a Papadopoulos tweet today:

Keep this in mind: BOTH the U.K. and Australian governments have been begging the president to not declassify FISA. Who on the campaign was interacting with those two campaigns? Me.

Also, how would they know what was in FISA unless they were colluding with Obama ? Bad look

quote:

Add into the mix that we have heard nothing more from DoJ IG Horowitz or Prosecutor Huber.

Just as swamp creature Sessions planned it. Hopefully the next AG will appoint a special prosecutor to pursue these matters.
Those of you who believe that Sessions is working feverishly behind the scenes are in for a rude awakening.

This thread has drifted far and wide. But this post is especially important. Twice I have started drafting a letter to Judge Rosemary Collyer (Presiding Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court). A letter from an average citizen who is very concerned why the FISC has remained so publicly silent, while the evidence stacks up that the DoJ and FBI abused that court in a profound manner.

Both times I gave up because it felt silly to write such a letter from a peon who has a very limited view of what happened and what was actually presented.

Rep Mark Meadows wrote to Judge Collyer and captured some of the things I thought of writing.

His letter is here:

https://www.scribd.com/documen...e-Rosemary-M-Collyer

This is the article describing that letter:

https://thehill.com/opinion/wh....W9jOleulIAw.twitter

Silence of 'the lambs': The deafening quietude of the FISA court and John Roberts

by John Solomon

Two years ago this month, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) issued a warrant authorizing the FBI to spy on Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to President Trump. The stated suspicion was the nominee’s campaign was colluding with Russia.

The issuance of a so-called FISA warrant was momentous and unprecedented, permitting a Democratic-run Justice Department to obtain communications inside the duly-elected GOP nominee’s campaign during its final weeks before the election.

Since that time, we have learned much about the evidence — or lack thereof — that supported the warrant.

We know, for example, the primary evidence was a dossier created by British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, but the court wasn’t told his work was directly paid for by Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic Party.

Instead, the FBI used this footnote in its warrant application to describe who hired Steele: “The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit” the Trump campaign. That’s hardly complete or forthcoming.

We also know that when the Steele dossier was submitted, it had not been fully vetted for accuracy, despite a requirement that all FISA evidence be verified. Some of the dossier’s claims later were found to be inaccurate.

We’ve painfully learned of blatant bias inside the investigation. Steele told senior Department of Justice (DOJ) official Bruce Ohr he was desperate to keep Trump from being elected president. Two of the FBI’s leads on the case, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, were having an affair and texting each other about finding “an insurance policy” designed to “stop” Trump.

The FBI lovebirds even communicated they were applying “hurry the F up” pressure to try to rush the FISA warrant through the court before Election Day.

We recently learned that the FBI’s initial justification for opening the Trump-Russia collusion case — the belief that another campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, might have colluded with Moscow — quickly fell apart when Papadopoulos told an FBI informant he didn’t collude and would consider such activity treasonous.

Finally, the House intelligence committee dug up evidence that Steele and the FBI engaged in leaks with the news media about the Russia investigation, then used some of those articles to support its FISA application. That is a practice known as circular intelligence, where single-source reporting is made to look multi-sourced.

There are more exculpatory pieces of evidence I could detail but these alone make a compelling case that the initial FBI and DOJ representations to the court were, at best, flawed and, at worst, desperately biased and driven by an election clock.

And that begs the question: What do the FISC judges and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, the ultimate judicial disciplinarian, think about what happened?

After all, the FISC issued not one but four warrants allowing the FBI to monitor Page for nearly nine months into Trump’s presidency.

This week, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the conservative firebrand who, along with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), has driven the once reluctant House leaders to dig for much of the aforementioned evidence, sent his own missive to U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer. She is chief judge of the FISC.

His letter asked the obvious question: As a separate and equal pillar of government from Congress and the executive branch, does the judiciary have concerns with the FBI’s and DOJ’s conduct?

“Based on our investigation and open source information, the FISC may have not lived up to the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures in approving U.S. citizens targeted without probable cause,” Meadows wrote. “We write to encourage you to investigate the possibility that FISA has recently been weaponized for political means.”

