https://www.washingtonexaminer...-about-michael-flynn

There's an intense conflict brewing between some Capitol Hill Republicans and fired FBI Director James Comey. The Republicans say Comey has been lying about what he told them in a March 2017 meeting. Comey says he never said what the Republicans say he said.

The Republicans say there's a transcript — not just of Comey's testimony but of fired top FBI deputy Andrew McCabe, too — that will prove them right. But so far, the intelligence community has prevented that proof from seeing the light of day. A resolution to the matter might come as soon as the next few days.

The conflict concerns Michael Flynn, the fired national security adviser who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in the Trump-Russia investigation. The FBI interviewed Flynn in the White House on Jan. 24, 2017. In the weeks that followed, there was significant public debate over Flynn and the Trump-Russia matter, and in March, Comey went to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers on what was going on.

In a meeting with some members of the House, according to sources familiar with the matter, Comey told lawmakers that the two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe he had lied to them, or that any inaccuracies in his answers were intentional. Lawmakers left the briefing with the impression that Flynn would not be charged with lying to the FBI.

At the end of November 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to just that.

In recent weeks, as Comey has gone on a publicity tour to promote his book, A Higher Loyalty , he has been asked on at least three occasions about the report, and each time has answered that he simply did not say what Republican sources say he said.

The most recent example came Sunday morning on NBC. "In the Washington Examiner, they report that, according to sources familiar with meetings that you had, that you told lawmakers when you were still director of the FBI that FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe that Flynn had lied to them or that any inaccuracies in his answers were intentional," "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd said to Comey. "If that's the case, what did he plead guilty to?"

"Yes, an example of how you can't believe everything you read in the media," Comey said.

"This is not true?" Todd asked.

"Not true," said Comey. "And I don't know what people heard me say, if they're reporting it accurately, what they heard me say, they misunderstood. But that's not accurate."

Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in a Thursday appearance with Fox News' Tucker Carlson, revealed that there is a transcript of the Comey session and that, yes, the transcript shows Comey telling lawmakers what the FBI agents thought.

"Director Comey's recollection is flawed," Gowdy said. "If he does not remember telling Congress that his agents told him they didn't think Flynn was lying, then he needs to get his lawyers to go back and look at the transcript. We did not miss here. Maybe he misspoke, but that's in the transcript."

Sources say the Comey quotes in question are included in the newly-released House Intelligence Committee Republicans' final report on the Trump-Russia investigation, but that they were blacked out by the intelligence community. In addition, the sources say a quote from McCabe making the same point — that the agents who questioned Flynn did not believe he had lied — was also in the report and was also redacted.

When the report was issued, committee chairman Devin Nunes complained that the intelligence community had gone overboard with its redactions, and that he, Nunes, would fight to remove some of those redactions.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:


Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in a Thursday appearance with Fox News' Tucker Carlson, revealed that there is a transcript of the Comey session and that, yes, the transcript shows Comey telling lawmakers what the FBI agents thought.

"Director Comey's recollection is flawed," Gowdy said. "If he does not remember telling Congress that his agents told him they didn't think Flynn was lying, then he needs to get his lawyers to go back and look at the transcript. We did not miss here. Maybe he misspoke, but that's in the transcript."

Sources say the Comey quotes in question are included in the newly-released House Intelligence Committee Republicans' final report on the Trump-Russia investigation, but that they were blacked out by the intelligence community. In addition, the sources say a quote from McCabe making the same point — that the agents who questioned Flynn did not believe he had lied — was also in the report and was also redacted.

When the report was issued, committee chairman Devin Nunes complained that the intelligence community had gone overboard with its redactions, and that he, Nunes, would fight to remove some of those redactions.

