder of email redacted.]” Apparently in response to the redacted portion of Rosenstein’s reply, Eisenberg responds, “I’m aware. Besides letting you know, [redacted]. My best to you and the family.” Rosenstein replies, “I don’t mean about me. [Redacted.]”

The emails also detail the DOJ’s response to the initial story as it was being prepared by the New York Times. On September 20, 2018, the Times’ Goldman emails DOJ’s Flores that he and fellow reporter Mike Schmidt were working on a story and wanted a DOJ response to certain questions, including that at a May 16, 2017, meeting of senior federal law enforcement officials, Rosenstein offered to wear a “wire” to record his conversations with Trump. “He also said McCabe could wear a wire.”

In a second request for comment, Goldman alleges that in a separate conversation between Rosenstein and McCabe, they discussed using the 25th Amendment “to remove President Trump” and “Rosenstein said that he may be able to get (then-Attorney General Jeff) Sessions and Kelly to go along with the plan.”

In a third request for comment, Goldman said he’d learned that Rosenstein in a May 12, 2017, conversation at the DOJ Command Center “appeared ‘upset’ and ‘emotional’ over the Comey firing.”

In a fourth request for comment, Goldman said that in a May 14, 2017, conversation with McCabe, “Rosenstein asked McCabe to reach out to Comey to seek advice about appointing a special counsel. McCabe believed that was a bad idea.”

In a fifth and final request for which he sought DOJ comment, Goldman wrote, “Rosenstein considered appointing (former Deputy Attorney General) Jim Cole as the special counsel.”

On Sept 20, 2018, Flores forwarded the Goldman email to “Annie” and “Bill” — apparently White House Deputy Counsel Annie Donaldson and White House Communications Director Bill Shine — telling Donaldson, “Boss calling Don re the below – if you think appropriate, share with Don [presumably referring to White House Counsel Don McGahn]”. She tells Shine, “We’ve sent a response from the DAG that’s below and had someone in the room dispute the ‘wire’ part noting the dag was being sarcastic.” She then includes the DAG response, which reads, “The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect. I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the Department and are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about this: based on my personal dealings with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”

Shine thanks Flores and asks her to “share with Elliott ASAP.” Flores responds that if Shine is directing her to share with Elliott, “I don’t think I know who that is referring to.” Flores sent that response at 10:09 PM on September 20, but Flores waits until 10:00 a.m. the next day to forward the entire exchange to DOJ Chief of Staff Whitaker, saying: “Should have sent this to you last night.”

In a mostly redacted email exchange on the evening of September 20, 2018, shows the efforts of officials in the Public Affairs and DAG’s office to produce a response to the impending news article. DOJ Official Bradley Weinsheimer forwarded to Flores the “DAG response” to the allegations in the article, saying “DAG has cleared this, which is what we just discussed.” He then provides the official DAG response about the allegations over Rosenstein wanting to invoke the 25th Amendment against Trump as being “inaccurate and factually incorrect.” Deputy Attorney General’s office official Ed O’Callaghan responds, “Think good.” The rest of his response is redacted under (b)(5) – deliberative process.

In the final draft of the official DAG response approved by O’Callaghan, the statement is changed from “Based on my dealings with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment” to “Based on my personal dealings with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”

The article concludes with an amazing statement:

“It is remarkable that Judicial Watch has done more to investigate the DOJ/FBI’s discussions about overthrowing President Trump than the DOJ or Congress,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These documents essentially confirm the coup discussions about wearing a wire when speaking with President Trump and plans to remove him under the 25th Amendment.”

America just survived an attempted coup, and the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were part of that coup. No one has been held accountable, and that is frightening.

We Know That This Is Not Political…

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today with the following headline, “Deep State FBI Director Wray Fights to Delay Release of Strzok-Page Text Messages Until AFTER 2020 Election.” If we had any doubts about Wray’s loyalties, I think those doubts were just erased.

The article reports:

FBI Director Christopher Wray’s FBI is fighting like hell to keep the thousands of outstanding text messages between FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page under wraps until after the 2020 election.

Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch has been in court this summer fighting to get their hands on 13,000 pages of Strzok-Page documents.

The FBI wants over 2 years to “process” the Strzok-Page docs.

The Court in late July ordered parties to negotiate a solution to getting key docs more quickly, Judicial Watch said. The FBI is protecting itself on illegal abuses.

“Wray FBI wants to stall until well after next presidential election before completing release of emails/texts between corrupt FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page,” Tom Fitton said.

“26 months for 13,000 pages!? President Donald Trump should order the FBI to comply with law and stop the stonewalling,” he added.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. I guess that is why the political left is fighting so hard against it.

The article concludes:

The FBI was forced to hand over text messages between Strzok and Page, however, they claimed that they were unable to retrieve several months worth of texts because they were ‘missing.’

Mueller also scrubbed other text messages between Strzok and Page. Their phones were set to ‘factory settings’ when the two FBI officials turned in their phones to the FBI resulting in ‘lost’ data.

Judicial Watch has been fighting in court to obtain the outstanding Strzok-Page texts and FBI Director Wray is working to keep the documents hidden from public scrutiny.

It’s amazing how many things were erased in the Clinton email investigation and in the Russia investigation. It’s time the American public got to see as much of that information as is possible to retrieve.

When The Circus Comes To Town

Yesterday Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, posted an article at The Daily Caller. The title of the article says it all, “FITTON: Congress Should Stop Wasting Time On Mueller — And Investigate Hillary Clinton’s Role In Steel Dossier.”

Here are some highlights from the article:

This hearing will give Mueller and the Democrats an opportunity to once again push the “destroy Trump” narrative and jump-start the impeachment process. Mueller’s testimony will be geared to that end. Democratic questions will seek to fill in the blanks to preserve Mueller’s manufactured reputation for probity. And the mainstream media will be primed — and probably pre-briefed — to drive the point home.

However, unlike at his press statement where he allowed no questions, Mueller will now have to face hard scrutiny from Republicans and honest Democrats about the origins of his investigation, misconduct during the process, and his questionable, sometimes completely erroneous conclusions.

For example, why did Mueller sit on the fact that his team had early-on discovered that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, which was the central question of the entire Russiagate hoax? Were the midterm elections a factor in his delay for exonerating President Trump of Russia collusion?

Why did Mueller continue as special counsel after learning that former FBI Director James Comey broke the law to get him appointed by leaking information from President Trump’s FBI files to the New York Times, using a Columbia professor friend of his as a cut-out?

It is truly sad that Congress continues to waste time on attempting to remove a duly-elected President instead of actually investigating some of the facts that have come to light about the 2016 campaign which they have totally ignored.

The article continues:

Why did Mueller hide from the American people for four months Peter Strzok and Lisa Page’s outrageous conduct and flagrant anti-Trump bias, which necessitated they be fired from the investigation? And why did his office quietly delete all the text messages they passed while on his team, going so far as to reformat their government-issued phones?

Did Mueller’s office have any contacts with the media, such as leaking information regarding the massive pre-dawn raid on Roger Stone’s home, or the inexplicable guns-drawn action at the home of Paul Manafort?

