Civil war within Demon-rats party as "Russia-gate" morphs into Obola-gate

Apollonian

Guest Columnist
As Russiagate Morphs Into Obamagate, The Democrat Party Enters Civil War

May 16, 2020 by IWB

Link: https://www.investmentwatchblog.com...bamagate-the-democrat-party-enters-civil-war/

[see vids at site link, above]]

BY JOHN RUBINO

Forget about Fox News and MSNBC. The really interesting stuff is happening outside the echo chambers, as far-left journalists declare war on the corporatist wing of the Democrat party.

Among their beefs: The obsessive focus of the past three years on Russiagate and then Ukrainegate drained all the progressive energy that would otherwise have gone towards opposing Trump on policy. And now that those wrong turns have been proven to be not just false today but known to have been false before the investigations even started, Trump has an energized base and copious material for attack ads and high-profile investigations heading into his re-election campaign.

The next two videos feature legitimate journalists who tower over anyone now on MSNBC, and should enrage everyone, right, left or center, who values the rule of law.

It’s hard to imagine the progressive and corporatist wings of the Democrat party coexisting after the next election, regardless of who wins. So get ready for a divorce that produces an American Socialist Party and a centrist party populated by the Clintons, Bidens and Obamas.
 
FARRELL: Obamagate Indictments Are Overdue

Link: https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/22/farrell-obamagate-indictments-are-overdue/

Chris Farrell
Judicial Watch
July 22, 2020
10:22 AM ET

One is supposed to believe that Attorney General William Barr is in charge of the Department of Justice and that on May 14, 2019, he appointed John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to conduct the inquiry to examine the origins of the “Trump/Russia investigation” and determine if intelligence collection involving the Trump campaign was “lawful and appropriate” (Obamagate).

To date, there is nothing to show from the Barr/Durham effort.

Judicial Watch has uncovered and published reams of material through litigation and use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). That work has been a years-long effort – often fighting the Trump/Barr Justice Department to release records the American public is owed by statute. Members of Congress have released documents and reports. Most recently, Senator Lindsey Graham has finally produced something for the public’s consumption after years of talking about accountability and holding hearings. Acting ODNI Richard Grenell released dozens of Russia probe records. Again – these releases are practically “historical” in nature. They come years after the subject events. That is quite unlike the lightening-fast Intelligence Community Inspector General (phony) complaint over Ukraine that saw President Trump impeached by the House of Representatives in roughly two months. It seems like there are differing standards and timelines for “justice” in official Washington, DC.

Seasoned investigators and attorneys can take the publicly available records and assemble sufficient facts, documentation and evidence to meet the legal threshold (“probable cause”) for successfully presenting a bill of indictment to a grand jury. Like most discretionary decisions and exercises of governmental power, it really comes down to political will. Do Barr and/or Durham have the stomach to seek the indictment of people like James Comey, John Brennan, Andy McCabe and (many) others?

Indictments have a way of getting a target’s attention. They focus the mind. Perhaps the indictment of certain key persons would result in a sudden and compelling desire for them to be forthright and cooperative with prosecutors? Various former government officials may wish to explain what really happened and who really knew what and when. Lesser characters on the DC stage may seek greater billing or not be happy with their role as a patsy. No doubt others would resort to having “no specific recollection at this time.” That’s OK. Prosecutors can still get to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, even with faulty memories.

So-called “journalists” may wish to return to their lost arts and pursue stories previously dropped down the Memory Hole. There might just be a rush to set the record straight and expel the miasma of deception, disinformation, and distraction.

Ask yourself why AG Barr fights Judicial Watch in virtually every FOIA lawsuit seeking records over the Obamagate coup plot. Why does he permit the FBI to claim in court that their agents’ text messages on their government phones are not government records? That’s insultingly preposterous – but it is the Justice Department’s position. Your tax dollars in action.

One thing is for certain: Should Barr/Durham not bring indictments and go to trial against the officials who organized the coup against President Trump, then the United States will become a “failed state.” The compromised justice system would be held in contempt by the people it was designed to protect.

Chris Farrell is director of investigations and research at Judicial Watch, a nonprofit government watchdog. He was previously a military intelligence officer.
 
Exclusive: Coup Plotters Considered Never Allowing Trump To Be Inaugurated

by Charles "Sam" Faddis October 11, 2020

Link: https://andmagazine.com/talk/2020/1...dered-never-allowing-trump-to-be-inaugurated/

An exclusive report based on a senior Department of Defense official’s account – the coup plotters considered never transferring power to the President-elect of the United States of America.

Recent revelations, including the declassification of key documents, have effectively ended any speculation about what really transpired in 2016 and 2017 in regard to Donald Trump and spurious allegations of Russian collusion. The story was a fabrication. None of it was ever true. There really was a conspiracy, and we really did witness the first attempted coup in American history.

Information uncovered within the last few days by AND Magazine adds significantly to our understanding of the scope of the conspiracy and suggests strongly that subsequent to the election of Donald Trump there was serious consideration given to simply not transferring power to the President-Elect.

According to a former senior Department of Defense official interviewed by AND Magazine, in the wake of Donald Trump’s “surprise” victory in November 2016, a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was rushed through pushing the false Russian collusion narrative and asserting as the judgment of the Intelligence Community as a whole that the Russians had not only interfered in the election but had done so in order to assist Donald Trump and help him become President. We have known for some time that this NIE was drafted, what we now know is considerably more about the highly unusual way in which it was drafted.

An NIE is supposed to represent the consensus of the Intelligence Community (IC). It is created in a lengthy collaborative process involving working-level analysts and experts. Only when the final version is effectively agreed upon and hammered out, does the document make is way to agency heads for final approval.

