I don’t think I’ve ever posted only a political cartoon as a comment on Dem liars before. Here is an A.F. Branco toon that sums everything, courtesy of Legal Insurrection.
JRH 3/26/19
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Tag: Adam Schiff
A peek inside Military Intelligence Ops.
Ted Belman of Israpundit posted a series of articles he stipulates was sent to him by “MIL-OPS INTELLIGENCE”. It seemed to me at least one theme of the combined articles was that America’s Intelligence Community shares an affinity with the American Left. The first article I found particularly disturbing was about former CIA Director John Brennan (a one-time CPUSA voter [perhaps at least a closet member] and rumored convert to Islam). That article shows Brennan to be an imbecile or an egregious traitor. Two extremes I do realize – you decide.
JRH 3/6/19
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A peek inside Military Intelligence Ops.
Posted by Ted Belman
March 5, 2019
This is a collection of articles which were, today supplied to me by MIL-OPS INTELLIGENCE who follow Israpundit daily. I am not sure how to describe them but they consists of senior military Intelligence specialists who continue to follow events in the Middle East. They are regular readers of israpundit Daily Digest and often circulate my posts.
All of the materials, below are unclassified.
These articles are:
1) examples of some of the robust exchanges that go on within the US intelligence community;
2) the personal opinions of the authors;
3) are distributed for discussion.
4) None of the articles represent the official view of any agency of the United States government.
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MIL-OPS INTELLIGENCE Friday, March 1, 2019
PENETRATIONS OF US INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES BY HOSTILE SPY SERVICES DURING JOHN BRENNAN’S CIA DIRECTORSHIP CRIPPLE US OPERATIONS WITHIN CHINA, IRAN, RUSSIA LEBANON During John Brennan’s directorship of the CIA, many brave foreign nationals who risk their lives inside extremely brutal regimes to provide the United States with essential information have been detected, imprisoned, tortured and executed. Public examples:
- The loss of all recruited agents in China [Between 20 and 30 of the US recruited agents in China were killed or imprisoned.] Media sources blamed the loss on a former CIA officer, Jerry Chung Shin Lee, who was arrested in January 2018 and is suspected of passing along their names to China
- In May 2011 , according to Iranian state media, 30 people were arrested as CIA spies and 42 others were suspected of involvement with U.S. intelligence. Insiders attribute this failure to information that was provided to Iran by Monica Witt, a former Air Force counterintelligence officer (and later an intelligence contractor) who defected to Iran 1n 2013 [where she is immune from any US criminal prosecution.]
Ms. Witt worked at the Air Force Office of Special Investigations from 2003-08 and then as a contractor, running an ultra secret Special Access Program, or SAP, until August 2010. The program gave her access to details about counterintelligence operations, true names of recruited agents, and identities of U.S. intelligence operatives in charge of recruiting foreign agents. Ms. Witt left the contractor in August 2010 for unspecified reasons.
Witt provided Iran with the details of a secret communications system American handlers use to talk to their recruited agents. Other texts reveal she “told all” to an Iranian ambassador in Central Asia. As she boarded the plane, she texted her handler: “I’m signing off and heading out! Coming home.” The FBI’s assistant director for national security, stated that Witt became an “ideological” defector after converting to Islam. Her actions, he added, inflicted “serious damage to national security.”
The FBI fumbled the case in 2012 by warning Ms. Witt she might be targeted for recruitment by Iranian intelligence. A trained counterspy, she knew that the tip-off meant she was under investigation and surveillance. It likely set in motion her flight to Iran a year later.
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Wednesday, February 13, 2019
SHOULD WASHINGTON HEED INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENTS ABOUT NORTH KOREA?
by Peter Huessy February 11, 2019
Pictured: U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shake hands at their first summit in Singapore, on June 12, 2018. (Image source: White House/Wikimedia Commons)
United States intelligence chiefs told Congress on January 29 that Pyongyang is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons in any deal with Washington. This assessment was made a month ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s February 27-28 second summit — to be held in Vietnam — with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the purpose of which is to make strides in achieving the very denuclearization that FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats consider improbable.
One would have thought that if these intelligence chiefs disagreed with Trump’s efforts to reach a deal with North Korea, they would have presented an alternative. They might have explained what a deal with Pyongyang is liable to do to America’s relations with Japan and South Korea. They might have provided a future scenario for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which North Korea signed in 1968, then violated and withdrew from in 2003.
Trump might, however, actually be acting sensibly. During a speech on January 31 at Stanford University, the U.S. special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, said that when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Kim in Pyongyang in October 2018, Kim committed for the first time to dismantling and destroying his plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities.
Although the media has been highlighting the disagreement between Trump and the U.S. intelligence community as though it is a huge scandal, such disputes have occurred in the past.
The most notable example was President Gerald Ford’s Team B project, launched in May 1976, to challenge the conventional intelligence community assessments of the Soviet threat. George H.W. Bush, who was director of the CIA at the time, had approved the project, which enlisted a group of foreign policy and security professionals who strongly disagreed with the policy of détente. Team B was convinced that the Soviet Union was spending 40% of its GDP on defense, as opposed to the 5% projected by the U.S. intelligence community.
After Team B released its report, the CIA conceded that Soviet defense spending was probably higher than it had thought, but nevertheless pushed for détente, a policy Ford supported, as well as for peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.
Ronald Reagan’s 1976 Republican Party primary campaign against Ford focused on this very issue, with Reagan taking a much harsher view of the Soviet Union and the battle against communism. As Reagan predicted, détente led not to peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union, but to Soviet expansion. Still, Reagan lost the Republican primary to Ford, and Ford lost the presidential race to Jimmy Carter.
Upon assuming the presidency in 1980, Reagan reversed most of the policies of the previous decades, and went against the consensus of a majority of the U.S. intelligence community.
Reagan turned out, of course, to be right, while the conventional wisdom of economists and intellectuals, such as John Kenneth Galbraith — who considered communism to be superior to capitalism because it supposedly made better use of “manpower” — was revealed to be spectacularly wrong.
Another key fight between the administration in Washington and its intelligence community took place at the outset of Reagan’s presidency, when Secretary of State Alexander Haig accused the Soviet Union of “training, funding and equipping” international terrorists. Reagan backed up Haig on this assessment — much to the chagrin of the intelligence community, which held a different view.
Yet, as former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates — who headed the CIA under President George H.W. Bush — revealed in his 1996 book, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, Haig and Reagan were not only correct; the extent to which the Soviets supported terrorism was even greater than they had thought.
In spite of the fact that Reagan ultimately won the Cold War – and the Soviet Union subsequently fell – his policies and extraordinary global achievements were partially discarded by the failures and laziness of the U.S. intelligence community. Starting in 1993, the US cut back excessively its military defenses. The US also failed to help Russia secure the Duma’s ratification of the 1993 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II), signed by Yeltsin and Bush but not ratified by the Senate. And the US allowed China both militarily and non-militarily to run rampant.
