^^ at this point they cant off him since it makes them look more guilty! smart move.

Chuck Ross tweet:

Glenn Simpson scheduled for 17 Oct congressional testimony, but will plead 5th

former FBI general counsel James Baker will continue his congressional testimony next Thursday, Oct. 18

Nellie Ohr is scheduled to testify on Oct. 19

It wouldn't look good if they sent the Marshals to bring Simpson in, would it? For Simpson, I mean.

Jeff Carlson has put together a mammoth summary of the conspiracy against Donald Trump.

Carlson has a twitter site at

https://twitter.com/themarketswork?lang=en

very informative place

here is the link to his summary.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/...llusion_2684629.html

It is long. Very long.

Reading it will numb you with how complicated and how many people were involved in the attempt to frame Donald Trump.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
It will numb you with how complicated and how many people were involved in the attempt to frame Donald Trump.

Yet there was no overriding conspiracy? No coordination? No actual Plot?

I find it unbelievable that that many people, worked for that long, with the same goal, using the same resources and it wasn't a coordinated attack.

A new report by John Solomon

The left is regurgitating an old story.

https://thehill.com/opinion/wh...-tale-joins-unproven

Move over ‘grassy knoll,’ the Trump-Russia bank tale joins unproven conspiracies list

If Democrats and their media accomplices keep recycling it, the unproven Donald Trump-Alfa Bank conspiracy may one day live right up there with the extra JFK gunman at Dallas’ grassy knoll, the missing Oak Island treasure, or the Lost City of Atlantis.

After all, the best unsolved mysteries — especially in politics — are those that can be neither proven nor disproven.

And therein lies the travesty of the unrelenting, yet uncorroborated, allegation that Trump’s campaign set up a covert communication system with Russia during the 2016 election, using a computer server in the United States and another owned by a Russian bank.

This allegation first surfaced with a Hillary Clinton-loving computer nerd in the fall of 2016, who claimed her group obtained domain name server (DNS) logs showing frequent “pings,” or contacts, between a server owned by Russia’s Alfa Bank and one in the name of the Trump Organization.

It turns out, though, that the server wasn’t actually in the Trump Organization in New York . It was in a tiny Pennsylvania town. And it actually wasn’t controlled by the Trump Organization but, rather, by an independent email marketing firm once hired by the president’s company

Christopher Steele — the Trump-hating former British spy hired by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which was hired by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party to dig up Trump dirt in Russia — was next to pick up the allegation. Eventually, allegations of connections between Alfa Bank’s parent-company Alfa Group, Russia and Trump made it into the dossier that Steele gave the FBI, although his grasp of the information was so shoddy that he misspelled the bank’s name.

Next, the allegation surfaced in a Slate and a New York Times article just a few days before Trump was elected

The Times’s story, however, conceded the FBI was dubious of the whole matter

Clinton source - Steele - Slate - NYT. A familiar pattern for BS stories

Not to be outdone, private attorney Michael Sussman walked in similar allegations to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in September 2016, according to four congressional sources familiar with testimony and documents gathered in the Russia case.

The evidence of the connections to the Alfa Bank allegations also are in a footnote in the House Intelligence Committee report, where Sussman's name was redacted by the FBI. Congressional investigators are investigating whether someone in Sussman’s firm, Perkins Coie, also provided Russia-related information to the CIA in early 2017.

That’s significant because Perkins Coie’s clients included the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and that firm paid Fusion GPS for Steele’s dirt-digging. Sussman declined to say, through a spokesman, if he met with a CIA contact but insisted any contact the firm may have had with the CIA wasn’t done at the behest of the DNC or Clinton.Still, it is hard to ignore his political connections.

And if that wasn’t enough to pressure the FBI to look at the allegation, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson — Steele’s boss on the Trump research project — brought the Alfa allegations directly to the No. 4 Justice Department official in December 2016. Assistant Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr’s notes from the meeting have a nifty notation. “The New York Times story on Oct. 31 downplaying the connection between Alfa servers and the Trump campaign was incorrect,” Ohr wrote in quoting Simpson. “There was communication and it wasn’t spam.”