What are the justifications for these redactions, each one, one by one? Sometimes there are little codes which I think may be the reason, but don’t know.

sometimes the FOIA exemption category is listed for each redaction

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/32/518.13

(B)(1) through (B)9

(B)3 has a lot of subitems that involve diff levels of classified mtl

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
sometimes the FOIA exemption category is listed for each redaction

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/32/518.13

(B)(1) through (B)9

(B)3 has a lot of subitems that involve diff levels of classified mtl

We aren’t talking about FOIA requests here, of course, but Congressional oversight requirements.

Wait just a friggin' minute. Just because an honest FBI agent said he (or they) didn't think a person was lying has nothing to do with it. His superiors felt it was lies, so the agents are lucky the Bureau isn't charging them with lying about what they think they recall. Remember, its not an objective question. If it serves a greater purpose to say he was lying, why involve the little guys opinion?

The reports become available to the public.

Nunes and crew know what the redacted parts say. They wrote this report.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
The reports become available to the public.

Nunes and crew know what the redacted parts say. They wrote this report.

So?

They exemptions are because of FOIA, not because of security classification, right?

FOIA means they don’t have to give it out, not that they may not, as I understand it. It’s ok to leak it for example, not classified.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...es-Senate-aides.html

A former campaign communications adviser to Donald Trump blew up at Democratic U.S. Senate aides on Tuesday at the end of a behind-the-scenes grilling connected to their wide-ranging Russia investigation.

New York-based political consultant Michael Caputo said he has spent $125,000 on attorneys to help him navigate the committee's demands for documents and testimony, ruining his children's economic future and forcing him to sell his family home.


'In 2009, my wife and I moved to my hometown of East Aurora, New York to have a family. Making far less money back home, we had a far better quality of life. That is, until the Trump-Russia narrative took off. Today, I can’t possibly pay the attendant legal costs and live near my aging father, raising my kids where I grew up.

'Your investigation and others into the allegations of Trump campaign collusion with Russia are costing my family a great deal of money – more than $125,000 - and making a visceral impact on my children.

'Now I must to move back to Washington, New York City, Miami or elsewhere, just so I can make enough money to pay off these legal bills. And I know I have you to thank for that.

'Here’s how I know: how many of you know Daniel Jones, former Senate Intelligence staffer for Senator Dianne Feinstein? Great guy, right? Most of you worked with him. One of you probably just talked to him this morning.

'Of course, very few of us in flyover country knew Daniel until recently. Now we know that he quit his job with your Senate committee not long ago to raise $50 million from ten rich Democrats to finance more work on the FusionGPS Russian dossier. The one the FBI used to get a FISA warrant and intimidate President Donald Trump, without anyone admitting -- until months after it was deployed -- that it was paid for by Hillary Clinton.

'In fact, good old Dan has been raising and spending millions to confirm the unconfirmable – and, of course, to keep all his old intel colleagues up-to-speed on what FusionGPS and British and Russian spies have found. Got to keep that Russia story in the news.

'Of course Dan’s in touch with you guys. We know from the news that he’s been briefing Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of this committee. Which one of you works for Senator Warner? Please give Danny my best.

'I saw some of his handiwork just last month. Remember this lede paragraph, from McClatchy on April 13?

'The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

That’s your pal Dan, isn’t it? He came up with some kind of hollow proof that Michael Cohen was in Prague meeting with Russians when he wasn’t. He tried to sell that to reporters, and they didn’t buy it because it doesn’t check out. So, to get a reporter to write up his line of bull, he gave the documents to the Office of Special Counsel.

'We know that’s likely, because he’s told people he’s briefing investigators.

'So, technically, the special counsel’s office has evidence. Your pal Dan gave them more of the Democrats’ dossier, funded by more Democrats, provided again by Russian and British spies. Information no reporter would write up, but now there’s an angle: the Special Counsel has it. Now it’s a story.

