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Special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year, $30 million, 448-page report did not find collusion between Donald Trump and Russia.
Despite compiling private allegations of loud and obnoxious Trump behavior, Mueller also concluded that there was not any actionable case of obstruction of justice by the president. It would have been hard in any case to find that Trump obstructed Mueller’s investigation of an alleged crime.
One, there was never a crime of collusion. Mueller early on in his endeavors must have realized that truth, but he pressed ahead anyway. It is almost impossible to prove obstruction of nothing.
Two, Trump cooperated with the investigation. He waived executive privilege. He turned over more than 1 million pages of administrative documents. He allowed then-White House counsel Don McGahn to submit to over 30 hours of questioning by Mueller’s lawyers.
Three, anyone targeted by a massive investigation who knows he is innocent of an alleged crime is bound to become frustrated over a seemingly never-ending inquisition.
Trump’s reported periodic rages at the Muller investigation are regrettable but not unnatural, given that Mueller expended a huge amount of government resources to confirm what many knew at the outset: that there was never any collusion with the Russian government to warp the 2016 election.
Yet Mueller’s team went down every blind alley relating to its investigation — except where Obama-era officials were likely culpable for relevant unethical or illegal behavior.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants were integral to Mueller’s investigations. But there is no mention of how the FISA court was deceived by not being told that the chief evidence used to obtain the warrants was an unverified dossier paid for in part by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Some of the collusion narrative Muller examined was based on FBI informants’ unverified stories. Yet strangely, the Mueller team did not investigate whether it was legal in the first place for the FBI, possibly with CIA help, to use informants to spy on a presidential campaign.
Former FBI Director James Comey figures into the Mueller report. But there is no curiosity about whether he broke the law in leaking what may well have been four classified memos of private presidential conversations to the press for the purpose of forcing an appointment of a special counsel.
The Christopher Steele dossier likewise makes an appearance in the Mueller report. But for a team investigating the alleged collusion of foreigners in a U.S. election, there is silence about the salient fact that Steele, a foreign national, enlisted other foreign nationals to dig up dirt on Trump to weaken his election chances — with part of the funding for this research provided by the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
What bothers many Americans about the collusion hoax is the accompanying sanctimony of the so-called investigators. The Mueller team could have helped itself had it just noted that much of the evidence it looked at was a product of Obama-era officials’ unethical or illegal behavior.
Comey wrote a memoir, “A Higher Loyalty.” Its eponymous themes are Comey’s own ethics and principles. But Comey may well have misled the FISA court and possibly lied under oath to a House committee. He was not candid with federal investigators and leaked confidential and classified government memos.
Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe also wrote a memoir, “The Threat.” Its argument is that FBI kingpins such as McCabe protect America from dangers such as Donald Trump. But McCabe himself is under criminal referral for lying to federal investigators. His sworn congressional testimony cannot be reconciled with Comey’s. McCabe also likely misled the FISA court. And he apparently contemplated staging a near-coup to remove an elected president through the deliberate misuse of the 25th Amendment.
Former CIA Director John Brennan is a paid analyst for MSNBC who often railed about Trump’s “treason” and predicted his indictment. Yet Brennan himself has lied under oath to Congress on two occasions. He likely misled Congress about his role in trafficking in the Steele dossiers. And Brennan’s CIA may well have helped the FBI use informants abroad to entrap Trump campaign aides in efforts to find dirt on Trump.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is a CNN analyst who often predicted that a supposedly treasonous Trump would be indicted. Clapper, too, has lied to Congress under oath. He once denied and then admitted to leaking confidential documents.
The problem with the Muller investigation, and with former intelligence officials such as Brennan, Clapper, Comey and McCabe, is pious hypocrisy. Those who have lectured America on Trump’s unproven crimes have written books and appeared on TV to publicize their own superior virtue. Yet they themselves have engaged in all sorts of unethical and illegal behavior.
