quote:

Originally posted by mbinky:
Personally? I expect absolutely NOTHING to come of this whole fiasco.

My only counter to that defeatist attitude is:

Oh please. Trump is doing great things, but until the DOJ is under new management don't get your hopes up.

I really hope Trump is waiting until after the election to kick Sessions and Rosenstein to the curb. As long as they (actually Rosenstein) run the DOJ don't expect too much. Tic toc the left is just running out he clock.

Conservative Treehouse has a good report up

https://theconservativetreehou...-a-year/#more-152815

The Media Are Hiding Their Knowledge and Duplicity – Buzzfeed, WaPo and New York Times Had Unredacted FISA Application For Over A Year…

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

While they tie it together, much of this has been discussed over the last year.

The big new thing is that CT is convinced that James Wolfe sent out an unredacted version of the Carter Page FISA warrant on 17 Mar 2017.

That is possible, but I don't think we have conclusive proof yet.

If Wolfe did actually send out the entire unredacted TS doc one page at a time, why is he only charged w lying to the FBI ?

Still more to learn.

I do agree w CT that the media will continue to spin and lie no matter how much actually comes out. Media such as NYT, Wash Post, Yahoo news, CNN.

This post mixes some known facts with an “educated guess”. This material is being discussed on several different blogs and twitter accounts. None of this is original w me. It is just some info; no hard hitting conclusion. But it might develop into something significant.

Background: A lawyer named Adam Waldman was (is ?) representing Christopher Steele, Julian Assange, and Russian Oleg Deripaska (close to Putin).

In March 2017, Waldman was secretly communicating w Senator Mark Warner (DEM) about the possibility of Warner meeting w each of them. The messages later became public and they were acknowledged as legitimate.

On 3 Mar 2017, Waldman texts to Warner:
“Hey Mark – am back in Washington and hope we can get together, maybe w Jack? And our wives? Pls let me know whatever suits you. BB is also treating a small number of people if you want in on that I can arrange … adam”


There has been a lot of speculation about who “Jack” and “BB” are. Just recently there has been a guess that might provide the answer. ( No one in the media seems to have asked Warner directly)

The guess is Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer. (This appears to have originated w a Tweet from someone named Gus Hall)

What follows is a lot about Bauer and a little about Goldsmith.

Both Goldsmith and Bauer are associated w the Lawfare blog. That is the blog where Comey’s good buddy Ben Wittes is the chief editor. When FBI counsel James Baker quit, he went to Lawfare.

Bob Bauer founded Perkins Coie law firm in 1980.

Perkins Coie is an international law firm with more than 1,000 lawyers in 19 offices across the United States, China and Taiwan.

Bauer was Obama’s White House Counsel in 2010/2011.

In May 2018, Bauer left Perkins Coie after more than 35 years with the firm. He will continue private practice with select clients including The Obama Foundation, The Biden Foundation, and he is a personal counsel to former President Obama.

Bauer was General Counsel to Obama for America, the former president’s campaign organization, in 2008 and 2012, and served as General Counsel to the Democratic National Committee.

Ever heard of Perkins Coie before ?

One more point about Bauer. He is married to Anita Dunn.

Dunn was Obama’s director of communications back in the 2008 to 2009 time frame. After she left the obama administration, she visited the WH over 100 times.

Jack Goldsmith is a co-founder of Lawfare along w Ben Wittes. He served briefly in the Geo W Bush administration. While he is described as a conservative, he wrote this article in October 2017:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ma...e-presidency/537921/

“DONALD TRUMP is testing the institution of the presidency unlike any of his 43 predecessors. We have never had a president so ill-informed about the nature of his office, so openly mendacious, so self-destructive, or so brazen in his abusive attacks on the courts, the press, Congress (including members of his own party), and even senior officials within his own administration. Trump is a Frankenstein’s monster of past presidents’ worst attributes: …..”

A lot more, but you get the idea.


So whether or not the guesses about “Jack” and “BB” are correct, I thought it was interesting to see how entwined Perkins Coie is to the DEM party.

If you read an article by Lawfare, they are a bit biased.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Conservative Treehouse has a good report up

https://theconservativetreehou...-a-year/#more-152815

The Media Are Hiding Their Knowledge and Duplicity – Buzzfeed, WaPo and New York Times Had Unredacted FISA Application For Over A Year…

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

While they tie it together, much of this has been discussed over the last year.

The big new thing is that CT is convinced that James Wolfe sent out an unredacted version of the Carter Page FISA warrant on 17 Mar 2017.

That is possible, but I don't think we have conclusive proof yet.

