quote:

Originally posted by HighZonie:

quote:

Originally posted by TSE:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Shocking...

Both Comey And Brennan Voted Communist While Cold War Was Raging

How the F*CK did these two clowns ever get to rise to the ranks they held in their respective organizations? This just amazes me.

Security background checks done by top men at FBI and CIA?

==============================================

^^^

Who could ever make this stuff up!!!

Thanks Obama - excellent vetting.

They were vetted, its just that their standards are the opposite of ours. A communist is perfectly acceptable to the (D) because the (D) is communist.

John Solomon writing for THE HILL has a new story out today: .....

Ukrainian who meddled against Trump in 2016 is now under Russia-corruption cloud

THE HILL > https://thehill.com/opinion/wh...-is-now-under-russia


--------------------------------------------
Apparently, Leshchenko's "black ledger" which led to the creation of the GPS Steele dossier may have been funded by Russia.

"Leshchenko also was “a source” of Russian dirt on Trump that was fed to Hillary Clinton’s opposition research firm, Fusion GPS, the firm that created the so-called Steele dossier that led to a two-year Russia probe that recently cleared Donald Trump of colluding with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

So, a Ukrainian parliamentarian fed dirt to Clinton’s team and leaked to the media information that harmed the Republican candidate’s campaign? That seems like more collusion than was uncovered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation."

....

"“Absolutely that is one of the things they are going to be investigating,” Kholodnytskyy told me when asked whether any of the Russian money could have been paid as an inducement or a reward for Leshchenko’s meddling in the U.S. election.

The special prosecutor said “credible” information obtained from news media reports, as well as classified information the government possesses, suggest Leshchenko was receiving money from a Russian businessman ..."
....
"Ukrainian officials told me Thursday that the U.S. embassy during Barack Obama’s presidency applied pressure in recent years to steer investigations away from Leshchenko. A source with direct knowledge said Leshchenko was one of the people the U.S. ambassador in Kiev asked Ukrainian prosecutors not to pursue in 2016."
....
"Whatever happens next in Ukraine, there’s growing evidence that Leshchenko and his activities during the 2016 election in America may deserve scrutiny on this side of the ocean, too.
..........
And that alarm will sound all the more loudly if Ukrainian authorities find any evidence substantiating that Leshchenko received bribes or influence money from Russia in 2016."
......
"Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko told me he was reopening parts of an investigation involving a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, where then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, worked as a board member. Lutsenko said he did not believe some $3 million in payments that Burisma made to Hunter Biden’s U.S. company violated Ukraine law but might be of interest to U.S. authorities.

Lutsenko told Bloomberg on Thursday that he’d like to offer evidence to U.S. Attorney General William Barr, so that American authorities can check whether Hunter Biden paid U.S. taxes."

John Solomon is one heck of an investigative journalist. He and a few others deserve the highest honors.

quote:

Originally posted by Jimineer:
John Solomon is one heck of an investigative journalist. He and a few others deserve the highest honors.

^^^^ I will definitely second that!

I have been reading THE HILL a lot more now that I have discovered John Solomon.

AG Barr has given 2 recent interviews (to WSJ and Fox)

What a breath of fresh air compared to Rosenstein and FBI Dir Wray.

Attorney General William Barr said in an interview that aired Friday that he is investigating what role the Steele dossier played in the Russia probe, and that the salacious document had “a number of clear mistakes.”

“It’s a very unusual situation to have opposition research like that, especially one that on its face had a number of clear mistakes and a somewhat jejune analysis,” Barr told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer.

jejune - naïve, simplistic, superficial

“And to use that to conduct counterintelligence against an American political campaign is a strange — would be strange development.”

In the interview, Barr spoke at length about an inquiry he launched at the Justice Department into the origins of the Russia investigation. He told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that the investigation is also focusing on what information U.S. intelligence agencies gathered on Trump campaign associates before the FBI formally opened its investigation in July 2016

https://dailycaller.com/2019/0...sier-clear-mistakes/

Fox reporter Hemmer asks AG Barr if he was comfortable using the terms "witch-hunt" and "hoax" to describe Mueller's investigation.

