Tag: Sharyl Attkisson

John R. Houk

© March 13, 2017

I saw on Fox News that Senator John McCain is publicly telling President Trump to put-up or apologize to the treasonous President Obama pertaining to the accusation of wiretapping during the 2016-election cycle. I don’t have the Fox News clip but here’s the CNN clip that Fox was referring to:

VIDEO: McCain: Provide wiretap evidence or retract

 

Posted by CNN

Published on Mar 12, 2017

 

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that President Trump should provide evidence for his unsubstantiated claim that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower or retract the accusation.

My God! McCain might as well stop being a RINO and out right join the Deep State Democratic Party and become an overt Obama minion. No wonder McCain lost to the Marxist oriented Obama in 2008.

McCain is making all kinds of noise that more news will come out connecting President Trump yet keeping silent (copying MSM) on mounting evidence of Russian links to Crooked Hillary and family marking political favors for God only knows what nefarious purposes.

Check this out from Angry Patriot:

While the liberals are trying their hardest to set up the Republicans in questionable ties with Russia, it seems as though it is being used as a distraction to hide the Democrats’ own connection with Russia.

 

Hillary Clinton’s election campaign manager, John Podesta, was on the board of a small energy company, Joule Unlimited, when it was given $35 million from a Russian government fund which has ties to Putin. (via Breitbart)

 

This information was discovered in a 56-page report titled, “From Russia with Money: Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset, and Cronyism.” Podesta did not disclose this, although he is required to do so by law.

 

This was written by a non-partisan government watchdog group, the Government Accountability Institute (GAI). Stephen Bannon, the Executive Chairman of Breitbart and the Chief Strategist in the Trump Administration, is also the Executive Chairman of GAI.

 

During the “Russian reset,” then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the flag bearer of U.S. involvement in Russia’s technology initiative, called Skolkovo, which is intended to be the Slavic version of Silicon Valley.

 

This “innovation city” was to be located outside of Moscow and employ 30,000 people. Their technologically advanced facilities would be under the strict control of the Russian government. In 2013, the building was described, by Slate, as reminiscent of the Soviet “utopia” building projects.

 

The GAI report revealed that the Department of State, under Hillary Clinton, recruited companies like Intel, Cisco, and Google to participate in Russia’s project. Of the 28 companies that participated in Skolkovo, 17 were donors to the Clinton Foundation or had paid Bill Clinton to speak.

 

As Clinton’s involvement increased in the project, so did the chance that this technological investment was actually a way to spy on American military technology. In 2014, the FBI gave out an “extraordinary warning” to the companies participating in Skolkovo.

 

Podesta failed to mention that he had memberships to the board of this company, even while knowing that Russian investment in it may have been an attempt to steal our military technology. It all seems a bit suspicious. Why was Clinton, the U.S. State Department, and John Podesta tied up in this affair?

 

It would appear that they are the ones that need investigating into Russian ties rather than anyone in the Trump administration. (BREAKING: Hillary Connected to $35 MILLION Russian Bribe. Is This Treason? Angry Patriot; March 2017)

I can understand the Leftist MSM not picking up connections between Crooked Hillary and the Russians, but what Senator McCain goes after Trump for proof NOW when even the MSM has suggested improper violations of Obama Administration of wiretapping is just nuts. McCain would serve American Patriotism and the GOP better if he called out Obama to prove President Trump is incorrect.

Here are some news tidbits that implicate Obama wiretapping much more than President Trump angrily tweeting villainous Obama wiretapped the Trump campaign in a moment of emotional display.

JRH 3/13/17 (Hat Tip: Donald Moore of Blind Conservatives List)

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DC Secrets and Lies

By Clarice Feldman

March 12, 2017

American Thinker

A quick look at Obama’s history reveals he has always had the inclination, motivation, and opportunity to snoop on and disseminate information about his political opponents. It’s how he made his political career: getting his opponents’ private divorce records unsealed and leaked with the help of the Chicago Tribune.

He and his administration continued this pattern and practice of skirting laws throughout his eight years in office, As Matthew Vadum reminds readers:

“Obama used the IRS to target conservative and Tea Party nonprofits, along with Catholic, Jewish, and pro-Israel organizations. He brazenly lied about it, too. His Justice Department surreptitiously obtained telephone records for more than 100 reporters.”