Such was not the case with this NIE. According to the senior official interviewed, this NIE was written by CIA Director Brennan, FBI Director Comey, and DNI Clapper. All work on the NIE was done at the Top Secret level with only a handful of individuals having access to what was written. Objections to the conclusions reached were dismissed summarily on the basis that Mr. Brennan, Mr. Comey, and Mr. Clapper had personally written the NIE findings and recommendations and would handle all inter-agency input themselves.

In short, the conclusions had been preordained. There was no room for discussion.

Circa November 10, 2016, the senior official speaking to AND Magazine received a phone call in his office at the Pentagon on a secure phone. The call was from the Department of Defense Under-Secretary’s office that coordinated attendance and participation in inter-agency meetings at the White House. The call concerned planning for a short fuse, inter-agency meeting at the White House. It was explained that a new committee was being formed to finalize and establish the timeline and storyline connecting Russia with the election of President Trump. The senior official speaking to AND Magazine had been named to be part of this new committee.

During this phone call, it was explained to AND’s source that one of the committee’s taskings was to develop a plan to delay and/or reschedule the inauguration. While the official to whom the call was made ultimately deliberately avoided attending committee meetings, he did see subsequent Top Secret email traffic that showed significant inter-agency discussion of the possibility of not proceeding as scheduled with the transfer of power.

At some point, this idea appears to have been dropped in favor of proceeding with the strategy of creating an impeachment narrative, but for months apparently there was significant discussion of the possibility of simply not handing over the Presidency to Donald Trump.

This same committee likely prepared the read ahead for the infamous January 5, 2017 meeting in the White House, which formally endorsed the impeachment narrative. Present at that meeting were President Obama, Vice-President Biden, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, CIA Director Brennan, DNI Clapper, FBI Director Comey, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

During this timeframe AND’s source was also directly involved with the so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing agreement involving NSA, its British counterpart GCHQ, and other allied nations. The source saw directly that there was a significant spike in “end-around” intel sharing between GCHQ and NSA during this time period. The term “end-around” is a reference to the practice, officially not sanctioned, of using foreign intelligence services to collect intelligence on American targets and thereby evade the legal restrictions on doing so that control NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. In many cases, this was done by simply having British GCHQ personnel print hard copies of reports and then simply “leave them” on a tabletop in a common NSA/GCHQ work environment where they would be “discovered” by NSA personnel.

The increase in the amount of this “end-around” reporting coincided precisely with the timeframe in which we now know law enforcement and intelligence agencies focused their attention on members of the Trump campaign. Given that fact, it is at a minimum highly suspicious and more than possible that this mechanism was being employed to help with what we now know to be politically motivated targeting by individuals associated with Donald Trump, his campaign, and his incoming administration.

For at least three years we were fed the lie that Donald Trump was in bed with the Kremlin and deserved to be removed from office on that basis. His election was illegitimate. He was a real-life “Manchurian Candidate.”

When that was exposed as a lie, the backers of the original narrative shifted gears. The whole matter should probably just be dropped. To the extent there was any “wrongdoing” it concerned the misconduct of a handful of “overzealous” mid-level personnel. “Change some regulations. Tighten some procedures. Move on.”

All of that is a lie too. Every day we see additional evidence that makes that crystal clear. When we have reached the point where an outgoing President and his subordinates are seriously planning not to hand over power to the President-Elect, we are standing on the precipice. This is no longer about partisan politics. This is about the very real possibility of losing our democracy.

The Romans went for centuries living in a democratic system based on the rule of law. They woke up one day to discover that they lived in an empire and that powerful forces in the capital city made the call regarding who their Emperor was. We may be far closer to that day than we realize.
 
Will They Really Get Away With It?

Link: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/will-they-really-get-away-it

by Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 - 23:45
Authored by Chris Farrell via The Gatestone Institute,

Obama administration officials committed crimes against the constitution. They engaged in a seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States.

Will they really get away with it?

Forty government officials were indicted or jailed as a result of Watergate. White House staffers H.R. Haldeman and John Erlichman went to jail. White House counsel John Dean went to jail. Attorney General John Mitchell went to jail. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, Charles Colson and James McCord – all jailed. Nixon Press Secretary Ronald L. Ziegler called Watergate a "third-rate burglary." It toppled a president.

"Obamagate," or the "Russia Hoax" is a political and criminal scandal exponentially more serious and damaging to the constitution. Like the Richter Scale measurements of earthquakes, Obamagate can be measured in "orders of magnitude" greater seriousness than the third-rate burglary. Obamagate is the First American Coup. Not from the militaristic right, as fantasized by liberal Hollywood. Oh, no – from the "fundamental transformation" artists of the Bolshevik Left.

Writing in the New York Post on October 24, 2020, columnist Michael Goodwin listed his reasons for voting for Donald Trump, again. His reasoning included:

"The other side must not be rewarded for its efforts to sabotage and remove a duly-elected president.

"Russia, Russia, Russia was a scam that ruined lives and put a cloud over the White House for nearly three years. The sequel was partisan impeachment, a clumsy coup attempt orchestrated by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Trump haters in Congress, the deep state, and the media.

"The press corps' bias of 2016 has morphed into full-blown partisanship on a daily basis at print, digital and broadcast outlets. Facebook, Twitter and other platforms openly use their power to censor pro-Trump news and opinion while promoting anything that makes the president look bad.

"It's not the algorithms; it's the people behind them.

"Their decision to block The Post's groundbreaking reports on Hunter Biden's business deals and Joe Biden's involvement should scare anyone who treasures the First Amendment. To censors, Orwell's nightmare is their dream.

"All fairness has been abandoned in a frenzy to destroy Trump and everything he represents. This culture war extends backward, too."

This is all very important stuff. It is still defective in one key area: it ignores (largely) the crime. The details of the criminal seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States.

How are we still missing this?

