So Mueller gets to bring his buddy to answer questions. That way he can "stay within the four corners of the report" and the other stooge can tell us how Trump needs to be indicted.

Deven Nunes saw the writing on the wall a few weeks ago when he said that if the "dirty cops" don't go to jail no Republican will never trust the FBI. He knows Barr and Durham aren't planning on indicting anyone. They will investigate, issue a report, slap some wrists ("bad dog"), and move on. The fact that McCabe walks free is telling. On a normal investigation you snag the little guy and squeeze him to move up the ladder. They had McCabe dead to rights on a lying charge. Yet nothing. That's because they have no intention of charging anyone above him so why bother going down that road? Some low level smuck might get a charge, someone we have never heard of, but no one of consequence.

Tic Toc run out the clock.

Jim Jordan questioning Mueller about Mifsud

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EbrfiAxjY0

Mueller continually says he can't get into "internal deliberations"

Under other questioning, Mueller repeatedly says the Steele dossier was "beyond my purview"

Mueller is pathetic

Republican questioning Mueller:

"when you talk about the firm that produced the Steele reporting, the name of the firm was Fusion GPS, is that correct?"

Mueller : "I'm not familiar with that"

Republican: "It's not a trick question. it was Fusion GPS"

Mueller comes across as a combination of:

- not very sharp at all

- using every tactic to stall answers to Republicans and run out their time

https://twitter.com/i/status/1154031615829393409

Repub: "the owner of Fusion GPS is Glenn Simpson"

Mueller: "This is outside my purview"

Repub "Glenn Simpson was never mentioned in your 448 page report, was he ? "

Mueller: "Outside my purview and being handled by others"

How many times did he decline to answer because:
A. It was classified
B. He didn't know.
C. He was secretly taking the 5th.

I am thinking that "C" is the reason for the majority of those answers.



.

NBC:

Mueller declined or deflected questions nearly 200 times during his testimony today

https://www.wsj.com/articles/w...-to-hide-11564094510

What Mueller Was Trying to Hide

Special counsel Robert Mueller testified before two House committees Wednesday, and his performance requires us to look at his investigation and report in a new light. We’ve been told it was solely about Russian electoral interference and obstruction of justice. It’s now clear it was equally about protecting the actual miscreants behind the Russia-collusion hoax.

The most notable aspect of the Mueller report was always what it omitted: the origins of this mess. Christopher Steele’s dossier was central to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe, the basis of many of the claims of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Yet the Mueller authors studiously wrote around the dossier, mentioning it only in perfunctory terms. The report ignored Mr. Steele’s paymaster, Fusion GPS, and its own ties to Russians. It also ignored Fusion’s paymaster, the Clinton campaign, and the ugly politics behind the dossier hit job.

Mr. Mueller’s testimony this week put to rest any doubt that this sheltering was deliberate. In his opening statement he declared that he would not “address questions about the opening of the FBI’s Russia investigation, which occurred months before my appointment, or matters related to the so-called Steele Dossier.” The purpose of those omissions was obvious, as those two areas go to the heart of why the nation has been forced to endure years of collusion fantasy.

Mr. Mueller claimed he couldn’t answer questions about the dossier because it “predated” his tenure and is the subject of a Justice Department investigation. These excuses are disingenuous. Nearly everything Mr. Mueller investigated predated his tenure, and there’s no reason the Justice Department probe bars Mr. Mueller from providing a straightforward, factual account of his team’s handling of the dossier.

If anything, Mr. Mueller had an obligation to answer those questions, since they go to the central failing of his own probe. As Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz asked Mr. Mueller, how could a special-counsel investigation into “Russia’s interference” have any credibility if it failed to look into whether the Steele dossier was itself disinformation from Moscow? Mr. Steele acknowledges that senior Russian officials were the source of his dossier’s claims of an “extensive conspiracy.” Given that no such conspiracy actually existed, Mr. Gaetz asked: “Did Russians really tell that to Christopher Steele, or did he just make it up and was he lying to the FBI?”

Mr. Mueller surreally responded: “As I said earlier, with regard to Steele, that is beyond my purview.”

So it went throughout the whole long day. Republicans asked basic questions about the report’s conclusions or analysis, and Mr. Mueller dodged and weaved and refused to avoid answering questions about the FBI’s legwork, the dossier’s role and Fusion’s involvement. Ohio Rep. Steve Chabot asked how the report could have neglected to mention Fusion’s ties to a Russian company and lawyer. Mr. Mueller: “Outside my purview.” California Rep. Devin Nunes asked several questions about one of the men at the epicenter of the “collusion” conspiracy—academic Joseph Mifsud, whom former FBI Director Jim Comey has tried to paint as a Russian agent. Mr. Mueller: “I am not going to speak to the series of happenings as you articulated them.”

