Christopher Steele
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A leading Senate Republican said on Monday he would ask Attorney General William Barr to appoint a special counsel to probe whether U.S. law enforcement officials made missteps in their investigation into possible collusion between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia.
A day after the attorney general said the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller found Trump's campaign did not conspire with Russia, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said: "We will begin to unpack the other side of the story."
He said it was time to look at the origins of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant for former Trump adviser Carter Page, which was based in part on information in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who co-founded a private intelligence firm.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on Graham's request.
Graham said he would look into those matters as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, using subpoena power if necessary, whether or not a special counsel is appointed.
Republican lawmakers have contended the FBI made serious missteps when it sought the warrant to monitor Page in October 2016 shortly after he left the Trump campaign.
Page, a foreign policy adviser during Trump's campaign, drew scrutiny from the FBI, which said in legal filings in 2016 that it believed he had been "collaborating and conspiring" with the Kremlin. Page met with several Russian government officials during a trip to Moscow in July 2016. He was not charged.
Steele was initially contracted by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based political research firm, to investigate Trump on behalf of unidentified Republicans who wanted to stop Trump's bid for the party's nomination. Fusion was then hired by lawyers connected to 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary's Clinton's campaign.
Graham told reporters he planned to ask Barr when they talk on Monday to appoint a special counsel to investigate the FISA matter, which is already being probed by the Justice Department's internal watchdog, Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Graham said later that Barr agreed to appear before the Judiciary Committee after he vets Mueller's report, according to media reports.
On Sunday, Barr said Mueller's team had not found evidence of criminal conspiracy between Trump's campaign and Russia in the 2016 election and had left unresolved the issue of whether Trump obstructed justice.
It is not the first time Republicans have called for a special counsel to look into the matters. Last year, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions tapped U.S. Attorney John Huber to review a range of Republican grievances, including concerns about the FISA warrant. That review is pending.
Source: NewsMax Politics
U.S. Attorney General William Barr leaves his house after Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion between U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 election in McClean, Virginia, U.S., March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
March 25, 2019
By Susan Cornwell and Doina Chiacu
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said on Monday he will ask Attorney General William Barr to appoint a special counsel to look into the origins of the investigation of whether President Donald Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
A day after the attorney general said the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller found that nobody from Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia, Senator Lindsey Graham said, “We will begin to unpack the other side of the story.”
He said it was time to look at the Clinton campaign and the origins of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant for former Trump adviser Carter Page, which was based in part on information in a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who co-founded a private intelligence firm.
Graham said he would look into these matters as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, using subpoena power if necessary, whether or not a special counsel is appointed.
Republicans lawmakers have contended the FBI made serious missteps when it sought the warrant to monitor Page in October 2016 shortly after he left the Trump campaign.
Republicans said the FBI failed to disclose that Steele was hired by a firm funded by Democrats to do opposition research on Trump’s business dealings.
However, Steele was initially contracted by FusionGPS, a Washington-based political research firm, to investigate Trump on behalf of unidentified Republicans who wanted to stop Trump’s bid for the party’s nomination.
Page, a foreign policy adviser during Trump’s campaign, drew scrutiny from the FBI, which said in legal filings in 2016 that it believed he had been “collaborating and conspiring” with the Kremlin. Page met with several Russian government officials during a trip to Moscow in July 2016. He was not charged.
Graham said he planned to ask Barr when they talk on Monday to appoint a special counsel to investigate the FISA matter, which is already being probed by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog.
“What I want to do is see if he’ll appoint a special counsel,” Graham said at a news conference. “I’d like to find somebody like a Mr. Mueller that could look into what happened with the FISA warrant, what happened with the counterintelligence investigation.”
Graham said he wants Barr to appear before the Judiciary Committee to discuss Mueller’s report, which concluded Russia did attempt to intervene in the election on Trump’s behalf.
On Sunday, Barr said in a four-page summary that Mueller’s team had not found evidence of criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 election and had left unresolved the issue of whether Trump obstructed justice.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell and Doina Chiacu; Writing by Tim Ahmann and Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Trott and Jeffrey Benkoe)
Source: OANN
- Text messages show that a Justice Department official had “continued concerns” about the FBI’s applications to obtain FISA warrants on Carter Page.
- In Oct. 2016, Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer at the time, suggested Stuart Evans, the DOJ official who handles FISA applications, was concerned about the “possible bias” of an informant used to obtain the warrants.