Why didn’t Mueller investigate the Steele dossier that was the basis for the Russian collusion hoax? Why didn’t Mueller examine contacts between Steele, Fusion GPS employees like Nellie Ohr, and/or members of the Clinton campaign with the sketchy Russian sources who fed the rumors that were the basis of the dossier

The article concludes:

This is rooted in a Clinton campaign operation seeking to create a false narrative that the Russians were conspiring with Donald Trump to rig the 2016 election. But she was the one subverting the American electoral process, with the unprecedented and illicit cooperation of corrupt swamp dwellers in the upper reaches of the Obama administration. And it is important that the sedition be exposed, and Hillary Clinton and the rest be held accountable.

To this end the president should start releasing all the key documents that detail the depth and breadth of the scandal, who was involved in it, and how it unfolded. Attorney General William Barr needs to investigate how the Mueller investigation came about and, in particular, the matter of the manufactured predicate for the unprecedented and troubling mobilization of government resources to spy on the Trump presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, Judicial Watch has over 50 lawsuits to uncover more information, of which over a dozen relate to Mueller himself.  The Democrat circus hearing may boomerang as the “investigation of the investigators” accelerates.

The activities of those in government who have tried to remove this President need to be exposed. This should never happen again.

The Investigation Continues

Judicial Watch has been instrumental in uncovering the misdeeds of the intelligence and Department of Justice communities during the Obama administration. They are quietly deposing many of the people involved as the result of a ruling by a district court that allows them to question many of the people involved in the Clinton email scandal.

In a Press Release today, Judicial Watch reported:

Judicial Watch: Justice Department Granted Immunity To Hillary Clinton’s Lawyer Who Destroyed 33,000 Emails

Heather Samuelson also testifies under oath in Judicial Watch court-ordered deposition that, 

contrary to what she told the FBI, she was in fact aware that 

Clinton used private email account as secretary of state

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s White House Liaison at the State Department, and later Clinton’s personal lawyer, Heather Samuelson, admitted under oath that she was granted immunity by the U.S. Department of Justice in June 2016:

Samuelson: I was provided limited production immunity by the Department of Justice.

Judicial Watch: And when was that?

***

Samuelson: My recollection, it was June 2015 [later corrected to 2016].

A complete copy of her deposition transcript is available here. Samuelson also revealed that, contrary to what she told the FBI in 2016, she was, in fact, aware that Sec. Clinton used a private email account while secretary of state:

Judicial Watch: Ms. Samuelson, when did you first become aware that Secretary Clinton used the e-mail address hdr22@clintonemail.com while she was at the State Department?

Samuelson: I believe I first became aware when either she e-mailed me on personal matters, such as wishing me happy birthday, or when I infrequently would receive e-mails forwarded to me from others at the department that had that e-mail address listed elsewhere in the document.

***

Judicial Watch: Okay. And who were the State Department officials?

Samuelson: I recall Cheryl Mills, but it could have been others.

Samuel’s admission to Judicial Watch that she became aware of Clinton’s non-State.gov emails during her service in the Clinton State Department White House Liaison Office during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state (January 2009 – February 2013) contradicts the notation in the FBI’s May 24, 2016 302 report on Samuelson’s interview with FBI agents:

Samuelson did not become aware of Clinton’s use of a private email account and server until she was serving as Clinton’s personal attorney.

After Clinton left office, Samuelson worked for a year in the office of the White House Counsel before becoming Clinton’s personal attorney, where, in 2014, she was primarily responsible for conducting the review of Clinton emails and sorting out “personal” emails from government emails, which were returned to the State Department under the direction of Cheryl Mills and Clinton lawyer David Kendall.  After the emails were returned to State, Clinton deleted the rest of the “personal” emails from her server, wiping it clean. Samuelson conducted the review of emails on her laptop, using Clinton server files downloaded from Platte River Networks, which housed the Clinton email server. Judicial Watch questioned her about a “gap” in the emails she discovered:

Judicial Watch: I believe you, during your interview with the FBI, you were asked about a gap in e-mails that you noticed in Secretary Clinton’s e-mails from January 2009 to March of 2009. Do you recall that?

Samuelson: I do.

Judicial Watch: Okay. Can you explain to me what that gap was?

Samuelson: My understanding is — well, I’m sorry. I should say my recollection is when we received the documents — the file from Platte River Networks, there was a period of time that was missing in her e-mails. And that period of time was January 2009 to March 2009.

Judicial Watch: And what did you do as the result of discovering this gap in the e-mails from January 2009 to March 2009?

***

Samuelson: I asked Platte River why we did not have — why they did not provide those.

Judicial Watch: And what did they tell you?

Samuelson: They said they did not have that information.

Judicial Watch: Did Platte River have access during 2014 to the server that housed Secretary Clinton’s e-mails to her Clintonemail.com account –

***

– and was there any discussion as to whether they could obtain Secretary Clinton’s e-mails from that server from January 2009 to March 2009?

***

Samuelson: I did ask them, and they said they did not have any e-mails from that period.

Samuelson also testified in her deposition that she created an “after action memo” in or around December 2014 to memorialize the email search. Samuelson’s lawyer directed her not to answer questions about this memo.

During Hillary Clinton’s transition as secretary of state during her tenure, Samuelson was in charge of political-nomination (“Schedule C”) hires for Clinton’s transition team at the State Department.  When questioned by Judicial Watch lawyers about Brock Johnson, whom she hired as a special assistant to Secretary Clinton as a “favor” to controversial Clinton Foundation official Doug Band (co-founder of Teneo Strategy with Bill Clinton and a top official of the Clinton Foundation, including its Clinton Global Initiative), Samuelson testified that on occasion Band sent referrals of individuals they should consider hiring. Johnson later worked, in coordination with the Obama White House, when the State Department falsely responded to a Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) FOIA request that there were no records showing Clinton’s email address.

The deposition of Samuelson comes out of Judicial Watch’s July 2014 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the U.S. Department of State failed to respond to a May 13, 2014 FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). Judicial Watch seeks:

    • Copies of any updates and/or talking points given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency concerning, regarding, or related to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
    • Any and all records or communications concerning, regarding, or relating to talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency.

On December 6, 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers and Clinton aides, as well as Heather Samuelson, to be deposed or answer written questions under oath. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.” Judicial Watch’s discovery is centered upon whether Clinton intentionally attempted to evade the Freedom of Information Act by using a non-government email system and whether the State Department acted in bad faith in processing Judicial Watch’s FOIA request for communications from Clinton’s office.

“The news that the Obama DOJ gave immunity to Heather Samuelson, Hillary Clinton’s lawyer responsible for the infamous deletion of 33,000 emails, further confirms the sham FBI/DOJ investigation of the Clinton email scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “And it is curious that Ms. Samuelson changed her story about what she knew and when about the Clinton email system.  Attorney General Barr can’t reopen the Clinton email investigation fast enough.”

Judicial Watch seems to be the only organization that cares about corruption in our government.

The Proof Is In The Emails

Judicial Watch released the following Press Release today:

Judicial Watch: State Department Emails Show Coordination Between Obama State Department and House Democrat Leader on Christopher Steele/Russia

JUNE 12, 2019

‘You’ve been a warrior on these issues, and I look forward to speaking further to preserve and wherever possible strengthen the important work you have done’ – Hoyer aide Daniel Silverberg to Victoria Nuland 

(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller News Foundation today released 16 pages of documents revealing former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer coordinating with then-House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer’s (D-MD) national security advisor, Daniel Silverberg to work on Russia dossier materials provided by Christopher Steele.