Almost worse, the intelligence community failed to recognize the rise of Islamic terrorism in Iran and elsewhere, which would culminate in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
These failures are not surprising, given the history of American intelligence assessments. In early 1950, for example, President Harry Truman was told by his intelligence chiefs that there would not be a North Korean invasion of South Korea. They reached this conclusion based on the assumption that North Korea could only invade South Korea with the help of the Soviet Union, and there appeared to be no sign of such assistance.
In June 1950, however, North Korea invaded South Korea, and an unprepared United States lost over 35,000 soldiers in the Korean War.
Whether Trump is able, through a combination of toughness and street-smarts, to succeed where others have failed with North Korea remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that the U.S. intelligence community often has a terrible track record where threat assessments are concerned. Alarmingly, it would not be surprising they were wrong again today.
Dr. Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting firm he founded in 1981, as well as Director of Strategic Deterrent Studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. He was also for 20 years, the senior defense consultant at the National Defense University Foundation.
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Thursday, February 7, 2019
VALARIE JARRETT, OBAMA and the IRAN DEAL
We have been tracking Valerie Jarrett from the time that Jarrett worked for Mayor Richard Joseph Daley’s Housing Authority where she functioned as his personal bagman for donations from builders, architects, developers, etc. Subsequent to that Jarrett went into public housing development as a private developer. Her group received generous government funding. However, their work was so shoddy that it had to be torn down.
We closely followed Jarrett’s early involvement with Michelle Obama whom she employed in Chicago city government and then later Jarrett hired Michelle as a $300,000 a year VP for University of Chicago Hospital. Jarrett was the original discoverer of Barak [sic] Obama as a potential political candidate and Jarrett raised significant funding for Obama from the Muslim community.
Other participants in Valerie Jarrett’s Muslim brotherhood in group included Rashid Khalidi and Robert Malley. A glimpse into the thinking of these key individuals was provided by the tape of the farewell banquet for Rashid Khalidi where the participants, including Barack Obama, participated in the toast: “death to Israel”. [Although the wording of the toast was clear on the tapes and Obama is shown actively participating, it is impossible ,without further analysis of the acoustics and other local factors, to determine whether the microphones that clearly picked up the text of the toast were actually tuned and located in a position where the reception was clear, but the acoustics of the room may have muffled the actual text…. and Obama’s claim that he never heard the wording might be, In fact, correct.]
During the Obama presidential years Valerie Jarrett was a key presidential assistant and Obama advisor at the White House. Although Pres. Obama promised the Jewish community that he would not in any way engage Robert Malley in anything to do with the Middle East, Obama later not only hired Robert Malley for the National Security Council staff, he actually placed O’Malley in charge of the entire National Security Council Middle East effort.
Meanwhile, Rashid Khalidi was a very frequent visitor to the White House [presidential visitor logs].
For six months to a year prior to the JCPOA [Iran deal] negotiations, Jarrett spent full time in Iran in close discussions with the Iranian clerical leadership relating to not only the nuclear deal but also establishing Iranian leadership in the Middle East. It was the content of these discussions that served as the directions for the US delegation. This was noted by Amir Hossein Motaghi when he defected and publicly complained that Secretary of State Kerry and Wendy Sherman were more enthusiastic in supporting the maximum Iranian position than was the Iranian delegation.
Valerie Jarrett is now a full- time resident in the Obama post-president home [compound] in Washington DC with the announced function of continuing Obama’s programs and legacies [which hopefully do not include “death to Israel”].
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Tuesday, January 8, 2019
ERDO?AN + Rep. SCHIFF +NY TIMES + WASH POST JOIN TO DEMOLISH CURRENT SAUDI – ISRAEL COUNTER IRAN WORKING RELATIONSHIP
Top intelligence sources revealed the concerted joint efforts by Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, and US leftists [Washington Post, New York Times, representative Adam Schiff, etc. ] to disrupt the current Saudi Arabian – Israeli working relationship to forestall Iran’s aggresive [sic] drive to dominate the Middle East.
Question:
Is the murder of Jamal Khashoggi [K] a brilliant plot by Eerdo?an to in one swoop become a more favored US ally than Saudi Arabia, restore fundamentalist government to Saudi Arabia by eliminating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman [MBS] and at the same time disrupting/destroying the US-Saudi-Israeli confluence which is the major obstacle to Iranian dominance of the Middle East?
Some factors for consideration:
Turkish tapes. Saudi Arabia was aware of the surveillance of their embassy in Turkey. Was the on the record on camera murder of K engineered by fundamentalist enemies of MBS within the Saudi royal family/government?
If the purpose was to kill K, then a 15 man team was far too obvious for the mission. Further, a sniper operating at a distance from the embassy on a day other than K’s visit would have easily accomplished the mission
If the mission was similar to other Saudi mission, to kidnap K, then his death might have been from natural causes, or accidental, or part of a plot to embarrass and entrap MBS.
Examination of K.s father’s political affiliation and business dealings show that he was deeply involved the most Islamic elements of Islam and the most” conservative” elements of the Saudi royal family/government.
Examination of K’s previous affiliationss [sic] show that he was deeply involved with the most Islamic elements of Islam and the most “conservative” elements of the Saudi royal family/government
Here is today’s Washington Post’s assault on Saudi Arabia and on MBS
Saudi Arabia’s trial for Khashoggi’s murder is a travesty. Congress must insist on justice.
If the United States is to uphold its values by insisting on justice in the Khashoggi case, Congress must take the lead.
By Washington Post Editorial Board
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Tuesday, December 25, 2018
RUSSIA’S 2016 DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN
Russia’s 2016 disinformation campaign targeted both pro-Trump and pro-Hillary supporters.
Russia spent just $6,000 in the last six weeks of the 2016 election on ads.
Russia spent only $4,600 on Google ads in the 2016 campaign.
The Russian influence in the 2016 election was minimal.
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
IS ADAM SCHIFF THE RUSSIAN MOLE? [Blog Editor: In an admittedly only a cursory search, this LINK is the only source close to Belman’s submitted articles.]
First, the Soviet Union and now the Russian government has sought to disrupt the American political process. Currently, they are succeeding beyond their wildest imagination thanks to representative Adam Schiff, a prominent leader of the let’s lynch Trump movement. Now that” Russian collusion” is fading as a possible pretext, Mr. Schiff must dream up some other ways to justify his committee’s fishing in these waters. His new patter also has to shed a semi-credible back glow on his earlier role as chief flogger of now-defunct Russian conspiracy theories.
Interpreting the Trump Meteor
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Wall Street Journal 12-18-18
His survival fight may at least buy time for a few important lessons to sink in.
Recall that we started down today’s investigatory whirlpool as a direct result of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats’ seizing on Russia as an excuse for their loss to a president whom many considered a joke. Now poor Adam Schiff, incoming head of the House Intelligence Committee, is trying to catch up with the new Democratic theme: Mr. Trump’s real sin is not Russian collusion after all. It’s his tawdry but well-known business and personal life.