AG Barr: It was an investigation, but I think if I had been falsely accused, I'd be comfortable w saying it was a witch-hunt.

Barr said he was ok w Mueller testifying to congress.

In the Fox interview, it is clear Barr knows exactly what the DEMs are trying to do to him. He is unafraid.

Barr also called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's charge he lied under oath to Congress and committed a crime 'laughable.'

"I think it's a laughable charge and I think it's largely being made to try to discredit me partly because they may be concerned about the outcome of a review of what happened during the election. But obviously, you can look at the face of my testimony and see on its face there is nothing inaccurate about it," Barr said.

He said that he was ready to be the new target for Democrats. "I thought I was in a position where this kind of criticism really wouldn't bother me very much."

Barr called the contempt charge recommendation passed by the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee "part of the circus."

"It's part of the usual political circus that's being played out. It doesn't surprise me," he said, adding he doesn't feel threatened.



https://video.foxnews.com/v/60...19001/#sp=show-clips

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

Fox News Discussion re. who will pay the BARR bill. This is from 5/14/2019.

DiGenova: Comey, Clapper and Brennan will have to pay the 'Barr bill'

Fox News > https://youtu.be/opmrky-jhFw

From the Gateway Pundit:

EXCLUSIVE: Junk Anti-Trump Russia Steele Dossier Appears Tampered With – Pages Were Replaced


>>> https://www.thegatewaypundit.c...pages-were-replaced/

"The Steele dossier was a made up hodgepodge of bogus reports collated into an enormous pile of rubbish. It’s shocking to think that the US Intelligence agencies used this sophomoric report to spy on the President of the US!"
Hat tip D. Manny and her Internet sleuths

Please be careful w sources.

The Gateway Pundit article is nonsense.

One of the reports isn't in the data at all.

One is misdated.

Most important the plot in the article is made w even horizontal spaces between the Steele reports and some strange assumption is made that the rate of total reports should be constant over all 17. There is no logic to that.

The reports are labeled & numbered as Company Intelligence Reports. Orbis was likely working on more than just the dossier.

The copy of the dossier that I have has no hand written numbers on pages 1,2, 4, 7,8. It appears that numbers were dropped off in the copy process. Page 2 has the slightest hint of a "2"

Report 86 on page 6 of the dossier is dated "26 July 2015". The year has been assumed to have been mistyped.

"Irrefutable evidence uncovered shows the original documents provided to the FBI were doctored." actually, no.

However, I do agree w the article's conclusion:

"It’s shocking to think that the US Intelligence agencies used this sophomoric report to spy on the President of the US!"

quote:

Originally posted by HighZonie:
From the Gateway Pundit:

EXCLUSIVE: Junk Anti-Trump Russia Steele Dossier Appears Tampered With – Pages Were Replaced


>>> https://www.thegatewaypundit.c...pages-were-replaced/

"The Steele dossier was a made up hodgepodge of bogus reports collated into an enormous pile of rubbish. It’s shocking to think that the US Intelligence agencies used this sophomoric report to spy on the President of the US!"
Hat tip D. Manny and her Internet sleuths

I watch Dan Bongino on YouTube each night and he ties together all these reports from Solomon and others. He apparently has some unnamed person on the inside helping him out with additional information.
The other day on Fox Gowdy talked about something so secret only a few people know about it. Bongino talked about some other US ally supporting the bogus dossier with Halper and an MI6 guy getting the dossier garbage from a Russian close to Putin. I think he was also saying that the UK government was also behind this, supported by the Obama admin. So perhaps the big secret is the UK was supporting the anti Trump effort and the spying? This probably went all the way up to Obama himself. Apparently there is documented evidence of this coming together - more than just talk and speculation.
Has anyone else heard that storyline? Maybe this is old news but I’m not hearing much trashing on the UK yet. This may be new revelations.