It is not unprecedented for the usually secretive court to speak. In recent years, it has released documents — usually self-reported violations from DOJ and the FBI — so the public can see when the process has been abused.

Now, it is possible that the court has taken some action in the Russia case, such holding a show-cause hearing behind closed doors, to question the FBI. But if it hasn’t, Meadows’ letter is designed to smoke out a response.

The FISC is one of the only courts in America where the accused gets no representation, and the public gets no visibility. For that reason, the DOJ and FBI are supposed to be held to a higher standard of making sure judges see “the good, the bad and the ugly” about evidence so the court can protect the accused.

But a troubling whisper has begun inside the Justice Department . “FISAs aren’t required to include exculpatory evidence,” one official told me on background in a recent text message.

That emerging sentiment should alarm all of us, no matter our political stripe.

A court that excludes legal representation for the accused almost certainly will fail to protect civil liberty if it isn’t allowed to see proof of innocence or evidentiary flaws.

Donald Trump may not be the most sympathetic victim. He has the resources to fight back, and the willingness to be bombastic. But what about those who lack either, such as an innocent imam, a wrongly suspected professor, or an unfairly accused global businessman?

For those reasons, the silence of the FISC and Chief Justice Roberts is deafening . Enough concern has been raised about the Russia case for the judiciary to offer us an explanation.

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My fears are stronger than Solomon's. It is hard not to conclude that the FISC has betrayed us. (MHO)

I’m not sure the Supreme Court can hear FISA appeals. As I understand it, the court hears cases in front of one judge, ex parte and appeals, when necessary are to the FISA court, either a panel of judges or possibly en banc.

The judges are all Art. III judges, so within the disciplinary purview of the CJ, who would typically assign complaints to the Chief Judge of another appellate circuit.

Keep in mind the courts act on cases brought to them. They don’t hear about something on TV and say “maybe we ought to open a file.”

There is probably more to it than this.

There was a time when I was pretty confident how this story would end. I expected the full conspiracy of the FBI and DoJ to be revealed when documents were declassified and released.

I thought it would be proven that the FBI used multiple spies on the Trump campaign from early 2016 through late 2017.

While we have had clues and suspicions, the deep state (or whatever they should be called) has managed to keep the documents hidden from the public.

Comey is supposed to testify to a House committee on 29 Nov, and Loretta Lynch on 5 Dec.

Hard to say if that will shed any light at all. Republicans want those sessions to be closed door.

Devin Nunes has pushed for 4 sets of information to be declassified and released:

#1

The last FISA warrant extension against Carter Page (at least key parts of it)

#2

The Bruce Ohr emails that reveal what Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele told him in 2016

#3

Exculpatory evidence that was not revealed to the FISA Court (presumably about Carter Page)

#4

A collection of FBI-DoJ emails that should have been shared w the FISA Court but were not

President Trump was moving to get a lot of this released, but Rod Rosenstein convinced him not to.

Supposedly the DoJ IG Horowitz is "looking into it".

It seemed like an opportunity to influence the Nov elections if this material came out.

Now it is beginning to feel very doubtful if this information will ever become public.

Maybe there are some really big pieces of the puzzle that we don't know about, and that are driving the release decisions. A very frustrating situation after more than 2 years of this crap.

My faith in the FBI and DoJ is utterly shattered.

quote:

My faith in the FBI and DoJ is utterly shattered.

Welcome to 2016...

quote:

Originally posted by Bigboreshooter:

quote:

My faith in the FBI and DoJ is utterly shattered.

Welcome to 2016...

Just replace FBI and DOJ with “federal government” and your bases are covered.

quote:

Originally posted by Bigboreshooter:

quote:

My faith in the FBI and DoJ is utterly shattered.

Welcome to 2016 BC ...

FIFY

This article was originally published in a UK paper (The Telegraph)

https://www.yahoo.com/news/exc...trump-204257046.html


MI6 battling Donald Trump over release of classified Russia probe documents

The UK is warning that the US president would undermine intelligence gathering if he releases pages of an FBI application to wiretap one of his former campaign advisers.