The (awesome and formidable) law enforcement and intelligence powers of the United States were perversely twisted and abused to advance a partisan political agenda by the sitting president (Barack Obama); his paid political operatives; and officers, agents and employees of the United States Government against Candidate Trump, President-elect Trump and President Trump.

There are handy references to keep track of the cast of characters involved in the coup plot. The Epoch Times has a resource, as does the Capital Research Center. One hopes John Durham has a reference, file or graphic that is something close to those analytical pieces. He seems to need some sort of help, since he apparently is unable to move past the anemic, pathetic Clinesmith indictment.

Seasoned investigators and attorneys can take the publicly available records and assemble sufficient facts, documentation and evidence to meet the legal threshold ("probable cause") for successfully presenting a bill of indictment to a grand jury.

Why is there reluctance today? How is it that Attorney General William Barr and John Durham are consumed with prosecutorial ennui when the crimes and cover-ups are so painfully obvious? One is left to conclude that it really all comes down to political will. Do Barr and/or Durham have the stomach to seek the indictment of people like James Comey, John Brennan, Andy McCabe and (many) others?

Granted, Lindsey Graham is certainly no Sam Ervin; and Richard Burr abdicated the running of the Senate Intelligence Committee to Mark Warner years ago – but AG Barr and Prosecutor Durham do not need committees of Congress for "cover" to pursue the criminality of the Obama administration and their operatives in the Department of Justice, FBI, CIA and State Department.

Just remember: 40 jailed for Watergate.
 
Obama: “White Resistance” Prevented Reparation Payments to Blacks

Link: http://www.hideoutnow.com/2021/02/obama-white-resistance-prevented.html

Back in 2008 Barack Obama was against reparations when he was running for president.

Obama was against a lot of things back then, like gay marriage, that would disqualify him from the Democrat party today. But he said what he thought the American people wanted to hear.

This week Obama told Bruce Springstein that reparations failed during his presidency because of “white resistance and resentment.”

We all know Democrats will be pushing reparations to any black American with links to slavery or not in the next four years.

Obama’s ancestors were slave owners.

Newsmax reported:

Former President Barack Obama says that “the politics of White resistance and resentment” kept him from pushing for financial reparations for Black Americans while he was in office.

In the second episode of his podcast with Bruce Springsteen, “Renegades: Born in the USA,” released on Monday, Obama said that he thinks reparations are “justified,” despite having opposed it during the 2008 election.

Obama said, “there’s not much question that the wealth … the power of this country was built in significant part — not exclusively, maybe not even the majority of it, but a large portion of it — was built on the backs of slaves.”

He added that a proposal for reparations failed during his presidency because of “the politics of White resistance and resentment.”
 
Russiagate disclosures incriminate National Security Advisor

Russiagate disclosures incriminate National Security Advisor​

Voltaire Network | 17 February 2022

Link: https://www.voltairenet.org/article215724.html


_0-46-180ae.jpg


Photo: National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in conversation with NATO Secretary General. The two men share the same hatred of Donald Trump and Russia.

Special Prosecutor John Durham’s investigation into the false information that triggered an impeachment proceeding against US President Donald Trump on the basis of his alleged complicity with Russia – branded Russiagate – is opening up new leads. ‎

As it turns out, that information originated from Rodney Joffe, an expert in computer security and winner of an FBI cybersecurity award. He was entrusted with internet security at the White House despite having been convicted of serious fraud, which should have been enough to preclude him from any government position.

In his job, it was easy for this con man to cull all the traffic data not only from the White House but also from Trump Tower and Donald Trump’s apartment located in a separate building. He then exploited the data to link Donald Trump to the Russian authorities.

Joffe apparently carried out the task in hopes of landing an important assignment, which had been promised to him had Hillary Clinton won the 2016 presidential election.

These fraudulent maneuvers - which constituted a threat to national security and were steeped in corruption - were allegedly orchestrated by Hillary Clinton’s then foreign policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, who is currently Joe Biden’s national security adviser and the main architect in fomenting a war against Russia in Ukraine.
 

Biden And Obama Must Answer For Russiagate​

By RealClearWire
March 15, 2022 at 12:57pm

Link: https://thepoliticalinsider.com/bid...1d09840caddec138a6473c7b9fa19141&source=TPICI

By J. Peder Zane for RealClearPolitics

What did Barack Obama and Joe Biden know about the Russiagate collusion hoax their fellow Democrats ginned up to kneecap Donald Trump – and when did they know it? How much did their chicanery contribute to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade the Ukraine?

Those questions are coming into sharp relief following a definitive report by my RealClearInvestigations colleague Paul Sperry last week that places the worst political scandal in our nation’s history and Putin’s brutal war directly inside the White House.

Drawing on a wide range of documents, many never previously reported, Sperry details how the Obama administration worked closely with the Clinton campaign and a foreign government – Ukraine – in a “sweeping and systematic effort” to interfere in the 2016 election. It turns out Democrats were guilty of every false charge they lodged against Trump.

RELATED: Liberal Bill Maher Slams Russiagate Narrative: ‘Why Didn’t Putin Invade When Trump Was In Office?’

Their maneuverings began in 2014 when Obama officials supported the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych because he was too close to Putin. Biden, then the vice president, was the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine. Sperry reports that leaked transcripts of conversations between two high-level officials in both the Obama and Biden administrations – Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan – reveal that Biden gave his blessing to the formation of a new coalition government.

Sperry writes that Nuland even “traveled to Kiev and helped organize street demonstrations against Yanukovych, even handing out sandwiches to protesters.”

A few months after the anti-Putin government took power next door to Russia, Putin marched into Crimea. Eight years later, he invaded Ukraine.