The only mystery left is whether our elite investigators actually believe their own delusions. Or were they constantly broadcasting their virtue as a preventive defense against growing evidence of their own moral lapses?
(C) 2019 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
Bob Woodward, the reporter who broke open the Watergate scandal, has called for the FBI and CIA to be investigated regarding the agencies’ handling of the debunked dossier that formed the basis of the Mueller investigation of the Trump campaign.
During an interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace, Woodward declared that the dossier authored by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele “has got a lot of garbage in it”.
“What I found out recently, which was really quite surprising, the dossier, which really has got a lot of garbage in it and Mueller found that to be the case, early in building the intelligence community assessment on Russian interference, in an early draft, they actually put the dossier on page two in kind of a breakout box.”
“I think it was the CIA pushing this. Real intelligence experts looked at this and said no, this is not intelligence, this is garbage and they took it out,” Woodward added.
“But in this process, the idea that they would include something like that in one of the great stellar intelligence assessments, as Mueller also found out, is highly questionable.” he added, saying that it “Needs to be investigated.”
Last week, President Trump slammed the FBI, stating that the intelligence agency conspired against his presidential campaign.
Wow! FBI made 11 payments to Fake Dossier’s discredited author, Trump hater Christopher Steele. @OANN @JudicialWatch The Witch Hunt has been a total fraud on your President and the American people! It was brought to you by Dirty Cops, Crooked Hillary and the DNC.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2019
Trump addressed the ‘fake’ dossier, which was funded in part by Fusion GPS, a political intelligence firm working for the DNC, calling it a “total fraud on your President and the American people!”
He also took aim at “Crooked Hillary” noting that eleven payments were made to the former to British spy Steele by the FBI in 2016.
Judicial Watch is suing for communication and payment records between the FBI, Steele, and his private firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.
BREAKING: JW announced today that it filed a FOIA lawsuit against the DOJ for records of communications and payments between the FBI & former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and his private firm, Orbis Business Intelligence (1/3).https://t.co/OuMuIGgvpf
— Judicial Watch 🔎 (@JudicialWatch) April 16, 2019
Source: InfoWars
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As Democrats mull how far to push the impeachment envelope against President Trump after Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion with Russia in the 2016 election but punted on obstruction of justice charges, another investigation could further blunt their attempts to oust the president from office or damage his re-election chances.
Amid calls from Trump and his supporters to “investigate the investigators,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been hard at work over the last year looking into the sources and methods the FBI used to begin surveillance of a one-time Trump campaign adviser based at least in part on discredited information gathered by a former British spy.
That packet of intelligence, known as the “Steele dossier,” contains salacious and unsubstantiated details about Trump’s alleged romps with Russian prostitutes, along with business and political quid pro quos with Russian officials.
Attorney General Robert Barr said the inspector general is wrapping up his probe and could release a final report as early as next month.
Those interviewed by Horowitz and his team over the past year, according to Politico, say he seems intensely focused on undermining the dossier and credibility of Christopher Steele, the former British MI6 agent who produced the document. Steele had served as a confidential source for the FBI since 2010 until a falling out over his leaks to the media about the Trump-Russia probe.
While prominent Democrats have accused Mueller of failing to do his duty and Barr of prioritizing the interests of Trump over the American people, they’ll have a more difficult time assailing Horowitz, a Harvard-educated lawyer appointed by President Obama to the DoJ’s top watchdog post in 2012.
Horowitz, who was a partner in New York City’s oldest law firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, before becoming inspector general, served as a board member of the Ethics Resource Center and the Society of Corporate Compliance Ethics.
He began his career at the Justice Department in the 1990s, serving as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, including stints as the chief of the public corruption unit. Before leaving in 2002, he worked as the deputy assistant attorney general of the criminal division and as its chief of staff.
Roughly a year ago, Horowitz also proved he’s willing to disappoint Trump and his supporters. He thoroughly investigated the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation and charges that the probe was rigged to let Clinton off the hook.