If Wolfe did actually send out the entire unredacted TS doc one page at a time, why is he only charged w lying to the FBI ?

Still more to learn.

I do agree w CT that the media will continue to spin and lie no matter how much actually comes out. Media such as NYT, Wash Post, Yahoo news, CNN.

That avoids making the unredacted one public, probably.

CTH seems to speculate a great deal. I read the bit about Nellie Ohr getting a Technician Amateur license in May, 2016, speculating the nefarious purpose without the slightest indication that radio was used. It is hard to imagine that it might, or how.

more and more pieces fall intro place

Remember some time back there was a McClatchy article written by Peter Stone and Greg Gordon that claimed Mueller had evidence that lawyer Cohen was actually in Prague in 2016 ? (that would have backed up the dossier claims)

While that story caught on like wild fire, no other news media said they had sources. They just kept repeating what McClatchy had reported.

(Please be careful to understand this is McClatchy news blog, not Andy McCarthy)

Those same McClatchy writers had another story that also looks like it was fed to them by Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS.

http://dailycaller.com/2018/08...r-glenn-simpson-nra/

Veteran GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell suddenly found her name mixed up in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

The first public mention of Mitchell came in a March 13 report released by Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The report listed Mitchell, a partner at the firm Foley & Lardner, as one of the “individuals or groups who were involved in or may have knowledge of third-party political outreach from the Kremlin to the Trump campaign.”

Two days later, McClatchy newspapers cited two anonymous sources who claimed that Mitchell expressed concerns just after the election that Russians had funneled secret cash to the National Rifle Association.

The origin of the claims about Mitchell, which she says are a “complete fabrication,” have remained a mystery for months. But notes taken during a meeting between Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr and Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, could shed light on how the allegations made their way into the public sphere.

The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned that during a Dec. 10, 2016 , meeting in Washington, D.C., Simpson told Ohr that Mitchell learned of and was troubled by Russian funding for the NRA.

“An NRA lawyer named Cleta Mitchell found out about the money pipeline and was very upset, but the election was over,” Simpson said, according to Ohr’s handwritten notes, which were read to TheDCNF by a government source.

Simpson and Ohr were meeting to discuss Fusion GPS’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Ohr had been in contact with Christopher Steele, the former British spy was working for Simpson on the Trump dossier.

Simpson’s claim to Ohr about Mitchell closely matched a March 15 article published by McClatchy reporters Greg Gordon and Peter Stone. Like Simpson’s statement to Ohr, the article made the false assertion that Mitchell is currently a lawyer for the NRA, but she hasn’t had a relationship with the organization for years

that "March 15" article is from 15 Mar 2018. Simpson was talking to Ohr in Dec 2016

In the piece, titled “NRA lawyer said to have concerns about group’s ties to Russia,” Gordon and Stone claimed that congressional investigations “have learned that a longtime attorney for the National Rifle Association expressed concerns about the group’s ties to Russia and possible involvement in channeling Russian money into the 2016 elections to help Donald Trump.”

The article also quoted California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

“Whether there was an effort by Russia to create a back channel or assist the Trump campaign through the NRA or gun-rights groups is an open question the committee’s minority has endeavored to answer for the past year,” Schiff said.

Mitchell has emphatically denied the allegations in the McClatchy article, saying that she never expressed concern about Russian funding for the NRA because she had not heard anything about it.

Mitchell told McClatchy the claim was a “complete fabrication.”

“I have no knowledge of anything like this and zero concerns whatsoever about anyone — Russians or otherwise — who ‘funneled’ funds to/ through NRA,” she told the news wire service.

“I have not had any relationship with the NRA in six years. I had zero contact with the NRA in 2016,” Mitchell told the reporters after their article was published. Contrary to what the initial McClatchy article and Simpson claimed, Mitchell’s NRA board membership expired in 2013.

Mitchell told TheDCNF that numerous news outlets, including ABC News, The New York Times, NPR, Talking Points Memo and CNN approached her about what she says is a “false story” about her.

“[The] only one who bit was McClatchy,” Mitchell said. “I’ve suspected all along it was Glenn Simpson/Fusion who made up that story.”

Mitchell minced no words when asked what she thinks about Simpson presenting her name to a top Justice Department official.

“He should be prosecuted for violating 18 USC 1001. Lying to a federal agent is a crime,” she said.

It is unclear how House Intelligence Democrats, led by Schiff, obtained the information about Mitchell

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

meanwhile, Inspector Chief Idiot Mueller chases porn stars, madams, ten year old charges that had been dropped, and Russians who will never be in a court room.

Some days I think my frustration has driven me nuts.