So this may go above Clapper, Comey, and Brennan.

The old FBI leadership team continues to try to get out in front of any releases from DoJ IG Horowitz.

This is an interview today w Chuck Todd interviewing James Baker (former FBI General Counsel)

https://dailycaller.com/2019/0...-steele-dossier-fbi/

short video at link

https://youtu.be/ckBuIN5kz1w

Baker says he viewed the Steele dossier material "skeptically from the outset, and I was concerned about it and had a jaundiced eye, or looked at it with a jaundiced eye right from the outset,”

“Steele was and had been a source that we thought was reliable. He’s reporting all this information. It looks alarming. We took it seriously, but we tried to vet it.”

The FBI didn't vet the dossier. The most simplistic of things were not checked.

Todd asks if the Carter Page FISA warrant would have been approved without the dossier.

Baker says yes. Baker says there was sufficient probable cause even without the dossier. That disagrees w what Andrew McCabe said.

So what other probable cause was there ?

Most interestingly, Todd asks if the dossier was used in any other FISA applications.

Baker stammers a bit, the says:

“I don’t think I should comment on that, I’m not sure what else the government has confirmed,”

“I don’t want to confirm or deny anything about other potential FISA applications.”


If the dossier wasn't used in other FISA warrants, Baker could have simply said something like "not to my knowledge"

Like Jim Comey said to the trees, so many questions.

A little background on the Carter Page FISA warrants



xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

article by Andrew McCarthy:

https://www.nationalreview.com...lication-that-wasnt/

The Steele Dossier and the ‘VERIFIED APPLICATION’ That Wasn’t

one issue w the article is something that a number of reports have messed up:

McCarthy writes

"The first VERIFIED APPLICATION included a laborious footnote (here, pages 15 to 16) vaguely “speculating” that Steele “likely” had a political motivation to discredit Trump’s campaign"

The FBI's false statement was worse than that.

This is straight from the FISA warrant:




"identified U.S. person" = Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS

"Source #1" = Christopher Steele

So the FBI told the FISC that Steele wasn't advised at all about the motivation behind the research.

The FBI said it was Glenn Simpson who was "likely" looking for info to discredit Candidate #1 (Donald Trump)

A few posts above was a story that Comey had voted communist a long time ago.

I really didn't think about it much. A lot of young people in college have radical ideas and grow out of them.

But there is much more to this story.

After Comey was fired, he started tweeting under the name Reinhold Niebuhr

story is here (from Nov 2017):

https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.79d1df656363

Former FBI chief James B. Comey has changed his Twitter name from theologian Reinhold Niebuhr to his own name and changed his Twitter handle from @FormerBu to @Comey.

Niebuhr was a Christian theologian. beginning in the 1930s and extending into the 1960s, Niebuhr’s various treatises on the intersection of Christianity and public life were at the center of innumerable public debates, and his voice was a constant in conversations about the moral dimensions of war, use of nuclear weapons, and civil rights

Among those who have quoted and called Niebuhr their favorite theologian are thinkers and politicians from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to David Brooks and John McCain

Comey's thesis at William & Mary compares Niebuhr with Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell

the thesis is here:

https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/1116/

1982
Reinhold Niebuhr and Jerry Falwell: the Christian in politics
by James Comey

The thesis reads like something Obama would have written.

Comey was a fan of Niebuhr.

The thesis is 115 pages long.

Here is a very small sampling:

Trey Gowdy: Secret FBI transcripts from Russia probe could be 'game-changer'

Fox News > https://www.foxnews.com/politi...i-transcripts-russia

.........................................

'There is some information in these transcripts that has the potential to be a game-changer if it’s ever made public.'

— Former congressman Trey Gowdy on "Sunday Morning Futures"
..........................................

