DOJ watchdog submits draft report on alleged FISA abuses: Former AG

Sep. 13, 2019 - 5:25 - Former acting U.S. Attorney General Matt Whitaker believes the American public will finally see how the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants were obtained illegally for one-time Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

https://video.foxbusiness.com/...636001#sp=show-clips

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
https://www.washingtonexaminer...of-fisa-abuse-report

John Solomon reports that his sources are telling him that "important" records could be released sometime this month.

"To get how bad the situation is, you need those documents to be declassified," the investigative reporter said. "We've been talking about those buckets for a long time. I am hearing that the Justice Department is nearing a decision to release 10 or 12 of the most important documents before the ... IG report comes out, that will allow all of us to see how bad it was before we see the IG's conclusions. I think that could happen later this month."

Again we wait for something to be released, something to be declassified. Oh just another week maybe a month yeah probably a month. We all know what went on, we all know how bad it is. Save the documents for the lawyers to use in court as evidence I don’t need to see them.
These talking heads constantly trying to make us chase our tails breathlessly always waiting for something while nothing of any substance actually happens.

It’s happened so often they’ve become to sound much like the climate change peddlers with their incessant predictions.

McCarthy promises accountability as Barr reviews IG’s FISA report: ‘The closest we’ve ever seen to a coup’

Make of it what you will, but let's try to keep the cynicism to a low roar. Myself, I'm taking the Yogi Berra approach- "It ain't over 'til it's over."

quote:

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., promised that guilty parties will be held accountable after Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz releases his report on the FBI's alleged abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the Russia investigation, and predicted that former bureau leaders James Comey and Andrew McCabe will face criminal charges after what he described as an attempted "coup" to take down President Trump.

"We came the closest ever to this country having a coup, and now we need accountability," McCarthy told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures." "I respect this attorney general so greatly, that the way he has handled this, he believes in accountability, but more importantly, he believes in the rule of law."

When asked if there will really be accountability, McCarthy promised, "Yes."

I'm not cynical when it comes to Barr.

Dude was retired, been there done that. What possible reason would he have to come out of retirement, go through the personal hell of being a Trump nominee...just to protect the deep state?

I have criticized REP senator Burr (chair of Senate Intel Comm) for being a pawn used by DEM senator Mark Warner. Burr has allowed Warner to drag the Russia collusion farce on and on. The Senate Intel Comm is still investigating to see if there was coordination/collusion between the Russians and the Trunp campaign.

Now we find out something else about Richard Burr.

In Nov 2016 Burr warned James Comey of the Steele dossier. Nov 2016. Even before McCain knew of the dossier.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/15...ump-tower/index.html

In fact, Steele was not the only one concerned that Trump might be in a compromising position with the Russians. Two powerful Republican senators had already separately approached the FBI director expressing their dismay at the revelations the former British spy had possibly unearthed. In November 2016, when Comey was speaking with legislators on Capitol Hill, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC) pulled Comey aside to warn him of something very troubling. Their conversation had gone unreported until now.

"There is some material circulating," Burr whispered cryptically. "It has some disturbing things in it. I just want to make sure you're tracking."

"We are," Comey said.

"I don't need to know any more about it," Burr said, expressing his respect for the FBI's independence in addressing possible counterintelligence threats. "I just felt like I needed to make sure you were aware."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

As far as I know, Burr has never publicly said he knew of the dossier in Nov 2016. Who told him ?

Burr "expressed his respect for the FBI's independence in addressing possible counterintelligence threats"

No wonder the Senate Intel Comm has been utterly useless in exposing the FBI/CIA/State Dept attempt to destroy the Trump Presidency


BTW, the guy who wrote the CNN article is Josh Campbell. He was special assistant to Comey. Campbell handed Comey the secure laptop immediately after Comey briefed President elect Trump on 6 Jan 2017.

Campbell now works for CNN. The FBI and intel agrencies are farm teams for CNN and MSNBC.

^^^^
One of the reasons why I don't expect any real consequences to come out from this. Too many "important people" to whom the law does not apply are involved. Not that the Department of INjustice (formerly known as the DOJ) or their enforcement arm the Amerikan Stasi (formerly known as the FBI) would do anything anyway. They are just wholly owned subsidiaries of the left.