What a conspiracy.

https://thefederalist.com/2018...ele-broke-fbi-rules/

Grassley’s letter also included the dates on which the FBI had interviewed Ohr about Ohr’s conversations with Steele. Those interviews occurred as follows:

#1: 11 / 22 / 16
...
#12: 5/ 15 /17

The date of the first FBI interview — Nov. 22, 2016 — proves significant in light of Solomon’s article last week, which disclosed the content of notes Ohr took of a meeting with Strzok and Page the day before the FBI conducted its initial debrief of Ohr.

“Ohr’s notes suggest he met Nov. 21, 2016, with FBI officials that included Strzok, then-FBI attorney Lisa Page and another agent,” Solomon wrote, adding that “Ohr’s notes from that meeting indicate that FBI officials told him they ‘may go back to Chris’ — an apparent reference to Steele — just 20 days after dismissing him.”

Did Ohr, Strzok, and Page devise the work-around to allow Steele to continue to feed the FBI information? The date of Ohr’s meeting with Strzok and Page and Ohr’s first “official” FBI interview the following day make that conclusion extremely likely.

The next questions, then, are: Who was the unnamed third FBI agent present during Ohr’s meeting with Strzok and Page? Does that agent remain employed by the bureau? Or, as both Strzok and Page were for a time, does the agent now work with Special Counsel Robert Mueller?

folks are trying to figure this one out

Papadopoulos has requested discovery material prior to his sentencing.

Mueller files a protective order to restrict the use of discovery to protect investigative information.







seen at

https://twitter.com/tracybeanz.../1029392778302812160

What’s to figure out?

The government insists on restricting the use of the materials to non public, secure storage, etc.

The defendant has a right to get it.

Remember the 12 defendant indictment, one entity of which appeared and demanded discovery?

quote:

On June 12, 2018, Team Mueller responded to the defense discovery requests by warning the court that Russian intelligence services still have active “interference operations” into U.S. elections and that handing over certain evidence in the criminal case could imperil ongoing investigations. They asked Judge Friedrich for an order to protect voluminous evidence sought by Concord. According to the prosecution, the evidence includes between 1.5 and 2 terabytes of data and involves U.S. residents not charged with crimes who Team Mueller says were unwittingly recruited by Russians to engage in political activity.

In requesting a protective order, the Muellerites argued that disclosure of such evidence would help foreign intelligence services in Russia and elsewhere while undermining U.S. law enforcement and national security investigations. U.S. documents identify “sources, methods and techniques used to identify the foreign actors behind these interference operations.” Improper disclosure of that information would tip foreign intelligence services about how the U.S. operates and let them “adjust their conduct, thus undermining ongoing and future national security operations.”

The prosecutors claimed that they have gathered “unclassified but sensitive information that remains relevant to ongoing national security investigations and efforts to protect the integrity of future U.S. elections.” It includes the identities of cooperating individuals and companies, as well as links between the defendants, uncharged parties and foreign governments, that goes well beyond what the prosecution intends to disclose at trial. They gave additional details to Judge Friedrich under court seal.

Mueller's protective order isn't a mystery.

The thing that seems odd is Papadop going for discovery at this time.

How often do we see a case where people confess, their sentencing is delayed for long times, and during the delay top people at the FBI are fired or forced out?

and there is a continual stream of very suspicious activity revealed by the FBI and DoJ ? (e.g. Ohr)

With the Russian case, it seems straightforward the Russians wanted to force Mueller to reveal his case w/o having anyone exposed to penalty. Sounds like a smart move.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
Mueller's protective order isn't a mystery.

The thing that seems odd is Papadop going for discovery at this time.

How often do we see a case where people confess, their sentencing is delayed for long times, and during the delay top people at the FBI are fired or forced out?

and there is a continual stream of very suspicious activity revealed by the FBI and DoJ ? (e.g. Ohr)

With the Russian case, it seems straightforward the Russians wanted to force Mueller to reveal his case w/o having anyone exposed to penalty. Sounds like a smart move.

Mueller continues to claim that public dissemination of the discovery materials jeopardizes sources and methods in an on going investigation, with ramifications in the current election cycle.

Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty, so this is for sentencing purposes.

This meeting raises serious questions concerning whether Christopher Steele shared information from his ‘dossier’ with Bruce Ohr, prompting the FBI to launch Crossfire Hurricane.

Federalist
Margot Cleveland

In three articles for The Hill last week, investigative journalist John Solomon revealed previously undisclosed text and email discussions between former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr and former MI6 agent and Spygate dossier author Christopher Steele. Solomon’s reporting also uncovered notes Ohr took summarizing discussions he had with Steele’s boss at Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, about the Russia “collusion” investigation.