Though the FBI repeatedly and publicly cast doubt on the allegations, some media outlets, such as CNN, continued to fan the flames of this tale

The latest to do so was New Yorker magazine , which just this month ran a long opus under the banner: “Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign?" No “new” news in that story, really. Just recycled fragments woven into a long, magazine-style story with an implicit plea for Democrats to resurrect the issue if they win control of Congress in November.

The relentless campaign to keep the allegations alive is remarkable not only for its political origins, but for what often has been omitted from the public narrative.

First off, the FBI has, on repeated occasions in 2016 and 2017, told me emphatically that it looked at the allegations and could find no conspiracy and, instead, believed the server communications were simply explained by normal internet traffic activities.

Secondly, Alfa Bank’s law firm traveled to meet an FBI cyber team in Chicago in 2017 and opened up its data vaults to assist the investigation. There was no follow-up, Alfa Bank says.

The private lawyer who supervised the review for Alfa Bank was Brian Benczkowski. He later was confirmed to be the chief of the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal division, one of the most sensitive and important jobs in law enforcement; Democrats asked him about the Alfa review during his confirmation. And neither the FBI nor the intelligence community offered any information to the Senate during his confirmation to contradict his conclusions that there was no conspiracy involving the Alfa-Trump servers.

Furthermore, not once in the 17 months of the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation has a member of Mueller’s staff reached out to Alfa Bank to raise questions about collusion or the servers, the bank says.

Another common omission from the news stories on this subject involves the political leanings of a key researcher who has pushed the Alfa-Trump narrative. Indiana University professor L. Jean Camp , who is well respected in computer science circles, was an unabashed supporter of and donor to Hillary Clinton in 2016. After the 2016 election, Camp accused the FBI in a tweet of ignoring the Trump server allegations and instead focusing on the reopening of Clinton’s email case. “The data are there and worth investigation. Why did FBI, #NYTimes kill this story before election to focus on Her Emails?” she tweeted in March 2017.

Camp acknowledged her political leanings to me last year, but insisted they had no bearing on her decision to raise questions about the data.

There’s one final omission worth noting. Most of the stories include a passing reference that Alfa commissioned one or two reports concluding there was no nefarious communications between Trump and Alfa servers. But nearly all ignore one of the most important findings in the reports: The DNS data released by researchers such as Camp to make their case of a possible conspiracy between Trump and Alfa were formatted differently than the bank server’s DNS logs.

“The format of the data does not match the format of actual logs at Alfa Bank,” the respected firm Stroz Friedberg wrote in a 2017 report. “If the DNS log data posted by Professor Camp is actual DNS log data from Alfa Bank, it has been edited and placed into a different format.”

News consumers and policymakers should demand that future iterations of this tale be more complete and balanced, and only told anew if new, substantial facts emerge from a place like the Mueller investigation.

Anything less is simply conspiratorial myth-making.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Remember when Comey said there was a "lot more" to support the FISA warrant than just the dossier? Maybe this is another piece of that puzzle.

Look at where the story started. Then look at all the players who pushed it. And then consider it has as much credibility as Christine Ford's story.

SOP:

1. Create a total fabrication that hurts Donald Trump

2. Pass the story thru multiple sources and venues that all appear to be independent

3. Feed the fabrication into the FBI

4. Repeat above steps

3 pieces of the "puzzle"

1.
more Papadopoulos tweets

Alexander Downer was too big of a fool to try tradecraft and truly launch an investigation. I notified the FBI about him recording my conversation with him. If anything was done with that info? Have no idea.

There is a reason I have the top law firm in NY representing me. It’s not for my defense, but to go on the offensive.