John Solomon has broken a number of stories on the deep state coup attempt against President Trump

https://www.washingtonexaminer...art-own-media-outlet

Journalist John Solomon leaves the Hill to start own media outlet

Journalist John Solomon has rocked the Washington media world by announcing his departure from the Hill newspaper and the Hill.TV brand he created to start his own media firm.

In a memo to his team, Solomon wrote, “After two-plus amazing years at Hill.TV I am moving on next month to build my own startup media company.”

He did not reveal any details about his future plans for an online media site.

Long an investigative reporter for the Associated Press, the 52-year-old reporter over the past decade has worked to push the Washington Times into profitability, started Circa, was president of Packard Media Group, and also headed the Center for Public Integrity, which investigates politicians and funding.

The well-traveled Solomon was an investigative reporter at the Washington Post before he was named executive editor of the Washington Times in 2008.

In July 2017, he was named executive vice president of the Hill.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

shows how radical the Wash Post has become.

In 2008 Solomon wrote for the WaPo

Good video 41. We need to have patience, Mueller had 2 years and a un-limited budget, Trump's hands were (politically) tied until he was finished. That just ended what April/May?

Our side just got the football, these are complicated cases to investigate and gather evidence.

Maybe I'll be proven wrong and nothing will happen, but I do have faith still...

Not much, but this is the closest thing to a credible report of actual activity by John Durham that I’ve seen.

“Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who has finished the report on his investigation into abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, has been talking with U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is handling any criminal referrals from the investigation.

Horowitz, who was called in front of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday with a couple other inspectors general to speak about his leadership role on the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, revealed that he had spoken with the prosecutor in the course of his investigation into possible FISA abuse by the FBI and DOJ.

Durham is Attorney General William Barr's right-hand man as the two look into the complicated and classified issues surrounding how an investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged ties with Russia began, separate from Horowitz's effort, and the U.S. Attorney from Connecticut has been virtually silent since being selected by Barr…” [Totally silent.]

www.washingtonexaminer.com/new...e-for-filing-charges

SDY:

quote:

John Solomon has broken a number of stories on the deep state coup attempt against President Trump

https://www.washingtonexaminer...art-own-media-outlet

Journalist John Solomon leaves the Hill to start own media outlet

=====================
^^^^^^^ VERY INTERESTING !

John Solomon is a top notch investigative journalist. His new News Outlet will be undoubtedly excellent.

SF members, please post if you see evidence of JS resurfacing.

Thanks

John Solomon reported (many months ago) that in Jan 2016 the obama WH invited Ukraine's top prosecutors to Washington.

Jan 2016

"The meeting, promised as training, turned out to be more of a pretext for the Obama administration to pressure Ukraine’s prosecutors to drop an investigation into the Burisma Holdings gas company that employed Hunter Biden

and

to look for new evidence in a then-dormant criminal case against eventual Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a GOP lobbyist."

https://thehill.com/opinion/ca...aine-in-us-elections

dated today

Let's get real: Democrats were first to enlist Ukraine in US elections

Earlier this month, during a bipartisan meeting in Kiev, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) delivered a pointed message to Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

While choosing his words carefully, Murphy made clear — by his own account — that Ukraine currently enjoyed bipartisan support for its U.S. aid but that could be jeopardized if the new president acquiesced to requests by President Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to investigate past corruption allegations involving Americans, including former Vice President Joe Biden’s family.

Murphy boasted after the meeting that he told the new Ukrainian leader that U.S. aid was his country’s “most important asset” and it would be viewed as election-meddling and “disastrous for long-term U.S.-Ukraine relations” to bend to the wishes of Trump and Giuliani.

"I told Zelensky that he should not insert himself or his government into American politics. I cautioned him that complying with the demands of the President's campaign representatives to investigate a political rival of the President would gravely damage the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. There are few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on in Washington these days, and support for Ukraine is one of them," Murphy told me today, confirming what he told Ukraine's leader.

The implied message did not require an interpreter for Zelensky to understand: Investigate the Ukraine dealings of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, and you jeopardize Democrats' support for future U.S. aid to Kiev.

The Murphy anecdote is a powerful reminder that, since at least 2016, Democrats repeatedly have exerted pressure on Ukraine, a key U.S. ally for buffering Russia, to meddle in U.S. politics and elections.