Wikileaks revealed that under Obama, the NSA intercepted conversations of numerous foreign officials, including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Angela Merkel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Silvio Berlusconi, and Nicolas Sarkozy.

So it is rather astonishing that so many disregard Trump’s claim that Obama and his aides spied upon him and his staff. There were several means at his disposal for him to do so, and it is increasingly likely that they did so. He apparently sought — twice — to get the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to approve tapping Trump communications, and was turned down once, in June of last year — a rare occurrence as in 10,000 applications in a six-year period only two were rejected. Reportedly the Obama administration tried again, using a slightly modified request and received permission. Heat Street reported this on November 7.

This week, investigative journalists Sara Carter and John Solomon confirmed that the FISA court warrant was granted in October.

 “What we don’t know is who was connected to that FISA,” Carter said on Sean Hannity’s show Wednesday night. “What was that FISA looking at? That is very highly classified. Nobody wants to talk about that particular FISA, right now. They said it did have to do with the Russian hacking on a very broad level, but it didn’t hone in directly on Trump is what I was told,” she said.

 

In addition to the FISA warrant in October, the FBI obtained a separate warrant that same month to look into a computer server tied to then-candidate Donald Trump’s businesses in Trump Towers (but not located in Trump Towers). According to the report, the feds used traditional investigative techniques to examine allegations of computer activity tied to two Russian banks and there had been no intercepts of Trump’s phone or emails.

 

The FBI quickly concluded, “the computer activity in question involved no nefarious contacts, bank transactions or encrypted communications with the Russians.”

 

The months-long FBI counterintelligence investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential campaign briefly investigated a computer server tied to Donald Trump’s businesses near the end of the election but has not gathered evidence of election tampering to date that would warrant criminal charges against any of the president’s associates, Circa has learned.

But a FISA warrant is not the only way to surveil communications. Under Chapter 36 of Title 50 of the US Code, and pursuant to Executive Order 12333, the president can authorize electronic surveillance without a court order, and we don’t know if Obama utilized one of these means as well. Nor can we ascertain who’s leaking, as on his way out of office –-17 days before his term was up — Obama allowed the National Security Agency to circulate such intercepted messages among 16 other intelligence agencies without following longstanding protocols designed to insure privacy of those involved in the communications, in effect inviting selective leaking by partisans in those agencies.

This week former NSA official Bill Binney confirmed the veracity of Trump’s claim that his conversations had been tapped and monitored and claimed it was done outside the courts.

Binney told Fox the laws that fall under the FISA court’s jurisdiction are “simply out there for show” and “trying to show that the government is following the law, and being looked at and overseen by the Senate and House intelligence committees and the courts.”

 

“That’s not the main collection program for NSA,” Binney said.

In any event, both the former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and the head of the FBI James Comey have stated without equivocation that there was no evidence found of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

On the other hand, there is increasing evidence of Russian ties to Hillary Clinton and those closely connected to her.

Jerome Corsi connects a Russian billionaire to Putin with close ties.  He provides documentary “evidence of the circuitous path the Russian government has been using since Hillary Clinton was secretary of state to make large financial payments to John Podesta and to the Clinton Foundation.”

These transfers were made at the same time Hillary Clinton was transferring “U.S. advanced technology to Russia.”

John Podesta is not the only family member enriched by the Russians. His brother Tony also rode the Russian gravy train.

Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, has confirmed that it hired the consultancy of Tony Podesta, the elder brother of John Podesta who chaired Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, for lobbying its interests in the United States and proactively seeking the removal of various Obama-era sanctions, the press service of the Russian institution told TASS on Thursday.

 

[snip]

 

Previously, The Daily Caller reported that Tony Podesta was proactively lobbying for cancellation of a range of anti-Russian sanctions against the banking sector. In particular, he represented interests of Sberbank and was paid $170,000 for his efforts over a six-month period last year to seek to end one of the Obama administration’s economic sanctions against that country.  Podesta, founder and chairman of the Podesta Group, is listed as a key lobbyist on behalf of Sberbank, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms. His firm received more than $24 million in fees in 2016, much of it coming from foreign governments, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

 

Former President Barack Obama imposed the Russian sanctions following the break out in violence in east Ukraine in 2014.