- Lisa Page’s text message likely refers to Christopher Steele, the former British spy whose dossier was used to obtain the Carter Page FISAs.
A top Justice Department official had “continued concerns” about the “possible bias” of an FBI source used to obtain surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
That’s according to text messages former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and her boss, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, exchanged Oct. 12, 2016.
Nine days after the exchange, which Fox News first reported, the FBI successfully obtained the first of four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Carter Page. The bureau relied heavily on unverified information from a confidential informant, Christopher Steele, to obtain the warrants.
In the texts, Lisa Page suggested Stuart Evans, the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Intelligence, had concerns about the bias of a confidential human source (CHS) used for the FISA application, which she refers to as “the package.” (RELATED: FBI Had Only ‘Medium Confidence’ In Steele Dossier)
“[Office of Intelligence] now has a robust explanation re any possible bias of the chs in the package,” Lisa Page wrote McCabe.
“Don’t know what the holdup is now, other than Stu’s continued concerns. Strong operational need to have in place before Monday if at all possible, which means to ct [sic] tomorrow,” she continued.
As head of the Office of Intelligence, Evans was in charge of handling FISA applications for the Justice Department.
Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page arrives for her House Judiciary Committee deposition (REUTERS/Leah Millis)
Steele, a former MI6 officer, compiled a series of memos about then-candidate Donald Trump and his campaign associates on behalf of Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm that worked in 2016 for the Clinton campaign and DNC.
Republican lawmakers have accused the FBI of failing to provide all of the details about Steele and Fusion GPS to the FISA Court judges who approved the Carter Page warrants. Democrats’ funding for the dossier is not addressed in the FISA applications. Steele’s comments to Justice Department official Bruce Ohr that he was “desperate” to see Trump lose the election are also not included in the applications.
Republicans have also asserted the FBI had not verified Steele’s claims about Carter Page before using the information in the FISA applications.
Ohr told Congress in an Aug. 28, 2018, interview that he told the FBI at least a month before the FISA applications were submitted about Steele’s comments on Trump.
He said he informed the FBI because Steele’s bias could affect his credibility as an FBI informant.
“So there’s a possibility of bias, and that would affect the credibility of this confidential human source or the information you got from them?” Republican North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows asked Ohr.
“Yes,” replied Ohr, whose wife worked as a contractor for Fusion GPS.
“I provided information to the FBI when I thought Christopher Steele was, as I said, desperate that Trump not be elected. So, yes, of course, I provided that to the FBI,” Ohr added.
In her texts with McCabe, Lisa Page suggested the bureau would have to exert pressure on DOJ’s Evans to push through the Carter Page FISA application.
“I communicated you and boss’s green light to Stu earlier, and just sent an email to Stu asking where things stood. This might take a high-level push,” she wrote.
Carter Page, an energy consultant, has vehemently denied the allegations about him found in the Steele dossier. In the report, Steele alleges Page was the Trump campaign’s liaison to the Kremlin, that he came up with the idea to release DNC emails through WikiLeaks, and that he offered to relax sanctions against Russia in exchange for a brokerage stake in a multi-billion dollar deal involving Rosneft, the Russian oil giant.
Page, who has testified before special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury, has not been accused of any crimes.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Source: The Daily Caller
- In congressional testimony in 2018, former FBI general counsel James Baker said that the bureau was aware that the founder of Fusion GPS was shopping the infamous dossier around Washington, D.C., prior to the 2016 election.
- Baker also said that his friend, the liberal reporter David Corn, was “anxious” to provide him with the dossier, which was funded by the Clinton campaign and DNC.
- Baker’s testimony reveals new details about the full court press to put the unverified dossier onto the FBI’s radar.
James Baker, the former general counsel for the FBI, told Congress last October that the bureau was aware that the founder of Fusion GPS was spreading the Steele dossier “to a lot of different” people in government and the media in an effort to “elevate” the document’s profile.
Baker also told lawmakers in his Oct. 3, 2018 testimony that his longtime friend, the liberal reporter David Corn, was “anxious” to provide him with the dossier.
Baker’s testimony, which was first detailed by The Wall Street Journal and has been confirmed by The Daily Caller News Foundation, sheds new light on what the FBI knew about efforts before the election to spread the dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by the Clinton campaign and DNC.