Then again, how could he? The Mueller team, rather than question the FBI’s actions, went out of its way to build on them. That’s how we ended up with tortured plea agreements for process crimes from figures like former Trump aide George Papadopoulos and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. They were peripheral figures in an overhyped drama, who nonetheless had to be scalped to legitimize the early actions of Mr. Comey & Co. Mr. Mueller inherited the taint, and his own efforts were further tarnished. That accounts for Mr. Mueller’s stonewalling.

The special counsel’s often befuddled testimony has predictably raised questions about how in control he was of the 22-month investigation or the writing of the report. Yet in some ways it matters little whether it was Mr. Mueller calling the shots, or “pit bull” Andrew Weissmann, or Mr. Mueller’s congressional minder, Aaron Zebley. All three spent years in the Justice Department-FBI hierarchy, as did many of the other prosecutors and agents on the probe. That institutional crew early on made the calculated decision to shelter the FBI, the Justice Department, outside private actors, and leading Democrats from any scrutiny of their own potential involvement with 2016 Russian election interference.

That’s been the story all along. Mr. Comey hid his actions from Congress; the Justice Department and FBI worked overtime to obstruct Republican-led congressional probes ; and Mr. Mueller and his team are clearly playing their own important role in hiding the truth. The Mueller testimony only highlights how important it is that Attorney General William Barr is finally pursuing accountability.

quote:

It’s now clear it was equally about protecting the actual miscreants behind the Russia-collusion hoax.
....
The Mueller testimony only highlights how important it is that Attorney General William Barr is finally pursuing accountability.

Yep. We on Sigforum have been all over this... but the rest of the country is starting to wake up.

Maybe. Viewership was down to 13 million, compared to 19.5 million for Comey and 15.8 million for that known pathological liar Michael Cohen. The biggest number of watchers was on FOX, which suggests that most people who followed this are conservative to some degree.

The numbers are from Nielsen, as reported at http://www.usnews.com/news/ent...r-13-million-viewers

One could argue that this was the result of the summer vacation season, burnout, or even boredom born of confusion. Myself, I kinda wonder whether this means that there weren't many people who took all this crap seriously to begin with and that the number of people who've done so hasn't continuously dropped as more information has become available.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I think you have to also factor in that the average attention span of the common Libtard Leftist Progressive (LLP's) is about 1.17 seconds, and that's probably a VERY conservative figure. The LLP's get their "news" via twattle, facebook, and flash Communist News Network headlines. I doubt very seriously if an LLP reads the first paragraph of a print "news" story.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
Maybe. Viewership was down to 13 million, compared to 19.5 million for Comey and 15.8 million for that known pathological liar Michael Cohen. The biggest number of watchers was on FOX, which suggests that most people who followed this are conservative to some degree.

The numbers are from Nielsen, as reported at http://www.usnews.com/news/ent...r-13-million-viewers

One could argue that this was the result of the summer vacation season, burnout, or even boredom born of confusion. Myself, I kinda wonder whether this means that there weren't many people who took all this crap seriously to begin with and that the number of people who've done so hasn't continuously dropped as more information has become available.

Well, to be truthful, most of the progressive liberals decided why sit through it watching or listening to it when they can wait for CNN, MSNBC, and Dimocrap Party to tell them "what" happened during hearings and what to think.

Dims are all upset with Mueller tanking the First Act, but they are still going forward with the Second Act aka calls for Impeachment.

https://www.foxnews.com/politi...gators-request-bills

Former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo in an exclusive interview that he is heading back to Greece to retrieve $10,000 that he suspects was dropped in his lap as part of an entrapment scheme by the CIA or FBI -- and federal investigators want to see the marked bills, which he said are now stored in a safe.

Papadopoulos said on "Sunday Morning Futures" he was "very happy" to see Devin Nunes, R-Calif., grill former Special Counsel Robert Mueller about the summer 2017 payment during last week's hearings -- even though Mueller maintained, without explanation, that the matter was outside the scope of his investigation.