Top Obama administration officials continued to influence Ukraine’s internal affairs. Biden, for example, would later boast of threatening to withhold aid until the government fired its chief anti-corruption prosecutor – who, among other matters, was investigating the gas company Burisma that was paying his son, Hunter Biden, $83,333 a month for a largely ceremonial position for which he had no qualifications other than his family name. [In 2019, House Democrats would impeach Trump for temporarily withholding aid to Ukraine to pressure it to investigate the Biden family’s dealings there.]

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During its final two years, the Obama administration’s dealing with Ukraine became increasingly focused on the 2016 election. Sperry reports that Nuland received some 120 reports on Ukraine from an outside contractor – Christopher Steele.

A former British intelligence officer, Steele would soon start working for the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which was paid by the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump. Fusion’s crown jewel was the so-called Steele dossier, a series of salacious and false memos allegedly cobbled together by Steele that formed the basis of the Trump/Russia collusion theory.

Steele and his Fusion colleagues weren’t the only political operatives working behind the scenes in the Obama administration. In April 2015, the Democratic National Committee hired a Ukrainian-American activist named Alexandra Chalupa as a $5,000-a-month consultant.

Chalupa was convinced that Trump’s Achilles heel was Paul Manafort, a lobbyist who had done work for the party led by Viktor Yanukovych. Her effort to attack Trump by exposing Manafort’s alleged Russian ties was the seed of the collusion hoax. Sperry reports that the DNC operative visited the White House at least 27 times during 2015 and 2016.

Among the government officials she worked closely with was Eric Ciaramella, the CIA detailee to the White House who would later be the “whistleblower” regarding Trump’s 2019 call with the Ukrainian president that led to his first impeachment.

RELATED: Tulsi Gabbard Demands Mitt Romney Resign After He Accuses Her Of ‘Treason’

At the same time, the Obama administration was politicizing its foreign policy for domestic goals. In one of the more damning passages in his article, Sperry reports:

The Obama administration’s enforcement agencies leaned on their Ukrainian counterparts to investigate Manafort, shifting resources from an investigation of a corrupt Ukrainian energy oligarch who paid Biden’s son hundreds of thousands of dollars through his gas company, Burisma.
“Obama’s NSC hosted Ukrainian officials and told them to stop investigating Hunter Biden and start investigating Paul Manafort,” said a former senior NSC official who has seen notes and emails generated from the meetings and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

As it became increasingly clear that Trump would be the GOP’s 2016 nominee, Chalupa and the administration ratcheted up the pressure on Ukrainian officials to denounce Clinton’s rival in order to sanitize their dirty tricks. [Fusion GPS did the same with Steele, having him present himself as an independent former British intelligence agent – while hiding his ties to Clinton – so that his smears would seem apolitical.]

Democrats collaborated with several Ukrainian lawmakers who supported them. This is not surprising because, Sperry reports, while Ukraine might have been a relatively small and poor nation, one of its oligarchs contributed more money to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was secretary of state than any other group of foreign nationals, including the Saudis.

On March 30, 2016 Chalupa wrote to her contact at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington requesting that they express their grave concerns about Trump and Manafort. “Within minutes of sending the email,” Sperry reports, “Chalupa wrote the DNC’s communications director Luis Miranda, ‘The ambassador has the messaging.’ Then she reached out to a friend in Congress, Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, about holding hearings to paint Manafort as a pro-Kremlin villain.”

Sperry reports that these efforts paid dividends in August 2016, when Manafort was forced to resign as Trump’s campaign manager because of his previous work in the Ukraine. [Manafort would later be sent to prison on various tax and other charges, none of which involved him doing Russia’s bidding.]

After Trump’s election that November, a Ukrainian lawmaker who had worked with Fusion GPS in the effort to damage the Republican told the Financial Times that his nation believed “a Trump presidency would change the pro-Ukrainian agenda in American foreign policy.” He said that most of Ukraine’s politicians were “on Hillary Clinton’s side.”

RELATED: Former AG Bill Barr Tells CNN He Would Help Defeat Trump In 2024

That, of course, was not the end of the story. Democrats, their allies in the FBI, CIA, and other branches of the government, as well as Never-Trump Republicans – all with the active collaboration of the media – would continue to peddle the Russiagate hoax to damage the commander in chief. On Jan. 5, 2017, just days before they left office, President Obama, Vice President Biden, and others met with then-FBI Director James Comey in the Oval Office.

The next day, Comey briefed President-elect Trump about the bogus Steele dossier. CNN then used that meeting as a pretext for trumpeting the false claims of collusion, sparking a media feeding frenzy that led to the appointment of Robert Mueller as a special counsel to investigate the charges bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign.

Sperry’s reporting strongly suggests that Obama and Biden were involved in this scandal well before then. The hydra-headed smear campaign against Trump deployed the powers of the executive branch to take down a political rival.

It is long past time for the media to begin the process of restoring its integrity. It could start by correcting the record – and then pressing Barack Obama and Joe Biden to explain why they accused Donald Trump of doing precisely what they did so effectively, which was involve a foreign nation in a U.S. presidential election.
 
Judge rules e-mails btwn hitlery and shyster (Sussman, who lied to feds) might be admissible in ct., which judge will assess in private before admittance

 

FBI Chief Comey Misled Congress’s 'Gang of 8' Over Russiagate, Lisa Page Memo Reveals​

Link: https://www.realclearinvestigations...russiagate_lisa_page_memo_reveals_836434.html

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Above, Lisa Page, as an FBI lawyer in 2017, wrote "talking points" for Director James Comey ahead of a briefing to Congress -- a memo now exposed for its deceptions. Her lawyer at right, Amy Jeffress, is the wife of the judge for the trial of recently acquitted ex-Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann.

By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations
June 9, 2022​

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

James Comey testifies before Congress in March 2017 after his misleading "Gang of Eight" private briefing for top lawmakers.
AP
The FBI deceived the House, Senate and the Justice Department about the substance and strength of evidence undergirding its counterintelligence investigation of President Trump, according to a recently declassified document and other material.