Horowitz amassed a mountain of embarrassing emails and electronic messages between former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and his co-worker and lover, Lisa Page, about their hatred for Trump and an “insurance plan” to derail his presidency. However, Horowitz concluded that he could not link the “appearance” of personal bias against Trump to “evidence that any political bias or improper considerations actually” impacted the way the FBI pursued the Clinton email probe.
He also harshly criticized then-FBI Director James Comey for his July 2016 announcement that he would not recommend any charges against Clinton, and his subsequent October 2016 decision to tell Congress that the FBI had discovered new emails and had re-opened the case.
Still, Horowitz concluded that Comey hadn’t acted out of political bias, but did “deviate” from established procedures and engaged “in his own subjective, ad hoc decision making” in what the IG described as an extremely unusual case with high political stakes.
The stakes couldn’t be higher when it comes to Horowitz’ current probe. Steele was hired by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS in 2016 to look into Trump’s Russia ties, and that work was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee through a law firm.
Republican members of Congress and other Trump allies allege the only true collusion took place between the Clinton camp and the FBI, with Steele’s help. They accuse the DoJ and the FBI of abusing the FISA process and misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by relying on the dossier to obtain approvals for the surveillance without disclosing that the information was unverified or paid for by Democrats and the Clinton campaign itself.
Democrats counter that the FBI wouldn’t be doing its job if it hadn’t investigated Trump associates’ ties to Russia. For instance, the unpaid campaign adviser at the center of the FISA controversy, Carter Page, first attracted FBI attention back in 2013 when he interacted with undercover intelligence agents in New York City. Carter’s trip to Russia in the summer of 2016 sparked more scrutiny and justified the warrant the FBI submitted to in October 2016, they argue.
But Trump and his supporters have blasted the FBI for continuing to use the dossier to attain FISA court warrants even after Steele was terminated for unauthorized and potentially criminal leaks to the media.
Last January, then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham, who now helms that panel, referred Steele to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution for lying about his contacts with several media organizations before the 2016 election.
Rep. Jim Jordan, who serves as the ranking Republican member on the House Oversight Committee, on Saturday pointed to the dossier as the rationale used to launch an investigation “on a false premise.”
“You can’t have the FBI using one party’s opposition research document to launch an investigation and spy on the other party’s campaign,” he said.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, a conservative Republican from Florida, over the weekend said Horowitz has evidence that FBI officials received tickets to concerts and athletic events from members of the press as incentives to leak to them.
“One of the … nuggets that the inspector general is working on is the corruption that existed between the media and members of the FBI,” Gaetz said, without citing his sources for the information.
The American public, especially those on the right, are already highly skeptical of the mainstream media, whose credibility has continued to sink during its coverage of the Trump administration amid the president’s frequent charges of “fake news” and the media’s torrent of stories alleging Trump’s collusion with Russia.
A Morning Consult/Hollywood Reporter survey released earlier this month found that the share of adults who said some of the biggest media outlets – including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the New York Times, NPR and the Wall Street Journal – were credible dropped an average of 5 percentage points over the past three years, from 56% to 44%.
The media skepticism was predictably most pronounced among Republicans, whose responses show a 12-point drop in their trust in news outlets over the course of the last three years.
It also doesn’t help that the dossier first surfaced in the liberal media when BuzzFeed posted it online – complete with the lurid details of a sex tape featuring prostitutes that the Russian government was said to be holding over Trump. Mueller’s investigation found no evidence that such a tape existed. It also didn’t corroborate another dossier claim published in a McClatchy report that then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen met with Russian officials in Prague.
The Mueller report’s conclusions poked huge holes in the Democrats’ Trump-Russia narrative and sparked new questions about the way the FBI went about investigating it, as well as the media’s role in fanning its flames. Horowitz’ report will try to address both issues.