'It’s a clever but effective ruse. That’s a story, just like when reporter Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News wrote this gem on September 16, 2016:

'“…U.S. officials have since received intelligence reports that during that same three-day trip, Page met with Igor Sechin, a longtime Putin associate … a well-placed Western intelligence source tells Yahoo News. That meeting, if confirmed, is viewed as especially problematic by U.S. officials…”

'Dozens of stories were written from the Isikoff piece, doing real damage to the Trump campaign. Of course, now we know Isikoff’s reference to “intelligence reports” was just him renaming a dossier funded by Democrats and dug up by his longtime pal Glenn Simpson and some foreign spies. Once Simpson gave his Clinton campaign opposition research to the feds, it was news.

'This was especially true after Isikoff intentionally labeled the campaign materials as intelligence – just like McClatchy called Dan’s information “evidence.”


But who is McClatchy’s second source? It couldn’t be Dan; he was the first source. It couldn’t be Simpson; he works for Dan. It can’t be the Mueller investigation; they kicked the McClatchy story to the curb with aplomb. So who could it be – perhaps one of his former Senate Intelligence colleagues? I mean, you’re all in this together. You’re the swamp.

'What America needs is an investigation of the investigators. I want to know who is paying for the spies’ work and coordinating this attack on President Donald Trump? I want to know who Dan Jones is talking to across the investigations – from the FBI, to the Southern District of New York, to the OSC, to the Department of Justice, to Congress.

'Forget about all the death threats against my family. I want to know who cost us so much money, who crushed our kids, who forced us out of our home, all because you lost an election.

'I want to know because God Damn you to Hell.'

If this does turn out to be a witch hunt, guys like this need to be reimbursed for their legal fees and the GDCs need to go to jail.

Yes, a counter-suit and judgment against the DNC, Hillary, Fusion, Steele, and all the corrupt players named individually. Their FBI/DOJ positions don't protect them against liability for illegal misconduct.

more from Michael Caputo

http://www.powerlineblog.com/a...caputo-debriefed.php

Following up on his testimony and statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo was interviewed by one of the prosecutors and two FBI agents working on the Mueller Switch Project yesterday.

• “They’re still looking at Russian collusion, still looking for it…In my mind, if anybody thinks that Russia collusion is off the table, they haven’t visited with the Mueller team.”

• “They know more about the Trump campaign than anybody that worked there and they know more about what I did in 2016 than I do myself.”

• What are they looking at? “I don’t want to interfere with the investigation. I was warned about that.”

• Did he construe that as a threat? “I’m not going to be friending them today on Facebook, if that’s what you’re asking.”

• “It’s not nice but it’s nothing compared to the $125,000 in legal bills that I’ve stacked up for nothing.”

• “What’s happening to me and my family is happening to many other people in this investigation and I’m just a witness. I can’t imagine if somebody’s a subject or a target what they’re going to go through.”

• “I certainly didn’t sign up for this when I went to work for the Trump campaign and I will never, ever work on another Republican campaign for as long as I live…and I think that’s part of this, Tucker. This is a punishment strategy. I think they want to destroy the president, they want to destroy his family, they want to destroy his businesses, they want to destroy his friends so that no billionaire, say, in 15 years wakes up and tells his wife, you know what, they country’s broken and only I can fix it….His wife will say, ‘are you crazy Did you see what happened to Donald Trump?’ That’s what this is about.”

• “Clearly these lawsuits after the fact are the new Democratic strategy. When you lose, you still win. I don’t think anyone should work on a Republican campaign again unless you’re legally indemnified. If you do, you’re crazy.”

• “I was there [with the Mueller prosecutors] for three hours. I would compare it to a proctology appointment with a very large-handed doctor. It was an awful experience.”

• “I’m a witness, not a subject or a target, but it doesn’t matter. When you get in that room it’s fraught with peril.”

• “As someone who left the campaign on June 20 and didn’t return to the transition or the administration, they wouldn’t be asking me about these allegations of obstruction and they wouldn’t be asking me about these allegations of financial crimes of some of these other people who’ve been indicted. They only asked me about Russian collusion….and they asked me about a bunch of my friends.”

• “I don’t think they’re convinced yet that there’s no Russian collusion.”