However Trump allies are fighting back, demanding transparency and asking why Britain would oppose the move unless it had something to hide.

It forces the spotlight on whether the UK played a role in the FBI's investigation launched before the 2016 presidential election into Trump campaign ties to the Kremlin.

British spy chiefs have “genuine concern” about sources being exposed if classified parts of the wiretap request were made public, according to figures familiar with discussions.

“It boils down to the exposure of people”, said one US intelligence official, adding: “We don’t want to reveal sources and methods.” US intelligence shares the concerns of the UK.

Another said Britain feared setting a dangerous “precedent” which could make people less likely to share information, knowing that it could one day become public.

The row is about an FBI request to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, which was made in October 2016 - the month before the US election.

Republican allies of Mr Trump in the US Congress have pounced on the application, claiming the FBI failed to follow due process and presented information in a flawed way. A heavily redacted version of the documents has already been released.

Mr Trump wants to declassify 21 pages from one of the applications. He announced the move in September, then backtracked, then this month said he was "very seriously" considering it again. Both Britain and Australia are understood to be opposing the move.

However a result of the attack line is that Britain’s spy agencies are being included in claims of “deep state” opposition to Mr Trump. It risks inflaming UK-US tensions at a time when Britain wants to deepen ties with America as it leaves the European Union.

One former top White House adviser to Mr Trump made similar insinuations, telling this newspaper: “You know the Brits are up to their neck."

The source added on the Page wiretap application: “I think that stuff is going to implicate MI5 and MI6 in a bunch of activities they don't want to be implicated in, along with FBI, counter-terrorism and the CIA."

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a number of people have pointed out - How would the UK know what is in the FISA warrant ?

It's amazing that governments always want to claim national security when they weaponize their assets illegally against the people that they are supposed to be protecting and then get caught.

My only question is, what's stopping the President? Get on with it!

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/u-ju...oulos-160100736.html

A U.S. federal judge on Sunday denied a motion by George Papadopoulos, a former aide for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, seeking to postpone his sentence pending a separate case he hoped would lead to his conviction being overturned.

Papadopoulos will report to jail on Monday to start his 14- day sentence after judge Randolph Moss dismissed his 11th hour bid to remain out on bail.

Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents probing ties between the campaign and Russia, had sought to delay his sentence while a separate case challenging the legality of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's appointment is ongoing. Moss said Papadopoulos' motion lacked merit.

Mueller's team continues to use their thug tactics to bully people into plea deals

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/26...t-mueller/index.html

An associate of Roger Stone said Monday he is refusing to sign a plea deal offered by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Jerome Corsi, whose role in Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election largely revolves around the possibility that he was an intermediary between Stone and WikiLeaks, said he was offered a deal to plea on one count of perjury.

"They can put me in prison the rest of my life. I am not going to sign a lie," Corsi told CNN in a phone call.

Asked what happens now that he is refusing, Corsi responded: "I don't know."

Last week, Corsi acknowledged he was in plea negotiations with Mueller's office, and earlier this month, he said he expected to be indicted for "giving false information to the special counsel or to one of the other grand jury."

Corsi said Monday that he believed he would by lying by signing the plea agreement because he says he did not willfully mislead anyone.

Describing his experience with Mueller's team as "like being interrogated as a POW in the Korean War," Corsi said after two months of questioning, prosecutors believed they caught him in various lies and did not appear to believe him when he said he could not recall certain events.

Corsi insisted he had no contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that "investigators were so mad because I didn't give them what they wanted."

He claimed that Mueller's team wanted to keep any plea agreement sealed , a point that particularly incensed him. Corsi said he would be required to report legal infractions to financial regulators.

Corsi injected himself into Stone's situation last year when he claimed that one of his own articles for InfoWars inspired Stone to predict in October 2016 that there would be trouble coming for Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Not long after that, WikiLeaks started releasing thousands of Podesta's hacked emails.