At the beginning of the Horowitz probe, House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler – who is weighing whether to begin impeachment proceedings against the president — said it’s a “shame” that the inspector general has to “devote resources to investigate a conspiracy theory as fact-free, openly political, and thoroughly debunked as the president’s do-called ‘FISA abuse.’”
As the probe is winding down, Steele himself appears less sanguine about Horowitz’ findings and conclusions. He has reportedly declined to be interviewed and plans to rebut the IG’s characterizations in a rare public statement.
The New York Times on Friday also reported that Steele never tried portray the dossier as anything other than raw intelligence — jumping off points for the FBI to begin investigating.
How that assertion squares with Horowitz’s findings will be closely watched by those on both sides of the aisle. But for Democrats eager to herald the Mueller report’s details on possible obstruction, the IG’s work could be tough to portray as just another government investigation biased in Trump’s favor.
AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File
The Steele dossier, that collection of incendiary allegations against Donald Trump compiled for the Hillary Clinton campaign by the former British spy Christopher Steele, was already widely discredited before the release of the Mueller report. Now, the report has hammered a few additional nails in…
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It’s almost as though the Mueller Report was written by Democrats for Democrats. Oh, wait — that’s exactly what it is! Which is why the left-wing media was so drunkenly exuberant on Thursday when the report was released.
The entire framework of the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller was to buttress the Democratic argument that President Trump is an unqualified boob who doesn’t deserve to be president — and there is not even the slightest acknowledgement of the by-now blatantly obvious fact that Trump was the victim of a virtual coup.
Indeed, you cannot help but get the feeling that the Mueller Report is the death benefit of that “insurance policy” that Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Andy McCabe took out way back in August 2016.
You will recall that FBI agent Strzok sent his Justice Department girlfriend Page a text message that hinted at nefarious Deep State involvement in the presidential election:
“I want to believe the path you threw out in Andy’s [McCabe’s] office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take the risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”
Well, the “unlikely event” of Donald Trump being elected president happened, and therefore the insurance policy went into effect — namely the creation of a diversionary narrative of Russian collusion to weaken the new president and ultimately to overthrow him.
But somehow, Bob Mueller and his team of “Angry Democrats” were unable to penetrate this conspiracy in plain sight — perhaps because they were so busy being part of it.
On page 323 of the report, the special counsel acknowledges that he is aware of the origin of the Russia hoax because he quotes the president’s Aug. 24, 2018, tweet asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, FBI agent Peter Strzok, Justice Department lawyer Lisa Page, DOJ official Bruce Ohr, and Christopher Steele and “his phony and corrupt Dossier.” But somehow neither Sessions, nor Mueller, nor anyone else has been able to put 2 + 2 together and come up with the correct answer.
Indeed, if you want to gauge the complete inadequacy of the Mueller Report, consider this: President Trump’s tweet is the only mention in the report of Ohr, whose wife worked for Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier. It is the only mention of Strzok. It is the only mention of Page. Considering their central role in framing the president, that is the equivalent of the Warren Report somehow relegating Lee Harvey Oswald to a single footnote.
The tweet is not the only mention of McCabe, because he had investigated National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and later became acting director of the FBI after the firing of James Comey, but there is no evidence that Mueller probed McCabe’s role with Strzok and Page in setting up the “insurance policy” that Strzok said was in place in case Trump got elected president.
The fact that there is no mention of Steele at all in Volume 1 of the report (which covers Russian interference in the 2016 election) is shocking since it was his unverified dossier that promoted the lie that the Russians had control of Trump because they possessed compromising material on the real estate tycoon. Steele’s participation with Russian sources is the most direct evidence of Russian interference in the election, but Mueller showed no interest in it because it implicated Democrats.
Volume 2 (which covers obstruction) does on page 235 acknowledge Steele’s existence as the source of what even Mueller calls the “unverified allegations” published by BuzzFeed in January 2017. It also notes on pages 239 and 240 that Director Comey briefed President-elect Trump on the phony dossier on Jan. 6, 2017, and that the briefing was subsequently leaked to the public.