• “You know, I was in the Senate talking with their investigators on Tuesday and they were still fishing around. It reminded me of net fishing. They’re just out there throwing things out there hoping that they can get something in. If we’re working with a fishing metaphor, I’d say the Mueller team is spearfishing.”

• “I don’t think they ask any questions they don’t already know the answer to. Thank goodness, I watch a lot of cop TV.”

• “I don’t recall them specifically asking me anything about the president of the United States….I think they’ve narrowed it down.”

• “Anybody whose name is in the mouth of the Mueller investigation is in peril, I think. These folks are really focused on bringing somebody in.”

• “I can tell you these guys know everything. They have all the documents, all the emails, and they’re ready to rock.”

• “I think the president should not go anywhere near this [Mueller team]. I think in a lot of ways it’s a trap. I think the president is clear on potential Russian collusion. I think the campaign is in the clear. In the end if they want to get the president, they’re going to try to trip him up in an interview like this and my advice, after being through it, is stay away.”

• “I have a lot of respect for Director Mueller. When this thing first started I had some faith that it was going to be done fairly. I’m not so sanguine about it anymore.”

• “I’m very confident there was no Russian collusion. I’m very confident that the president is in the clear here. I’m very confident that in the end they’re going to find the holes that they’re digging to be empty, but they are digging and they’re going to continue to dig.”

Posted some of this in the main President Trump thread, but that thread moves fast w a lot of diff topic areas. So here is a more comprehensive discussion.

The issue is Carter Page and the fact that Comey never warned Donald Trump about FBI concerns re Carter Page.

Carter Page lived in Moscow from 2004 to 2007. He worked for Merrill Lynch as an energy consultant.

In 2013, Russian agents tried to recruit Carter Page here in the U.S.

Page was trying to set up business deals in Russia. He thought the 2 Russian agents were business people; he didn’t know they were spies. The FBI prosecuted the 2 spies. Carter Page was not prosecuted. The FBI explained to Page that he was being set up. In court documents, Page was not mentioned by name. He was referred to as “male-1”. There were other Americans who had been targeted also.

In March 2016, then candidate Donald Trump announced that Carter Page was on his foreign policy team. (keep in mind Donald Trump was having a terrible time getting quality people to join his team for the presidential run)

Now the House Intel Committee report informs us that Comey briefed the obama National Security Council Principals about Carter Page in late spring 2016. But Comey never briefed Donald Trump about his counterintelligence concerns re Page.

Who was on the obama NSC ? Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Joe Biden, John Kerry, James Clapper, Loretta Lynch, and many others. How long do you think it was before the Clinton campaign knew about Comey’s “concerns” about Carter Page?

“late spring 2016” That would be April / May 2016.

Right in the time frame when the Clinton campaign and DNC hired Fusion GPS. Fusion hired Steele in late May / early June 2016.

But Comey never told Donald Trump abut Carter Page being a counterintelligence target. Comey never told Donald Trump about Page even in January 2017 when Comey told the president-elect about the mythical pee tape.

Hard not to conclude that Comey was a key player in the conspiracy to set up and frame President Trump. James Comey - Mr. Ethics.

And the final irony - after a full year of FISA complete surveillance as a supposed "Russian foreign agent", Carter Page has never been charged with anything.

from the House report:

image hosting free no registration

quote:

And the final irony - after a full year of FISA complete surveillance as a supposed "Russian foreign agent", Carter Page has never been charged with anything.

I thought the Russians charged him with being an idiot.

One of the companies that Steele identified in the dossier is suing Buzzfeed in Florida.

This is a libel & slander case filed by Aleksej Gubarev against Buzzfeed.

Steele was ordered to do a deposition weeks ago for this case, but we haven't heard anything about the status of the deposition.

Latest info on the trial schedule:

Discovery due by 15 June 2018

Jury Trial on 26 Nov 2018

Of note, while Mueller has charged numerous Russians and Russian companies of trying to influence the 2016 election, none of those appear to be associated with any Russians or companies identified in the dossier. (as best I can tell)

***************

best summary of Mueller investigation:

If Comey would have mentioned Carter Page in his briefing of Trump, I wonder if Trump would have said, “Who?”