Not only must Mr. Schiff dream up some way to justify his committee’s fishing in these waters. His new patter also has to shed a semi-credible backglow on his earlier role as chief flogger of now-defunct Russian conspiracy theories.
Sadly, he would have benefited from an aide whispering in his ear when he was making his pitch to a New Yorker writer. “What should concern us most,” he explained to the magazine, “is anything can have a continuing impact on the foreign policy and national-security policy of the United States, and, if the Russians were laundering money for the Trump Organization, that would be totally compromising.”
Huh? For the Russians to be laundering money for him, Mr. Trump would need a large source of under-the-table cash from somewhere (his NBC show?). What the confused Mr. Schiff presumably means is that Mr. Trump was laundering money for Russians—i.e., selling them condos. Never mind that the entire Western financial system also participated in this business opportunity. Now it will be one more legal jeopardy in the swirl of investigations around the White House.
Still, the media will have to work hard to flap away the odor of selective prosecution. Mr. Trump was already an unusually heavily scrutinized figure. Now he’s attracting the kind of subatomic legal scrutiny reserved only for presidents of the opposite party when the press is inveterately hostile too. Example: the New York Times re-auditing his family’s heavily audited tax returns to find a welter of abuses that somehow escaped the IRS and New York tax department.
You can argue whether this is fair or wise, but that’s our system, and a U.S. political party was poorly advised to nominate somebody with Mr. Trump’s baggage in the first place.
This column has long maintained that a high-level Russian criminal conspiracy is the one thing investigators won’t find when loosed on Mr. Trump’s colorful business and personal history. I especially have to laugh over the somber and knowing suggestions that the Russians have “dirt” on Mr. Trump. Every third-tier swimsuit model and ex-Playmate from here to Las Vegas probably has dirt on Mr. Trump.
Michael Cohen’s reported admission that the Trump Organization was pursuing Russian opportunities well into 2016 campaign is a smoking gun, all right, but not of Russian collusion. Why did Mr. Trump run for president in the first place? To become more famous, to add gaudy luster to his brand. He had no expectation of winning. Of course he used the campaign spotlight to market himself for deals in which others would pay to use his name.
Winning was his big mistake, a colossal if propitious miscalculation. Nobody would care about Stormy Daniels if he weren’t president. His decades-long pursuit of a Trump Tower in Moscow would be a non-story. Nobody would be raking him over the emoluments coals for owning a hotel in Washington.
Unfortunately, it will also occur to Mr. Trump now that his best move is to cling to the White House at all costs. That’s because under Justice Department guidelines he can expect not to be indicted as long as he remains in office. I wonder if his Torquemadas have taken this into account.
The moment is turning weird. Even President Obama stepped forward to tidy up the scene by claiming that the inconvenient Trump boom is really the Obama boom. By all lights, the media should have treated this as laughable. Had a Republican leg of lamb been victorious on election night 2016, markets would have priced upward on the news that the Obama agenda was finished. Investors aren’t clairvoyant but they respond to unexpected information. And seldom in history have circumstances conspired to give so clear a verdict on an outgoing administration.
When it’s all over, this will be one lesson worth holding on to. Mr. Trump’s personal fight for survival is likely to dominate our politics for the foreseeable future. And yet if anything justified his election in the first place, it was the wake-up call from 63 million voters to America’s leadership class. Alas, it’s hard to listen to people like James Comey and Mr. Obama himself and not see our political system trying hard to expel Mr. Trump so it can go back to doing exactly what it was doing before he was elected.
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Some Editing (much left untouched) by Blog Editor John R. Houk.
Copyright © 2017 [Mr. Belman should update his copyright] – Israpundit – All Rights Reserved
True Collusion: Obama’s FBI, DOJ & CIA
John R. Houk, Editor
Posted July 8, 2018
Even as the Mainstream Media (MSM) continues to harangue the Trump Administration over Crooked Hillary’s loss to President Trump, more and more documented information is rising to the top like scum purified out of metal. Emails and memos substantiate just how corrupt the Obama Administration’s FBI, DOJ, CIA, etc. leadership indeed was in creating ex nihilo fake evidence of Trump wrongdoing with Russian help.
Below are three documented stories of where the actual collusion originated and guess what? TRUMP IS NOT THE CULPRIT!
JRH 7/8/18
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Bombshell: Even More Evidence of FBI anti-Trump Bias Uncovered!
By Onan Coca
July 7, 2018
At some point, some rational journalist is going to have to start openly wondering if they’ve been wrong about this FBI/DOJ/Mueller stuff all along, won’t they?
The overwhelming majority of agents working for the FBI/DOJ are wonderful, hard-working professionals, which begs the question, how did so many anti-Trump, pro-Hillary Clinton agents get in on the Clinton investigation, the Russia investigation, and the Mueller investigation?
The material that has leaked out over the last few months has proven that at least 4-5 of the agents had a definite anti-Trump animus and that animus was bad enough that Mueller canned them from his investigation.
Now, we’re learning that there is even more evidence of the intelligence community working against Trump for partisan reasons.
Here’s what the Hill found in recently uncovered memos:
Multiple reviews of whether FBI agents’ political bias affected the Russia-Trump collusion case remain in their infancy, but investigators already have unearthed troubling internal communications long withheld from public view.
We already know from FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok’s now-infamous text messages with his fellow agent and reported lover, Lisa Page, that Strzok — the man driving that Russia collusion investigation — disdained Donald Trump and expressed willingness to use his law enforcement powers to “stop” the Republican from becoming president.
The question that lingers, unanswered: Did those sentiments affect official actions?
Memos the FBI is now producing to the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general and multiple Senate and House committees offer what sources involved in the production, review or investigation describe to me as “damning” or “troubling” evidence.
They show Strzok and his counterintelligence team rushing in the fall of 2016 to find “derogatory” information from informants or a “pretext” to accelerate the probe and get a surveillance warrant on figures tied to the future president.
The memos prove that Strzok and his team railroaded Trump associate Carter Page (who has still never been accused of any kind of wrongdoing) and used him as a scapegoat to spy on the Trump campaign. Strzok’s own words in the memos damn him for his immoral tactics and obvious partisan behavior.
The memos also indicate that certain FBI officials were knowingly and maliciously leaking information from their investigations to Democrats in Congress and to the media.
These and other documents are still being disseminated to various oversight bodies in Congress, and more revelations are certain to occur.
Yet, now, irrefutable proof exists that agents sought to create pressure to get “derogatory” information and a “pretext” to interview people close to a future president they didn’t like.
Clear evidence also exists that an investigation into still-unproven collusion between a foreign power and a U.S. presidential candidate was driven less by secret information from Moscow and more by politically tainted media leaks.
And that means the dots between expressions of political bias and official actions just got a little more connected.
In response to all of the bad news, Democrat leader Adam Schiff (D-CA) has been trying to obfuscate what is really happening by attacking Republicans for being on Trump’s side.