Stone has denied wrongdoing regarding WikiLeaks' releases during the 2016 campaign, and several of his associates have been brought before a grand jury as Mueller's team continued its investigation of Stone.

And McCabe STILL has not been indicted for lying to the FBI (and I honestly believe never will).

President Trump has it right about Mueller

President Trump tweets from today:

The Phony Witch Hunt continues, but Mueller and his gang of Angry Dems are only looking at one side, not the other. Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie . Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue....

....The Fake News Media builds Bob Mueller up as a Saint, when in actuality he is the exact opposite. He is doing TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice System, where he is only looking at one side and not the other. Heroes will come of this, and it won’t be Mueller and his...

....terrible Gang of Angry Democrats. Look at their past, and look where they come from. The now $30,000,000 Witch Hunt continues and they’ve got nothing but ruined lives. Where is the Server? Let these terrible people go back to the Clinton Foundation and “Justice” Department!

^^ I'm kinda hoping there's a way to make something more of the "refusing to lie" approach. How many lawyers on Mueller's team were caught trying to use the same tactic in the Enron and Ted Stevens cases?

Yesterday:

Mueller is claiming that Paul Manafort breached his plea deal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/1...ort-cooperation.html

Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, repeatedly lied to federal investigators in breach of a plea agreement he signed two months ago, the special counsel’s office said in a court filing late on Monday.

Prosecutors working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said Mr. Manafort’s “crimes and lies” about “a variety of subject matters” relieve them of all promises they made to him in the plea agreement. But under the terms of the agreement, Mr. Manafort cannot withdraw his guilty plea.

Defense lawyers disagreed that Mr. Manafort had violated the deal. In the same filing, they said Mr. Manafort had met repeatedly with the special counsel’s office and “believes he has provided truthful information.”

But given the impasse between the two sides, they asked Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to set a sentencing date for Mr. Manafort, who has been in solitary confinement in a detention center in Alexandria, Va.

after at least a dozen sessions interrogating him, the special counsel’s prosecutors have not only decided Mr. Manafort does not deserve leniency, but they also could seek to refile other charges that they had agreed to dismiss as part of the plea deal.

The prosecutors did not describe what they said Mr. Manafort lied about, saying they would set forth “the nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies” in an upcoming sentencing memo. The sentencing judge does not have to accept the prosecution’s account at face value, and Mr. Manafort’s lawyers are expected to vigorously contest it.


Today:

Manafort lawyer is said to have briefed Trump attorneys

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ne...WzWzMgbSP/story.html

A lawyer for Paul Manafort, the president’s onetime campaign chairman, repeatedly briefed President Trump’s lawyers on his client’s discussions with federal investigators after Manafort agreed to cooperate with the special counsel, according to one of Trump’s lawyers and two other people familiar with the conversations.

The arrangement was highly unusual and inflamed tensions with Mueller’s office when prosecutors discovered it after Manafort began cooperating two months ago, the people said. Some legal specialists speculated it was a bid by Manafort for a presidential pardon even as he worked with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, in hopes of a lighter sentence.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of the president’s personal lawyers, acknowledged the arrangement on Tuesday and defended it as a source of valuable insights into the special counsel’s inquiry and where it was headed. Such information could help shape a legal defense strategy, and it also appeared to give Trump and his legal advisers ammunition in their public relations effort against the special counsel’s office. For example, Giuliani said, Manafort’s lawyer Kevin M. Downing told him that prosecutors hammered away at whether the president knew about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting where Russians promised to deliver damaging information on Hillary Clinton to his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. The president has long denied knowing about the meeting in advance. “He wants Manafort to incriminate Trump,” Giuliani declared of Mueller.

While Downing’s discussions with the president’s team violated no laws, they helped contribute to a deteriorating relationship between lawyers for Manafort and Mueller’s prosecutors, who accused Manafort of holding out on them despite his pledge to assist them in any matter they deemed relevant, according to the people. That conflict spilled into public view on Monday when the prosecutors declared that Manafort had breached his plea deal by lying to them about several subjects.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mueller has been a key player in destroying the reputation of the FBI and DoJ.