We don’t know the extent of the monitoring connected with the FISA warrant. I saw one mention of monitoring everyone “within 2 hops” of Carter Page. What does that mean?

I also wonder, having read that FISA court order about certifying compliance, if they wrote that saying the very minimum, concealing a much more widespread abuse. On one hand, they want to stop that and nail abusers, but on the other, if widespread violations like Nellie Ohr rummaging around in the database were to become known, the stench could end the program.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
We don’t know the extent of the monitoring connected with the FISA warrant.

We've been dealing with "1) How" they got the FISA warrant.

There's still:
2) "What they collected with the Warrant". The number of unmaskings
3) "What they did with what they collected". Dispersing the information via the Presidential Daily Briefings.

Here is the link to Conservative Treehouse where I found the reference to “2 hops of Carter Page.”

quote:

Asst. AG Rod Rosenstein gave the special counsel the counterintelligence investigation and also gave them FISA Title-1 surveillance warrant authority; which allowed Robert Mueller to retrieve all communications (e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g) belonging to any person, entity or group, within two-hops of former unofficial campaign aide Carter Page. By extension this covered almost all the campaign officials, and also most of the Trump administration.

We must be missing a lot of details.

How can a warrant to monitor an obscure nobody with minimal links to the campaign leverage into “[covering] most of the Trump Administration.”

This message has been edited. Last edited by: JALLEN,

https://www.nationalreview.com...-cover-fbi-missteps/

Outrageous Redactions to the Russia Report

The FBI and DOJ have been burying the investigators’ questionable judgments and information helpful to Flynn.
Cute how this works: Kick off the week with some “the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted” bombast from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, by which he rationalizes that his defiance of subpoenas and slow-walking document production to Congress — which is probing investigative irregularities related to the 2016 campaign — is required by DOJ policy and “the rule of law.” Then end the week with the Friday-night bad-news dump: the grudging removal of DOJ and FBI redactions from a House Intelligence Committee report on Russia’s election meddling.

Now that we can see what they wanted to conceal, it is clear, yet again, that the Justice Department and the FBI cannot be trusted to decide what the public gets to learn about their decision-making.

They tell us that their lack of transparency is necessary for the protection of national security, vital intelligence, and investigative operations. But what we find out is that they were concealing their own questionable judgments and conflicting explanations for their actions; their use of foreign-intelligence and criminal-investigative authorities to investigate Michael Flynn, Trump’s top campaign supporter and former national-security adviser; and their explicitly stated belief that Flynn did not lie in the FBI interview for which Special Counsel Robert Mueller has since prosecuted him on false-statements charges.

It is simply ridiculous for President Trump to continue bloviating about this situation on Twitter and in friendly media interviews, and for congressional Republicans to continue pretending that the problem is Justice Department and FBI leadership — as if Trump were not responsible for his own administration’s actions. The president has not only the authority but the duty to ensure that his subordinates honor lawful disclosure requests from Congress.

What happened with these redactions is inexcusable.

A little over a week ago, the House committee chaired by Representative Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) published its lengthy report on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The report was actually completed weeks earlier but was withheld while the committee battled to disclose information that the Justice Department and FBI insisted on blacking out. As usual, the DOJ claimed that the declassification and release of the information would damage investigations and national security. No, it wouldn’t, countered Chairmen Nunes and other Republicans who knew what had been redacted.

This has become a depressingly familiar dance. Justice and the Bureau previously insisted that the sky would fall if Congress forced the release of an Intelligence Committee report on government abuse of foreign-intelligence surveillance powers. To the contrary, we learned that the FBI and DOJ had used the unverified Steele dossier to obtain surveillance warrants on at least one person tied to the Trump campaign, in contravention of express guidelines that “only documented and verified information may be used to support FBI applications to the [FISA] court” (see Nunes’s March 1 letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions). In addition, we learned that the FISA court was not told that the dossier was a Clinton campaign opposition-research project, and that its author, Christopher Steele, had been terminated as an informant for lying to the FBI about his contacts with the media.