Schiff has even begun mocking a few GOP Congressional leaders as ‘The Four Horsemen,” but Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) isn’t worried about anything Schiff has to say. In fact, to hear Gowdy talk about it… nobody in the GOP “gives a damn” about what Schiff thinks.
From RCP:
“Let me tell you this about Adam,” Gowdy began. “Adam’s had a terrible last couple of years. He wanted to be the attorney general under Hillary Clinton and no one in the country worked harder to protect her than Adam Schiff.”
“He wanted to be the head of the CIA. He wanted to run for California and the run for Senate and the People’s Republic of California, but he couldn’t win either of those seats. So, now, now, he wants to be the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Speaking of the apocalypse, Adam Schiff wants to be the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,” he said.
“If you ever have — I don’t know — a couple of three months with nothing else to do, I want you to go back, Jason, and think of all the things you would not know if you had taken Adam Schiff’s advice. You wouldn’t know the whole — the spontaneous reaction to a video was a hoax in Libya. You would never have read the first Chris Stevens email. You wouldn’t know that Hillary Clinton had this unique email arrangement with herself because Adam Schiff did everything in his power to keep you from finding out,” Gowdy continued.
“You wouldn’t know about the dossier. You wouldn’t know who funded it. You wouldn’t know it was used in a court proceeding. You wouldn’t know about Strzok and Page. In fact, you wouldn’t even be having the show tonight. You wouldn’t be having the show about Strzok and Page if Adam Schiff had had his,” Gowdy finished.
VIDEO: Gowdy to Schiff: GOP doesn’t give a damn what you think
Posted by Fox News
Published on Jul 5, 2018
On ‘Hannity,’ the Republican sounds off on the Democrat calling him one of the ‘four horsemen of this apocalypse.’
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Emails Appear To Blow a Hole in Strzok’s Statement on Page FISA
By CHUCK ROSS
JULY 6, 2018 AT 3:46PM
During a closed-door interview on June 27, former FBI official Peter Strzok downplayed his role in obtaining surveillance warrants to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The Daily Beast reported that Strzok, the former deputy chief of counterintelligence, claimed in the interview that he had no substantive input on drafting or securing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants used to spy on Page, an energy consultant who left the Trump team in September 2016.
Strzok also denied providing evidence for the FISAs, the first of which was granted on Oct. 21, 2016.
A Republican in the June 27 interview confirmed that Strzok, who oversaw the Russian investigation, denied having a direct role in the FISA process. But the Republican was also incredulous at Strzok’s suggestion that he had little to do with the spy warrants obtained against Page.
A new report appears to justify the Republican’s skepticism.
John Solomon reported on The Hill that Strzok exchanged emails with FBI attorney Lisa Page regarding the Carter Page surveillance.
Strzok and Lisa Page exchanged numerous anti-Trump text messages during their work on the Russia probe, which was codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane.” In one Aug. 8, 2016, message, Strzok told Page that “we’ll stop” Trump from becoming president.
Strzok, who was the FBI’s top investigator on Crossfire Hurricane, sent an email with the subject line “Crossfire FISA” to Lisa Page discussing a set of talking points aimed at getting then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to push the Department of Justice to approve a surveillance warrant against Carter Page, according to Solomon.
“At a minimum, that keeps the hurry the F up pressure on him,” Strzok emailed Lisa Page on Oct. 14, 2016, according to Solomon.
Strzok also commented on a letter that Lisa Page sent to then-FBI Director Jim Comey offering to meet with the FBI to discuss allegations made against him in a Yahoo News article published on Sept. 23, 2016.
“At a minimum, the letter provides us a pretext to interview,” Strzok wrote to Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair, on Sept. 26, 2016.
The Yahoo News article claimed that U.S. government officials were looking into allegations that Page met secretly in Moscow in July 2016 with two sanctioned Kremlin insiders.
It would later be learned that the article, written by Michael Isikoff, was based on information from Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier.
The dossier claimed that Page was the Trump campaign’s conduit to the Kremlin for the collusion conspiracy. Page has vehemently denied all of the allegations, and no evidence has emerged to support the Steele dossier’s claims about him.
The FBI and DOJ’s spy warrants relied heavily on the Steele dossier, which remains largely unverified and uncorroborated, in order to persuade a federal judge to allow spying against Carter Page. The FISA applications also cited the Isikoff article that relied on the dossier, though without disclosing that the article was derived from Steele.
The applications also did not disclose that the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC had financed the dossier. A law firm for both organizations hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which in turn hired Steele.
Despite Strzok’s suggestion of an interview with Carter Page, the FBI did not meet with him until March 2017, six months after the email and two months after BuzzFeed News published the dossier. Page has questioned why the FBI waited so long to interview him.
The FBI used other methods to keep tabs on the former Trump aide. As The Daily Caller News Foundation first reported, an FBI informant named Stefan Halper made contact with Page during a conference at the University of Cambridge on July 11, 2016, nearly three weeks before the start of Crossfire Hurricane.
Halper, a veteran of three Republican presidential administrations, maintained contact with Page for over a year, until September 2017. That was the same month that the fourth and final FISA warrant against Carter Page expired.
Halper met with two other Trump campaign advisers, Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulos. Halper paid Papadopoulos $3,000 in September 2016 to travel to London under the guise of writing a policy paper and Mediterranean energy issues.
Papadopoulos has told associates that during dinner one night in London, Halper asked him about Russian efforts to steal Hillary Clinton emails.
Strzok’s attorney, Aitan Goelman, did not respond to an email seeking comment for this article.
A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website. 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.
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Judicial Watch Sues CIA for Documents on Dossier Leak to Senator Harry Reid
JW Press Room
JULY 06, 2018
Reid Publicized Clinton-DNC Dossier Allegations Following Brennan Briefing
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for records of communications with former Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) and his staff regarding the anti-Trump dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (Judicial Watch v. Central Intelligence Agency (No. 1:18-cv-01502)).
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid reportedly believed then-Obama CIA Director Brennan was feeding him information about alleged links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in order to make public accusations.
According to “Russian Roulette,” by Yahoo! News chief investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff and David Corn, the Washington bureau chief of the left-wing Mother Jones magazine, Brennan contacted Reid on Aug. 25, 2016, to brief him on the state of Russia’s interference in the presidential campaign. Brennan briefed other members of the so-called Gang of Eight, but Reid is the only who took direct action.
Two days after the briefing, Reid wrote a letter to then-FBI Director James Comey asserting that “evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign continues to mount.”
Reid called on Comey to investigate the links “thoroughly and in a timely fashion.”
Reid saw Brennan’s outreach as “a sign of urgency,” Isikoff and Corn wrote in the book.
“Reid also had the impression that Brennan had an ulterior motive. He concluded the CIA chief believed the public needed to know about the Russian operation, including the information about the possible links to the Trump campaign.”
According to the book, Brennan told Reid that the intelligence community had determined that the Russian government was behind the hack and leak of Democratic emails and that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind it. Brennan also told Reid that there was evidence that Russian operatives were attempting to tamper with election results.