A seven-page internal FBI memo dated March 8, 2017, shows that "talking points" prepared for then-FBI Director James Comey for his meeting the next day with the congressional leadership were riddled with half-truths, outright falsehoods, and critical omissions. Both the Senate and the House opened investigations and held hearings based in part on the misrepresentations made in those FBI briefings, one of which was held in the Senate that morning and the other in the House later that afternoon. RealClearInvestigations reached out to every member of the leadership, sometimes known as the "Gang of Eight." Some declined to comment, while others did not respond to queries.
The talking points were prepared by Lisa Page, a senior FBI lawyer who later resigned from the bureau amid accusations of anti-Trump bias, and were used by Comey in his meeting with Hill leaders. They described reports the FBI received in 2016 from "a former FBI CHS," or confidential human source, about former Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort and Carter Page (no relation to Lisa Page) allegedly conspiring with the Kremlin to hack the election.

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File

Paul Manafort was falsely alleged to have "managed" Trump-Russia collusion ...
AP
Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP

... with junior Trump aide Carter Page as an intermediary.
AP
Quoting from the reports, Comey told congressional leaders that the unidentified informant told the FBI that Manafort "initially 'managed' the relationship between Russian government officials and the Trump campaign, using Carter Page as an intermediary." He also told them that "Page was reported to have had 'secret meetings' in early July 2016 with a named individual in Russia's presidential administration during which they discussed Russia's release of damaging information on Hillary Clinton in exchange for alterations to the GOP platform regarding U.S. policy towards Ukraine."
But previous FBI interviews with Carter Page and other key sources indicated that none of that was true – and the FBI knew it at the time of the congressional briefings.
The Lisa Page memo anticipated concerns about the quality of information Comey was relaying to Congress and suggested he preempt any concerns with another untruth. The memo advised Comey to tell lawmakers that "some" of the reporting "has been corroborated," and to point out that the informant's "reporting in this matter is derived primarily from a Russian-based source," which made it sound more credible.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Igor Danchenko: American-based, not Russian-based.
AP
(Aaron Chown/PA FILE via AP)

Christopher Steele: Dubious hearsay from Danchenko's drinking budies and an old girlfriend became part of the dossier.
AP
By this point, however, the FBI knew that the main source feeding unsubstantiated rumors to the informant, Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign to dig up dirt on Trump, was American-based.
The FBI first interviewed that source – a Russian national named Igor Danchenko who was living in the U.S. and had worked at the Brookings Institution – in January 2017. Danchenko had told them that the anti-Trump dirt he funneled to Steele was dubious hearsay passed along over drinks with his high school buddies and an old girlfriend named Olga Galkina, who had made up the accusations about Carter Page and Manafort that the FBI relayed to Congress.
Danchenko is now under criminal indictment in Special Counsel John Durham's ongoing investigation for lying about the sourcing for his information. The source to whom he attributed spurious charges against Trump – including his being compromised by a sex tape held by the Kremlin – was a fabrication, according to the indictment. He never spoke with the person as he claimed. Another source turned out to be a longtime Hillary Clinton campaign adviser.

The FBI did not tell the Gang of Eight that Danchenko was working for Steele and did not really have any sources inside the Kremlin, according to the script prepared for Comey, which was recently declassified as part of pre-trial discovery in Special Counsel John Durham's probe. The FBI also concealed Steele's identity and the fact he was working for the Clinton campaign.
Department of Justice

From FBI lawyer Lisa Page's misleading memo prepping Director Comey to brief Congress.
Department of Justice

'Crowning' Deception​

Adding to the deception, Comey referred to the unnamed informant by the codename "CROWN," making it appear as if Steele's dossier was a product of British intelligence, although Steele had not worked for the British government for several years and was reporting entirely in a private capacity. According to the talking-points memo, Comey also withheld from Congress the fact that Steele had been fired by the FBI for leaking information to the media. Instead of sharing that critical information about his reliability and credibility – to say nothing of his political and financial motivations – Comey hid the truth about his star informant from the nation's top lawmakers.

"If asked about CROWN/Steele" during the briefing, the memo anticipated, Comey was to tell lawmakers only that "CROWN, a former FBI CHS, is a former friendly foreign intelligence service employee who reported for about three years, and some of whose reporting has been corroborated."

Meanwhile, FBI headquarters officials were duping the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court in similar fashion in order to continue to obtain warrants to spy on Carter Page. They led judges on the secret surveillance court to believe Danchenko was "Russian-based" – and therefore presumably more credible.
Patrick Henry College

Brian Auten: Let a false claim influence spy warrants.
Patrick Henry College
YouTube/Fox News

Kevin Clinesmith: Falsified evidence for spy warrants.
YouTube/Fox News
The official in charge of vetting the Steele dossier at the time – and interviewing him and his primary source Danchenko to corroborate their allegations – was FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten. By March 2017, Auten knew the "Russian-based" claim was untrue, and yet he let case agents slip it into two FISA renewal requests targeting Page.

Auten seemed to become concerned about the falsehood only when the Senate Judiciary Committee asked to see the Page spy warrants. He then reviewed the FISA applications in advance of Comey briefing the panel on March 15 and raised concerns with then-FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who was assisting with redactions to the documents before sharing them with Congress. Auten wondered in text messages whether a correction should be reported to the court. But no amendment was ever made.

Years later, in a closed-door 2020 hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee investigators finally caught up with Auten and asked him about it.

"The FISA applications all say that he's Russian-based," then-chief Senate Judiciary Committee investigative counsel Zach Somers pressed Auten. "Do you think that should have been corrected with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court?"

Auten said he raised the issue with Clinesmith, who was convicted last year by Durham on charges related to falsifying evidence in the FISA application process. "And what response did you get back?" Somers asked. "I did not get a response back," Auten replied.