 

Podesta’s efforts were a key part of under-the-radar lobbying during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign led mainly by veteran Democratic strategists to remove sanctions against Sberbank and VTB Capital, Russia’s second largest bank.

 

[snip]

 

The lobbying campaign targeted Congress and the executive branch, with Podesta and other lobbyists arranging at least two meetings between Sberbank officers and Department of State officials, according to Elena Teplitskaya, Sberbank’s board chairman, who spoke to House aides in August.

 

[snip]

 

The Podesta Group represented Sberbank and its subsidiaries, Troika Dialog Group in the Cayman Islands, SBGB Cyprus Ltd in Nicosia, Cyprus, and SB International in Luxembourg. Troika Dialog also was related to Klein, Ltd., a Cayman Island organization that once funneled tens of millions of dollars to environmental groups to oppose low-cost fracking in the U.S., which was hurting the Russian oil industry.

 

[snip]

 

Sberbank was the lead financial institution in the Russian deal to purchase Uranium One, owned by one of Bill Clinton’s closest friends, Frank Giustra. Giustra and Bill Clinton lead the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership, an integral part of the Clinton Foundation. Giustra has additionally donated $25 million to the Clinton Foundation.

 

Giustra sought to sell his stake in uranium reserves that included ore deposits in the Western United States, and Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state, approved the sale. And in one felled swoop, 20 percent of America’s uranium ore was sold to the Russian state atomic agency.

During the pending sale, the Podesta Group represented Giustra’s company and tried to advance the transaction.

So there probably was surveillance on Trump and his associates, although no connection with Russia was established with them. Instead, all the connections to Russia were with Clinton and her closest associates.

What we also know was that, like Hillary Clinton, the Congressional Democrats repeatedly demonstrate a shocking disregard for national security. The Daily Caller has documented what the mainstream media is largely ignoring: the fact that dozens of Democratic congressmen, including the former head of the DNC, engaged three brothers from Pakistan and two of their wives at salaries multiple times over those similarly situated (over $4 million), gave them passwords, and allowed them access to sensitive computer files, even though it is impossible to fathom how people with their record of financial troubles got security clearances. These brothers are presently under criminal investigation accused of stealing House computer equipment and transferring information from Congressional files to a personal server. They owe $100,000 to an Iraqi businessman believed to have with ties to Hezb’allah who is a fugitive from U.S. authorities. This week, to cap it off, the brothers are under investigation for kidnapping and holding prisoner their stepmother to prevent her from seeing her dying husband in Pakistan.

Politico reports that Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former head of the DNC, refuses to fire one of the brothers even though he is banned from the House network. She’s keeping him on as an “adviser.”

Really, it’s impossible to parody Democrats these days. It would be too unbelievable.

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SUPERSTAR REPORTER GOES PUBLIC WITH OBAMA’S CREEPY SPYING ON HER

Shares bizarre details about hacked computer as she investigated scandals

By GARTH KANT

March 12, 2017

WND

Former Attorney General Eric Holder and former President Obama

“It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.” – George Orwell, “1984” 

WASHINGTON – The woman who is perhaps the nation’s top investigative journalist is fighting back against Big Brother.

Sharyl Attkisson shared with WND a detailed and harrowing description of what it was like to experience a reality straight out of Orwell: The reporter claims she was spied on by the Obama administration while investigating its scandals.

What tipped her off?

Imagine what it must be like to watch your computer turn itself on and off.

“That’s one visible sign I noticed over many months,” Attkisson told WND in an email interview.

“At the time, I suspected it was some sort of phishing program seeking my passwords and contacts, and was confident my computer had sufficient protections. I never suspected it was connected to an intrusion of my systems until sources and forensics told me that it was.”

She also watched a different computer that she used delete files by itself.

After Attkisson released a video showing that as it was happening, Vox’s Max Fisher claimed it was more likely that she had a stuck backspace key.

