quote:

Originally posted by HighZonie:
Let's see here....

Clapper leaked the story to Tapper...... so,

The story must be all "Clapper-Trapper"

Webster definition:
Definition of claptrap
: pretentious nonsense : trash

quote:

Unpacking the Other Clinton-Linked Russia Dossier
A copy of the little-publicized second dossier in the Trump-Russia affair, acquired by RealClearInvestigations, raises new questions about the origins of the Trump investigation, particularly about the role of Clinton partisans and the extent to which the two dossiers may have been coordinated or complementary operations.


Sidney Blumenthal, who passed the Shearer dossier on to Jonathan Winer at the State Department. (Top photo: anti-Trump sartorial statement.)
The second dossier -- two reports compiled by Cody Shearer, an ex-journalist and longtime Clinton operative -- echoes many of the lurid and still unsubstantiated claims made in the Steele dossier, and is receiving new scrutiny. Over the weekend, Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a TV interview that his panel is shifting its focus concerning the genesis of the Russia investigation from the FBI to the State Department. This probe will include the Shearer dossier.

In late September 2016, Sidney Blumenthal, a close Clinton confidant and colleague of Shearer’s, passed Shearer’s dossier on to State Department official Jonathan M. Winer, a longtime aide to John Kerry on Capitol Hill and at Foggy Bottom.

According to Winer’s account in a Feb. 8, 2018 Washington Post op-ed, he shared the contents of the Shearer dossier with the author of the first dossier, ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who submitted part of it to the FBI to further substantiate his own investigation into the Trump campaign. Steele was a subcontractor working for the Washington, D.C.-based communications firm Fusion GPS, which was hired by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee to compile opposition research on her Republican opponent.


Jonathan Winer, who passed Shearer material on to Christopher Steele.
Steele’s 35-page dossier was used as evidence in October 2016 to secure from a secret court a surveillance warrant on volunteer Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Among issues the intelligence panel will likely want clarified is whether the FBI also used Shearer’s material as evidence in obtaining the FISA warrant.

Shearer did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment. Attempts to reach Winer by email were unsuccessful. And efforts to reach Blumenthal through his publisher were unsuccessful.

The copy of the Shearer memo provided to RealClearInvestigations is made up of two four-page reports, one titled “Donald Trump—Background Notes—The Compromised Candidate,” the other “FSB Interview” – the initials standing for the Russian Federal Security Service.

quote:

Originally posted by mbinky:
The IG report is due out in what, a week? Going to be interesting to see if it's followed by criminal indictments.

Accountability needs to start. And soon.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:


This conspiracy was well thought out and well executed. A conspiracy to throw the election to Clinton. So what is Mueller investigating ?

Manafort from 10 years ago. Flynn for "lying" about a call that was legitimate

Cohen for paying off a porn star.

But the real conspiracy is right out in the open. Is Mueller grabbing computers from Fusion ? from Steele ? from Shearer ?

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CNN walked away with a prestigious journalism award at Saturday night’s White House Correspondent’s Association dinner for their role in making public a briefing by intelligence officials to then President-elect Donald Trump. CNN reported the briefing “included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.” But the information briefed to the President was also leaked to the media by one of the same senior Obama administration officials who orchestrated the briefing and was hired by CNN months later as a paid analyst.

Some are questioning now if this was ethical –a pay for play of sorts –as it raises serious questions about the role and responsibility that U.S. intelligence officials have when taking on paid positions as analysts for news organizations, while still retaining their high-level security clearances. It also raises similar questions about news organizations and their role of remaining objective and not paying their sources.

“If it would have been anyone else, he’d be prosecuted. Instead, they get a high paid position..”
Reporters Jake Tapper, Jim Sciutto, Evan Perez and Carl Bernstein won the Merriman Smith Award for their broadcast work and reporting on the dossier. But as first reported here it was former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who was suspected by Congress of leaking the information to CNN, after he asked now fired FBI Director James Comey to give Trump the private briefing on Jan. 6, 2017.

By August 2017, Clapper was hired by CNN as an analyst but the network never disclosed that Clapper was a major source behind the leak of an unproven and salacious dossier when he joined the network. News agencies and reporters never disclose their sources, it would be unethical, but isn’t it also unethical to pay sources for information or give sources jobs as analysts for your news outlet after they’ve been illegally leaking classified information?