"I was very happy to see that Devin Nunes brought that up," Papadopoulos said. "A man named Charles Tawil gave me this money [in Israel] under very suspicious circumstances. A simple Google search about this individual will reveal he was a CIA or State Department asset in South Africa during the '90s and 2000s. I think around the time when Bob Mueller was the director of the FBI.

So, I have my theory of what that was all about," Papadopoulos added. "The money, I gave it to my attorney in Greece because I felt it was given to me under very suspicious circumstances. And upon coming back to the United States I had about seven or eight FBI agents rummaging through my luggage looking for money."

According to Papadopoulos, "the whole setup" by the "FBI likely, or even the special counsel's office," was intended to "bring a FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] violation against me." The FARA statute played a key role in the prosecutions of former Trump aides, including Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort.

"I actually want Congress, [Bill] Barr, [DOJ Inspector General Michael] Horowitz, and [U.S. Attorney John] Huber to review the bills because I still have the bills and I think they are marked," Papadopoulos said. "These bills that are still in Athens right now must be examined by the investigators because I think they are marked and they're going to go all the way back to DOJ, under the previous FBI under [James] Comey, and even the Mueller team."

It would be ironic and poetic justice, if this little low level guy that they screwed with, Popadopoulos, brings all their sorry asses, Comey, Brennan, Mueller et al., crashing down.

I sincerely hope it comes to pass. BEFORE the statute of limitations runs. Regards 18DAI

quote:

Originally posted by 18DAI:
It would be ironic and poetic justice, if this little low level guy that they screwed with, Popadopoulos, brings all their sorry asses, Comey, Brennan, Mueller et al., crashing down.

I sincerely hope it comes to pass. BEFORE the statute of limitations runs. Regards 18DAI

In my imagination that is exactly what is going on. He had no less than four spys try to entrap him plus the transcripts of exculpatory evidence/conversations that was never included in FISA application. The whole investigation started with this nobody and he may be the key to unravelling this mess.

Joe diGenova: “Declassified documents will be released this week … by Wednesday” (July 31st)….
Posted on July 29, 2019 by sundance

Speaking to WMAL radio, former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova informs the audience that declassified documents will begin to be made public starting Wednesday July 31st.

Additionally, Mr. diGenova states confidently that U.S. Attorney John Durham is not conducting a “review”, but is conducting a full criminal investigation with a grand jury empaneled and currently receiving testimony from witnesses.

The comments come at 04:58 of the audio/video below:



https://theconservativetreehou...wednesday-july-31st/

Christopher Wray is not the leader to restore public trust in the FBI.

Chris Wray's FBI continues to cover for Team Comey's Russia shenanigans

https://thehill.com/opinion/wh...s-russia-shenanigans

by John Solomon

The FBI is going to court to fight the public release of a small number of documents the State Department sent to agents from Christopher Steele, the British intelligence operative and Hillary Clinton-paid political muckraker, during the 2016 election.

“We know that terrorist organizations and other hostile or foreign intelligence groups have the capacity and ability to gather information from myriad sources, analyze it and deduce means and methods from disparate details to defeat the U.S. government’s collection efforts,” an FBI assistant section chief swore in an affidavit supporting the request to keep the documents secret.

so what ? This is Christopher Steele providing info to State Dept. Information that wasn't true. False information that was created for one reason - to hurt the campaign and election of Donald Trump

The FBI can’t afford to “jeopardize the fragile relationships that exist between the United States and certain foreign governments,” the FBI official declared in another dramatic argument against the conservative group Citizens United’s request to release the memos.

We need to jeopardize relationships that conspire to steal our presidential elections. It may well turn out that the UK interfered in the 2016 election much much more than Russia

And if that wasn’t enough, the bureau actually claimed that “FBI special agents have privacy interests from unnecessary, unofficial questioning as to the conduct of investigations and other FBI business.”

privacy interests ? It is obvious we need a lot more housecleaning at the FBI

The FBI’s July 10 court filing speaks volumes about Director Christopher Wray’s efforts to thwart the public understanding of what really happened in the FBI’s now-debunked Russia collusion probe.

Steele’s contacts at State can’t possibly be equated to the nation’s most sensitive secrets. The same research he provided to State and the FBI in fall 2016 was being provided to Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, and to the media.

In fact, Steele was fired from the FBI on Nov. 1, 2016, for leaking information. Any assumption of secrecy, privacy or classification is ludicrous. And a post-firing FBI analysis found most of Steele’s dossier was either wrong, could not be corroborated, or simply was made up of public source internet information. In other words, it was garbage intelligence.