Moreover, page 246 acknowledges that the president wanted the FBI to investigate Steele’s allegations on Jan. 27, 2017, but that Comey talked him out of it. If the president had gotten his wish, the entire Mueller investigation would never have taken place at all because it would have been quickly established that Steele was working at the behest of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Oh, yes, and Comey would have kept his job because he was working for the president instead of against him.
The mention of Steele on page 315 does prove that the Mueller team was well aware of allegations of a Democratic/Deep State plot against Trump but chose not to investigate it. This mention is in reference to the July 2017 reporting about the infamous Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and several Russians.
The New York Times quoted a statement from Trump legal spokesman Mark Corallo that the Trump Tower meeting “might have been a setup by individuals working with the firm that produced the Steele reporting.” If Mueller’s team knew this and still didn’t bother to investigate the suspicious circumstances of the meeting, then they have lost all credibility.
Most telling perhaps is that there is no direct reference to GPS Fusion in the entire report other than that anonymous reference by Corallo to “the firm that produced the Steele reporting.” Nor for that matter is there any reference to the Perkins Coie law firm that was the go-between that hired GPS Fusion on behalf of the DNC to generate the phony Steele dossier.
Clearly, the Mueller Report is the result of a one-sided investigation that did not seek to get at the truth, but only single-mindedly sought — if at all possible — to indict the president. This realization thoroughly vindicates attorney Alan Dershowitz, who has long said that to avoid a political outcome of the investigation, the country needed a bipartisan “blue ribbon panel” such as the 9/11 Commission.
It’s too late for that now, but if Attorney General William Barr has any intestinal fortitude (and I think he does) we will soon get a new investigation that exposes the partisan origins of the Russia hoax and asks many current and former federal officials, up to and including President Obama, “What did you know, and when did you know it.”
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It’s almost as though the Mueller Report was written by Democrats for Democrats. Oh, wait — that’s exactly what it is! Which is why the left-wing media was so drunkenly exuberant on Thursday when the report was released.
The entire framework of the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller was to buttress the Democratic argument that President Trump is an unqualified boob who doesn’t deserve to be president — and there is not even the slightest acknowledgement of the by-now blatantly obvious fact that Trump was the victim of a virtual coup.
Indeed, you cannot help but get the feeling that the Mueller Report is the death benefit of that “insurance policy” that Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Andy McCabe took out way back in August 2016.
You will recall that FBI agent Strzok sent his Justice Department girlfriend Page a text message that hinted at nefarious Deep State involvement in the presidential election:
“I want to believe the path you threw out in Andy’s [McCabe’s] office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take the risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”
Well, the “unlikely event” of Donald Trump being elected president happened, and therefore the insurance policy went into effect — namely the creation of a diversionary narrative of Russian collusion to weaken the new president and ultimately to overthrow him.
But somehow, Bob Mueller and his team of “Angry Democrats” were unable to penetrate this conspiracy in plain sight — perhaps because they were so busy being part of it.
On page 323 of the report, the special counsel acknowledges that he is aware of the origin of the Russia hoax because he quotes the president’s Aug. 24, 2018, tweet asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, FBI agent Peter Strzok, Justice Department lawyer Lisa Page, DOJ official Bruce Ohr, and Christopher Steele and “his phony and corrupt Dossier.” But somehow neither Sessions, nor Mueller, nor anyone else has been able to put 2 + 2 together and come up with the correct answer.
Indeed, if you want to gauge the complete inadequacy of the Mueller Report, consider this: President Trump’s tweet is the only mention in the report of Ohr, whose wife worked for Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier. It is the only mention of Strzok. It is the only mention of Page. Considering their central role in framing the president, that is the equivalent of the Warren Report somehow relegating Lee Harvey Oswald to a single footnote.