On August 27, 2016, Reid wrote a letter to Comey accusing President Trump’s campaign of colluding with the Russian government.
The Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the CIA failed to respond to a February 12, 2018, FOIA request for:
- All records of communications, including but not limited to letters, emails, text messages, and instant chats, between former CIA Director John Brennan and/or officials in the CIA Director’s Office on the one hand, and Senator Harry Reid and/or members of Senator Reid’s staff on the other hand, regarding, concerning or relating to the Christopher Steele “dossier” and/or alleged “collusion” between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia.
- Copies of any reports, memoranda or other materials provided to Senator Reid and/or members of his staff by the CIA relating to alleged Russian “collusion” or cooperation between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia.
- All materials, including briefing reports and memos, audio/video presentations, PowerPoint presentations and any other records, used by CIA Director Brennan and/or other CIA officials to brief Senator Reid and/or members of his staff on alleged “collusion” between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia.
- All notes, minutes, transcripts, and audio and/or visual recordings made of any and all briefings provided by the CIA to Senator Reid and/or members of his staff regarding alleged “collusion” between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia.
Brennan has come under public scrutiny as one of the suspected prime movers of the “Spygate” scandal against then-candidate Trump and his team during 2015 and 2016 and later against President Trump and members of his administration.
Brennan himself has revealed his deep-seated animus toward President Trump and used his media platform as an MSNBC commentator to repeatedly attack the president.
When President Trump tweeted about FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s firing in March 2018, Brennan retweeted and responded:
When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America…America will triumph over you.
In response to the president’s tweet that former FBI director Comey is a “proven leaker and liar,” Brennan retweeted and responded in April 2018 that President Trump’s administration is a failing “kakistocracy.”
“Obama CIA Director John Brennan’s unhinged attacks on President Trump help explain the Obama administration spying abuses targeting Trump,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The mere fact that we had to file this lawsuit shows the CIA has something to hide on Obama-era abuses and collusion with Democrats in Congress to target then-candidate Trump.”
Judicial Watch filed a separate FOIA lawsuit against the CIA on March 6, 2017, for records related to the investigation of former Trump National Security Advisor and retired United States Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn’s communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (Judicial Watch v. Central Intelligence Agency et al. (No.1:17-cv-00397)).
The National Security Agency refused to confirm or deny the existence of intelligence records about communications between Gen. Flynn and Amb. Kislyak.
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Bombshell: Even More Evidence of FBI anti-Trump Bias Uncovered!
Onan Coca is the Editor-in-Chief at Romulus Marketing and Bravera Holdings. He’s also the managing editor at Eaglerising.com, Constitution.com, Godfather.com and the managing partner at iPatriot.com. You can read more of his writing at Eagle Rising.
Onan is a graduate of Liberty University (2003) and earned his M.Ed. at Western Governors University in 2012. Onan lives in Atlanta with his wife and their five wonderful children.
Copyright © 2017. EagleRising.com. All rights reserved.
About Eagle Rising
Eagle Rising seeks to share commentary and opinion about culture, media, politics, etc., from a Christian and politically conservative perspective. … READ THE REST
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Emails Appear To Blow a Hole in Strzok’s Statement on Page FISA
Conservative Tribune by Western Journal
The Western Journal is a news company that drives positive cultural change by equipping readers with truth. Every day, WesternJournal.com publishes conservative, libertarian, free market and pro-family writers and broadcasters.
As Americans — and indeed, readers around the world — continue to lose trust in traditional newspapers and broadcast networks and their claims of objectivity and impartiality, The Western Journal is rapidly filling the gap as a trusted source of news and information. The Western Journal is … READ THE REST
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Judicial Watch Sues CIA for Documents on Dossier Leak to Senator Harry Reid
© 2018 Judicial Watch, Inc.
Judicial Watch is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions are received from individuals, foundations, and corporations and are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Judicial Watch, Inc., a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law. Through its educational endeavors, Judicial Watch advocates high standards of ethics and morality in our nation’s public life and seeks to ensure that political and judicial officials do not abuse the powers entrusted to them by the American people. Judicial Watch fulfills its educational mission through litigation, investigations, and public outreach.
The motto of Judicial Watch is “Because no one is above the law”. To this end, Judicial Watch uses the open records or freedom of information laws and … READ THE REST
Schiff and Dems ‘Have All This Blood on Their Hands,’ Nunes Says
I watched last night’s Ingraham Angle and saw the Ingraham/Nunes interview about the House expanding Congressional investigations into Obama Administration State Department officials’ possible knowledge that the so-called Steele Dossier was a fake put together by the Crooked Hillary campaign to disparage and sink the Trump campaign.
JRH 7/3/18
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Schiff and Dems ‘Have All This Blood on Their Hands,’ Nunes Says
Obama administration officials and liberal bureaucrats ‘completely destroyed the FBI and DOJ’ by weaponizing them on behalf of Hillary Clinton
Updated 03 Jul 2018 at 7:48 AM
PoliZette – Politics. Explained.
Democrats “have all this blood on their hands” because they “completely destroyed the FBI and DOJ” by digging up dirt on President Donald Trump in 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s favor, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said Monday on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.”
“They’re the ones that have all this blood on their hands. They’re the ones who completely destroyed the FBI and DOJ,” Nunes insisted. “How did they do that? They did that by digging up dirt — the Clinton campaign dug up dirt, put it into a dossier, fed it into the FBI. The FBI used our counterintelligence capabilities against a political campaign. That’s what happened here.”
Nunes was responding to accusations Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, leveled against him and other GOP House committee members during an interview on CNN’s “Wolf” last week.
Schiff called Nunes, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) “the four horsemen of this apocalypse” who “have been leading the charge basically to require the Justice Department to give them materials that can be leaked or fed or misrepresented.” Meadows is chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, which Jordan founded, while Gowdy is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“And in the meantime, they do enormous damage to these institutions. Ultimately they’ll be held accountable,” Schiff claimed.
Nunes dismissed Schiff, saying he and the other GOP lawmakers are “not going to be threatened by the Democrats” and will proceed with their investigative plans.
“The Democrats in the House and the Senate — they’ve continued to want to obfuscate, they’ve continued to want to cover up,” Nunes said. “If we listened to the Democrats, we would have never … found out that the Democrats and Hillary Clinton paid [former British spy] Christopher Steele to generate this dirt on President Trump.”
VIDEO: Nunes tightens screws in his probe into surveillance abuses
“So I tend to ignore everything that they say,” Nunes added. “We continue to do our work day in and day out to get to the truth. And gradually we are getting to the truth.”
Nunes revealed earlier this year that the FBI used the anti-Trump dossier alleging collusion between the presidential campaign and the Russians to renew surveillance warrants again former Trump adviser Carter Page. Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) funded the dossier.
Information the congressional committees’ investigations have steadily uncovered includes direct evidence of profoundly anti-Trump and pro-Clinton bias within the DOJ and FBI during the Russian collusion investigation, and also in the immediately prior probe of Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official business as secretary of state.