Sharyl Attkisson

WND asked, as an Emmy-award winning investigative journalist and now the anchor of her own Sunday morning national TV news program, “Full Measure,” did she find Fisher’s claim that she was confused by a keyboard plausible?

“It was just a silly attempt by a noted propagandist blog that had no firsthand information to deflect from the surveillance,” she replied dismissively.

“The ‘expert’ didn’t even know enough to understand there is no ‘backspace’ key on the computer shown, and — in any event — that holding down such a key cannot duplicate the super fast deletions demonstrated at the beginning of that particular video clip.”

What do YOU think? Will President Trump spy on American citizens like Obama did? Sound off now in the WND Poll!

The five-time Emmy Award winner and recipient of the Edward R. Murrow award for investigative reporting announced in January she is suing the Justice Department and seeking $35 million in damages for illegally hacking her computers and monitoring her work between 2011 and 2013.

Three separate computer forensic exams of her computers revealed what appears to be stunning evidence pointing straight to the Obama administration.

“The most important and irrefutable finding is: forensic evidence of a government-owned I.P. (internet protocol) address accessing my computer,” Attkisson told WND.

She said she was told that was “better evidence than the U.S. had when it accused China of various acts of hacking into our government, which the government accepts as proven.”

Her computers were examined by three independent forensics examiners including: a confidential source, an examiner hired by CBS News, and an examiner hired by her attorney.

What they found is just stunning.

Attkisson provided an itemized overview of some of their findings, and described what a confidential source and examiner hired by her attorney found:

• “A government-owned I.P. address was used to access my computer.”

• “We are able to see instances of exact date and time that the intruders entered my computers, and the methods they used to do so.”

• “They used commercial, non-attributable software proprietary to the CIA, FBI, NSA or DIA.”

• “The malware was constantly running on my computers. It included a feature that logged my keystrokes, accessed all my emails and collected my passwords.”

• “Skype was surreptitiously used to listen in on audio.”

• “My smartphone was also infected.”

• “Three classified documents had been put on my computer.”

• “Once sources notified me that I was likely being surveilled, and I discussed this in emails, the intruders took steps to erase evidence of their presence. However, the deletions themselves create a record of evidence.”

CBS and its analyst found:

• “Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012.”

• “Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts.”

• “An intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data.”

• “This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion.”

• “[Attkisson’s] systems were indeed subject to non-standard interactions between June 2012 and January 2013.”

• “Definitive evidence that shows commands were run from Sharyl’s user account that she did not personally authorize.”

• “This history has been deliberately removed from Sharyl’s hard drive.”

• The intruders conducted an inordinate number of internal computer clock “time stamp” changes, likely to try to confuse any forensics that might be conducted.

Why her?

WND asked the former CBS Washington bureau investigative correspondent, did she think the administration considered her a foe? And acted to stop her out of purely political concerns?

“I have no idea, the perpetrators would have to answer that question and they certainly aren’t stepping forward,” she replied.

“But,” she continued, “my computer intrusions occurred in context of the Obama administration’s crackdown on whistleblowers and a lot of my work deals with whistleblowers.”

“Additionally, we know the administration was aggressively trying to control the narrative on a number of stories it saw as damaging, especially as the re-election year of 2012 shaped up.”

Attkisson detailed her experience under surveillance in 2014 in her highly acclaimed New York Times bestseller, “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”

Stonewalled by Sharyl Attkisson

Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, records previously obtained by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch indicate Attkisson was targeted by the Obama administration because of critical reporting.

In 2014, Judicial Watch said it “obtained an October 4, 2011, email to White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz, Attorney General Eric Holder’s top press aide, (in which) Tracy Schmaler, described Attkisson as ‘out of control.’

“Schmaler added ominously, ‘I’m also calling Sharryl’s [sic] editor and reaching out to Scheiffer’ (an apparent reference to CBS’ Chief Washington Correspondent and Face the Nation moderator Bob Scheiffer). Schultz responded, ‘Good. Her piece was really bad for the AG’ (attorney general.)”

Given that Obama’s Justice Department had labeled her as “out of control” and tried to get the reporter’s employer to rein her in, WND asked Attkisson:  What did she make of an administration that seeks to control reporters?