He is out to get President Trump, and he will destroy anyone he thinks can help his rabid dog prosecutor team achieve that goal.

Just the fact that Mueller is still hammering away at the June 2016 Trump Tower mtg tells us that he is out to take a scalp and not interested in justice or the truth.

That Trump Tower meeting was almost certainly a set up by Glenn Simpson as a trap for the Trump campaign.

Just like the FBI set up the Trump campaign with spies such as Stefan Halper.

Can't wait to find out what he's supposed to have lied about.

I was extremely disappointed that President Trump did not declassify the Carter Page FISA warrant and release it to the public.

Here is an interview he did where he discusses that decision.

https://nypost.com/2018/11/28/...gv9v7ThZml98pNCZPwhs

In a wide-ranging, exclusive interview with The Post, President Trump said Wednesday that if House Democrats launched probes into his administration — which he called “presidential harassment” — they’d pay a heavy price.

“If they go down the presidential harassment track, if they want go and harass the president and the administration, I think that would be the best thing that would happen to me. I’m a counter-puncher and I will hit them so hard they’d never been hit like that,” he said during a 36-minute Oval Office sitdown.

The commander-in-chief said he could declassify FISA warrant applications and other documents from Robert Mueller’s probe — and predicted the disclosure would expose the FBI, the Justice Department and the Clinton campaign as being in cahoots to set him up.

“I think that would help my campaign. If they want to play tough, I will do it. They will see how devastating those pages are.”

But Trump told The Post he wanted to save the documents until they were needed.

“It’s much more powerful if I do it then,” Trump said, “because if we had done it already, it would already be yesterday’s news.”

Trump revealed his playbook just as Democrats are set to take over House committees in January where they are poised to investigate his potential business conflicts of interests, tax returns, Russia dealings and more.

With the GOP losing power in January, its congressional investigations into alleged Department of Justice misconduct in launching the Russia probe is expected to fizzle out.

In September, a group of Trump allies in the House – led by Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York – called on Trump to declassify scores of Justice Department documents they believe undercut the start of the Russia investigation and show bias against Trump.

The documents include Justice officials’ request to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and memos on DOJ official Bruce Ohr’s interactions with Christopher Steele, the author of a controversial dossier that alleged Trump ties with Russia.

Trump initially agreed to declassify the documents, including text messages sent by former FBI officials James Comey, Andrew G. McCabe as well as Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Ohr. Trump allies believe the revelations will show favoritism toward Hillary Clinton and a plot to take down Trump.

Trump then reversed course, citing the need for further review and concern of US allies.

Trump added Wednesday that his lawyer Emmet Flood thought it would be better politically to wait.

“He didn’t want me to do it yet, because I can save it,” Trump said.

The president also pushed back on the notion that all the Justice Department documents should eventually be released for the sake of transparency.

“Some things maybe the public shouldn’t see because they are so bad,” Trump said, making clear it wasn’t damaging to him, but to others. “Maybe it’s better that the public not see what’s been going on with this country.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I believe it is vital the public knows how bad it is

Carter Page continues to tweet.

He just identified the WSJ reporter who contacted him in July 2016 about his meetings w Russians.

Remember that Glenn Simpson worked for WSJ before he started Fusion GPS. Simpson has a lot of contacts at WSJ.

The time sequence is important. Christopher Steele wrote a report dated 19 July 2016. (this is pages 9-10 of the dossier).

In that report, Steele wrote that in July 2016, Carter Page secretly meets in Moscow with Igor Sechin and Divyekin.

Keep in mind this report was not made public until much later.

But after Steele writes a 19 July 2016 report, on 26 July 2016 a WSJ reporter contacts Carter Page:

(Page response to Paletta in blue)



The WSJ reporter was Damian Paletta. Paletta now works for the Washington Post.

So Steele writes a 19 July 2016 report, and one week later a WSJ reporter contacts Carter Page about the exact contents of that report.

The linkage looks pretty suspicious. Steele - Simpson - Paletta

The real Russia collusion story is painfully obvious while Mueller hysterically chases every false lead the MSM feeds him.