And that activity long proceeded Giuliani’s discussions with Ukrainian officials and Trump’s phone call to Zelensky in July, seeking to have Ukraine formally investigate whether then-Vice President Joe Biden used a threat of canceling foreign aid to shut down an investigation into $3 million routed to the U.S. firm run by Biden’s son.

As I have reported, the pressure began at least as early as January 2016, when the Obama White House unexpectedly invited Ukraine’s top prosecutors to Washington to discuss fighting corruption in the country

The meeting, promised as training, turned out to be more of a pretext for the Obama administration to pressure Ukraine’s prosecutors to drop an investigation into the Burisma Holdings gas company that employed Hunter Biden and to look for new evidence in a then-dormant criminal case against eventual Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a GOP lobbyist.

Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me that, soon after he returned from the Washington meeting, he saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election. That's when two top Ukrainian officials released secret evidence to the American media, smearing Manafort.

The release of the evidence forced Manafort to step down as Trump’s top campaign adviser. A Ukrainian court concluded last December that the release of the evidence amounted to an unlawful intervention in the U.S. election by Kiev’s government, although that ruling has since been overturned on a technicality.

Shortly after the Ukrainian prosecutors returned from their Washington meeting, a new round of Democratic pressure was exerted on Ukraine — this time via its embassy in Washington.

Valeriy Chaly, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States at the time, confirmed to me in a statement issued by his office that, in March 2016, a contractor for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) pressed his embassy to try to find any Russian dirt on Trump and Manafort that might reside in Ukraine’s intelligence files.

The DNC contractor also asked Chaly's team to try to persuade Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro Poroshenko, to make a statement disparaging Manafort when the Ukrainian leader visited the United States during the 2016 election.

Chaly said his embassy rebuffed both requests because it recognized they were improper efforts to get a foreign government to try to influence the election against Trump and for Hillary Clinton.

The political pressure continued. Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in crucial U.S. aid to Kiev if Poroshenko did not fire the country’s chief prosecutor. Ukraine would have been bankrupted without the aid, so Poroshenko obliged on March 29, 2016, and fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

At the time, Biden was aware that Shokin’s office was investigating Burisma, the firm employing Hunter Biden, after a December 2015 New York Times article.

What wasn’t known at the time, Shokin told me recently, was that Ukrainian prosecutors were preparing a request to interview Hunter Biden about his activities and the monies he was receiving from Ukraine. If such an interview became public during the middle of the 2016 election, it could have had enormous negative implications for Democrats.

Democrats continued to tap Ukraine for Trump dirt throughout the 2016 election, my reporting shows.

Nellie Ohr, the wife of senior U.S. Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, worked in 2016 as a contractor for Fusion GPS, the same Hillary Clinton-funded opposition research firm that hired Christopher Steele, the British spy who wrote the now-debunked dossier linking Trump to Russia collusion.

Nellie Ohr testified to Congress that some of the dirt she found on Trump during her 2016 election opposition research came from a Ukrainian parliament member. She also said that she eventually took the information to the FBI through her husband — another way Ukraine got inserted into the 2016 election.

Politics. Pressure. Opposition research. All were part of the Democrats’ playbook on Ukraine long before Trump ever called Zelensky this summer. And as Sen. Murphy’s foray earlier this month shows, it hasn’t stopped.

The evidence is so expansive as to strain the credulity of the Democrats’ current outrage at Trump’s behavior with Ukraine.

Sundance and the guys over at The Conservative Treehouse have been pretty spot on when discussing the coup attempt, and I think they are right on this one too.

It's time for Trump to start declassifying documents because it's becoming more and more apparent that Barr is not going to do it.

"FOIA Release of McCabe Memo Highlights Much More Than Rosenstein’s “Wear a Wire” Controversy…"

There are three aspects to this McCabe memo that warrant attention: (1) Rosenstein’s willingness to wear a wire. (2) Evidence that Rosenstein took Mueller into the White House on May 16, 2017, as a set-up to interview Mueller’s pending target; and (3) the CURRENT redaction's to the memo indicate CURRENT efforts by the CURRENT AG Bill Barr to protect a corrupt endeavor that encompasses Rod Rosenstein. While all three aspects are alarming; the last aspect is concerning in the extreme.

https://theconservativetreehou...roversy/#more-171766

quote:

It's time for Trump to start declassifying documents because it's becoming more and more apparent that Barr is not going to do it.