The tweet is not the only mention of McCabe, because he had investigated National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and later became acting director of the FBI after the firing of James Comey, but there is no evidence that Mueller probed McCabe’s role with Strzok and Page in setting up the “insurance policy” that Strzok said was in place in case Trump got elected president.
The fact that there is no mention of Steele at all in Volume 1 of the report (which covers Russian interference in the 2016 election) is shocking since it was his unverified dossier that promoted the lie that the Russians had control of Trump because they possessed compromising material on the real estate tycoon. Steele’s participation with Russian sources is the most direct evidence of Russian interference in the election, but Mueller showed no interest in it because it implicated Democrats.
Volume 2 (which covers obstruction) does on page 235 acknowledge Steele’s existence as the source of what even Mueller calls the “unverified allegations” published by BuzzFeed in January 2017. It also notes on pages 239 and 240 that Director Comey briefed President-elect Trump on the phony dossier on Jan. 6, 2017, and that the briefing was subsequently leaked to the public.
Moreover, page 246 acknowledges that the president wanted the FBI to investigate Steele’s allegations on Jan. 27, 2017, but that Comey talked him out of it. If the president had gotten his wish, the entire Mueller investigation would never have taken place at all because it would have been quickly established that Steele was working at the behest of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Oh, yes, and Comey would have kept his job because he was working for the president instead of against him.
The mention of Steele on page 315 does prove that the Mueller team was well aware of allegations of a Democratic/Deep State plot against Trump but chose not to investigate it. This mention is in reference to the July 2017 reporting about the infamous Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and several Russians.
The New York Times quoted a statement from Trump legal spokesman Mark Corallo that the Trump Tower meeting “might have been a setup by individuals working with the firm that produced the Steele reporting.” If Mueller’s team knew this and still didn’t bother to investigate the suspicious circumstances of the meeting, then they have lost all credibility.
Most telling perhaps is that there is no direct reference to GPS Fusion in the entire report other than that anonymous reference by Corallo to “the firm that produced the Steele reporting.” Nor for that matter is there any reference to the Perkins Coie law firm that was the go-between that hired GPS Fusion on behalf of the DNC to generate the phony Steele dossier.
Clearly, the Mueller Report is the result of a one-sided investigation that did not seek to get at the truth, but only single-mindedly sought — if at all possible — to indict the president. This realization thoroughly vindicates attorney Alan Dershowitz, who has long said that to avoid a political outcome of the investigation, the country needed a bipartisan “blue ribbon panel” such as the 9/11 Commission.
It’s too late for that now, but if Attorney General William Barr has any intestinal fortitude (and I think he does) we will soon get a new investigation that exposes the partisan origins of the Russia hoax and asks many current and former federal officials, up to and including President Obama, “What did you know, and when did you know it.”
President Trump slammed the FBI in a tweet Wednesday, stating that the intelligence agency conspired against his presidential campaign.
Wow! FBI made 11 payments to Fake Dossier’s discredited author, Trump hater Christopher Steele. @OANN @JudicialWatch The Witch Hunt has been a total fraud on your President and the American people! It was brought to you by Dirty Cops, Crooked Hillary and the DNC.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2019
Trump addressed the ‘fake’ dossier authored by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, which was funded in part by Fusion GPS, a political intelligence firm working for the DNC, calling it a “total fraud on your President and the American people!”
He also took aim at “Crooked Hillary” noting that eleven payments were made to the former to British spy Steele by the FBI in 2016.
The president tagged conservative news outlet OANN, which reported on the details on Tuesday. Watchdog Judicial Watch previously obtained documents which show the payments were made. The details relating to each payment were heavily redacted.
Judicial Watch is suing for communication and payment records between the FBI, Steele, and his private firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.
BREAKING: JW announced today that it filed a FOIA lawsuit against the DOJ for records of communications and payments between the FBI & former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and his private firm, Orbis Business Intelligence (1/3).https://t.co/OuMuIGgvpf
— Judicial Watch 🔎 (@JudicialWatch) April 16, 2019
“How and why did the FBI pay Christopher Steele, who was already being funded by the Clinton campaign and DNC through Fusion GPS?” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.