Nunes noted that he referred 17 current and former DOJ and FBI officials to Gowdy of the House oversight committee, and to Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Nunes also revealed Monday that he referred 10 Obama-era Department of State and White House officials to Gowdy and Goodlatte for testimony about the dossier, surveillance abuse, and other matters.
Congressional investigators “still don’t understand how” and why the Trump-Russia investigation “was opened” in the first place, Nunes said, noting that “many people in the Obama-era State Department were involved in the opening of that investigation.”
“We also know that many people in the State Department were meeting with Christopher Steele … so this is why this investigation is taking a while,” Nunes said. “A lot of people had their hands on the Steele dossier, including many people in the media who knew about the Steele dossier.”
Nunes said these reasons are “partly why I am sending these names over to the judiciary and oversight committees, because they already have a task force — the task force has been convened.”
“They should be able to do all of these hearings in the public, full transparency, so that people can watch on live television,” Nunes told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. “But the good thing is that I believe that Chairmen Gowdy and Goodlatte, their task force will interview these people, and they will interview them in public. It will be the first time during this entire investigation that the American people get to see actual questions get answered by these potential witnesses.”
Related: Trump Can Order Rosenstein to Give Docs to Congress, So Why Doesn’t He?
“That is my recommendation to the committee chairmen. I believe they will follow that recommendation. And they may have other names,” Nunes added. “I believe as these hearings take place and testimony is given to the Congress, I think it will be a much-needed sunlight in this investigation. I think the American people will begin to see who is telling the truth and who is not telling the truth.”
Nunes also ripped mainstream media outlets for failing to cover the Obama-era scandals and seeking to “get to the bottom of it.”
“What we’re having to do here as the legislative branch of government — we’re having to do the work that the media won’t do because there are very few in the media who will actually cover this story to try to get to the bottom of it,” Nunes lamented. “That’s part of what’s taking so long. Typically you would have a free and fair and transparent media trying to get to the truth. But in this case we haven’t had that.”
Nunes said he hopes to ensure the American people “know that this is just one more step in the process” of finding answers and achieving transparency.
“I think we’ve been very transparent about how we’ve conducted the process. We’re onto FISA abuse and other matters. I’ve said for a long time that we’re looking at the State Department.”
PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at kathryn.blackhurst@lifezette.com. Follow her on Twitter.
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© 2014-2018 LifeZette. All Rights Reserved
How House Democrats’ FISA Memo Confirms Republicans’ Charges Of Abuse
If you only watch or read Lame Stream Media (aka Mainstream Media – MSM), you’d think Shifty Schiff’s Dem Party Minority Memo upstaged and refuted the Nunes GOP Majority Memo. Shifty’s Memo only obfuscates the actual facts found in the Nunes Memo. A close comparison of the two Memos shows that Shifty’s Memo corroborates Nunes but with a classic display look-here-instead-of-here language.
Jason Beale writing for The Federalist demonstrates just how shifty Adam Schiff is.
JRH 3/2/18
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How House Democrats’ FISA Memo Confirms Republicans’ Charges Of Abuse
By Jason Beale
MARCH 1, 2018
The Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) finally dropped their Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse rebuttal memo Saturday afternoon, and the reaction is murky.
If you had your money on a comprehensive, point-by-point refutation of the “scurrilous allegations” of evidentiary malfeasance laid out in the majority (Nunes) memo, you’re going to need to cut a check. If your bet was on the construction and destruction of straw-men unassociated with the proceedings, and confirmation the use of raw, unevaluated intelligence to argue probable cause that an American citizen “knowingly acted as an agent of a foreign power,” you can proceed to the cashier window to redeem your ticket.
Some background. The HPSCI majority memo (the Nunes memo), which was released to the public on February 2, contained a number of specific allegations of inappropriate conduct by Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice officials seeking the approval of the FISA court (FISC) to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. These allegations included the introduction into evidence of unconfirmed, uncorroborated sections of the infamous Christopher Steele dossier; the omission of material context in vouching for the reliability of their source (Steele); and the deliberate obfuscation of the fact that the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee paid for the dossier.
The Democrat HPSCI minority, led by Rep. Adam Schiff, fought the release of the Nunes memo on the grounds that it would recklessly expose sources and methods and, according to Schiff, erode public confidence in the FBI’s ability to protect sources to the extent that releasing the memo might enable another Oklahoma City bombing. Schiff and his colleagues composed a rebuttal, and assured us that it would effectively “correct the record” on the Nunes memo—particularly on the reliability of the evidence presented to the FISC, and the Nunes contention that the judge wasn’t fully apprised of the “partisan, political” provenance of the funding behind the dossier.
None of this came to pass with the release of the Schiff memo.
What Actually Happened Inside That Counter-Memo
A close read of the Schiff memo reveals the incredulity of the Nunes memo claim that the Steele dossier initiated the FBI investigation into Trump associates’ engagement with Russians. A close read of the Nunes memo reveals that it makes no such claim. In fact, the Nunes memo clearly states the investigation was initiated after the FBI received information concerning suspicious interactions between Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos and a sketchy professor with alleged ties to Russian officials.
It’s written very clearly in the memo, in plain English. Yet the Schiff memo works hard to undermine that strawman, and effectively confirms the Nunes memo description of the event that triggered the investigation.
Schiff then addresses the issue of source and evidence credibility. This is key to the Nunes memo allegations and to confidence in the FBI and DOJ officials charged with protecting every citizen’s Fourth Amendment rights, even in the course of seeking legal access to citizens’ most private communications.
In lieu of providing a single word of confirmation that any of the Page-related dossier information had been corroborated or validated prior to providing it to the court, the Schiff memo constructs a Page avatar whose past associations and contact with Russian spies, Kremlin officials, shady businessmen, and FBI agents represent an insurmountable trail of suspicion that can only be assumed to be criminally conspiratorial, and likely treasonous.
They do this by noting Page’s 2013-2014 recruitment attempt by Russian spies in New York City, whose approaches inspired the FBI to alert Page and warn him away. Those spies were eventually arrested and convicted of espionage offenses after an investigation aided by information Page willingly provided. They further highlight Page’s three-year residency working for Merrill Lynch in Moscow, separate trips to Russia in July and December of 2016, and numerous interviews with the FBI regarding, presumably, his interactions with Russians suspected of nefarious intentions.
Building a Tower of Suspicion Around Carter Page
All of this builds a tower of suspicion around Page, the idiosyncratic Naval Academy graduate whose quirky and paranoid behavior on nationally televised interviews has inspired the derisive head-shaking of dozens of talking heads. They chortle at the naiveté of this man’s eagerness to repeatedly throw himself into the lion’s den of “The Situation Room” or “All In with Chris Hayes.” They wonder what could possibly compel this man to subject himself to the open mocking of his declarations of innocence, again and again? The Schiff document describes an FBI/DOJ presentation of evidence that appears to draw from these instincts of suspicion and disbelief yet, significantly, offer no proof.