In isolation, the details revealed in Solomon’s must-read exposés are troubling. But when considered in conjunction with information related to the Russia investigation the government previously released, this new information is potentially devastating, because it indicates that, notwithstanding claims to the contrary, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched operation Crossfire Hurricane based on Steele’s Clinton-funded opposition research.

This conclusion flows from an email exchange revealed in Solomon’s first article, which established that Ohr met with Steele on July 30, 2016, in Washington DC. Ohr brought his wife Nellie to the breakfast gathering. Nellie, as has long been reported, worked at Fusion GPS, also on the Trump opposition-research project.

That end-of-July meeting followed emails exchanged earlier in the month, in which Steele told Ohr: “There is something separate I wanted to discuss with you informally and separately. It concerns our favourite business tycoon!”

“An apparent reference to Trump,” Solomon explained, noting that Steele’s reaching out to Ohr came just days before Steele met with an FBI agent stationed in Rome to relay “still-unproven allegations that Trump had an improper relationship with Russia, including possible efforts to hijack the presidential election.”

While we do not know the details discussed at the July 30, 2016, tête-à-tête, the morning meeting with the Ohrs appears related to Steele’s request to chat about their “favourite business tycoon.” Significantly, as Solomon reported, “That meeting occurred exactly one day before FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok formally opened an investigation, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, into whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Moscow to steal the election.”

Add This New Info to What We Already Know

This meeting raises serious questions concerning whether Steele shared information from his “dossier” with Ohr, which Ohr then passed on to the FBI, prompting the FBI to launch Crossfire Hurricane. This possibility seems extremely likely, given two additional facts.

First, the FBI’s proffered rationale for initiating Crossfire Hurricane has long seemed shaky. According to Republican Rep. Adam Schiff’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Democratic response memorandum, “the FBI initiated its counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, after receiving information” that individuals linked to Russia had told George Papadopoulos they could assist Trump’s presidential campaign by anonymously releasing information about Hillary Clinton.

Schiff’s memo redacted the details of the information the FBI received concerning Papadopoulos’ purported conversation with the Russians. But The New York Times reported in May 2018 that, according to officials speaking “on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly,” it was comments Papadopoulos made to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer over drinks in a London bar in May 2016 that prompted the FBI to launch Crossfire Hurricane.

The New York Times further reported that Papadopoulos had told Downer “that Russia had dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,” and implied the “dirt” consisted of the hacked DNC emails, writing, “Before hacked Democratic emails appeared online, he had seemed to know that Russia had political dirt on Mrs. Clinton.”

However, in an interview with The Australian, Downer said that “during their drink at the Kensington Wine Room, Mr. Papadopoulos had told him he had damaging information on Mrs. Clinton, but he did not reveal what it was.” As Downer put it: “He didn’t say dirt, he said material that could be damaging to her. No, he said it would be damaging. He didn’t say what it was.” Rather, “During that conversation he (Papadopoulos) mentioned the Russians might use material that they have on Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the election, which may be damaging.”

This Is Reading Into What Papadopoulos Said

While Papadopoulos would later mention “dirt” and “emails” when the FBI interviewed him in late January 2017, at the time the FBI launched the investigation in July 2016, agents would only have Downer’s version of the events, which, according to the former Australian diplomat, made no reference to emails — either the Democratic National Committee’s hacked ones or the 30,000 emails missing from Clinton’s homebrew server.

Yet the narrative goes that the former Trump advisor’s comments justified an investigation into the Trump campaign once WikiLeaks released the hacked DNC emails in late July 2016, because Papadopoulos had obviously known ahead of time that Russia had that “dirt” on Hillary.

Taken in isolation, this theory is a tough sell, but now that we know that Steele met with Ohr the day before the FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane, no one should be buying the bureau’s bull. Unlike Papadopoulos’ vague reference to damaging material, Steele had already authored several memos — including at least two from July 2016 that purported to connect the Trump campaign to the WikiLeaks release of the DNC emails.

For instance, one memo claimed “Source E, acknowledged that the Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing e-mail messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to the WikiLeaks platform.” Steele’s memo continued: “The reason for using WikiLeaks was ‘plausible deniability’ and the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of TRUMP and senior members of his campaign team.”


Then in a memo dated July 30, 2016, Steele wrote that the Kremlin was “concerned that political fallout from DNC e-mail hacking operation [was] spiraling out of control,” and was “keen to cool [the] situation and maintain ‘plausible deniability’ of existing/ongoing pro-TRUMP and anti-CLINTON operations.”