More recently, the FBI severely restricted access to former FBI director James Comey’s memos of his meetings with President Trump. Finally, three congressional committees protested that there was no legal basis for such restriction. When the memos were finally disclosed, we learned that there was no investigative or national-security reason to have concealed them. They did, however, provide greater insight about such matters as how a briefing of then-president-elect Trump on a salacious sliver of the dossier (but not on its sensational allegations of a traitorous conspiracy with the Kremlin) led to an intelligence-community leak about the briefing and the consequent media publication of the dossier — the backbone of the media-Democratic “collusion with Russia” narrative.

When the House first issued its report on the Russia investigation, a heavily redacted portion (pp. 53–54) related that Trump’s original national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, had pled guilty to a false-statements charge based on misleading statements to FBI agents about his December 2016 conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The report explained that Flynn had been rebuffed by Kislyak when, based on instructions from the Trump transition team, Flynn asked Russia to refrain from voting in favor of a U.N. resolution condemning Israel. Flynn also discussed with the transition team what, if anything, he should communicate to Kislyak about Trump’s position on the sanctions that President Obama had imposed on Russia over its interference in the 2016 election.

None of this was new information. Indeed, the committee noted that it was drawn from public court filings by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in connection with Flynn’s guilty plea. But there was one intriguing disclosure in the redacted report: Flynn pled guilty “even though the [FBI] agents did not detect any deception during Flynn’s interview.” There was no elaboration on this point — no discussion of why Flynn was interrogated by FBI agents in the first place; no insight on deliberations within the FBI and Justice Department about whether Flynn had deceptive intent; no explanation of how he came to be charged months later by Mueller’s prosecutors even though the trained investigators who observed Flynn’s demeanor during the interview did not believe he’d lied

This news that Flynn’s interrogators had not sensed deception was not altogether new. It had been reported that then–FBI director James Comey had made this revelation in closed-session testimony before the committee on March 2, 2017. (See my column.) Yet, during media interviews to promote his just-released memoir, Comey — who has rebuked the House Intelligence Committee report as an effort to tear down our law-enforcement institutions — repeatedly expressed bafflement that anyone could possibly have construed his testimony to imply that the agents believed Flynn had not lied. Byron York recounts the interviews at the Washington Examiner. In one, Comey told ABC host and Clinton pal George Stephanopoulos:

I don’t know where that’s coming from. . . . That — unless I’m — I said something that people misunderstood, I don’t remember even intending to say that. So, my recollection is I never said that to anybody.

it turns out the redactions had absolutely nothing to do with concerns about the need to protect national security or pending investigations. Instead, the now-unredacted passages:

Elaborate on why the FBI did not believe Flynn had lied, including quotations from Comey’s testimony.

Reveal that for some period of time during 2016, the FBI conducted a counterintelligence (CI) investigation of Flynn.

Note that top Obama Justice Department and FBI officials provided the committee with “conflicting testimony” about why the FBI interviewed Flynn as if he were a criminal suspect.

Illustrate that the FBI and Justice Department originally insisted on concealment of facts helpful to Flynn that are already public.

The now-unredacted passages relate that, for some period of time during 2016, the FBI was conducting a “CI investigation into General Flynn.” It was Comey’s recollection that he had “authorized the closure” of that investigation “by late December 2016.”

As we have discussed in connection with Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser against whom the Obama Justice Department obtained FISA surveillance warrants, a CI investigation on an American citizen proceeds on the suspicion that the citizen is an agent of a foreign power whose clandestine activities violate federal criminal law. That is, it appears possible (if not likely) that the Justice Department was operating on the theory that Flynn — a decorated combat veteran and co-author of a 2016 book that brands Russia as an implacable enemy of the United States — was an agent of the Kremlin.