The dossier, which was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele through cut-out Fusion GPS, was also being paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee, as first reported by The Washington Post. And Clapper, Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan have been very vocal and partisan against the Trump administration, despite the fact that they are former senior intelligence officials of the United States. The United States has generally observed a tradition of non-partisanship among its intelligence officials who serve the people rather than a regime. In countries like Pakistan, Russia and in other places throughout the world highly partisan intelligence apparatus’ have attempted to destroy, overthrow or control their governments through subversion or coup d’etats.

Brennan, who is now a paid analyst for MSNBC, candidly expresses his anti-Trump opinions in public venues and continues to drop insults along with vague and ominous premonitions about the President, while refusing to show any evidence that the Russian’s possess blackmail material or that the Trump campaign was “colluding” with the Russians to win the presidency. The House Intelligence Committee has found no evidence of collusion after more than 15 months of investigation.


The FBI, CIA, DNI, among other intelligence agencies, are supposed to work to protect the American people in a non-partisan matter, and current U.S. intelligence officials say the direction these former officials have taken is dangerous.

Former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom criticized Brennan and Clapper in an interview Sunday on Fox News Sunday Morning Features with Maria Bartiromo saying there is “no doubt there is a cabal – to diminish his (Trump’s) ability to manage the country.”

Kallstrom said people in the United States should be concerned and react to this, “this is third world country stuff.”

Many current and former U.S. intelligence officials agree.

“Clapper was already in bed with CNN months before he was hired and while he was the DNI,” said a current U.S. intelligence official. “It’s unbelievable that a senior official would leak this type of disinformation to destroy an incoming president. If it would have been anyone else, he’d be prosecuted. Instead, they get a high paid position to the company they leaked to and retain their security clearance. Banana Republic?”



Mary Beth Long, a defense analyst and the first woman to serve as an Assistant Secretary of Defense from 2007 to 2009, responded to my tweet yesterday questioning CNN’s hiring of Clapper but added a very compelling and interesting point.

She questioned if it was “appropriate” for two openly highly partisan intelligence officials, who now work for news networks, to continue to retain their security clearances.


At the time Comey briefed Trump on the contents of the dossier, no media organization would report on it, despite the fact that Steele had shared it with numerous outlets.

Comey said in his memo that Clapper had asked him to brief the President privately about the dossier’s contents, specifically the salacious part of the document accusing the President of being with prostitutes who urinated on a bed that former President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama had slept in while staying in a Moscow hotel room.

“I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook,” Comey said in his memo about what he told Trump in the briefing.

“I explained again why I had thought it important that he knows about it,” said Comey. “I also explained that one of the reasons we told him was that the media, CNN in particular, was telling us they were about to run with it.”

As for the White House Correspondent’s Association, they stated that CNN’s story made the “dossier” part of the American “lexicon” and therefore deserved the prestigious award.

These four journalists and a number of other CNN reporters broke the story that the intelligence community had briefed President Barack Obama and then-President-elect Donald Trump that Russia had compromising information about Trump. The CNN team later reported that then-FBI Director James Comey personally briefed Trump about the dossier. Thanks to this CNN investigation, “the dossier” is now part of the lexicon. The depth of reporting demonstrated in these remarkable and important pieces, and the constant updates as new information continued to be uncovered showed breaking news reporting at its best.

It certainly appears that briefing the unverified dossier to the President and then leaking it to the media was part of a plan to undermine an incoming President. It was a “news hook” that led to more than a years worth of stories that accused the President of alleged collusion with Russia and aided the Kremlin in what appears to be one of the greatest disinformation campaigns to sow chaos in the United States, according to numerous former and current U.S. intelligence officials.

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Here Are Three Scary FBI Scandal Factors You Must Know
There's an old Washington maxim about being careful because 'what goes around almost always comes back around'

April 29, 2018
There are three scary but crucial factors underlying the rapidly growing FBI scandal that most people miss, even though these factors are hidden in plain sight.

Recognizing and understanding this trio goes a long way toward explaining what has happened in the scandal — and where it is likely to go next.

First, there’s Horowitz’s revenge. Virtually everybody in the nation’s capital is waiting either in fear or in eager anticipation for the upcoming investigative report of Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Horowitz is among the most respected and effective IGs ever appointed, but former President Barack Obama, who nominated him in 2011, may consider that decision among the most regrettable from his eight years in the White House.

Here’s why: The Inspectors General Act of 1978 authorizes the IGs and their investigators and auditors to obtain and examine any official document necessary to carrying out their responsibilities in fighting waste, fraud and corruption in government. Presidents appoint IGs — but those IGs report to Congress, making them an important component of congressional oversight of the executive branch.