From Solomon’s reporting we now have proof that Ohr fed information from Steele to the FBI after the FBI had dismissed Steele as a Confidential Human Source (CHS). The question is whether Ohr also funneled information from Steele to the FBI before the launch of Crossfire Hurricane and, if so, whether Steele’s statements brought about Crossfire Hurricane.

Yet Schiff Has Said Exactly the Opposite

This point is significant because in his Democrat response memo, Schiff states unequivocally that Steele had nothing to do with the decision to launch Crossfire Hurricane: “Christopher Steele’s raw intelligence reporting did not inform the FBI’s decision to initiate its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016.” Schiff reiterated this point a second time, stressing that Steele’s reporting “played no role in launching the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference and links to the Trump campaign.”

Schiff, however, only knows what the FBI included in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application or disclosed to congressional oversight committees. With every new revelation, it becomes more and more apparent that the FBI was less than forthright with both the FISA court and Congress.

At least Congress will have a chance to explore these issues with Ohr, as the House Oversight Committee has reportedly scheduled a closed-door session for Aug. 28, 2018, to question Ohr about his contacts with Steele. Hopefully, when the time comes the committee will focus on both Ohr’s role following Steele’s removal as a CHS and whether the former MI6 spy played a part in the decision to launch Crossfire Hurricane.

Link

Re Margot Cleveland article above,

she writes "Mr. Papadopoulos had told him he had damaging information on Mrs. Clinton, but he did not reveal what it was.”

That is not quite right. Papadopoulos told Downer that the Russians had material that could damage Clinton.

Margot Cleveland of The Federalist has another report out:

http://thefederalist.com/2018/...a-officials-spygate/

This one is very significant.

She puts together the significance of the Ohr-Steele communications and how Rosenstein may have been cut out of the loop.

Rod Rosenstein has gone on the record that he didn’t know of Bruce Ohr’s connection to the Russian investigation until “sometime in the fall of 2017” . Ohr was removed from his position as Associate Deputy AG in December 2017.

Recent reporting by John Solomon has revealed that Bruce Ohr was communicating directly w Christopher Steele from July 2016 to the end of November 2017.

After Steele was closed as an FBI Confidential Human Source in November 2016, Ohr passed Steele reports to the FBI

Adam Schiff has said the only parts of the dossier that were used in the original FISA warrant were the parts about Carter Page.

We know for certain that each of the extensions of the FISA warrant against Carter Page had additional information added. (10 to 15 pages added for each renewal)

Each renewal said the relationship w source #1 (Steele) had been suspended. Each of the extensions also state that the incident that led to the suspension occurred after Source # 1 provided the reporting “described herein”.

We don’t know what the redacted additions to each of the extensions actually say.
But if the additional information added turns out to be material from Steele that was passed thru Ohr, then the FBI lied to the FISC court. (looks like multiple times in each warrant)

And, if Rosenstein is telling the truth under oath, the FBI and Ohr kept Rosenstein in the dark about Ohr’s passing info from Steele.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

adding: the above story could be the real reason why Strzok was fired. When all the dust settles, he may not have been fired for texting about Donald Trump, but for lying to the FISC and the most senior people in the DoJ.

Strzok's gofundme has collected over $400k. Those donors may look very unwise.

From Sarah Carter:

In March, 2017, two days before former FBI Director James Comey testified to lawmakers that the bureau had an open counterintelligence investigation into President Trump’s campaign, former British spy Christopher Steele sent an urgent message to Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr hoping that “important firewalls will hold” when Comey testified.

The text message from Steele, who compiled the infamous unverified dossier on Trump, was sent on March 18, 2017, to Ohr and obtained by SaraACarter.com from a government source, familiar with the ongoing investigation.

We’re a bit apprehensive given scheduled appearance at Congress on Monday. Hoping that important firewalls will hold.
Ohr was demoted twice by the Department of Justice for not disclosing that his wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS, the now-embattled research firm which paid Steele for the documents. Ohr has been deposed for questioning by the House Judiciary Committee and is expected to speak to lawmakers behind closed doors on Aug. 28.



In the text, Steele writes Ohr, “Hi! Just wondering if you had any news? Obviously, we’re a bit apprehensive given scheduled appearance at Congress on Monday. Hoping that important firewalls will hold. Many thanks.”

Ohr writes back later that day, saying “Sorry, no new news. I believe my earlier information is still accurate. I will let you know immediately if there is any change.”

It is not certain, based on the limited communications obtained by Congress between the pair, what Ohr was referring to when he discussed “earlier information” that he delivered to Steele.