“That we had to sue for this basic information shows the FBI may have something more to hide.” Fitton added.
Responding to Fitton’s statement, The Federalist’s Sean Davis noted that the information Steele was providing the FBI in 2016 and 2017 most likely stemmed from a huge Russian disinformation campaign. “There was Russian collusion in 2016, but from Hillary and Obama,” Davis noted.
At the same time he was colluding with Kremlin officials to cook up the dossier, Steele was also secretly working on behalf of a sanctioned Russian oligarch with close Putin ties. There was Russian collusion in 2016, but from Hillary and Obama. https://t.co/YILK3Hi3P4
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) April 17, 2019
Attorney General William Barr and his team are investigating potential abuses by FBI and Department of Justice officials involved in the the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia.
Source: InfoWars
The Justice Department’s inspector general has been scrutinizing the FBI’s use of information from the Steele dossier to conduct surveillance on President Donald Trump and his associates from his 2016 presidential campaign and will release his report as soon as next month, Politico reports.
IG Michael Horowitz has been examining the FBI for close to a year and is investigating whether the agency possibly abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in October 2016 when it pulled a FISA warrant to surveil Carter Page based in part on information from Christopher Steele, a British ex-spy who claimed he was told by sources that Page and other Trump associates were working with Russians to help Trump win the election and boost Trump’s businesses.
The IG is reportedly focused on gauging Steele’s credibility as a source for the FBI, and the report “is going to try and deeply undermine Steele,” according to a source who spoke with Politico.
FISA allows U.S. agencies to secretly intercept a target’s communications with court approval.
Horowitz is also looking into whether FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who exchanged anti-Trump text messages while working on the Russia investigation, were guided by politics in their official actions.
Trump has long slammed the dossier as “phony” and a “con job.”
The dossier was published by BuzzFeed in January 2017, after the election.
Steele was being paid for his research by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm that was funded in part by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
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Source: NewsMax Politics
Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, joined FNC’s Maria Bartiromo this week on “Sunday Morning Futures” to discuss Attorney General Bill Barr’s statement that he believes “spying did occur” on the 2016 Trump campaign and transition team and the next steps for his investigation into what happened.
“Democrats, if you’re trying to get Trump, they really don’t care how you’re trying to get him,” Graham said. “I really do care about the rule of law. Most Democrats don’t care about this because they thought it was a worthy endeavor to try to take Trump down, so I’m hoping some Democrats will change their tune, because if you can do this to a Republican, one day you can do it to a Democrat.”
“You know they accuse Trump of changing all the rules in Washington. I would suggest that all the rules have been changed to get Trump,” he continued. “They’re attacking Bill Barr now one of the most seasoned, highly-respected legal minds in the United States. Nothing has changed about Bill Barr since he was attorney general under Bush 41. The only thing that’s changed is the desire to get Trump.”
MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX NEWS: That was Attorney General William Barr last week saying he believed biased members of the FBI did, in fact, authorize spying on the Trump campaign during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. All of a sudden Democrats now calling it a “right-wing conspiracy.” They are saying they are stunned and this is scary. I don’t know what all of the “stunned” comments are about, plenty of Republicans going back over a year on this program, have said the same exact thing. Watch.
REP. JOHN RATCLIFFE, 19 AUGUST 2018: So remember, Maria, how bad it was when we all found out there was this unverified dossier used as the basis to gain a warrant to surveil someone associated with the trump campaign, carter page, and it got worse when we found out that that dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, but little did we know that some of that money that Hillary Clinton and the DNC used to pay for the dossier, ultimately ended up in the account of the number four person at the Department of Justice, Bruce Ohr, and his wife, Nellie Ohr, who was retained and paid by Fusion GPS to work with Christopher Steele to help create that dossier. So next week, I’m going to sit down with some of my colleagues with Mr. Ohr and give him an opportunity to explain exactly how that came to pass and more importantly who at the Department of Justice authorized it.