But they must offer proof, as Andrew McCarthy points out in the latest of his series of analytic National Review articles devoted to making sense of the FISA proceedings. McCarthy notes that: “(B)ecause Page was an American citizen, FISA law required that the FBI and the DOJ show not only that he was acting as an agent of a foreign power (Russia), but also that his ‘clandestine’ activities on behalf of Russia were a likely violation of federal criminal law. (See FISA, Section 1801(b)(2)(A) through (E), Title 50, U.S. Code.) It is the Steele dossier that alleges Page was engaged in arguably criminal activity. The Democrats point to nothing else that does.”
The Schiff memo offers that proof, the crucial passage of the Steele dossier undeniably used as the crux of their “criminal activity” contention. They present it as follows: “It is in this specific sub-section of the applications that DOJ refers to Steele’s reporting on Page and his alleged coordination with Russian officials. Steele’s information about Page was consistent with the FBI’s assessment of Russian intelligence efforts to recruit him and his connections to Russian persons of interest.”
“In particular, Steele’s sources reported that Page met separately while in Russia with Igor Sechin, a close associate of Vladimir Putin and executive chairman of Rosneft, Russia’s state-owned oil company, and Igor Divyekin, a senior Kremlin official. Sechin allegedly discussed the prospect of future U.S.-Russia energy cooperation and ‘an associated move to lift Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia.’ Divyekin allegedly disclosed to Page that the Kremlin possessed compromising information on Clinton (‘kompromat’) and noted ‘the possibility of its being released to Candidate #l’s campaign.’ (Note: ‘Candidate #1’ refers to candidate Trump.) This closely tracks what other Russian contacts were informing another Trump foreign policy advisor, George Papadopoulos.”
The problem with this crucial passage is that it contains a fatal flaw, in that it is almost-certainly wrong. Page has testified repeatedly, under oath, that he had no such contact, meetings, or conversations with either Sechin or Divyekin. He did so both to the members of the HPSCI committee and during his numerous interviews with the FBI. He has further testified that he has never met Sechin in his life. He even issued a written denial in a letter he sent to former FBI director James Comey in September 2016, wherein he offered to meet with the FBI to resolve the issue.
If Democrats Are Right, Page Should Be Arrested
The Democrats show little faith in the disputed, yet legally essential, evidence of these “meetings.” In fact, they include in their memo this intriguing passage: “This information contradicts Page’s November 2, 2017 testimony to the Committee, in which he initially denied any such meetings and then was forced to admit speaking with (Arkady) Dvorkovich and meeting with Rosneft’s Sechin-tied investor relations chief Andrey Baranov.”
That’s one way of saying it. Another way to say it would be: “Carter Page’s testimony contradicts the unverified, third-hand hearsay information contained in the dossier, as he expressly denied meeting either of those officials. As to contacts with Russians unrelated to information contained in the Steele dossier, Page confirmed that he spoke with Arkady Dvorkovich and met with Andrey Baranov. “
But we don’t have to take Page’s word for it, nor should we. If there is evidence to the contrary, Page should quite rightly be arrested and charged with, at a minimum, lying to the HPSCI and to the FBI. Were there evidence or corroboration to confirm illicit engagements with Sechin and Divyekin, as reported in the dossier and declared to be credible by the FBI/DOJ officials testifying to the FISC judge, Page is dead to rights.
Yet Page walks free. The absence of evidence sufficient to arrest and charge Page with lying about his alleged treasonous and conspiratorial activities, coupled with the critical role those very allegations played in convincing a judge to approve a FISA warrant targeting his communications, leaves Citizen Page in a rather unique state of judicial and political limbo.
Yet for Page to regain his battered reputation and get on with his life, the FBI, DOJ, and HPSCI Democrats will have to admit that the information provided to the court regarding his activities in Russia was wrong. In doing so, they would have to further admit that the rest of the information in the 35-page Steele dossier was tarnished, and inadmissible. That’s not going to happen.
We Refuted Something Republicans Never Said
The Schiff memo confirmed that the Steele dossier was used to obtain the warrant. It added nothing to suggest that the dossier information had been corroborated. The Democrats aren’t talking about this part of their memo on cable news shows, because they would like you to forget it.
What they are talking about—a lot—is their refutation of a phantom Republican claim that the dossier triggered the FBI investigation. The Republicans made no such claim, but Schiff and his colleagues are nonetheless eager to address this straw man at every opportunity. Why? Because their focus isn’t on Page’s civil rights, or even on his possible guilt. They don’t seem to have much of an opinion on these either way.
Their focus is on the future, and the Democrats believe their immediate future depends on a positive (for them) outcome of the Robert Mueller investigation into Russian influence on the election. They fear the slightest acquiescence to doubt about the validity of the Steele dossier will somehow impact that investigation, and their future. Page is just some guy in the way.
In advance of the release of the Schiff memo, I wrote here that the only question it needed to answer was whether the Steele dossier information used against Page had been corroborated and validated prior to its use in the FISA court. That question was answered, albeit not intentionally. The information was not corroborated or validated. Although Schiff and his colleagues will do everything they can to convince you otherwise, it’s the only thing that matters.
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Jason Beale (a pseudonym) is a retired U.S. Army interrogator and strategic debriefer with 30 years experience in military and intelligence interrogation and human intelligence collection operations. He’s on Twitter @jabeale.
Copyright © 2018 The Federalist, a wholly independent division of FDRLST Media, All Rights Reserved.
Hannity Outline of Dossiers & Memos
John R. Houk
© February 6, 2018
Sean Hannity’s show was awesome last night (2/5/18). Hannity’s opening monologue outlines (he even provides lists as he speaks) how the Memo constructed by the GOP members of the House Intel Committee demonstrates how Crooked Hillary’s campaign used the FBI and Christopher Steele creating lies to harm President Trump before and after his election.
The Dems led by liar Adam Schiff have constructed a Minority-Dem Memo claiming the GOP Memo is filled with political duplicity. Although President Trump hasn’t decided to release the Dem Memo, many pundits expect him to do so. Yet rumor has it that the Dem Memo does not contradict the GOP Memo one iota. Rather the Dem agenda is to discredit the GOP Memo by attacking Intel Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and prominent Intel Committee member – Trey Gowdy.
Attacking the messenger to discredit facts and truth is the standard method utilized by Alinsky, Obama and Crooked Hillary.
To drive Hannity’s opening monologue home, the show has who Hannity calls “The Great One” – Mark Levin. Levin corroborates everything Hannity lined out but emphasizes one key feature – Crooked Hillary paid for it all.
Below are the two videos from the same show.
JRH 2/6/18
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VIDEO: Hannity: Second memo exposes deep state corruption
Posted by Fox News
Published on Feb 5, 2018
Former British spy Christopher Steele was working on a second anti-Trump dossier that contained allegations that were fed to him by Clinton associates and the Obama State Department.
FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well as political and business news. The number one network in cable, FNC has been the most watched television news channel for more than 15 years and according to a Suffolk University/USA Today poll, is the most trusted television news source in the country. Owned by 21st Century Fox, FNC is available in more than 90 million homes and dominates the cable news landscape, routinely notching the top ten programs in the genre.