The exchange raises questions, according to a government source who asked, “What did Steele mean by important firewalls before Comey testimony? And what did Ohr mean by earlier information he provided?” The source noted that the ‘firewall’ statement seemed raise similar questions posed by lawmakers after (now-fired) FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok sent the infamous “insurance policy” texts to his paramour, former FBI Attorney Lisa Page.

Strzok, who was the lead investigator in the FBI’s investigation into Trump, was removed last August from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation after the DOJ’s Inspector General revealed thousands of text messages, including troves of anti-Trump text messages, between him and Page. Page, who was working as the general counsel for now-fired Deputy Attorney General Andrew McCabe, is no longer with the FBI.

Last week, SaraACarter.com published a law enforcement sensitive document written by Ohr that raised serious concerns among lawmakers regarding his possible contacts with FBI agents involved in the Russia-Trump bureau investigation.

Months before Comey’s testimony, on Nov. 21, 2016, the handwritten document by Ohr lists a possible meeting with Strzok, Page and Special Agent Joe Pientka (who along with Strzok interviewed former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn). The document is one of several hundred documents obtained by lawmakers after long battles with the DOJ.

In the handwritten note, Ohr jots down, “no prosecution yet, pushing ahead on M case,” in reference to Paul Manafort, who is now facing years old charges on financial crimes and money laundering.

Ohr also wrote on the same memo, “may go back to Chris,” in reference to Christopher Steele.

Link

This is a bit repetitious, but it is an important issue.

Wanted to emphasize the position that Rosenstein finds himself in.
The recent news about Ohr makes his position even worse.

Rosenstein signed the third extension of the Carter Page FISA warrant in June 2017.

We know now that warrant (and the others) had serious problems:

1. The justification for calling Page a Russian foreign agent was largely based on the unverified Steele dossier. The FBI said Steele was a trusted human source, but they have never provided any proof that the key dossier points have been verified.

2. The FBI said the Sep 2016 Yahoo News article was independent of the Steele information. (The warrant uses “Source #1” for Steele). It is absolutely documented now that Steele planted the information w Isikoff of Yahoo News.

3. Bruce Ohr maintained communication w Steele from July 2016 to Nov 2017. Ohr provided reports to the FBI at least thtough May 2017. Rosenstein has testified that Ohr had nothing to do w the Russia investigation.

4. Each of the extensions provided more information to justify the given extension. It is possible that Ohr provided Steele information to support each warrant extension. This would be a huge FUBAR.

The FBI said in each warrant that source #1 was closed as a human source because he released information to the press, but that transgression occurred after source #1 had provided the material in the warrant. That would be another lie if Ohr was passing info from Steele to be used in the extensions.

So there may be more bad news for Rosenstein in the third extension, but just the above points make that warrant unjustified.

Rosenstein testified that “what he was briefed on” was not consistent with what has been released as the warrant.

If all of the Page FISA warrants are unjustified (or based on false information), wouldn’t that make any information gathered from those warrants invalid for use by the Mueller team ?

Manafort is mentioned in the dossier. Did Mueller gather any information about Manafort through the FISA warrant ? Could Manfort’s lawyers have thrown that out as a possibility and made Mueller affirm that nothing in the evidence against Manafort came from the FISA warrant ?

Was there a FISA warrant against Manafort ? Was that also based on false information just like the Carter Page warrant ?

I believe I read that Manafort had a FISA warrant on him for some period.

quote:

If all of the Page FISA warrants are unjustified (or based on false information), wouldn’t that make any information gathered from those warrants invalid for use by the Mueller team ?

Is there any “information” in the dossier worth knowing?

Did Ohr 'personally and substantially' participate in a particular matter in which his spouse had a 'financial interest' while he worked for the Justice Department?

Federalist
Adam Mill

A review of publicly available information causes a reasonable person to wonder whether Bruce Ohr broke the law by promoting his wife’s anti-Trump research to the FBI when he was working at the Justice Department.

The law prohibits public officials from involvement in matters in which their spouse has a financial interest. The question is, Did Ohr “personally and substantially” participate in a particular matter in which his spouse had a “financial interest” while he was employed by the Justice Department as the assistant attorney general? Let’s take a closer look.

Recall that the Hillary Clinton campaign (through its law firm Perkins Coie) hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS to generate dirt on Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign. Fusion GPS in turn hired former British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled the Trump dossier containing as yet unproven allegations of Russian dirt on Trump.