Republicans have criticized the FBI for failing to disclose those efforts in applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser who is a major target of the Steele report. Some GOP lawmakers have asserted that the FBI should have been leery of Steele and Fusion’s opposition research of Trump. (RELATED: FBI’s Former Top Lawyer Acknowledged ‘Unusual Steps’ In Early Days Of Russia Probe)
Fusion GPS Co-Founder Glenn Simpson listens as his lawyer, Joshua Levy, speaks to members of the media following a meeting with members of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committee in the Rayburn Office Building on Capitol Hill on October 16, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Zach Gibson/Getty Images)
Page has vehemently denied Steele’s allegations that he served as the Trump team’s backchannel to the Kremlin during the 2016 campaign.
As has been previously reported, Simpson served as a PR man of sorts for the dossier, setting up meetings with reporters from numerous news outlets in an effort to get Steele’s reporting into the media bloodstream.
Both Steele and Simpson were also in contact with U.S. government officials, including the Justice Department’s Bruce Ohr and the State Department’s Jonathan Winer. Steele shared some of his findings with both officials, as well as his FBI handler, Michael Gaeta.
In his testimony, Baker said that the FBI was aware of Simpson’s full court press on the Steele report.
“My understanding at the time was that Simpson was going around Washington giving this out to a lot of different people and trying to elevate its profile,” said Baker.
He also said that the FBI was aware of “various copies of the dossier floating around Washington.”
Baker also addressed his interactions with Corn, the reporter at Mother Jones who published a report on Oct. 31, 2016 that quoted Steele.
“I know that David was anxious to get this into the hands of FBI. And being the person at the FBI that he knew the best, he wanted to give it to me,” Baker testified.
The FBI severed ties with Steele after Corn’s report on the grounds that the former spy improperly revealed that he was a confidential source for the bureau.
Corn’s contact with Baker has been previously reported. The journalist has said that nothing improper occurred and that he shared the dossier with Baker after the election in hopes of authenticating the document.
“I tried the FBI again after the election. On my own accord, I shared a copy of the dossier with the FBI in order to see if the bureau would authenticate the documents and now comment on them. Once again, it would not,” Corn told The Hill in July 2018.
Corn also said it was “inaccurate” to describe him as a source for the FBI.
“I was merely doing what a journalist does: trying to get more information on a story I was pursuing.”
The effort to spread the dossier far and wide appears to have picked up steam after Trump’s election win.
David Kramer, an associate of late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, said in a deposition in December 2017 that he provided the dossier to a dozen journalists, including one at BuzzFeed News, which published the report on Jan. 10, 2017. (RELATED: John McCain Associate Had Contact With A Dozen Reporters Regarding Dossier)
Steele asked him to meet with BuzzFeed reporter Ken Bensinger and CNN’s Carl Bernstein, according to Kramer.
Kramer also met with Corn in early December 2016. He said that Corn was inquiring about a meeting that McCain planned to have with then-FBI Director James Comey. Kramer said that he was unsure how Corn found out about the meeting.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Source: The Daily Caller
Twitter has admitted to shadowbanning a tweet by The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis in order to “keep people safe.”
Tweeting a passage last week from former FBI attorney Lisa Page’s Congressional testimony discussing the FBI’s rush to find connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, Davis pointed out the irony of Hillary Clinton’s campaign employing former UK spy Christopher Steele, a foreign national, “working with Russians to obtain damaging information about Donald Trump.”
Of note, the dossier Steele compiled which was subsequently used to obtain a warrant to spy on a Trump adviser (and later smear Trump) relied on a “senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure” and “a former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin,” according to Vanity Fair.
Following his March 12 tweet, Davis wondered if Twitter was experimenting with “shadow bans” – as he could only see his tweet if he was logged in, meaning nobody else could see it.
Is @Twitter experimenting with shadow bans by deleting tweets so others can’t see them, but keeping them visible to you while you’re logged in? I had to re-publish my original Lisa Page transcript tweet because it was disappeared to everyone but me. pic.twitter.com/RugtpK2MYn
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 12, 2019
Six days later, Twitter confirmed with Davis that they had deliberately shadow-banned his tweet in order to “keep people safe.”