Steele is a former British spy and author of the anti-Trump dossier used to justify a series of FISA spy warrants targeting Carter Page. Winer is a former Obama State Department deputy assistant secretary who was implicated in working with Steele and Clinton associate Sidney Blumenthal to circulate the anti-Trump dossier.

Judicial Watch obtained the documents in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed on April 25, 2018 on behalf of itself and the Daily Caller News Foundation against the State Department after it failed to respond to three separate FOIA requests (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:18-cv- 00968)). The lawsuit seeks:

  • All records of communications between State Department officials, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, on the one hand, and British National Christopher Steele and/or employees or contractors of Steele’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence, on the other hand.
  • All records and/or memoranda provided by Christopher Steele and/or his firm Orbis Business Intelligence or by others acting on Steele’s/Orbis’s behalf, to State Department officials.
  • Any and all records in the custody of the State Department related to the provision of documents to British national Christopher Steele and/or his firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, or the receipt of documents from Steele or his firm.  Time period is January 20, 2009 through the present.
  • All records created in 2016 by Jonathan M. Winer relating to research compiled by Christopher Steele.

In an email exchange on September 19, 2016, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS asks Winer if he is “in town?” Winer replies “For a couple of hours.”

In an email exchange on September 26, 2016, Winer emails Nuland asking for “15 minutes of your time today if possible,” to discuss a “Russia related issue” from his “old O [Orbis Business Intelligence] friend.” Orbis was co-founded and run by Russia dossier author Christopher Steele. Nuland’s assistant suggests a secure call for the discussion and Winer asks his aide to postpone a meeting he was to have with the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) to accommodate.

In an exchange beginning in November 2016, Hoyer top-aide Silverberg emails a “thank you” to Nuland, calling her a “warrior on these issues” and stating that he looks forward to pursuing “some of the things we discussed yesterday, albeit on the system integrity side.” Nuland forwards this email to Winer who adds that he wants to talk about “some new info.”

From: Silverberg, Daniel [mailto:Daniel.Silverberg@mail.house.gov]
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2016 10:57 PM
To: Nuland, Victoria J
Subject: Thank you

Toria,

It was a delight to speak today, notwithstanding the context. You’ve been a warrior on these issues, and I look forward to speaking further to preserve and wherever possible strengthen the important work you have done. I’ll follow up regarding a possible working group meeting.

On Nov 29, 2016, at 10:07 AM, Nuland, Victoria J <nulandvi@state.gov> wrote:

Thanks, Daniel. I look forward to continuing our collaboration in whatever capacity life brings. Copied here is Jonathan Winer, who has some legal ideas that may be of interest to you and Cong. Hoyer.

From: Nuland, Victoria J
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2016 10:08 AM
To: Winer, Jonathan
Subject: RN: Thank you

They want to pursue some of the things we discussed yesterday, albeit on the system integrity side.

From: Winer, Jonathan
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2016 10:12 AM
To: Nuland, Victoria J
Subject: Re: Thank you

Want to talk briefly further. Some new info want you to be aware of. [Redacted] Phone call ok sometime this am? Five minutes is enough.

From: Nuland, Victoria J <nulandvj@state.gov>
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2016 10:23 AM
To: Winer, Jonathan <WinerJ@state.gov>
Subject: RE: Thank you

Of course, [redacted] Send me good number and time.

From: Silverberg, Daniel
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2016 10:52 AM
To: Nuland, Victoria J
Cc: Winer, Jonathan
Subject: Re: Thank you

Great. Jonathan, I am all ears.

From: Winer, Jonathan
Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2016 2:10 PM
To: Silverberg, Daniel <Daniel.Silverberg@mail.house.gov>
Subject: Re: Thank you

I’ve reached out per our call yesterday. Please call me to talk further at your early convenience. Weekend best but can also talk Monday.

In a November 2016 exchange with the subject line “Would like to catch up on something at your convenience,” Winer reaches out to Nuland for a meeting, which gets booked in the Truman building on November 28. 

In an email exchange dated December 12, 2016, Winer requests a brief meeting with Nuland saying, “Something new has come up of which I want you to be aware.” Nuland replies, “Ok,” and adds her assistant to the exchange. Winer’s assistant then emails Nuland’s assistant looking for a time to meet.

In February 2018, Winer wrote an op-ed claiming anti-Trump dossier author Christopher Steele and Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal approached him with separate dossiers. Winer wrote: “In the summer of 2016, Steele told me that he had learned of disturbing information regarding possible ties between Donald Trump, his campaign and senior Russian officials.” Also, “While talking about that hacking, Blumenthal and I discussed Steele’s reports. He showed me notes gathered by a journalist I did not know …”

“Every day of digging reveals more and more political collaboration on this hit job, and at the highest levels. While so much of the media is content to chase Russian conspiracies, The Daily Caller News Foundation and the fantastic lawyers at Judicial Watch are going to keep doing the hard work of holding power accountable,” said Christopher Bedford, editor in chief of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“These documents further confirm the Obama State Department was obviously a way station for Steele’s smear dossier and other anti-Trump activism,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Judicial Watch recently released 43 pages of documents from the State Department revealing that its “Special Coordinator for Libya,” Jonathan Winer, played a key role in facilitating Steele’s access to other top government officials, prominent international business executives. Winer was even approached by a movie producer about making a movie about the Russiagate targeting of President Trump.

Judicial Watch previously released two sets of heavily redacted State Department documents showing classified information was researched and disseminated to multiple U.S. Senators by the Obama administration immediately prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The documents reveal that among those receiving the classified documents were Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Sen. Robert Corker (R-TN).

Also, Judicial Watch is suing the State Department for communications between Nuland and employees of Fusion GPS, as well as top ranking Department of Justice, FBI, and State Department officials.

Stay tuned. More information on the roots of the Russian collusion investigation will be coming out shortly. We already have enough information to realize that because President Trump was a political novice, professional politicians felt that they could easily set him up for disaster. Recent letters from the people involved in investigating the root of the Russia investigation indicate that people will be held accountable for the misuse of government agencies and the violation of the civil rights of Americans.

Obstruction Of Justice?

On Thursday, Judicial Watch posted the following Press Release:

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released an email revealing that Nellie Ohr, wife of former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, informed him that she was deleting emails sent from Bruce Ohr’s DOJ email account.

From: Nellie Ohr

Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2016 12:49 PM

To: Ohr, Bruce (ODAG)

Subject: Re: Analyst Russian Organized Crime – April 2016

Thanks! I’m deleting these emails now

The full email exchange is between Bruce Ohr, Lisa Holtyn, Nellie Ohr, and Stefan Bress, a first secretary at the German Embassy, and is part of 339 pages of heavily redacted records from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Judicial Watch obtained the records through a March 2018 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed after the Justice Department failed to respond a December 2017 request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00490)).