We learned in December that Ohr met with Fusion GPS in November 2016 — a critical time frame — in his capacity as the associate deputy attorney general. Former FBI agent Peter Strzok has confirmed Ohr fed the FBI documents pertinent to the investigation into Trump’s Russia ties, and The Hill reported the FBI used Ohr to continue collecting information from Steele, even after it terminated him as a source for leaking word of the investigation to the media.

John Solomon filled in the contours of Ohr’s role in the investigation, writing in The Hill of recently disclosed emails:

They also confirm that Ohr later became a critical conduit of continuing information from Steele after the FBI ended the Brit’s role as an informant. …
The FBI specifically instructed Steele that he could no longer ‘operate to obtain any intelligence whatsoever on behalf of the FBI,’ those memos show.
Yet, Steele asked Ohr in the Jan. 31 text exchange if he could continue to help feed information to the FBI: ‘Just want to check you are OK, still in the situ and able to help locally as discussed, along with your Bureau colleagues.’
‘I’m still here and able to help as discussed,’ Ohr texted back. ‘I’ll let you know if that changes.’
Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy recently expressed alarm that Ohr would insert himself into the ongoing Russia investigation. Understandably so. The FBI acts as the Justice Department’s investigator, and normally must convince the DOJ that the quality and quantity of gathered evidence will support a case before a federal court. When a senior DOJ prosecutor gives the FBI information, it comes with the DOJ’s implied endorsement of the evidence. This kind of implied endorsement may have played a role in the FBI’s decision to pay Steele to continue research on the Trump dossier.

Ohr sponsored Steele’s research in spite of the fact that, as Steele later admitted, critical allegations in the dossier remain unverified. In particular, Steele now refuses to stand by his allegations of Russian hacking. Steele reportedly said his dossier allegations were never supposed to be made public, which is incongruous with his dissemination of the allegations to Ohr and his decision to leak word of the investigation to the press.

Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson disclosed in a sworn declaration that Fusion GPS paid Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, a Russia expert, to help research and analyze potential opposition research on Trump.

Curiously, it appears Ohr’s relationship with both Simpson and Steele predated his wife’s work for Fusion GPS, which raises the question whether Simpson may have hired her to gain favor with him. We don’t know how long Nellie Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, but Simpson’s December 2017 declaration indicates bank records from August 2015 through that time reflected she contracted with the firm to help research Trump. Ohr’s promotion of his wife’s research to the FBI potentially helped stoke continued demand for her services.

As pointed out by The Daily Caller, Ohr failed to disclose that his wife was being paid by Fusion GPS in his mandatory public financial disclosure form. The purpose of the form is to “identify potential or actual conflicts of interest.” Thus, The Daily Caller posits that when Ohr became involved in brokering his wife’s Trump-Russia research to the FBI, he deprived DOJ of the opportunity to identify this potential conflict of interest by failing to disclose the source of her “consulting” income. The DOJ had a legal right to know that Ohr’s wife was personally profiting from the research he promoted to the FBI.

One question that remains unanswered is whether Ohr also had a role in approving or overseeing the Trump-Russia investigation from within the DOJ. As noted by The Daily Mail, he “worked closely” with both Sally Yates, former assistant attorney general, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Also of note is that both Yates and Rosenstein signed off on one or more of the spy warrants for Trump associate Carter Page. If either Yates or Rosenstein consulted Ohr on the propriety of those applications, Ohr would have been in a position to endorse the validity of research for which his spouse was paid.

Violation of the law prohibiting public officials from involving themselves in matters in which their spouse has a financial interest (18 U.S.C. §208) is a crime punishable for up to five years in prison, if the conduct is deemed willful. The DOJ has the power to enforce this law civilly and criminally, and as Ohr’s employer, has a responsibility to do so if he violated it. So the DOJ’s perceived inaction in response to Ohr’s actions may set a government-wide precedent.

Steele openly sought to use the dossier to interfere with the election. Ohr promoted his work in spite of the fact that Steele made no secret to Ohr that he was desperate to stop Trump from becoming president. And he acted on it. Solomon reports, based on notes he reviewed of Ohr’s meeting with Steele: “‘Glen asked Chris to speak to the Mother Jones reporter. It was Glen’s Hail Mary attempt,’ Ohr wrote.”

In December 2016, Ohr received a memory stick with early versions of the dossier allegations. But why would he continue to receive Fusion GPS dirt even after the election? Perhaps because the campaign to stop Trump didn’t end after the election.

That December, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta supported calls to brief members of the Electoral College on the investigations into Trump’s Russia ties and into Russian meddling in the election. He openly advocated nullifying the election result by using the requested briefing to persuade members of the Electoral College to break with their voters.