"“John Ratcliffe is rightfully exercised over the obligations the government has to tell the whole truth to a court when you are speaking permission to spy or do surveillance on an American,” Gowdy said, in apparent reference to allegations that information was withheld from the surveillance court when the FBI sought to monitor another Trump aide.

“Part of that includes the responsibility of providing exculpatory information or information that tends to show the person did not do something wrong.”


Trey Gowdy: Investigators assigned to examine Russia probe origins have 'easy road map'
He added, “If you have exculpatory information and you don't share it with the court, that ain't good.”

In the same interview, the former congressman took aim at the unverified anti-Trump dossier authored by Christopher Steele.

"I mean, let's just call it for what it is. It's a series of rank hearsay compilations put together by an FBI source who was later defrocked. Paid for by the Democrat National Committee, then, oh by the way, Christopher Steele hated Donald Trump too so that we can call it a dossier. It sounds official," Gowdy said.

"It's really something the National Enquirer would blush if they printed so we know that it was used four times by the United States government."

Doug Collins (R) has released a batch of transcripts from interviews w the House Judiciary Comm.

Interviews w

Trisha Anderson
William Sweeny
Loretta Lynch
James Rybicki
Andrew McCabe
George Toscas
Jonathan Moffa
John Giacalone
Sally Moyer

link:

https://dougcollins.house.gov/transparency

Devin Nunes keeping the pressure up on finding out who Mifsud worked for in Apr 2016.

3 of the 4 agencies he asked about Mifsud have responded. Nunes said as usual the FBI is dragging their feet.

Nunes seems very positive Mifsud was not working for Russia.

https://theconservativetreehou...erative/#more-164022


video:

https://youtu.be/k4Qh4BbdWJ8

quote:

The thesis reads like something Obama would have written.

It's good background information. It clarifies why Comey was such a good foot soldier for Obama, and why he wanted Hillary to win in 2016.

quote:

Comey was a fan of Niebuhr.

Of course Comey would say he was just comparing and contrasting the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr and Jerry Falwell and not favoring one over the other. But I think you're right, his own opinions come through.

Christopher Steele's nugget of fool's gold was easily disproven — but FBI didn't blink an eye

BY JOHN SOLOMON

https://thehill.com/opinion/wh...ly-disproven-but-fbi

Of all the wild tales that Christopher Steele spun about Russia-Trump collusion during a visit to the State Department shortly before the 2016 election, only one was deemed worth forwarding to his FBI handlers.

Long hidden, the now-disclosed email speaks volumes about both the quality of Steele’s so-called intelligence gathering and the FBI’s willingness to vet an informant who was openly biased against Donald Trump, paid by Trump’s Democratic opponent, and motivated by an Election Day deadline.

Multiple sources confirm to me that the attachment that Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec sent to then-FBI section chief Stephen Laycock on Oct. 13, 2016, was a summary from Steele’s company alleging Trump and Russia might be communicating through a computer server at Russia’s Alfa Bank.

This long-debunked allegation has floated around Washington since the summer of 2016, compliments of Hillary Clinton backers ranging from a university computer science professor who spread it across the internet to a lawyer for Clinton’s campaign who delivered it to the FBI in summer 2016.

that lawyer was Michael Sussmann of Perkins Coie who delivered the Alfa bank fabrication straight to FBI General Counsel James Baker

The theory — worthy of a spy novel — was that a series of data pings between a computer in Trump Tower and Alfa Bank in Moscow actually was a secret beacon alerting the Putin and Trump teams that it was time to talk about colluding on hijacking the American presidential election.

The story eventually made its way to mainstream media such as The New York Times, Slate, CNN and, just last fall, The New Yorker. It has been debunked by the FBI, and it was not mentioned as a reliable allegation in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Steele’s version of the allegation was uploaded to a private internet storage service, then downloaded by Kavalec and sent on Oct. 13, 2016, to Laycock, who immediately forwarded it to the FBI team investigating Trump-Russia collusion, according to people who have seen it.