Fraud and More Fraud​

And so the "Russian-based" fraud lived on through the FISA renewals, which also swore to the court that Danchenko was "truthful and cooperative." (Attempts to reach Auten for comment were unsuccessful. The FBI declined comment.)

The five-year statute of limitations for criminal liability related to the invalid FISA applications expires at the end of this month. It has already expired regarding false statement offenses that may have been committed during the March 2017 Gang of Eight briefings.
However, legal experts say Durham could bypass the statute by filing conspiracy charges. Some former FBI attorneys and prosecutors believe the special counsel is building a "conspiracy to defraud the government" case against former FBI officials and others.

Around the same time, the FBI similarly misled high-ranking officials at the Justice Department.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Peter Strzok: He also shaded the facts.
AP
AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File

Andrew McCabe: Suggested Steele dirt came from the British government.
AP
In a March 6, 2017 briefing on the Russiagate probe to acting Attorney General Dana Boente, Comey's deputy Andrew McCabe and counterintelligence official Peter Strzok suggested that Steele's material came from the British government rather than the Clinton campaign by referring to it as "CROWN source reporting," according to handwritten notes taken during the meeting.
Strzok falsely suggested to Boente that the probable cause for his opening the Russiagate investigation, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, included Trump asking Russia during a July 2016 public campaign appearance to find Clinton's 30,000 missing State Department emails she had deleted from a private server. The electronic communication Strzok personally wrote to officially open the investigation made no mention of this incident. What's more, Trump made the sarcastic remark after the date when Strzok stated the FBI determined probable cause.

Strzok, who did not respond to requests for comment, spread the same false claim in his book. He recently admitted in a Georgetown University forum he got that detail wrong, while blaming a faulty memory. Strzok was fired by Special Counsel Robert Mueller after the Justice inspector general alerted Mueller to virulently anti-Trump texts he had exchanged with Lisa Page, with whom he was having an illicit affair.

During the high-level briefing, Strzok and McCabe shaded other facts to make it seem as if the case against Trump and his advisers were stronger than it was in order to convince the attorney general they had justifiable cause to continue their "sensitive" political investigations. For instance, they told Boente that the secret FISA monitoring of Page's phone and emails was "fruitful," when in fact collections failed to corroborate the dossier allegations against Page.

The next month, Boente approved and signed the third application to surveil the Trump adviser. Carter Page was never charged with a crime. But the year-long surveillance, which didn't end until Sept. 22, 2017, allowed FBI headquarters to potentially monitor the Trump presidency through what is known as "incidental collections" of emails, texts and phone and Skype conversations.

On March 20, 2017, Comey went to Capitol Hill and publicly announced for the first time the existence of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump and his campaign.

"The FBI, as part of our counter-intelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts," Comey testified.

The unusual public disclosure of an active investigation opened the floodgates to media hysteria about possible Trump "collusion" with Russia and triggered years of congressional hearings and investigations that dragged Trump figures into countless hours of depositions under subpoena.

Two months later, Mueller took over where fired Comey left off and breathed new life into the counterintelligence and criminal investigations. In the end, Mueller found no evidence Trump or any Trump official or associate conspired with any Russians to interfere in the election or conduct other espionage. The case, like the Clinton campaign-funded dossier that inspired it, was a bust.

Tellingly, Lisa Page also personally briefed Mueller about the FBI's investigation when the special counsel took over the case in May 2017. She boasted that Mueller was so impressed with her "overview" that he hired her on the spot. "I want her on my team," she said Mueller told her immediate boss McCabe.

Page did not return requests for comment through her Washington attorney.
 

DC Bar Restores Convicted FBI Russiagate Forger To ‘Good Standing’ Amid Irregularities And Leniency​

BY REALCLEARWIRE
DECEMBER 17, 2021 AT 10:30AM
By Paul Sperry for RealClearInvestigations

Link: https://thepoliticalinsider.com/dc-...s-and-leniency/?utm_campaign=TPI08102022AMWUC

A former senior FBI lawyer who falsified a surveillance document in the Trump-Russia investigation has been restored as a member in “good standing” by the District of Columbia Bar Association even though he has yet to finish serving out his probation as a convicted felon, according to disciplinary records obtained by RealClearInvestigations.
The move is the latest in a series of exceptions the bar has made for Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty in August 2020 to doctoring an email used to justify a surveillance warrant targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Clinesmith was sentenced to 12 months probation last January. But the D.C. Bar did not seek his disbarment, as is customary after lawyers are convicted of serious crimes involving the administration of justice. In this case, it did not even initiate disciplinary proceedings against him until February of this year — five months after he pleaded guilty and four days after RealClearInvestigations first reported he had not been disciplined.
After the negative publicity, the bar temporarily suspended Clinesmith pending a review and hearing. Then in September, the court that oversees the bar and imposes sanctions agreed with its recommendation to let Clinesmith off suspension with time served; the bar, in turn, restored his status to “active member” in “good standing.”
Before quietly making that decision, however, records indicate the bar did not check with his probation officer to see if he had violated the terms of his sentence or if he had completed the community service requirement of volunteering 400 hours.
To fulfill the terms of his probation, Clinesmith volunteered at Street Sense Media in Washington but stopped working at the nonprofit group last summer, which has not been previously reported. “I can confirm he was a volunteer here,” Street Sense editorial director Eric Falquero told RCI, without elaborating about how many hours he worked.
Clinesmith had helped edit and research articles for the weekly newspaper, which coaches the homeless on how to “sleep on the streets” and calls for a “universal living wage” and prison reform.
From the records, it also appears bar officials did not consult with the FBI’s Inspection Division, which has been debriefing Clinesmith to determine if he was involved in any other surveillance abuses tied to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, in addition to the one used against Page.