2.
Rep Ratcliffe:

Hypothetically, declassifying docs related to the Russia probe could reveal evidence that directly contradicts the underlying pretext of the investigation itself: that Papadopoulos had a conversation with an Australian diplomat about getting Clinton's emails from the Russians.

What this could reveal is that the Obama DOJ and FBI, in October of 2016, only presented the FISA court with selective evidence in support of their case to get a warrant to spy on a Trump campaign associate, rather than presenting evidence on both sides of the coin.

3.
on page 261 of the Trump Presidency thread, Cliff posted a DiGenova audio report

DiGenova said:

The FBI had exculpatory evidence that it did not present to the FISA Court.

The FBI and John Brennan requested the UK MI6 and GCHQ to do electronic surveillance on American citizens. That's how they found out that Papadopoulos was not interested in Clinton's emails.

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Way back Mar 2017, Judge Napolitano of Fox got in trouble when he reported that three intelligence sources had confirmed to him that the Obama administration used GCHQ (Britain's NSA) to spy on President Trump during the 2016 election so that there would be no paper trail.

"Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the 'chain of command' to conduct the surveillance on Trump," he said. "Obama didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI, and he didn’t use the Department of Justice."

https://www.realclearpolitics....during_campaign.html


I hope someday soon we pull the curtain to the side and see what really happened

good news

https://dailycaller.com/2018/1...age-sue-dnc-dossier/

Former Trump campaign associate Carter Page filed a defamation lawsuit Monday against the Democratic National Committee and its law firm, which commissioned the infamous Steele dossier.

Page filed the suit in federal court in Oklahoma against the DNC, the law firm, Perkins Coie, and two of its partners, Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann.

Perkins Coie, which also represented the Hillary Clinton campaign, is the firm that hired Fusion GPS, the opposition researcher that investigated Donald Trump’s links to Russia.

Elias was Perkins Coie’s main contact to Fusion GPS, which was founded by three former Wall Street Journal reporters.

Page, an energy consultant, features prominently in the dossier, though he vehemently denies its allegations.

In the report, which was provided to numerous journalists and the FBI, Steele alleged that Page was the Trump campaign’s back channel to the Kremlin for the purposes of conspiring to influence the election. Steele cited anonymous sources who claimed that it was Page’s idea to release stolen DNC emails through Wikileaks. The dossier also alleged that Page met secretly with two Kremlin insiders, Igor Sechin and Igor Diveykin, during a trip to Moscow in July 2016. Page has repeatedly denied meeting with either man.

The dossier’s claims about Page did not stop just with media stories. The FBI relied heavily on Steele’s unverified report to obtain four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Page. The first warrant was granted on Oct. 21, 2016, shortly after Page left the campaign. The fourth and final warrant expired in September 2017.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


good luck Carter.

lawsuit:

https://t.co/WOsz3YLl0m

Discovery in the U.S.? Defamation suit in Britain, where, IIUC, the laws tend to favor plaintiffs in such suits? Both, maybe?

Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson to plead the Fifth on Capitol Hill, lawyer says; other Trump dossier figures called to testify

Three key figures connected to the infamous, Democrat-funded anti-Trump dossier have been called to testify on Capitol Hill this week, as the House investigation into Justice Department actions during the 2016 campaign comes to a head.

However, Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of the Fusion GPS research group that commissioned the dossier, will invoke the Fifth Amendment right not to testify when he appears before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, his lawyer, Joshua Levy, announced late Monday.

"Compelling Glenn Simpson to appear for a confidential deposition after he has stated his intention to invoke his constitutional right not to testify reflects the worst practices of past congressional investigations and reinforces that this is a political exercise, not a serious inquiry," Levy wrote in a statement.

A deposition is also scheduled for Thursday with James A. Baker, the FBI’s former top lawyer. Baker, who had a close working relationship with former FBI Director James Comey, left the bureau earlier this year.

The dossier, authored by former British spy Christopher Steele and commissioned by Fusion GPS, was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign through law firm Perkins Coie. It included salacious and unverified allegations about Trump's visit to Russia.