“I expect it,” was the sober response. “But it’s our job to resist it and we aren’t doing a very good job of that as an industry.”

(Attkisson described problems endemic in the news media, including the genesis of fake news, in an interview with WND in December previewing her new book titled “The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote,” due to be published on May 22, 2017.)

The Smear by Sharyl Attkisson

Did she think her experience and that of the Associated Press and Fox News reporter James Rosen (both spied on by the Obama administration) were part of a pattern?

“Yes. I was informed about my case prior to us knowing about any of the other cases, just before the Snowden revelations, and prior to former DNI (Director of National Intelligence James) Clapper falsely telling Congress that the government was not collecting data of millions of Americans…but all of these events occurred in the same general time frame.”

So, was it the administration that was “out of control?”

“You decide!” she replied, echoing a famous news slogan.

Investigating the truth about her own story, the award-winning reporter has faced what she called a Catch-22 dilemma.

“To find out who accessed my computer, we need the government’s cooperation, but the government isn’t cooperating.”

“In my lawsuit, we seek to learn who had access to the I.P. address that was used to infiltrate my computer,” she continued. “To date, the Department of Justice has taken multiple steps to block us from finding this answer.”

However, her persistence has revealed some compelling results.

“Finally, at my request, the DOJ (Department of Justice) Inspector General’s office sent investigators to look at a separate computer, my personal home computer.”

Attkisson said that although the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office will not release their notes and records, “and have improperly failed to respond to my Freedom of Information Act request for the information,” their forensics investigators reported to her that they found the following on her personal computer:

• “Evidence of suspicious deletions of files that could not have been done by me.

• “Use of my computer in ‘advanced mode’ (which was not done by me).”

• “‘Someone’ installed software onto my desktop and executed it and overwrote some important logs effectively covering their tracks and erasing much evidence of their actions.”

• “As with my CBS computer, they found a lot of unusual time and date setting changes on my personal computer as well (15 times in four days).”

• “They executed data recovery, recovering previously deleted logs.”

Attkisson said the forensics examiners working for the Justice Department’s inspector general “told me they believed the intruder(s) were actually working in my house at the computer conducting these acts, rather than conducting them remotely, but, in fact, the acts were conducted remotely, as with the work computers referenced above.”

“Furthermore,” she continued, “the examiners indicated that prior to their supervisors signing off on their findings, ‘somebody’ narrowed their mission to only reporting on any ‘remote’ intrusions (i.e. not addressing the suspicious forensics they found by someone they believed was actually in my house working at the computer.)”

And that’s when the investigation hit a wall.

“At this point, as their report was sent to higher-ups for approval, they dialed back their communications with me and would not deliver the promised final report or the notes that went with it.”

Attkisson said she filed a FOIA to obtain them but it was ignored. Many months went by.

“When Congress pressed the issue, the DOJ IG issued only a summary and emphasized there was no evidence of ‘remote’ intrusion in that computer and left out the suspicious forensics they discovered,” explained the investigative super-sleuth. “To this day, the DOJ IG has failed to properly respond to my FOIA requests seeking the full information and report.”

As a result, “Many in the media misreported that this DOJ IG report was somehow conclusive evidence that my computers had not been infiltrated.”

“In fact,” she clarified, “the DOJ IG didn’t even examine the primary computers in question — referenced in the other exams above— because CBS would not allow them to look at the computers.”

Did she think the problem was specific to the previous administration, or was it due the growth of the surveillance community, its powers and lack of oversight?

“I think this is an outgrowth of technology that makes such surveillance possible, politicians and corporate interests who are willing to use it for improper purposes, and a weak and conflicted news media that has done little to stop it.”

Finally, WND said it would be remiss if it did not ask the ace reporter if her experience had given her any insight into President Trump’s accusations that his campaign had been spied on by the Obama administration.

However, Attkisson said she has not looked at, or reported, on those allegations.

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John R. Houk

© March 13, 2017

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DC Secrets and Lies

© American Thinker 2017

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SUPERSTAR REPORTER GOES PUBLIC WITH OBAMA’S CREEPY SPYING ON HER

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