Clinesmith’s cooperation was one of the conditions of the plea deal he struck with Special Counsel John Durham. If he fails to fully cooperate, including turning over any relevant materials or records in his possession, he could be subject to perjury or obstruction charges.
Clinesmith — who was assigned to some of the FBI’s most sensitive and high-profile investigations — may still be in Durham’s sights regarding others areas of his wide-ranging probe.

RELATED: New Evidence Implicates FBI Higher-Ups In Anti-Trump Lawyer’s Document Falsification

The scope of his mandate as special counsel is broader than commonly understood: In addition to examining the legal justification for the FBI’s “Russiagate” probe, it also includes examining the bureau’s handling of the inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecured email server, which she set up in her basement to send and receive classified information, and her destruction of more than 30,000 subpoenaed emails she generated while running the State Department.
As assistant FBI general counsel in the bureau’s national security branch, Clinesmith played an instrumental role in that investigation, which was widely criticized by FBI and Justice Department veterans, along with ethics watchdogs, as fraught with suspicious irregularities.
Clinesmith also worked on former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the 2016 Trump campaign as the key attorney linking his office to the FBI. He was the only headquarters lawyer assigned to Mueller. Durham’s investigators are said to be looking into the Mueller team’s actions as well.
The D.C. Bar’s treatment of Clinesmith, a registered Democrat who sent anti-Trump rants to FBI colleagues after the Republican was elected, has raised questions from the start. Normally the bar automatically suspends the license of members who plead guilty to a felony.
But in Clinesmith’s case, it delayed suspending him on even an interim basis for several months and only acted after RCI revealed the break Clinesmith was given, records confirm.
It then allowed him to negotiate his fate, which is rarely done in any misconduct investigation, let alone one involving a serious crime, according to a review of past cases. It also overlooked violations of its own rules: Clinesmith apparently broke the bar’s rule requiring reporting his guilty plea “promptly” to the court — within 10 days of entering it — and failed to do so for five months, reveal transcripts of a July disciplinary hearing obtained by RCI.
“I did not see evidence that you informed the court,” Rebecca Smith, the chairwoman of the D.C. Bar panel conducting the hearing, admonished Clinesmith.
“[T]hat was frankly just an error,” Clinesmith’s lawyer stepped in to explain.
Smith also scolded the bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel for the “delay” in reporting the offense, since it negotiated the deal with Clinesmith, pointing out: “Disciplinary counsel did not report the plea to the court and initiate a disciplinary proceeding.” Bill Ross, the assistant disciplinary counsel who represented the office at the hearing, argued Clinesmith shouldn’t be held responsible and blamed the oversight on the COVID pandemic.
The Democrat-controlled panel, known as the Board on Professional Responsibility, nonetheless gave Clinesmith a pass, rubberstamping the light sentence he negotiated with the bar’s chief prosecutor, Disciplinary Counsel Hamilton “Phil” Fox, while admitting it was “unusual.”
Federal Election Commission records show Fox, a former Watergate prosecutor, is a major donor to Democrats, including former President Obama. All three members of the board also are Democratic donors, FEC data reveal.

RELATED: Durham Seeking Prison Time For Ex-FBI Lawyer Clinesmith, Who Doctored CIA Email On Carter Page

While the D.C. Bar delayed taking any action against Clinesmith, the Michigan Bar, where he is also licensed, automatically suspended him the day he pleaded guilty. And on Sept. 30, records show, the Michigan Bar’s attorney discipline board suspended Clinesmith for two years, from the date of his guilty plea through Aug. 19, 2022, and fined him $1,037.
“[T]he panel found that respondent engaged in conduct that was prejudicial to the proper administration of justice [and] exposed the legal profession or the courts to obloquy, contempt, censure or reproach,” the board ruled against Clinesmith, adding that his misconduct “was contrary to justice, ethics, honesty or good morals; violated the standards or rules of professional conduct adopted by the Supreme Court; and violated a criminal law of the United States.”
Normally, bars arrange what’s called “reciprocal discipline” for unethical attorneys licensed in their jurisdictions. But this was not done in the case of Clinesmith. The D.C. Bar decided to go much easier on the former FBI attorney, further raising suspicions the anti-Trump felon was given favorable treatment.
In making the bar’s case not to strip Clinesmith of his license or effectively punish him going forward, Fox disregarded key findings by Durham about Clinesmith’s intent to deceive the FISA court as a government attorney who held a position of trust.
Clinesmith confessed to creating a false document by changing the wording in a June 2017 CIA email to state Page was “not a source” for the CIA when in fact the agency had told Clinesmith and the FBI on multiple occasions Page had been providing information about Russia to it for years — a revelation that, if disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, would have undercut the FBI’s case for electronically monitoring Page as a supposed Russian agent and something that Durham noted Clinesmith understood all too well.
Bar records show Fox simply took Clinesmith’s word that he believed the change in wording was accurate and that in making it, he mistakenly took a “shortcut” to save time and had no intent to deceive the court or the case agents preparing the application for the warrant.
Durham demonstrated that Clinesmith certainly did intend to mislead the FISA court. “By his own words, it appears that the defendant falsified the email in order to conceal [Page’s] former status as a source and to avoid making an embarrassing disclosure to the FISC,” the special prosecutor asserted in his 20-page memo to the sentencing judge, in which he urged a prison term of up to six months for Clinesmith. “Such a disclosure would have drawn a strong and hostile response from the FISC for not disclosing it sooner [in earlier warrant applications].”
As proof of Clinesmith’s intent to deceive, Durham cited an internal message Clinesmith sent the FBI agent preparing the application, who relied on Clinesmith to tell him what the CIA said about Page. “At least we don’t have to have a terrible footnote” explaining that Page was a source for the CIA in the application, Clinesmith wrote.
The FBI lawyer also removed the initial email he sent to the CIA inquiring about Page’s status as a source before forwarding the CIA email to another FBI agent, blinding him to the context of the exchange about Page.