Earlier this month, Baker testified about the genesis of the bureau’s Russia investigation, sources close to a congressional investigation told Fox News. He also testified that Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann gave him documents pertaining to the Russia probe, suggesting another connection between the early stages of the FBI’s Russia probe and those working with the DNC and the Clinton campaign, the sources said.

House Republicans have also scheduled a deposition for Friday with Nellie Ohr, a Russia researcher for Simpson’s company. Ohr is married to Bruce Ohr, a Justice Department official who has also testified about his contact with Simpson during the campaign.

Baker and Ohr are appearing for voluntary depositions, which take place as transcribed interviews under oath.

The dossier, which has been at the center of an intense power struggle between congressional Republicans and the FBI, specifically cites the DOJ and FBI’s surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, saying the dossier "formed an essential part" of the application to spy on him.

Fox News learned Monday that Page has filed suit in Oklahoma against the DNC, as well as the law firm Perkins Coie, and its principals Marc Elias and Sussman over the dossier, and what Page claims were “slanderous” and “libelous” statements.

"It goes beyond any damages or any financial aspect," Page told Fox News' "Hannity" Monday night. "There have been so many lies. You look at the damage it did to our democratic systems and our institutions of government back in 2016, and I'm just trying to get some justice in terms of getting some disclosure."

Meanwhile, Virginia GOP Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is considering a subpoena for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

"It's essential that we talk to him. He knows that. He has not agreed to come for a transcribed interview on the record. He needs to agree to do that. If he does not agree to do that very soon, I will issue a subpoena for him to appear," Goodlatte said Saturday during a Fox News appearance.

House Republicans had called for Rosenstein to testify last week about reports the Justice Department official suggested secretly wearing a wire to record the president. But talks over the details of that testimony reached an impasse.

The New York Times first reported the details of the alleged discussions between Rosenstein and senior FBI officials in May 2017, one day before Rosenstein appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to oversee the Russia investigation.

After the allegations surfaced last month, Rosenstein released a statement saying: "I never pursued or authorized recording the President and any suggestion that I have ever advocated for the removal of the President is absolutely false."

https://www.foxnews.com/politi...es-called-to-testify

In ordinary times, this might not be a big deal.

But these aren't ordinary times.

The only senior FBI official that I think retired was Mike Kortan. He was FBI assistant director for public affairs and retired in Feb 2018.






No prosecution

Maybe Michael Flynn and Geo Papadopoulos would have liked this kind of treatment.

quote:

"It goes beyond any damages or any financial aspect," Page told Fox News' "Hannity" Monday night. "There have been so many lies. You look at the damage it did to our democratic systems and our institutions of government back in 2016, and I'm just trying to get some justice in terms of getting some disclosure."

At least U.S. discovery, then.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
In ordinary times, this might not be a big deal.

But these aren't ordinary times.

The only senior FBI official that I think retired was Mike Kortan. He was FBI assistant director for public affairs and retired in Feb 2018.

Sundance speculates James Baker.

Link

"Sundance speculates James Baker"

That is possible. I thought Kortan more likely because the IG report said "The senior FBI official retired from the FBI"

It was widely reported that Kortan retired, but usually reported that Baker resigned.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

diff topic

Glenn Simpson appeared at congress today. He took the 5th.

https://www.foxnews.com/politi...estions-over-dossier

What are Horowitz and Huber doing ?

John Solomon recently said he didn't think anything more was coming out before the election.

Baker is still scheduled for testimony on Thur, and Nellie Ohr on Friday.

Since Nellie Ohr was on the inside of the Fusion GPS operation, she might have significant inputs if she is open and honest.


Donald Trump tweet:

Is it really possible that Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie was paid by Simpson and GPS Fusion for work done on the Fake Dossier, and who was used as a Pawn in this whole SCAM (WITCH HUNT), is still working for the Department of Justice????? Can this really be so?????