The description of the requested briefing clearly matched the same “intelligence” that the Clinton campaign procured and Nellie Ohr helped Fusion GPS produce. Ohr may have conferred undeserved legitimacy on the “intelligence” when he promoted it to the FBI. This raises the question of whether his actions also constitute an attempt to “use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election,” in violation of another law.

Russian interference in an American election is obviously a serious concern. But public officials here in the United States are in an even greater position to use their power to tilt and influence future American elections. Ohr’s wife was indirectly hired by the Clinton campaign to help defeat Trump. Ohr seems to have used his position in the DOJ to help his wife further this contractual objective.

If we allow the government to pick its own leaders by interfering in elections, our democracy will quickly become a sham. That’s why Congress passed the law in the first place. Has the DOJ done enough to reassure Americans that officials within the DOJ will not interfere with future elections?

The DOJ might not have known the extent of Ohr’s involvement in 2016. But it certainly knows now. And government officials are undoubtedly watching how Ohr’s case plays out. Unfortunately, his continued presence in the DOJ sends them a powerful message about the relatively low risk of following his example.

Link

Report: Weekly Standard Founder Bill Kristol Caught Up in Spygate Scandal and Linked to Peter Strzok

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Bill Kristol, from the Weekly Standard, went from a leading conservative voice and Obama critic to a Trump hater who worked with Obama to derail the Trump Campaign.

Kristol fell so far that he started pushing the Trump – Russia dossier at the same time as John Brennan and the Obama team.

Kristol went from leading conservative voice to being the leader of the anti-Trump “conservative” movement in a matter of a few years.

Kristol and The Weekly Standard published articles smearing The Gateway Pundit for supporting the Republican Presidential candidate.

Now we know that Kristol’s fall was worse than we thought.

According to Julie Kelly at American Greatness website Kristol was one of the first individuals to push the Trump – Russia collision farce –

In his online appeal for money after being fired this week, disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok credited an unlikely source to vouch for his victim status: The Weekly Standard.

At one time a leading conservative magazine, the Standard declared last month that Strzok’s plight was merely an “overwrought tale of bias” and the case against him is “just sound and fury.” The article brushed off Strzok’s actions as “several bad judgment calls” and blasted Congressional Republicans for continuing a criminal investigation into the now-unemployed G-man.

Strzok is following only 32 people on his newly-verified Twitter account. Bill Kristol, the editor-at-large of the Standard, is one of them.

What Kelly points out is stunning –

On July 24, 2016, just days before Strzok helped launch a counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign, Kristol gave Strzok and the Obama Justice Department a big assist from the anti-Trump Right by posting a flawed and questionably-sourced article. “Putin’s Party” is compelling evidence that Kristol and the Standard were far from mere sideline observers as the Trump-Russia collusion scam took shape in the summer of 2016.

At the very least, the timing of the article suggests there was careful coordination between the central players—including the Hillary Clinton campaign—and Bill Kristol to derail Trump’s candidacy just weeks before the election. But the article’s content also serves to raise alarming questions about the claims by many Republicans that “conservatives” had no knowledge of or involvement with the Christopher Steele dossier.

Let’s back up a bit. On the morning that Kristol’s piece posted, the Trump-Russian election collusion story was in its embryonic stage—nearly all American voters that summer remained blissfully unaware of the details in this preposterous story—but secretly it was being peddled to the media by Fusion GPS, a political opposition research firm hired by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to dig up Russian-related dirt on Donald Trump. Talking points produced by Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion, and contained in the Steele dossier, were making the rounds in the D.C.-NYC media claque during July 2016. (At the same time, Steele was working with the FBI and alerting the agency to his dubious findings about the Trump campaign.)

Kristol’s article hits on every single one of the Simpson-Steele talking points: Trump forced the GOP to water-down language on the Ukraine in the party’s platform (it didn’t happen); the Russians were behind Wikileaks’ release of the DNC’s hacked emails (unproven); Trump encouraged foreign powers to interfere in the election (he didn’t); and Trump would not honor U.S. commitments to NATO (an overblown assessment of Trump’s NATO criticism nearly all the Republican candidates made). He listed a handful of unknown Trump campaign associates who would soon become household names, including campaign manager Paul Manafort; national security advisor, Lt. General Michael Flynn; and foreign policy aide Carter Page. (Strzok and the FBI formally opened their investigation into the three men—and campaign aide George Papadopoulos—on July 31, 2016.)

Did Steele have to pay Kristol or did he just post the article on his own? Sad – Very Sad!


https://www.thegatewaypundit.c...rump-russia-scandal/