At some point, moreover, Justice rationalized the investigation into Flynn, at least in part, by relying on the Logan Act. An almost surely unconstitutional 18th-century statute, the Logan Act purports to prohibit Americans from unauthorized freelancing in foreign-policy. It has never been successfully used to prosecute anyone. (Compare then-director Comey’s July 5, 2016, press conference and subsequent testimony, in which he theorized that charging Hillary Clinton for a rarely prosecuted classified-information offense would violate Justice Department policy against selective prosecution.)

The startling fact that there was a CI investigation of Flynn does not, of course, tell us on what evidence suspicions against him were based. As I’ve previously contended (when it was not known that there was a CI investigation, but it was apparent that Flynn had been seen as a criminal suspect), there are profound reasons to question the legitimacy of Flynn’s treatment.

Notwithstanding Friday night’s unveiling of blacked-out passages, the report still contains redacted paragraphs about Flynn. Two of them (on pp. 52–53) sandwich a passage about a business trip Flynn took to Moscow in late 2015 (seven months before he branded Russia a committed enemy in his book). The trip followed a visit to Kislyak by Flynn and his son at the ambassador’s Washington residence.

While it is only natural that Obama officials would seethe over Flynn’s ascendancy, the suggestion that his post-election contacts with Russia were improper, let alone unlawful, is absurd. Flynn was the designated national-security adviser for the incoming administration and a key member of the Trump transition team. To have communications with officials of foreign governments was a legitimate and necessary part of his job. Plus, Kislyak was a foreign agent subject to FISA surveillance, so the FBI had recordings of his communications with Flynn and knew that Flynn had done nothing improper. (It has been presumed that Flynn’s communications with Kislyak were intercepted because Kislyak, not Flynn, was the subject of a FISA warrant; now, with confirmation that Flynn was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation, we may need to revisit that presumption.)

Whatever prompted the CI investigation of Flynn, the now-unredacted passages of the report recount that it had come to nothing by the end of 2016. The FBI’s former deputy director, Andrew McCabe, told the committee that “we really had not substantiated anything particularly significant against General Flynn.”

And so, ladies and gentlemen, what do you suppose the FBI wanted redacted from the report? If you guessed “the paragraph describing the Flynn-Kislyak phone call,” you have caught on to how this wretched game is played. Here’s the paragraph that was originally blacked out:

In the call between General Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak, General Flynn “requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. sanctions in a reciprocal manner.” [Endnote (EN) 90] Russia decided not to reciprocate, which eventually led senior U.S. government officials to try to understand why. [There follows a passage of about two lines followed by EN 91, both redacted.] In a subsequent call with General Flynn, Ambassador Kislyak attributed the action to General Flynn’s request. [EN 92]

what conceivable good reason can there have been for the FBI and Justice Department to redact from the report information that was already publicly disclosed? Why black out public information showing that Flynn merely did what any Obama official, or any other U.S. official, would have done — namely, suggest that Russia would only make things worse by escalating the dispute?

Is it because this action, simply communicating with the Russian ambassador, is the real reason Flynn was prosecuted?

Obama officials had hoped to nail Flynn on a heinous crime — a corrupt deal to drop the sanctions as a quid pro quo for Putin’s election-meddling that purportedly helped Trump win. Instead, all they could show was a trivial misstep: Flynn’s failure to acknowledge that sanctions were mentioned in his conversation with Kislyak — a mention so innocuous that the FBI couldn’t decide whether Flynn’s failure to describe it was a lie or an innocent failure of recollection.