11:26 AM - Oct 16, 2018

more Papadopoulos twitter:

At a time when frauds are pleading the fifth to not testify to Congress, I am enthusiastic to and even wanted an open hearing. Private for now. Hope that changes.

Whichever western intelligence organization planted my “Russia” contact (“the professor, Joseph Mifsud) into my life, could not have possibly picked a worse access agent. A guy with access directly to the UK foreign minister and high level British intelligence contacts. Backfire.

When I fully compartmentalize and chronologically detail the origins and consequences of the most profound political scandal in modern history, it will be clear that there were three disinformation intelligence operations targeted at me and campaign with one end game.

I didn’t want to have to expose the biggest political scandal in modern history which will surely sever security relations between the US-UK-Australia to some extent. I was enjoying living on the Greek islands. But, guess life works in mysterious ways and I am happy I was called.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Papadopoulos will appear before members of the House Judiciary and House Oversight & Government Reform Committees on Oct. 25 . And according to CNN, Papadopoulos is also in discussions to meet with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

Unlike most witnesses in the numerous congressional investigations into Russian meddling, Papadopoulos has asked lawmakers to invite him to provide testimony. He has said he wants to discuss what he says were a series of suspicious contacts he had with foreign nationals while he worked on the Trump campaign.

https://dailycaller.com/2018/1...os-testify-congress/

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
"Sundance speculates James Baker"

That is possible. I thought Kortan more likely because the IG report said "The senior FBI official retired from the FBI"

It was widely reported that Kortan retired, but usually reported that Baker resigned.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It’s not clear this is correct. I can find no reference to retire, but wiki says resigned. He started at DOJ in 1990 apparently and has had several breaks to work at private outfits. Nobody would resign if they were eligible to retire.

https://www.foxnews.com/politi...mey-aide-leaving-fbi

The longtime head of public affairs at the FBI -- who was a confidant of former director James Comey -- is planning to retire, Fox News has learned.

A notice went out this week for a retirement get-together for Michael Kortan scheduled for Feb. 15. Since 2009, Kortan has served as assistant director for public affairs, an influential job that controlled media access. He also served under former director Robert Mueller, now leading the Russia probe.

The FBI confirmed to Fox News that Kortan is retiring.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

https://www.politico.com/story...icials-resign-400533

Mike Kortan, FBI assistant director for public affairs, is set to retire next week, an FBI spokeswoman confirmed

Kortan, who has headed the FBI’s media operation since 2009, has told colleagues for months or longer that he was on the verge of retirement

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I rest my case, and request a jury trial

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
https://www.foxnews.com/politi...mey-aide-leaving-fbi

The longtime head of public affairs at the FBI -- who was a confidant of former director James Comey -- is planning to retire, Fox News has learned.

A notice went out this week for a retirement get-together for Michael Kortan scheduled for Feb. 15. Since 2009, Kortan has served as assistant director for public affairs, an influential job that controlled media access. He also served under former director Robert Mueller, now leading the Russia probe.

The FBI confirmed to Fox News that Kortan is retiring.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

https://www.politico.com/story...icials-resign-400533

Mike Kortan, FBI assistant director for public affairs, is set to retire next week, an FBI spokeswoman confirmed

Kortan, who has headed the FBI’s media operation since 2009, has told colleagues for months or longer that he was on the verge of retirement

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I rest my case, and request a jury trial

It makes more sense for a reporter to cozy up to the public affairs guys, and makes fewer waves.

Fingers crossed that it's Baker, if only because he'd probably know more.

James Baker (former FBI General Counsel) testified for a second time today. (behind closed doors)

We haven't heard much about what he said, but this from Rep Gaetz was disappointing:

Gaetz, however, complained that the FBI general counsel present for the interview would not allow Baker to answer a series of questions about topics like surveillance of Trump campaign aides because it is tied to ongoing investigations

https://thehill.com/policy/nat...-former-fbi-official