But a few months before Horowitz was sworn into the job in 2012, Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general and previously deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton, gutted the IG act provision that mandates their access to all necessary documents. Holder acted at the behest of then-FBI Director Robert Mueller and others at the bureau.

Holder — who would subsequently be held in contempt by Congress for refusing to turn over subpoenaed documents in the “Fast and Furious” scandal — thus forced Horowitz to request in writing any documents he sought from the bureau.

There then ensued a three-year struggle in Congress and the media that culminated in Obama having no choice but to sign the Inspector General Empowerment Act of 2016, which removed all doubt about the IG’s access.

During the three years between Holder's blatant subversion of the 1978 Inspectors General Act and passage of the 2016 law, James Comey succeeded Mueller as FBI chief. He continued, however, to wall off Horowitz's access to documents essential to doing his job until the new law was passed.

Horowitz has been investigating the FBI's conduct in its investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private server and email system to conduct official business as America's chief diplomat. He's also probing the bureau's investigation of allegations of collusion between President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and elements linked to the Russian government.

In the course of those two investigations, Horowitz has obtained and reviewed an estimated 1.2 million documents. There is an old saying in Washington that "things that go around have a way of coming back around."

Second, there's Obama's perogative. As more facts are uncovered about the lengths to which former FBI Director James Comey, his then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and a half-dozen other pro-Hillary Clinton bureau insiders went to protect the Democratic nominee in her email scandal, the least discussed element is Obama's role in the affair.

But former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy make persuasive cases that protecting Obama in the Clinton email scandal was key to the FBI's clearly bungled investigation.

Remember Comey's July 2016 nationally televised announcement that he would not recommend prosecution of Clinton despite her "extreme carelessness" in handling super secret classified national security information?

Related: Former Attorney General Says FBI 'Very Irresponsible' on FISA Application

One of the drafts of Comey's announcement referred to Clinton emails between her and "the president." But, as McCarthy recently pointed out, "a revised draft of Comey's remarks was circulated by his chief of staff, Jim Rybicki. It replaced 'the president' with 'another senior government official.'"

Mukasey recently explained on "The Ingraham Angle" why that change made a huge difference in understanding the Clinton email scandal:

"President Obama was sending messages and receiving messages on Hillary Clinton's private email server. Jim Comey knew that, and when President Obama went on television and said, 'There's no issue here, she didn't really intend to cause harm,' what he was really saying in essence is, 'You'd better let her off, because if you wind up accusing her, you wind up accusing me.'

"Comey followed that lead. And the notion that this was somehow something that he had to do for the welfare of the country, there's a lot of disingenuous claptrap." In other words, preserving Obama's "plausible deniability" was priority number one.

Third, there's the spooks' sting. These two scandals are loaded with spymasters. The most powerful ones weren't even at the FBI. Think former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan. And don't forget former national security adviser Susan Rice or former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power.

All these people enjoyed years of unfettered, or nearly so, access to the incredible digital and electronic listening power developed by the U.S. intelligence community in the wake of 9/11, including the ability to "unmask" any lawmaker, congressional staffer, corporate executive, philanthropic executive or donor, judge, foreign official, presidential appointee, diplomat, or military officer overheard in any of the hundreds of millions of conversations intercepted by the listening agencies.

Related: The 'Deep State' Is Real and Dangerous, Paul Says

Think of the potential leveraging power that attends knowing all the secrets of all the most important people at all levels of governance in the most powerful country on earth. Just as blackmail is an oft-used technique for obtaining intelligence sources at the highest levels of foreign capitals, it can also provide the necessary tools for transferring great wealth from one person or place to others.

This reality may make sense of an otherwise opaque Brennan tweet from March 13, which included this key passage in the text: "With other investigative shoes yet to drop, legislators who try to protect @realDonaldTrump will face November reckoning."

Those "other investigative shoes" could have multiple meanings to numerous hearers when spoken by a guy who spent years running the CIA. After all, who knows what secrets he took with him as he walked out the door of the agency's Langley headquarters, secrets that could be worth a fortune when properly utilized in a timely manner.

There is a huge industry of former spies who have created companies and consultancies that are paid billions of dollars by clients around the globe. If you doubt that, just ask Hillary Clinton, because she knows all about them.

Senior editor Mark Tapscott can be reached at mark.tapscott@lifezette.com.