Nellie Ohr’s email has the same subject line as an email exchange with the subject line “Analyst Russian Organized Crime – April 2016” in which Bress initiates a discussion with Bruce Ohr and his top aide, Lisa Holtyn, proffering some “Russian analysts” to discuss a variety of topics with Ohr, Holtyn, and other DOJ officials. Among those topics to be discussed is “Impact of Russian influence operations in Europe (‘PsyOps/InfoWar’).”

Holtyn responds with, “I haven’t had a chance to confer with Bruce yet, but would certainly love to meet with the ‘A Team’!” Bruce Ohr then says, “That time works for me as well.” Bress then provides the personal details/passport numbers of the German analysts who will be meeting with Holtyn and Ohr. Holtyn tells Bress that the Ohr’s would like to host the German delegation for dinner and notes that Joe Wheatley and Ivana Nizich (a husband/wife team of DOJ Organized Crime prosecutors and friends of the Ohr’s) would join them as well.

Until he was demoted for his connection to the anti-Trump dossier, Bruce Ohr was a top official at DOJ. A House Intelligence Committee memo released by Chairman Devin Nunes said that Nellie Ohr was “employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump” and that Bruce Ohr passed the results of that research, which was paid for by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign, to the FBI. The “salacious and unverified” Dossier was used to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance warrant to spy on Carter Page.

These documents are part of Nellie Ohr’s and the DOJ’s communications about Russia. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) recently wrote up a criminal referral concerning her testimony before Congress that she had no knowledge of what was going on during the Russia investigation at DOJ.

“This email is disturbing and suggests documents relevant to the improper targeting of President Trump were destroyed,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

This production of documents also revealed that Bruce Ohr remained in regular contact with former British spy and Fusion GPS contractor Christopher Steele after Steele was terminated by the FBI in November 2016 for revealing to the media his position as an FBI confidential informant.

Americans just spent upwards of $30 million and two years investigating Russian collusion and obstruction of said investigation. Why weren’t deleted emails from key players in the investigation looked at?

The investigation into the investigators has something in common with many Clinton scandals. Although the Clintons are only tangentially involved in this scandal, it bears one of their trademarks–keep the scandal in the news until people are sick of it. At that point, reveal the truth. The public will be so bored with the basic scandal that they won’t even notice or process the truth. I hope I am wrong about this–people involved in the abuse of government power need to go to jail, but I am afraid that by the time the truth comes out, no one will care.

Avoiding Transparency

As I have previously written, Judicial Watch has done an amazing job of keeping our government transparent, regardless of which party is in power. Recently, Judicial Watch uncovered records that the State Department (during the Obama administration) had told them did not exist. The documents uncovered reveal that the Obama administration was tracting FOIA requests. The question is whether or not Secretary of State Clinton was attemptig to evade FOIA by using her private server.

Yesterday Judicial Watch issued the following Press Release:

WH called – have we received a FOIA request’ – State Department 

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained 44 pages of records from the State Department through court-ordered discovery revealing that the Obama White House was tracking a December 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records concerning then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecure, non-government email system. Months after the Obama White House involvement, the State Department responded to the requestor, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), falsely stating that no such records existed.

Judicial Watch’s discovery is centered upon whether Clinton intentionally attempted to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by using a non-government email system and whether the State Department acted in bad faith in processing Judicial Watch’s FOIA request for communications from Clinton’s office. U.S District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides, as well as E.W. Priestap, to be deposed or answer written questions under oath. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”

The State Department’s Office of Inspector General issued a report in January 2016 saying “At the time the request was received, dozens of senior officials throughout the Department, including members of Secretary Clinton’s immediate staff, exchanged emails with the Secretary using the personal accounts she used to conduct official business.” Also, the IG “found evidence that [Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills] was informed of the request at the time it was received …”

The State Department produced records in response to court-ordered document requests that detail Obama White House involvement in the Clinton email FOIA request.

In a December 20, 2012, email with the subject line “Need to track down a FOIA request from CREW”, Sheryl L. Walter, director of the State Department’s Office of Information Programs and Services (A/GIS/IPS), writes to IPS officials Rosemary D. Reid and Patrick D. Scholl and their assistants:

WH called – have we received a FOIA request from CREW (Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington) on the topic of personal use of email by senior officials? Apparently other agencies have. If we have it, can you give me the details so I can call the WH back? I think they’d like it on quick turnaround. Thanks! Sheryl

In the same email chain, Walter on December 20, 2012 also emailed Heather Samuelson, Clinton’s White House liaison, describing the CREW FOIA request:

Hi Heather – Copy attached, it was in our significant weekly FOIA report that we send to L and S/ES also. Do you want us to add you to that list? It’s a subset of things like this that we think likely to be of broader Department interest. More detail below re this request. As a practical matter given our workload, it won’t be processed for some months. Let me know if there are any particular sensitivities. If we don’t talk later, happy holidays! All the best, Sheryl

Sheryl: The request is assigned Case #F-2012-40981. It was received on 12/6/2012 and acknowledged on 12/10/2012. The request is assigned for processing.

On January 10, 2013, Walter writes to Samuelson that she is not including “personal” accounts in the FOIA request search:

Hi Heather – did you ever get any intell re what other agencies are doing re this FOIA request that seeks records about the number of email accounts associated with the Secretary (but isn’t specifying “personal” email accounts so we are interpreting as official accounts only). We are considering contacting the requester to find out exactly what it is they are looking for. Do you have any-concerns about that approach?

Soon afterward, Samuelson responds, “White House Counsel was looking into this for me. I will circle back with them now to see if they have further guidance.”

CREW’s general counsel, Anne Weismann, submitted a FOIA request to the State Department on December 6, 2012, seeking “records sufficient to show the number of email accounts of or associated with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the extent to which those email accounts are identifiable as those of or associated with Secretary Clinton.”

On May 10, 2013, [Information Programs and Services] replied to CREW, stating that “no records responsive to your request were located.”

Samuelson became Secretary Clinton’s personal lawyer and in 2014 led the review of Clinton’s emails to determine which ones were work-related and which were personal. She was also one of five close Clinton associates granted immunity by the Department of Justice in the Clinton email investigation.

Samuelson is one of several Obama administration and State Department officials ordered by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth to respond under oath to Judicial Watch questions regarding whether Clinton’s private email use while Secretary of State was an intentional attempt to evade FOIA.

The new documents also include a January 2013 email exchange discussing Clinton’s departure from the State Department in which Agency Records Officer Tasha M. Thian specifically stating that Secretary Clinton “does not use email.”

This was directly contradicted by an email exchange between Secretary Clinton and Gen. David Petraeus dating back to January 2009 – the very first days of Clinton’s State Department tenure – in which she tells Petraeus that she “had to change her email address.”

Interestingly, this email exchange between Petraeus and Clinton was not produced in a related FOIA lawsuit seeking “all emails” of Hillary Clinton. The bottom portion of the email chain was produced, but not the beginning emails.

In a January 2013 email under the subject “RE: Sec Clinton’s papers,” Thian writes:

Just so you know, Secretary Clinton – she brought with her a lot of material as Senator and First Lady – 47 boxes. In case you hear there are many boxes I wanted you to know what they are. She is taking her copies of photos, public speeches, press statements, contacts, templates (some of these are both hard copy and electronic), reimbursements, etc …

Although Sec. Clinton does not use email [emphasis added] her staffers do – I have agreed that the emails of the three staffers will be electronically captured (and not printed out).