Titter claimed in its e-mail to me that it “mistakenly remove[d]” a completely anodyne tweet about public congressional testimony, but didn’t explain why it left the tweet–and metrics showing no engagement–visible to me when logged in. Is conning users a bug, or a feature? pic.twitter.com/bqtc8Klcam
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 18, 2019
“Twitter gave me no notice or explanation when it shadowbanned one of my Tweets about Russian interference in our elections,” wrote Davis, adding “But what’s worse is how Twitter apparently gives its users the fraudulent impression that their tweets, which Twitter secretly bans, are still public.”
Twitter gave me no notice or explanation when it shadowbanned one of my Tweets about Russian interference in our elections. But what’s worse is how Twitter apparently gives its users the fraudulent impression that their tweets, which Twitter secretly bans, are still public.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 18, 2019
In short, Twitter did not want the public to consider the irony of Hillary Clinton’s campaign paying for a foreign national to collude with Russians against Donald Trump, while the FBI scrambled to prove the Trump campaign did.
Unreal.
In other censorship news, ZeroHedge is now banned in New Zealand and much of Australia following our reporting on the Christchurch terror attacks.
Sorry citizen, some facts are just too dangerous for your own good.
Source: InfoWars
Famously a loyal friend to the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. – long a target of President Donald Trump criticism in a storied political rivalry – while also being a notable defender of President Trump's policies, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., responded to the president's latest attacks this weekend.
"As to @SenJohnMcCain and his devotion to his country: He stepped forward to risk his life for his country, served honorably under difficult circumstances, and was one of the most consequential senators in the history of the body. (1/2)," Sen. Graham tweeted Sunday.
"Nothing about his service will ever be changed or diminished. (2/2)," he concluded.
Sen. Graham's tweets come amid continued attacks from President Trump, rebuking the late Sen. McCain for his pushing the infamous Christopher Steele dossier in election campaign meddling in 2016 and his casting the deciding vote against a skinny repeal and replacement of Obamacare.
As much as Sen. McCain was an adversary of President Trump before and after his election, Sen. Graham has remained loyal to both, including rejecting the Senate's passing of a resolution to unravel the president's national emergency on the southern border.
"Totally support President @realDonaldTrump's VETO," Sen. Graham tweeted Friday. "President Trump is right to declare an emergency on our southern border and he's right on the law allowing him to reallocate funds to secure our southern border. #BuildtheWall."
Graham's seemingly polar defenses for President Trump and Sen. McCain tend to be rooted in common sense – or uncommon sense – similar to that he tweeted in the follow up to the above.
"Question: How can President Trump be accused of 'going around Congress' using a statute . . . passed by Congress?" Sen. Graham also tweeted Friday.
Source: NewsMax Politics
Former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the salacious dossier about President Donald Trump, admitted in a deposition that he used unverified sources for some of the information contained in the document.
CNN reported on a deposition Steele gave last summer, in which he said he used material gathered from CNN iReport stories. CNN iReport was a citizen journalist arm of the news network that relied on users submitting stories and multimedia content.
Steele admitted to using information he found via internet searches to compile information about Russian company Webzilla, its parent company XBT, and XBT CEO Aleksej Gubarev. The Steele dossier, which was first published by BuzzFeed in January 2017, claimed that Webzilla was working with the Russian government to help conduct cyber operations and interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Steele said during the deposition that he believed the content he read on CNN iReport had "some kind of CNN status. Albeit that it may be an independent person posting on the site."
When asked whether he knew the content on the site had no connection to CNN reporters, Steele replied, "I do not."
Reaction to Steele's admission has been swift. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted, "The author of the fake Russia dossier — paid for by Hillary and the DNC and used to launch the witch hunt against President @realDonaldTrump — now admits he relied on claims posted by a random person on a CNN site 'not edited, fact-checked or screened.'"
Trump himself weighed in as well, tweeting, "Report: Christopher Steele backed up his Democrat & Crooked Hillary paid for Fake & Unverified Dossier with information he got from “send in watchers” of low ratings CNN. This is the info that got us the Witch Hunt!"
Source: NewsMax Politics
The infamous dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele was apparently right — and wrong — about Russian attempts to hack the Democratic Party leadership in 2016, The New York Times reported.
In a report unsealed in Miami on Thursday, a former FBI cyber expert found evidence suggesting Russian agents used cut-rate Internet service providers operated by entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev to start a hacking operation during the 2016 presidential campaign, the Times reported.
But a big difference between the report and the Steele dossier, the Times noted, is the report did not directly link Gubarev or his executives to the 2016 hacking, as was asserted in the Steele dossier.