MARIA BARTIROMO: And there you go. We’re back now with Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, and Mr. Chairman let me ask you about what Barr said this week. “There was spying on the campaign.” Where does this go now?
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: Well, we’re going to find out whether or not there was legal authority to get a FISA warrant against Carter Page, who was associated with the Trump campaign. By definition the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows our government to spy on people we think are working with foreign governments. The question was, was there any legitimate reason to believe that? If the warrant was issued on the dossier that’s a bunch of garbage, the answer would be no. Most importantly how could a counterintelligence investigation be opened up against the Trump campaign, Congress never heard about it, was there a legitimate reason to open up a counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign, which is spying, and why was President Trump never informed of the fact that people working for him, our government suspected of working with the Russians, because the purpose of a counterintelligence investigation is to protect the people being targeted by a foreign government.
But what happened after the election is equally important to me. The counterintelligence investigation continued on the transition team, that’s how General Flynn got in trouble. What basis did the government have to follow the Trump transition team? How did it get leaked out to the public that there was a counterintelligence investigation going on against General Flynn, while he was in transition, leaking this information, after the election, is just as important to me as spying before the election.
MARIA BARTIROMO: Yeah, and there were two really important things that came out last week that Barr suggested. Number one, that it wasn’t just a bunch of small cabal of people at the top of the FBI, but there was information going through lots of different intel agencies: the State Department, the CIA, that’s one thing I’d like to get your reaction on as well, Senator.
LINDSEY GRAHAM: Well how wide was the problem? How deep was it? And what was the basis of it? Why was the United Nations un-masking people, American citizens caught up in conversations? Was there any legitimacy at all to the idea of Papadopoulos working with the Russians, or did they plant that idea in his head about the Clinton emails being in the hands of the Russians? Did it come from him working with the Russians or somebody working with us?
At the end of the day, was there any reason to believe that Carter Page was working with the Russians, or was it all based on a dossier that’s a bunch of garbage?
And in transition, as the Trump team is trying to take over the government, why was the counterintelligence investigation still ongoing? Who leaked the fact that there was one to the Washington Post, who dimed out all of these people that were in transition to the media? That’s a violation of the law. And was there an attempt to invoke the 25th amendment after the election?
Democrats, if you’re trying to get Trump, they really don’t care how you’re trying to get him. I really do care about the rule of law. Most Democrats don’t care about this because they thought it was a worthy endeavor to try to take Trump down, so I’m hoping some Democrats will change their tune, because if you can do this to a Republican one day you can do it to a Democrat.
MARIA BARTIROMO: I think this is a really important point you’re making, it feels like a Kavanaugh moment, senator, where the Democrats and the media just threw out all of what we deem is so valuable and important as Americans in a free democracy, that is due process, innocent until proven guilty. Here we go again, as they try to rip down Attorney General Bill Barr.
LINDSEY GRAHAM: Well you know they accuse Trump of changing all the rules in Washington. I would suggest that all the rules have been changed to get Trump. Kavanaugh’s nominee was not presumed innocent because he was a conservative. The way they treated Brett Kavanaugh was to try to destroy his life and drive him out of wanting the job, hoping he would quit.
They’re attacking Bill Barr now one of the most seasoned, highly-respected legal minds in the United States. Nothing has changed about Bill Barr since he was attorney general under Bush 41. The only thing that’s changed is the desire to get Trump, no matter how you have to get him. So if you need to destroy Barr they will, and if you need to destroy Kavanaugh they will, if you need to make up stories to get a warrant they will, if you need to open up a counterintelligence investigation based on bogus information to try to get into the Trump campaign to find out what he’s up to, to create an “insurance policy,” I think they will. There was nothing they wouldn’t do to get Trump and America needs to understand this can happen to both parties. Let’s hold them accountable and stop it, now.
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