Also included in the new batch of documents is the draft Departing Officials Notice, which states that State Department personnel are not to remove classified records from Department “custody and control.”

The new records obtained by Judicial Watch are further evidence revealing the Obama White House’s early knowledge of questions surrounding Clinton’s email use. In late April, Judicial Watch announced that E.W. (Bill) Priestap, assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, had admitted, in writing and under oath, that the agency found Clinton email records in the Obama White House, specifically, the Executive Office of the President.

“These documents suggest the Obama White House knew about the Clinton email lies being told to the public at least as early as December 2012,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “A federal court granted Judicial Watch discovery into the Clinton emails because the court wanted answers about a government cover-up of the Clinton emails. And now we have answers because it looks like the Obama White House orchestrated the Clinton email cover-up.”

Judicial Watch’s filed its 2014 FOIA lawsuit after the State Department failed to respond to a May 13, 2014 FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)).

Real news is out there, you just have to look for it. Sometimes you simply have to go after it using the legal process.

Is Anyone Actually Surprised By This?

Yesterday BizPacReview reported:

Recently published case files from the FBI’s investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appear to show that certain evidence from that investigation has gone “missing.”

Reportedly released last week by the FBI itself, the records contain internal emails sent only three months ago in which it’s revealed that a CD that contained notes from an Aug. 3, 2015 meeting with the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community has gone “missing.”

One email starts by saying that certain “Special Agents (SAs)” have been gathering and captioning evidence “in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)” request.

Judicial Watch has been doing a phenomenal job of investigating the Hillary Clinton email scandal.

On May 1, Judicial Watch issued the following in regard to their investigation:

Judge Lamberth made the ruling in Judicial Watch’s July 2014 FOIA lawsuit filed after the U.S. Department of State failed to respond to a May 13, 2014 FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). Judicial Watch seeks:

Copies of any updates and/or talking points given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency concerning, regarding, or related to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Any and all records or communications concerning, regarding, or relating to talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency.

“A federal court wants answers on the Clinton email scandal and Mr. Sullivan is one of many witnesses Judicial Watch will question under oath,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is shameful that the Justice and State Departments continue to try to protect Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration on the email scandal.”

U.S District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides, as well as E.W. Priestap, to be deposed or answer written questions under oath. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”

Judicial Watch previously released interrogatory responses given under oath by E.W. (Bill) Priestap, assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, in which he stated that agency found Clinton email records in the Obama White House, specifically, the Executive Office of the President.

I will post more on the Judicial Watch investigation as it becomes available. Meanwhile, it seems as if the government’s investigation can’t get out of its own way.

BizPacReview reports:

“On February 6, 2019, SA [redacted] contacted SA [redacted] regarding the notes,” another email reads. “SA [redacted] explained he documented all relevant case materials before leaving the case and did not retain any notes or other case materials. As such WFO CI-13 considers the item missing and will enclose this document [the email?] into 1A4 as a placeholder until the missing item is located.”

In other words, this evidence — whatever it may be — has inexplicably been destroyed (someone or something cracked the CD) or gone “missing,” as the federal agency would prefer to put it.

What it’s unclear what aspect of the Clinton investigation these notes had covered, what’s known is that Clinton has a track record of destroying evidence.

Around March of 2015, it was learned that the then-Democrat presidential candidate had “unilaterally decided to wipe her server clean and permanently delete all emails from her personal server,” as noted at the time by then-Congressman Trey Gowdy.

When asked later that year by Fox News’ Ed Henry about wiping her server clean, she tried to feign ignorance by innocently asking, “Like with a cloth or something?

Clinton also reportedly ordered her aides to discard her old SIM cards and destroy her Blackberrys.

Obstruction, anyone?

Judicial Watch Investigates

Judicial Watch is one of my favorite organizations. The have turned the use of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests into an art form. They are a non-biased group that is simply demanding transparency in government–from both parties.

Yesterday One America News Network posted an article about the latest FOIA request from Judicial Watch.

The article reports:

Conservative watchdog group filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the FBI in an effort to pierce the veil of the resources used in the $25 million probe.

Specifically, the organization is looking to obtain all communications and payments made to the author of the anti-Trump dossier — Christopher Steele.

The former British intelligence officer was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee in order to compile his 35 page document.

Judicial Watch is now trying to determine the FBI’s involvement.

It’s already known that the FBI made 11 payments to Steele, but the details behind those payments were heavily redacted.

Conservatives suspect rogue actors at the bureau were looking to reverse the results of the 2016 election, which is something Attorney General William Barr said he’s looking into.

I don’t think they were rogue actors–I think the operation began very high up in the FBI, but we will have to wait to see if that is where the trail leads.

About That ‘Cover Up’ Thing

As I have previously stated, if you want an unbiased assessment of what is actually going on behind the scenes in our government, one of your best sources is Judicial Watch.

Yesterday Judicial Watch posted a Press Release about Hillary Clinton’s private server. Below are some of the highlights:

FBI notes of an interview with an unidentified Platte River Networks official in February 2016 (almost a year after the Clinton email network was first revealed) show that Platte River “gave someone access to live HRC archive mailbox at some point.” The same notes show that an email from December 11, 2014, exists that reads “Hillary cover up operation work ticket archive cleanup.” The interviewee said that the “cover up operation” email “probably related to change to 60 day [sic] email retention policy/backup.” The subject indicated that he didn’t “recall the prior policy.” The notes also indicated, “[Redacted] advised [redacted] not to answer questions related to conv [conversation] w/DK [David Kendall] document 49 – based on 5th amendment.”

The subject said that “everyone @ PRN has access to client portal.”

A December 11, 2014, Platte River Networks email between redacted parties says: “Its [sic] all part of the Hillary coverup operation <smile> I’ll have to tell you about it at the party”

An August 2015 email from Platte River Networks says: “So does this mean we don’t have offsite backups currently? That could be a problem if someone hacks this thing and jacks it up. We will have to be able to produce a copy of it somehow, or we’re in some deep shit. Also, what ever [sic] came from the guys at Datto about the old backups? Do they have anyway [sic] of getting those back after we were told to cut it to 30 days?”

In March 2015, Platte River Networks specifically discusses security of the email server.

[Redacted] is going to send over a list of recommendations for us to apply for additional security against hackers. He did say we should probably remove all Clinton files, folders, info off our servers etc. on an independent drive.

Handwritten notes that appear to be from Platte River Networks in February 2016 mention questions concerning the Clinton email system and state of back-ups

The documents show Platte River Networks’ use of BleachBit on the Clinton server. The BleachBit program was downloaded from a vendor called SourceForge at 11:42am on March 31, 2015, according to a computer event log, and over the next half hour, was used to delete the files on Hillary’s server.