"I have no evidence of them actually sitting behind a keyboard," the report's author and former FBI agent Anthony Ferrante noted in a deposition, the Times reported.
Gubarev has insisted neither he nor his businesses knowingly took part in the Russian hacking, and filed a defamation lawsuit against BuzzFeed, the first news organization to publish the Steele dossier when it became public in January 2017.
The report unsealed Thursday was commissioned by BuzzFeed to fend off Gubarev's suit, the Times reported. The lawsuit was dismissed in December when a court found BuzzFeed's decision to publish was legally protected.
Evan Fray-Witzer, a lawyer for Gubarev, told the Times hackers using a client's servers is hardly unique for a web-hosting company, or any tech company.
"You could say the same thing about Google's infrastructure and Amazon's infrastructure — and no one is accusing them of hacking anyone just because hackers used their infrastructure," he told the Times.
Source: NewsMax America
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Top FBI official Andrew McCabe did not just investigate President Trump. As he notes in a little-publicized part of his new book, McCabe even investigated his department boss — then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions — after Senate Democrats asked McCabe to look into allegations Sessions perjured himself during his confirmation hearings when he denied meeting with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign.
Sessions had, in fact, met with the Russian ambassador. He later corrected the record and explained he had forgotten speaking with the official and was not trying to mislead Congress.
Ordering the Sessions probe was “another unprecedented, partisan action that has been forgotten,” said former federal prosecutor Solomon L. Wisenberg, a partner at Nelson Mullins LLP in Washington.
McCabe dished a healthy portion of scorn on Sessions in his book, “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump.” He accused him of having “trouble focusing” and having to overcome a “huge learning curve for an attorney general.” He claimed he wasn’t even reading briefing materials on national security threats. McCabe also accused Sessions of being Islamophobic and making racist comments in meetings. He even claimed that the attorney general thought federal agents who were taken hostage overseas “had it coming” and shouldn’t be rescued.
Main Story: Days After Comey Firing, McCabe’s FBI Re-Engaged Dossier Spy
A former senior Justice Department aide to Sessions, who was in high-level meetings with McCabe and the former attorney general, strongly disputed McCabe’s allegations, calling them “fiction.”
“They’re beyond absurd and outright false. Like just about everything else he says,” the official told RealClearInvestigations. “He was fired, after all, for lying. To the FBI.”
Andrew McCabe omits from his book his role obtaining a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, above. Top photo: McCabe, right, also investigated his department boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, center, in addition to the President.
AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File
Top photo: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Sessions fired McCabe last March on the recommendation of the FBI’s disciplinary office after the Justice Department’s inspector general found that McCabe had repeatedly lied under oath to investigators about leaking information to the press about the ongoing Clinton Foundation case. The department watchdog referred evidence of McCabe’s false statements to U.S. attorneys for criminal prosecution. A grand jury has been hearing the case.
In his 274-page book, McCabe does not mention ex-British spy Christopher Steele or his lurid and unverified Trump-Russia dossier, which was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign, and McCabe was not asked about either of them in any of his interviews with mostly friendly media outlets. He also left out his role in obtaining a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and, by extension, the Trump campaign.
It is still not clear if McCabe’s investigations of President Trump and his associates were completely absorbed by the special counsel’s investigation, or if the FBI under his leadership continued to investigate the president on its own.
While it’s widely assumed that the FBI stopped its entire Trump-related Russia investigation once Mueller was appointed in May 2017, McCabe and deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein signed off on the third renewal of the FISA warrant on Page two months later.
And in little-noticed June 2017 testimony, McCabe told the Senate Intelligence Committee that “the FBI continues to investigate … the Russia investigation.”
Explained McCabe: “[T]he FBI maintains a much broader responsibility to continue investigating issues relative to potential Russian counterintelligence activity and threats posed to us from Russian adversaries.”
There are laws against groundlessly subjecting individuals to criminal investigation. Former prosecutors say what FBI brass did to the president and his advisers could potentially be a violation of a federal statute known as “deprivation of rights under the color of law.” Other statutes proscribing fraud and false statements also come into play.
Moreover, Justice Department as well as FBI regulations strictly prohibit inaccurate or unverified information in FISA warrant applications, such as the Steele dossier’s rumors the FBI relied on to obtain authorization to spy on Page. It can also be a felony to conceal relevant or exculpatory information and mislead the FISA court.
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