Three days into his job as national-security adviser, Flynn had been meeting with many government national-security agents. Strzok’s visit must have seemed routine. Having no notice that he was to be interrogated as a criminal suspect, Flynn spoke with the agents alone, without a lawyer. But why was he being treated as a suspect? The newly unredacted report elaborates:

The Committee received conflicting testimony from Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Yates, Director Comey, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General [Mary] McCord, and Deputy Director McCabe about whether the primary purpose of the interview was investigating potentially misleading statements to the Vice President, which the Vice President echoed publicly[,] about the content of those calls [EN 94, citing Yates]; a possible violation of the Logan Act [EN 95, citing Yates]; or a desire to obtain more information as part of the counterintelligence investigation into General Flynn. [EN 96, citing McCabe, who did not recall that Comey had authorized closing the counterintelligence investigation a month earlier.]

Ask yourself: Was this passage previously blacked out due to proper concerns about national security, or because the relevant officials couldn’t get their stories straight?

There is no Department of Justice in the Constitution. It is an executive-branch component created by Congress, funded with taxpayer funds appropriated by Congress, and subject to congressional oversight to ensure that its operations are conducted in accordance with their statutory purposes. Because of the sensitivity of their law-enforcement and intelligence missions, the Justice Department and its premier agency, the FBI, are shown great deference when lawmakers make requests — or even demands — for information. Contrary to what Justice Department leadership apparently believes, this deference is not an entitlement

There is no defending the redactions that have now been disclosed. Especially in light of recent history, this powerfully suggests that there is no justification for withholding much else that the Justice Department refuses to reveal.

Republican committees can carp all they like about Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. The buck stops with the president.

*******************

McCarthy's last paragraph is too harsh on President Trump. He can't dive into every Department and solve every problem. The big problem here is we still have a DoJ/FBI that is hiding bad, and perhaps criminal, behavior from the American people. Behavior that directly supports the ongoing silent coup to overturn the 2016 election.

When McCain's dead the dossier needs to be shoved in his rectum prior to burial

There was a hearing today regarding Concord Management

http://thehill.com/policy/cybe...lty-in-mueller-probe

A Russian company charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s sprawling probe into Russian interference in the presidential election pleaded not guilty Wednesday to federal charges related to the spreading of divisive content on social media.

A U.S. attorney for the company, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, offered the not guilty plea at an initial appearance and arraignment in federal court in Washington, D.C., before Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey.

The indictment, unveiled in February, alleges that the so-called Internet Research Agency and individuals and entities associated with it knowingly and intentionally conspired with one another “to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.”

It alleges that Concord Management funded the operation of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm that spread divisive content on social media to U.S. audiences as part of a broader plot to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

The company is said to be controlled by Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, a Russian businessman who has been nicknamed “Putin’s chef” because of his reported close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The individuals and entities charged in February as part of the Internet Research Agency case were largely thought to be out of the reach of U.S. prosecutors because they are based in Russia.

However, Concord Management notified a federal judge last month that it had retained D.C.-based attorneys to argue on its behalf.

Those attorneys, Eric Dubelier and Katherine Seikaly of the law firm Reed Smith, appeared in court on Wednesday to plead not guilty on the company’s behalf. No representatives from Concord Management were present at the arraignment.

The lawyers representing Concord Management told Harvey that they do not represent any of the other entities charged in February. In emphasizing that fact, Dubelier accused the government of indicting a “proverbial ham sandwich” in connection with the alleged interference plot.

Jeannie Rhee, an investigator with Mueller’s office, clarified that it was the government’s understanding that the lawyers had engaged them on behalf of Concord Management and Concord Catering, pointing to a filing with the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at the Treasury Department.

i think they are saying this defense team only represents Concord Management. They do not represent any of the Russian individuals or the company Concord Catering

Dubelier took that to mean that the special counsel’s office has access to sensitive files on Concord Management through OFAC, calling it “disturbing.” He did not elaborate further.

No representatives from the other entities were present at the hearing Wednesday afternoon — something not surprising but disappointing to Mueller's office.

“The government would be thrilled if they were,” said Rhee.

Attorneys with the special counsel’s office indicated they would need additional time to exacerbate “other channels” to pursue the summons with regard to the Internet Research Agency and Concord Catering.

The judge scheduled status hearings for updates on the case for May 16 and July 9.