…From: [Redacted]

Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2015 2:46 PM

To: Grafeld, Margaret P [Peggy]

Subject: Concerns about the HRC Review …

While working with this inspector, I have personally reviewed hundreds of documents in the HRC collection. I can now say, without reservation, that there are literally hundreds of classified emails in this collection; maybe more. For example, there are comments by Department staff in emails relating to the Wikileaks unauthorized disclosures; many of the emails relating to this actually confirm the information in the disclosures. This material is the subject of FOIA litigation, and the emails will now have to be found, reviewed and upgraded. Under the EO 13526, it would be in in our right to classify the entire HRC collection at the Secret level because of the “mosaic effect.” While there may be IC equities in the collection, I am very concerned about the inadvertent release of State Department’s equities when this collection is released in its entirety — the potential damage to the foreign relations of the United States could be significant.

The Press Release concludes:

“Judicial Watch uncovered new ‘cover-up’ records on the illicit Clinton email system that further demonstrate the sham nature of the FBI/DOJ ‘investigation’ of her,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These shocking new documents show that various Obama agencies were protecting Hillary Clinton from the consequences of her misconduct. It is well past time for the DOJ to stop shielding Hillary Clinton and hold her fully accountable to the rule of law.”

In a different lawsuit Judicial Watch previously released 186 pages of records from the DOJ that include emails documenting an evident cover-up of a chart of potential violations of law by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

And, in a separate lawsuit, Judicial Watch uncovered 215 pages of records from the DOJ revealing former FBI General Counsel James Baker discussed the investigation of Clinton-related emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop with Kendall. Baker then forwarded the conversation to his FBI colleagues.

Judicial Watch has previously released numerous instances of classified information distributed through Clinton’s unsecure, non-government email system. For example, see here, here and here.

And, Judicial Watch is currently conducting depositions of senior Obama-era State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides.

Here’s the evidence. What is the government going to do about it?

The Need To Hold Individuals Accountable

I think one of the most frustrating things about watching the news these days is watching people in power say things that have no foundation in fact and do things that an ordinary person would go to jail for. Those days may be coming to an end (one can only hope).

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit reported that Judicial Watch has filed an ethics complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against House Intel Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA).

The article reports:

The official complaint filed by Judicial Watch with the Office of Congressional Ethics, requests House Intel Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) be investigated in connection with recent revelations that he secretly met with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson in Aspen, Colorado in July of 2018.

The complaint also requests Schiff be investigated after it was revealed his staff traveled to New York and met with Michael Cohen for 10 hours prior to Trump’s former lawyer testifying to the House Intel Panel.

The article includes a portion of the ethics complaint:

Dear Chairman Skaggs,

Judicial Watch is a non-profit, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government and fidelity to the rule of law. We regularly monitor congressional ethics issues as part of our anti-corruption mission.

This letter serves as our official complaint to the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) concerning the activities of Rep. Adam Schiff. Rep. Schiff appears to have violated House Code of Official Conduct, Rule 23, clauses 1 and 2, by inappropriately communicating with witnesses. Clauses 1 and 2 provide:

1.A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.

2.A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House shall adhere to the spirit and the letter of the Rules of the House and to the rules of duly constituted committees thereof.

Rep. Adam Schiff attended the Aspen Security Forum conference in July 2018, which was also attended by Glenn Simpson, the founder of the firm Fusion GPS. Press reports have detailed evidence of a meeting and discussion between Rep. Schiff and Glenn Simpson at the July 2018 Aspen Security Forum. As noted in The Hill newspaper:

At the time of the encounter, Simpson was an important witness in the House Intelligence Committee probe who had given sworn testimony about alleged, but still unproven, collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Fusion GPS is the political opposition research firm involved in procuring “unverified” information claiming the Trump presidential campaign had “colluded” with Russia, among other things. That Fusion OPS-supplied information was the basis upon which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) obtained Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance warrants against Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.

Mr. Simpson’s leadership of Fusion GPS and his centrality to events resulted in his having to testify before congressional committees or their staffs. Specifically, Mr. Simpson testified before the House Intelligence Committee, of which Rep. Schiff was the ranking Democratic member, on October 16, 2018 – approximately three (3) months after the Aspen Security Forum.

We note that following revelations in 2017 that Rep. Devin Nunes had informed President Trump that U.S. intelligence agencies had been engaging in “incidental collection” of his campaign’s communications, Rep. Schiff demanded that Rep. Nunes, then Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, recuse himself from any investigations involving alleged Trump collusion with Russia. Indeed, Rep. Schiff wrote the following on twitter:

This is not a recommendation I make lightly … But in much the same way that the attorney general [Jeff Sessions] was forced to recuse himself from the Russia investigation after failing to inform the Senate of his meetings with Russian officials, I believe the public cannot have the necessary confidence that matters involving the president’s campaign or transition team can be objectively investigated or overseen by the chairman.

Then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi concurred with Rep. Schiff’s call for Mr. Nunes to recuse himself.

The July 2018 contacts between Rep. Schiff and Mr. Simpson create, at a minimum, the appearance of impropriety. As a result of Rep. Schiff’s previously undisclosed, private discussions with Mr. Simpson, the public’s confidence in Mr. Schiff’s ability to objectively and impartially carry out his duties as Committee Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have been gravely damaged.

Further, Rep. Schiff’s contacts with Mr. Michael Cohen should also be scrutinized in the same light as the Simpson contacts. Journalists have reported:

President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen told House investigators this week that staff for Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., traveled to New York at least four times to meet with him for over 10 hours immediately before last month’s high-profile public testimony, according to two sources familiar with the matter – as Republicans question whether the meetings amounted to coaching a witness.

The sources said the sessions covered a slew of topics addressed during the public hearing before the oversight committee – including the National Enquirer ‘s “Catch and Kill” policy, American Media CEO David Pecker and the alleged undervaluing of President Trump’s assets.

Judicial Watch is a watchdog group that fights for government transparency. The are equally hard on Democrats and Republicans. They have been major players in exposing much of the deep state in recent years.

Truth Based On Evidence

A lot of what we are hearing about collusion, surveillance, etc., is simply stated as ‘reliable sources say.’ I suspect some of what we are hearing is true, but it is impossible to tell what is real and what is not. However, while the media is simply speculating and smearing people they don’t like, Judicial Watch is quietly executing Freedom of Information Act requests and analyzing the date.

Below is the latest Press Release from Judicial Watch (February 15th):

‘I’ll make sure Andy tells Mike to keep these in his pocket’

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received 186 pages of records from the Department of Justice that include emails documenting an evident cover up of a chart of potential violations of law by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Judicial Watch obtained the records through a January 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the DOJ failed respond to a December 4, 2017 FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00154)). Judicial Watch is seeking all communications between FBI official Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page.

The newly obtained emails came in response to a May 21 order by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton to the FBI to begin processing 13,000 pages of records exchanged exclusively between Strzok and Page between February 1, 2015, and December 2017. The FBI may not complete review and production of all the Strzok-Page communications until at least 2020.

  • Three days after then-FBI Director James Comey’s press conference announcing that he would not recommend a prosecution of Mrs. Clinton, a July 8, 2016 email chain shows that, the Special Counsel to the FBI’s executive assistant director in charge of the National Security Branch, whose name is redacted, wrote to Strzok and others that he was producing a “chart of the statutory violations considered during the investigation [of Clinton’s server], and the reasons for the recommendation not to prosecute…”

[Redacted] writes: I am still working on an additional page for these TPs that consist of a chart of the statutory violations considered during the investigation, and the reasons for the recommendation not to prosecute, hopefully in non-lawyer friendly terms …

Strzok forwards to Page, Jonathan Moffa and others: I have redlined some points. Broadly, I have some concerns about asking some our [sic] senior field folks to get into the business of briefing this case, particularly when we have the D’s [Comey’s] statement as a kind of stand alone document. In my opinion, there’s too much nuance, detail, and potential for missteps. But I get they may likely be asked for comment.