On its face, the FBI’s behavior in the Citizens United case isn’t about protecting national security secrets . It’s about protecting the bureau’s reputation from revelations its agents knew derogatory information about Steele and his work before they used his dossier to support a surveillance warrant targeting the Trump campaign and failed to disclose that information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

“Only through our litigation will the American people discover what the political operatives inside the Obama State Department and FBI were doing in 2016 with the fake Steele dossier before the FISA court," said David N. Bossie, the president of Citizens United.

To better illustrate the folly of the FBI’s fight, let’s examine one document the bureau is fighting to keep secret in its entirety.

It’s a five-page memo that Kavalec downloaded from Steele from an internet storage site after meeting with him on Oct. 11, 2016. She sent it to then-FBI section chief Steven Laycock, now an assistant director, two days later.

The document, according to my sources who have seen it, lays out a theory that Steele and some liberals spread late in the 2016 campaign that unusual computer pings between a Trump Tower server and Alfa Bank in Russia might be a secret communication channel by which Trump and Vladimir Putin were hijacking the election.

The theory has been written about in the media. Kavalec downloaded the file from Steele via a commercial internet download service and transmitted it to Laycock on non-classified email.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who reviewed the document recently, wrote Attorney General William Barr last week saying the memo was “based on open source media reporting” and that the FBI’s claim that revealing it would harm sources and methods is “completely unfounded.”

In other words, it’s not the stuff intelligence laws were designed to protect.

Furthermore, the FBI investigated the theory and debunked it. Even the tight-lipped special counsel Robert Mueller went out of his way during testimony last week to say the Alfa Bank theory “is not true.”

So if Mueller could talk about it and the information was transmitted in a non-classified manner, why would the FBI go to such lengths to fight its release?

My sources say it’s because the State Department included notations on Steele’s five pages of research strongly calling into question his Alfa Bank theories before sending it to the FBI. In other words, they challenged the veracity and quality of Steele’s intelligence.

Under the FBI’s human source rules, a U.S. government’s negative assessment of an informer’s information would constitute “derogatory information” that would have to be disclosed to the FISC if Steele’s work was being used to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant.

Eight days after Kavalec sent Laycock her annotated version of Steele’s Alfa Bank research, the FBI submitted to the FISC an application that won the agency permission to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

The bureau did not include State’s assessment. Instead, agents declared they possessed no derogatory information about Steele.

Wray took over the FBI long after such misdeeds occurred. But for some reason, his team has fought relentlessly to keep information secret from Congress and the public about Team Comey’s Russia case.

because Wray thinks the FBI reputation is more important than the American people knowing what illegal acts of treason FBI personnel committed

the FBI allowed text messages — some embarrassing — between Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to be destroyed during the probe, blaming a software glitch. The Department of Justice inspector general was able to recover some of those texts after an extensive effort.

And when Kavalec’s documents were discovered recently, the FBI initially redacted the name of Laycock as recipient of the Steele information. It eventually released Laycock’s name and acknowledged it was wrong to hide his identity.

“The FBI mistakenly asserted Exemptions 6 and 7C to redact the name of the FBI executive,” the bureau sheepishly said in a footnote to its most recent court filing.

After Barr said he believed the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign, Wray questioned his boss’s assessment in public. “It’s not the term I would use,” Wray told Congress.

When the government gets stuff wrong, as it did in the Russia case on Comey's watch, transparency is the best panacea for restoring public trust.

Claiming FBI agents have a privacy right to avoid facing hard questions, portraying public source documents as national secrets and doing the Muhammad Ali “rope-a-dope” dance to thwart disclosure is not an acceptable alternative.

It’s a lesson Chris Wray should learn, quickly.

MHO: Wray won't learn the lesson. Wray needs to be replaced

BTW this is the same false claim about Alfa Bank communications that was made secretly by Perkins Coie law firm directly to James Baker when he was General Counsel for the FBI

I wonder when Uncle Trump will fire Wray? After the 2020 elections? Anyone know why he has not fired him yet? Regards 18DAI

quote:

The FBI can’t afford to “jeopardize the fragile relationships that exist between the United States.....

The FBI can’t afford to jeopardize the fragile relationships that exist between the United States Government and its citizens.

AG Barr is Wray’s boss. I hope that he’ll have a word with Wray.

quote:

It’s a lesson Chris Wray should learn, quickly.

Wray came off as a swamper during his confirmation hearings. He's "Jeff Sessions Light".