RELATED: Ex-FBI Lawyer To Plead Guilty In Russiagate Criminal Case

Durham also noted that Clinesmith repeatedly changed his story after the Justice Department’s watchdog first confronted him with the altered email during an internal 2019 investigation. What’s more, he falsely claimed his CIA contact told him in phone calls that Page was not a source, conversations the contact swore never happened.
Fox also maintained that Clinesmith had no personal motive in forging the document. But Durham cited virulently anti-Trump political messages Clinesmith sent to other FBI employees after Trump won in 2016 – including a battle cry to “fight” Trump and his policies – and argued that his clear political bias may have led to his criminal misconduct.
“It is plausible that his strong political views and/or personal dislike of [Trump] made him more willing to engage in the fraudulent and unethical conduct to which he has pled guilty,” Durham told U.S. District Judge Jeb Boasberg.
Boasberg, a Democrat appointed by President Obama, spared Clinesmith jail time and let him serve out his probation from home. Fox and the D.C. Bar sided with Boasberg, who accepted Clinesmith’s claim he did not intentionally deceive the FISA court, which Boasberg happens to preside over, and even offered an excuse for his criminal conduct.
“My view of the evidence is that Mr. Clinesmith likely believed that what he said about Mr. Page was true,” Boasberg said. “By altering the email, he was saving himself some work and taking an inappropriate shortcut.”
Fox echoed the judge’s reasoning in essentially letting Clinesmith off the hook. (The deal they struck, which the U.S. District Court of Appeals that oversees the bar approved in September, called for a one-year suspension, but the suspension began retroactively in August 2020, which made it meaningless.) Boasberg opined that Clinesmith had “already suffered” punishment by losing his FBI job and $150,000 salary.
But, Boasberg assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that Clinesmith also faced possible disbarment. “And who knows where his earnings go now,” the judge sympathized. “He may be disbarred or suspended from the practice of law.”
Anticipating such a punishment, Boasberg waived a recommended fine of up to $10,000, arguing that Clinesmith couldn’t afford it. He also waived the regular drug testing usually required during probation, while returning Clinesmith’s passport. And he gave his blessing to Clinesmith’s request to serve out his probation as a volunteer journalist, before wishing him well: “Mr. Clinesmith, best of luck to you.”
Fox did not respond to requests for comment. But he argued in a petition to the board that his deal with Clinesmith was “not unduly lenient,” because it was comparable to sanctions imposed in similar cases. However, none of the cases he cited involved the FBI, Justice Department or FISA court.
One case involved a lawyer who made false statements to obtain construction permits, while another made false statements to help a client become a naturalized citizen – a far cry from falsifying evidence to spy on an American citizen.
Durham noted that in providing the legal support for a warrant application to the secret FISA court, Clinesmith had “a heightened duty of candor,” since FISA targets do not have legal representation before the court.
He argued Clinesmith’s offense was “a very serious crime with significant repercussions” and suggested it made him unfit to practice law.
“An attorney – particularly an attorney in the FBI’s Office of General Counsel – is the last person that FBI agents or this court should expect to create a false document,” Durham said.
The warrant Clinesmith helped obtain has since been deemed invalid and the surveillance of Page illegal. Never charged with a crime, Page is now suing the FBI and Justice Department for $75 million for violating his constitutional rights against improper searches and seizures.
Explaining the D.C. Bar’s disciplinary process in a 2019 interview with Washington Lawyer magazine, Fox said that “the lawyer has the burden of proving they are fit to practice again. Have they accepted responsibility for their conduct?” His office’s website said a core function is to “deter attorneys from engaging in misconduct.”
In the same interview, Fox maintained that he tries to insulate his investigative decisions from political bias. “I try to make sure our office is not used as a political tool,” he said. “We don’t want to be a political tool for the Democrats or Republicans.”

RELATED: Why The Russiagate Scandal Outranks Every Other In History

Bar records from the Clinesmith case show Fox suggested the now-discredited Trump-Russia “collusion” investigation was “a legitimate and highly important investigation.”
One longstanding member of the D.C. Bar with direct knowledge of Clinesmith’s case before the bar suspects its predominantly Democratic board went soft on him due to partisan politics. “The District of Columbia is a very liberal bar,” he said. “Basically, they went light on the him because he’s also a Democrat who hated Trump.”
Meanwhile, the D.C. Bar has not initiated disciplinary proceedings against Michael Sussmann, another Washington attorney charged by Durham. Records show Sussmann remains an “active member” of the bar in “good standing,” which also has not been previously reported.
The former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer, who recently resigned from Washington-based Perkins Coie LLP, is accused of lying to federal investigators about his client while passing off a report falsely linking Trump to the Kremlin.
While Sussmann has pleaded not guilty and has yet to face trial, criminal grand jury indictments usually prompt disciplinary proceedings and interim suspensions.
Paul Kamenar of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government ethics watchdog, has called for the disbarment of both Clinesmith and Sussmann. He noted that the D.C. Court of Appeals must automatically disbar an attorney who commits a crime of moral turpitude, which includes crimes involving the “administration of justice.”
“Clinesmith pled guilty to a felony. The only appropriate sanction for committing a serious felony that also interfered with the proper administration of justice and constituted misrepresentation, fraud and moral turpitude, is disbarment,” he said. “Anything less would minimize the seriousness of the misconduct” and fail to deter other offenders.
Disciplinary Counsel Fox appears to go tougher on Republican bar members. For example, he recently opened a formal investigation of former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who records show Fox put under “temporary disciplinary suspension” pending the outcome of the ethics probe, which is separate from the one being conducted by the New York bar.
In July, the New York Bar also suspended the former GOP mayor on an interim basis.
Giuliani has not been convicted of a crime or even charged with one.
 
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