The email arrived eight days before the FBI choose to use allegations in Steele’s so-called dossier to secure an extraordinary Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on the Trump campaign in the final days of the 2016 election.

In other words, it was a clear signal for the FBI to check Steele’s credibility before offering him to the judges as a reliable informant. The reason? It was clear, convincing evidence that the FBI informant had broken protocol and was leaking to entities outside his chain of command, experts say.

Had the FBI done due diligence — and there’s no evidence it did — then its agents would have followed up with Kavalec to see what else Steele had blabbed to State. And they would have learned that he admitted he had an Election Day deadline to get his information public , was leaking to the news media and had provided demonstrably false information to State officials, according to Kavalec’s own notes.

All of that, FBI intelligence experts tell me, would be enough to question Steele’s credibility and reliability as an informant and to push a “pause” button on the FISA request.

But even absent checking with State, the very piece of Steele intelligence that Kavalec transmitted to FBI — the alleged back-door computer channel at Alfa Bank — already was deemed unreliable by the bureau.

The FBI received similar information in summer of 2016 from the Democratic Party’s and Clinton campaign’s lawyer, who forwarded it to then-FBI chief counsel James Baker.

I first heard about the allegation in late September 2016 and, by the first week of October, I reached multiple U.S. officials — including one inside the FBI — who told me the allegation had been investigated and the pings were determined to be “innocuous” contacts, most likely related to errant spam emails. Alfa Bank hired two experts who reached similar conclusions.

Every time the story surfaced over the next two years, I got the same answer from U.S. officials. And I wasn’t alone. The New York Times published a similar answer before the 2016 election: “The F.B.I. ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts,” it reported on Oct. 31, 2016.

In the end, Kavalec’s email to the bureau about Steele was a perfect test of Steele’s credibility and of the FBI’s willingness to question the credibility of its star informant in one of the most controversial FISA applications in American history.

Both failed. Steele passed along easily debunked intelligence, and the FBI failed to ask hard questions about his credibility or to alert FISA judges to the concerns that Steele’s behavior raised before the warrant was secured.

In other words, before the FBI and its then-director, James Comey, swore to the FISA court on Oct. 21, 2016, that they had verified the FISA warrant application and deemed Steele a credible informant with no known derogatory information, the government knew:

Steele had told senior Justice official Bruce Ohr he was “desperate” to defeat Trump and was working in some capacity for the Clinton campaign;

he leaked his dossier to the news media;

he offered demonstrably false intelligence, such as the Alfa pings and an allegation given to Kavalec that Russian hackers were being paid by a nonexistent Russian Consulate in Miami.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a leader of the FISA abuse investigation, said the discovery two weeks ago of the State documents further heightens his concerns about the "problematic genesis" of the FBI's probe of Trump. "Each day we receive additional confirmation that those at the highest levels of the FBI were fully aware of the bias and lack of credibility that the whole investigation was initiated upon," he told me.
Far worse revelations for the FBI likely lie ahead.

Most Americans now support an investigation into whether the FBI abused FISA to smear Trump.

President Trump is preparing to declassify the first tranche of documents in the Russia case, and they are expected to show the FBI possessed — but did not alert the court to — damning evidence of the Trump campaign’s innocence, including recorded conversations of targeted campaign aides denying wrongdoing .

recorded by FBI/CIA spies such as Stefan Halper


But even before that happens, the State Department email that was kept from the American public and Congress for 2 1/2 years should be appreciated for what it signifies: It was a missed opportunity to assess Steele’s research for what it was — political fool’s gold.

Does Atty Gen Barr have Secret Service protection?

quote:

Originally posted by RichardC:
Does Atty Gen Barr have Secret Service protection?

He falls under the Department of Justice, which I believe allows his detail to be made up of agents from the U.S. Marshals. Last time I was at police week in D.C. and the Attorney General was speaking, the venue was swarming with USMS.