[Redacted] writes to Strzok, Page and others: The DD [Andrew McCabe] will need to approve these before they are pushed out to anyone. At the end of last week, he wasn’t inclined to send them to anyone. But, it’s great to have them on the shelf in case they’re needed.

[Redacted] writes to Strzok and Page: I’m really not sure why they continued working on these [talking points]. In the morning, I’ll make sure Andy [McCabe] tells Mike [Kortan] to keep these in his pocket. I guess Andy just didn’t ever have a moment to turn these off with Mike like he said he would.

Page replies: Yes, agree that this is not a good idea.

Neither these talking points nor the chart of potential violations committed by Clinton and her associates have been released.

  • On May 15, 2016, James Rybicki, former chief of staff to Comey, sends FBI General Counsel James Baker; Bill Priestap, former assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division; McCabe; Page; and others an email with the subject line “Request from the Director.”

Rybicki writes: By NLT [no later than] next Monday, the Director would like to see a list of all cases charged in the last 20 years where the gravamen of the charge was mishandling classified information.

It should be in chart form with: (1) case name, (2) a short summary for content (3) charges brought, and (4) charge of conviction.

If need be, we can get it from NSD [National Security Division] and let them know that the Director asked for this personally.

Please let me know who can take the lead on this.

Thanks!

Jim

Page forwards to Strzok: FYSA [For your situational awareness]

Strzok replies to Page: I’ll take the lead, of course – sounds like an espionage section question… Or do you think OGC [Office of the General Counsel] should?

And the more reason for us to get feedback to Rybicki, as we all identified this as an issue/question over a week ago.

Page replies: I was going to reply to Jim [Rybicki] and tell him I can talked [sic] to you about this already. Do you want me to?

  • A July 22, 2016, email exchange, among Strzok, Page, Moffa and other unidentified FBI and DOJ officials, shows that Beth Wilkinson, an attorney for several top Clinton aides during the server investigation, wanted a conference call with the DOJ/FBI and that she was “haranguing” the FBI/DOJ about the return of laptops in the FBI’s possession:

A Wilkinson Walsh attorney, emails [Redacted] FBI National Security Division Officials: We wanted to follow up on our conversation from a few days ago. We would like to schedule a time to speak with both you and [Redacted] early next week. Is there a time on Monday or Tuesday that could work on your end?

[Redacted] FBI National Security Division official emails: See below. I am flexible on Monday and Tuesday. [Redacted] can chime in with her availability. It is my understanding that Toscas [George Toscas, who helped lead Midyear Exam] may have called over to Jim or Trisha [former Principal Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson] regarding some high-level participation for at least the first few such calls. I am happy to discuss further but wanted to send you this so you could raise within the OGC [Office of the General Counsel] and give me a sense of scheduling options. I am around if you want to talk.

***

[Redacted] FBI National Security Division official writes: In the meantime, I’ll tell Hal that we will certainly schedule a call and will get back to him as to timing. Since he knows Beth [Wilkinson] personally, it could be useful to have Jim on the phone if she is going to be haranguing us re: the laptops.

[Redacted] FBI Office of the General Counsel writes: More…I guess this is [Redacted’s] rationale for why we need to have the GC on the call to discuss the fact that we will be following all of our legal obligations and FBI policies/procedures with regard to the disposition of the materials in this case.

Strzok writes: You are perfectly competent to speak to the legal obligations and FBI policy/procedures. We should NOT be treating opposing counsel this way. We would not in any other case.

  • In an April 12, 2016, email exchange initiated by an email from Strzok to [Redacted] within the Justice Department’s National Security Division (NSD), Strzok asks the NSD official if he’d like to add anything to the agenda of a meeting to occur three days later between FBI and DOJ attorneys.

[Redacted] NSD official responds: Would like to see what you have on your agenda so we could see what we might want to add on our end. I will mention to [Redacted]. Also interested in understanding FBI OGC’s analysis of the privilege and ethics issues we are facing.

Strzok forwards to Page: Pretty nonresponsive.…

Page responds: Why provide them an agenda? I wouldn’t do that until you have a sense of how Andy [McCabe] wants to go. So no. We’ll talk about what we’re going to talk about and then they can talk about what they want to talk about. Also, seriously Pete. F him. OGC needs to provide an analysis? We haven’t done one. But they seem to be categorical that it’s just impossible, I’d just like to know why.

And now I’m angry before bed again.?

Total indulgence, there’s a TV in here. Here’s hoping I can find something to sufficiently melt my brain???

Strzok replies: Because I want to make this productive! Why NOT provide them an agenda!?!? We all talk about what we want to talk about and that’s a waste of time.

They haven’t done one either (legal analysis)

Assume noble intent.

How do we maximize this use of time?

Page writes: I’m ignoring all this and going to bed.

Strzok and Page were discussing a meeting that the Justice Department and FBI were about to have concerning, among other things, “privilege and ethics issues we are facing.”

  • On July 12, 2016, Eugene Kiely, the director of FactCheck.org, emailed the FBI about inconsistencies he’d identified between Comey’s congressional testimony and statements by Clinton and her campaign about her deletion of emails. Kiely noted that Comey testified to the House that Clinton did not give her lawyers any instructions on which of her emails to delete, whereas Clinton herself told the press that she made the decision on which emails should be deleted. Kiely also pointed out that Comey said in his testimony that there were three Clinton emails containing classification “portion markings,” whereas the State Department had said there were only two Clinton emails with classification markings. Kiely’s inquiry set off an internal discussion at the top of the FBI on how to respond to his questions.

Strzok writes: “We’re looking into it and will get back to you this afternoon; the answer may require some tweaking, the question is whether this is the forum to do it.” The email is addressed to FBI intelligence analyst Moffa; Rybicki; Michael Kortan, FBI assistant director for public affairs, now retired; Lisa Page and others.

Strzok’s suggested press response is fully redacted, but included is his deferral to the “7th floor as to whether to release to this reporter or in another manner.”

When asked “should we provide any additional information to FactCheck.org or would any updates more appropriately be give [sic] directly to Congress?” Strzok defers to “Jim/Lisa [Page]” and [Redacted].

  • In response to a March 29, 2016, article in The Hill, forwarded by Strzok to Page, reporting that Judge Royce Lamberth ordered limited discovery for Judicial Watch in its lawsuit against the State Department for Clinton’s emails (related to the Benghazi attack) – and thus opening Clinton up to possible depositions by Judicial Watch – Page responds simply: “Oh boy.”

“Judicial Watch caught the FBI in another cover-up to protect Hillary Clinton,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These records show that the FBI is hiding a chart detailing possible violations of law by Hillary Clinton and the supposed reasons she was not prosecuted.”

Judicial Watch recently released  215 pages of records from the DOJ revealing former FBI General Counsel James Baker discussed the investigation of Clinton-related emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop with Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall. Baker then forwarded the conversation to his FBI colleagues. The documents also further describe a previously reported quid pro quo from the Obama State Department offering the FBI more legal attaché positions if it would downgrade a redaction in an email found during the Hillary Clinton email investigation “from classified to something else.”