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VIDEO: Mark Levin talks about the memo madness
Posted by Fox News
Published on Feb 5, 2018
Upcoming host of ‘Life, Liberty & Levin’ sounds off on ‘Hannity.’
Dems Want Social Platform Censorship by Blaming Russians – AGAIN
John R. Houk
© January 25, 2018
Yesterday I stumbled upon a Fox News story in which Dems Senator Feinstein and Rep. Schiff have publicly called for Twitter, Facebook and now I read – Google, to investigate Russian bots spreading the meme #ReleaseTheMemo. My least favorite Fox host Shepherd Smith seemed to move story to agree with the Dems. Here’s the 4:30 minute segment on Youtube:
VIDEO: Top Democrats claim Russian bots are pushing #ReleaseTheMemo
Posted by Fox News
Published on Jan 24, 2018
Rep. Schiff and Sen. Feinstein say the classified memo prepared by staffers working for Devin Nunes is misleading and is being pushed online as part of a smear campaign against law enforcement officials investigating Team Trump; insight from Axios reporter Alayna Treene.
FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well as … READ THE REST
In essence my first reaction the Dems were trying to get off the hook about corruption among Obama/Hillary cadres in the FBI and DOJ. Indeed, after Googling “Russian Bots,” I found MSM after MSM site pushing the Dem meme of Russian Bots. Just like loyal Leftist Pravda spreading Communist propaganda, the MSM pushed the Dem assertion Russia was involved in the American legal system to taint the FBI and the Mueller investigation purportedly investigating the Trump Campaign for President colluded with Russia to win said Campaign.
I felt the Dems were pulling the Russia-Russia-Russia load of crap to deflect from the real collusion story of Dems and Dem-favoring FBI and DOJ trying to discredit President Trump for an idiotic excuse to impeach him on FALSE evidence.
It turns out I am CORRECT! The Daily Caller picked up on a story from the Left-leaning Daily Beast which substantiates that an overwhelming majority of the viral message of “#ReleaseTheMail” was driven by red-blooded Americans rather than Russian Bots:
DC VIDEO: No Russian Bots …
http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/23/no-russian-bots-note-behind-releasethememo/
…
According to The Beast:
A knowledgeable source says that Twitter’s internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo. There are no preliminary indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is either predominantly Russian.
In short, according to this source, who would not speak to The Daily Beast for attribution, the retweets are coming from inside the country. (No, Russian Bots Weren’t Behind The #ReleaseTheMemo Hashtag; By Chuck Ross; Daily Caller; 1/23/18 6:27 PM)
Now you realize that Twitter management is not exactly a Right-leaning Social Platform, right? Ergo, you must understand that the Dems – particularly Senator Feinstein and Rep. Schiff – are calling for Twitter, Facebook and Google to censor Conservative dialog on the Social Platforms used by Americans.
The best details I have found pertaining to the Dem Fake News propaganda trying to Censor my fellow Conservatives is at The Federalist.
JRH 1/25/18
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The Russia ‘Fake News’ Scare Is All About Chilling Speech
JANUARY25, 2018
Last week Republicans began to call for the release of a memo authored by House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes that purports to lay out a series of abuses connected to the FBI surveillance of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. As often happens these days, a Twitter hashtag evolved around the effort, #ReleaseTheMemo, and was widely retweeted by Republicans and elected officials.
It didn’t take long for a report to emerge claiming that Russian-sponsored Twitter accounts and bots were the real driving force behind the viral call for the release of the memo. Without worrying about the veracity of this convenient claim, all the usual suspects giddily spread the story across social media — probably because they have such a deep reverence for truth in the Era of Trump.
The report also prompted Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff, both Democrats, to pull out every fearmongering catchphrase available to demand that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg perform an “in-depth forensic examination” on the “ongoing attack by the Russian government through Kremlin-linked social media actors directly acting to intervene and influence our democratic process.”
It’s difficult, it seems, for some people to embrace neutral principles nowadays. But if you genuinely believe that Donald Trump’s distasteful tweets are attacks on the foundations of free expression, how can you not be alarmed by a pair of powerful elected officials demanding social media companies hand over information about their users? What would they say if the president had sent a letter to Google insisting they give the executive branch an “in-depth forensic examination” of his political opponent’s searches?
As it turns out, reports today say that Twitter’s internal analysis found that it was mostly Americans, not creepy Slavic mind-control robots, who were behind the hashtags. Not that it really matters, anyway. If a group of Americans have a legitimate issue to rally around, how are they supposed to control what outsiders do? It’s not as if #ReleaseTheMemo was a secret or illegal. Republican politicians were openly using it.
Yet, if Feinstein and Schiff had their way, Twitter and Facebook would have moved to quash the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag for what turned out to be apparently solely partisan reasons. Sounds like a power that can be abused. Even if the two had been genuinely troubled by Russian hashtags — yes, suspend your disbelief — the source of fake news is not always easily discernible. Sometimes it comes to you from an anonymous Russian bot, and sometimes it’s retweeted by a prominent journalist.
Democrats have manufactured panic over amateurish Russian propaganda to not only claim that Vlad Putin was “meddling” in the election, but also to argue that interference had the power to turn the election to Trump. With this risible idea in hand, they have created paranoia about social media interactions and rationalized infringements on expression.
Not long before demanding forensic investigations into hashtags, Feinstein was demanding Twitter, Facebook, and Google more tightly restrict its content, threatening, “Do something about it — or we will.” Democrats have attempted to control interactions through Fairness Doctrines or the IRS, and now the Russia scare. Part of living in a free country is dealing with messy, ugly misinformation.
Lots of people in the United States seem pretty impressed by how they do things in Europe. In Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May is launching “a rapid response unit” run by the state to “battle the proliferation of ‘fake news’ online.” A “National Security Communications Unit” will be tasked to combat misinformation — as if it has either the power or ability to do so. In France, President Emmanuel Macron is working on a plan to combat “fake news,” which includes the power to “emergency block” websites during elections. What could possibly go wrong.
Me? I’d rather we live with Russian troll bots feeding us nonsense than authoritarian senators dictating how we consume news. I mean, has anyone yet produced a single voter who lost his or her free will during the 2016 election because he had a Twitter interaction with an employee of a St. Petersburg troll farm? Or do voters tend to seek out the stories that back their own worldviews?
If your argument is that American are uninformed and easily misled, I’m with you. Just look at all the people who believe that a $46,000 buy on Facebook by the Russians was enough to destroy the pillars of our democracy. But if you want to live in a free and vibrant nation, you have to live with the externalities of that freedom.
David Harsanyi is a Senior Editor at The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter.
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Dems Want Social Platform Censorship by Blaming Russians – AGAIN
John R. Houk
© January 25, 2018
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The Russia ‘Fake News’ Scare Is All About Chilling Speech
Copyright © 2018 The Federalist, a wholly independent division of FDRLST Media, All Rights Reserved.
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