When in doubt, go directly to the source!

Avoiding The Consequences Of Bad Behavior

On February 11th, Judicial Watch posted the following Press Release:

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received 215 pages of records from the U.S. Department of Justice revealing former FBI General Counsel James Baker discussed the investigation of Clinton-related emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop with Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall. Baker then forwarded the conversation to his FBI colleagues.

The documents also further describe a previously reported quid pro quo from the Obama State Department offering the FBI more legal attaché positions if it would downgrade a redaction in an email found during the Hillary Clinton email investigation “from classified to something else.”

The newly obtained emails came in response to a May 21 order in a January 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the DOJ failed to respond to a December 4, 2017 FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-00154)). Judicial Watch seeks:

  • All records of communications, including but not limited to, emails, text messages and instant chats, between FBI official Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page;
  • All travel requests, travel authorizations, travel vouchers and expense reports of Peter Strzok.
  • All travel requests, travel authorizations, travel vouchers and expense reports of Lisa Page.

On October 28, 2016, the day that Comey sent a letter to Congress regarding the FBI’s discovery that the Weiner laptop contained Clinton’s emails. Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall, within hours, emails Baker requesting a call “ASAP” about the Comey letter. Baker describes his follow-up call to senior FBI officials:

I received the email below from David Kendall and I called him back. Before doing so I alerted DOJ via email that I would do that.

[Redacted paragraph]

He said that our letter was “tantalizingly ambiguous” and made statements that were “inchoate and highly ominous” such that what we had done was worse than transparency because it allows people to make whatever they want out to make out of the letter to the prejudice of Secretary Clinton.

I told him that I could not respond to his requests at this time but that I would discuss it with others and get back to him.

I suggest that we have some kind of follow up meeting or phone call with this group either this evening or over the weekend to address this and probably other issues/questions that come up in the next 24 hours. Sound reasonable?

Baker’s heads up on the Kendall call was sent to:

The emails show that a conference call for the above senior officials was set up for the next day by Peter Strzok. (Two days before the election, on November 6, Comey sent a second letter reporting that the FBI’s review of the Weiner laptop material would not change his “conclusion” that Hillary Clinton should not be prosecuted.)

On October 13, 2016, former FBI attorney Lisa Page sent an email, which apparently references a related Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit and further discusses a previously reported quid pro quo offer from the State Department:

Jason Herring will be providing you with three 302s of current and former FBI employees who were interviewed during the course of the Clinton investigation. These 302s are scheduled to be released to Congress in an unredacted form at the end of the week, and produced (with redactions) pursuant to FOIA at the beginning of next week. As you will see, they describe a discussion about potential quid pro quo arrangement between then-DAD in IOD [deputy assistant director in International Operations Division] and an Undersecretary at the State Department whereby IOD would get more LEGAT [legal attaché] positions if the FBI could change the basis of the FOIA withhold re a Clinton email from classified to something else. [Emphasis added]

The lawsuit also forced the release of a November 6, 2016, email by then-FBI official Peter Strzok telling Bowdich, Priestap, Rybicki, Page, former FBI General Counsel James Baker and others: “[Redacted], Jon and I completed our review of all of the potential HRC work emails on the [Anthony Weiner] laptop. We found no previously unknown, potentially classified emails on the media.”

As Judicial Watch previously reported, there were at least 18 classified emails found on the Weiner laptop by the FBI. Paul Sperry’s RealClear Investigations report revealed that only 3,077 of the 340,000 emails “were directly reviewed for classified or incriminating information.”

The new records also include a September 2, 2016, email that Comey forwards containing a press release issued that day by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), in which Grassley criticized the FBI for not publicly releasing many unclassified records related to the Clinton email-server investigation, as demanded by Congress. In his cover note responding to Grassley’s charge, Comey tells his top aides, “To be great is to be misunderstood.” Page then responds with, “Outstanding.”

On October 23, 2016, Strzok forwarded to Page and others the Wall Street Journal article revealing that Andrew McCabe’s wife had received a half million dollars for her Democratic state senate campaign. Page responded that the article, “shaded or omitted or mischaracterized” facts “in order to get out the story [the reporter] wanted to tell.” She claimed the WSJ story was just “another depressing chapter in this whole post-investigation saga.”

“It is big news that, just days before the presidential election, Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyer pressured the top lawyer for the FBI on the infamous Weiner laptop emails,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These documents further underscore that the fix was in for Hillary Clinton. When will the Justice Department and FBI finally do an honest investigation of the Clinton email scandal?”

Last month, United States District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that discovery can begin in Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides will now be deposed under oath. Senior officials — including Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, and FBI official E.W. Priestap — will now have to answer Judicial Watch’s written questions under oath. The court rejected the DOJ and State Department’s objections to Judicial Watch’s court-ordered discovery plan. (The court, in ordering a discovery plan last month, ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”)

Judicial Watch’s discovery will seek answers to:

  • Whether Clinton intentionally attempted to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by using a non-government email system;
  • whether the State Department’s efforts to settle this case beginning in late 2014 amounted to bad faith; and
  • whether the State Department adequately searched for records responsive to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request.

The Only People Actually Conducting A Real Investigation Of Federal Misconduct Are Judicial Watch

Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article about a recent Freedom of Information Act Request filed by Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch is an impartial government watchdog agency–they have gone after Clintons, Bushes, Obamas, etc.

The article reports:

A conservative watchdog group announced Friday it had filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department seeking communications records that relate the FBI’s investigation into whether Hillary and Bill Clinton’s charity organization participated in pay-to-play schemes or other improper behavior with the U.S. government.

The latest lawsuit by Judicial Watch related to the Clintons, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the FBI denied their FOIA request and appeal this fall, targets the offices of prominent Obama-era officials, including former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former FBI Director James Comey, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Specifically, Judicial Watch demands the DOJ do a search, and “demonstrate that it employed search methods reasonably likely to lead to the discovery,” for “[a]ll records of communication, including but not limited to e-mails (whether sent or received on .gov or non-.gov e-mail accounts), text messages, or instant chats, sent between officials in the offices of the FBI Director, Deputy Director and General Counsel on the one hand, and officials in the offices of the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General and or Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General on the other hand, regarding the closure or possible closure of an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.”

The article concludes:

The watchdog also singled out the DOJ inspector general’s report released in April in which McCabe described a “very dramatic” call he had with another high-level department official about the handling of the Clinton Foundation probe. That same inspector general’s report, which led to McCabe’s firing, found McCabe ” lacked candor” on four separate occasions, including three times while under oath, in connection with the disclosure to the Wall Street Journal leak to push back on a report about large donations McCabe’s wife received from Democrats during her bid for the Virginia state Senate — a leak that effectively confirmed the existence of the Clinton Foundation probe.

“The record shows the Obama Justice Department suppressed a public corruption investigation into the Clinton Foundation,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement. “It’s time for the DOJ to stop shielding the Clintons and produce records on this miscarriage of justice.”

It may be that the Clintons are totally innocent of any wrongdoing. However, much of their past behavior definitely calls their honesty into question.