Remember that Barr has been friends with Mueller and Comey for decades.

not directly about the dossier, but several posts in this thread have been about Michael Flynn.

He was supposed to testify against a former partner of his, Bijan Rafiekian (Flynn Intel Group)

When the prosecutors heard what Flynn was going to say, they didn't like it. They did not call Flynn to testify against Rafiekan.

A jury convicted Rafiekan.

Then the Rafiekan's defense team filed a motion to acquit.

https://theconservativetreehou...partner-and-acquits/

In a stunning and very rare move today Federal Judge Anthony J Trenga has thrown out the conviction of a Mike Flynn’s partner Bijan Rafiekian (Flynn Intel Group) and granted the defendants’ motion to acquit

This is a huge blow to the DOJ-NSD who framed their special counsel case on sketchy FARA violations and bamboozled the jury with dubious legal theories. This type of intervention by a federal judge is very rare

“The evidence was insufficient as a matter of law for the jury to convict Rafiekian on either count”

The Government “failed to offer substantial evidence” that Rafiekian acted as an agent of a foreign government”

“There is no substantial evidence” that he agreed to cooperate subject to the direction/control of Turkey; no evidence of any implied agreement w/ Turkey."

“There is no evidence of discussions or suggestions, let alone an agreement, express or implied, to either avoid filing under FARA or to cause the filing of a false FARA registration statement.”

On General Flynn and the alleged FARA conspiracy: The government told the Court that “Flynn was not a member of the alleged conspiracy.”

“The evidence was insufficient as a matter of law to sustain either of Rafiekian’s convictions, and the Motion for Acquittal is therefore GRANTED. Should the Court’s judgment of acquittal be later vacated/reversed… the motion for New Trial is conditionally granted”


This is all especially important because:

The DOJ/NSD has been using sketchy FARA (Sec. 951) designations to construct legal arguments within their FISA applications.


The DOJ National Security Division have been using FARA, accusing people of being “agents of a foreign power”, in order to conduct political surveillance.

By god, Durham’s doing something. Not sure what…

“U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating Ukraine’s role in the 2016 FBI probe of President Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, the Department of Justice confirmed Wednesday.

Earlier this year, Attorney General William P. Barr tapped Mr. Durham, the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut, to review how the FBI began its investigation into Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and whether the agency improperly spied on key campaign figures…”

https://m.washingtontimes.com/...part-of-trump-russi/

Seen at CTH

Geo Papadopoulos tweet yesterday:

AG Barr has been on official travel in Italy for the past two days. As I explained months ago, on Fox and in my book, Mifsud was an Italian operative handled by the CIA. Italy holds the keys to the kingdom. Right government, right time

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

One can only hope. If Mifsud was working for the CIA, then the whole Russia counterintelligence investigation was a set up and fraud. What a firestorm that would start.

Certainly seems like the DEMs and Deep State are very anxious to massively attack the President right now.

Carl Bernstein helped to promote the Steele dossier. Bernstein recently said that his sources are telling him that Attorney General William Barr is preparing to push a "deep state" conspiracy .

Berstein says that is "to protect President Trump". As if protecting the President from a CIA coup attempt is a bad thing to do.


DEMs are coming on strong attacking AG Barr and saying he should recuse himself from Ukraine issues. Same old trick they used on Sessions.

And no one seems to be asking why Ukraine would have DNC servers.

hmmmm

Wash Post article from 3 hours ago

https://www.washingtonpost.com...eabc129a0_story.html

The Trump administration is investigating the email records of dozens of current and former senior State Department officials who sent messages to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email, reviving a politically toxic matter that overshadowed the 2016 election, current and former officials said.

As many as 130 officials have been contacted in recent weeks by State Department investigators — a list that includes senior officials who reported directly to Clinton as well as others in lower-level jobs whose emails were at some point relayed to her inbox, said current and former State Department officials. Those targeted were notified that emails they sent years ago have been retroactively classified and now constitute potential security violations, according to letters reviewed by The Washington Post.

In virtually all of the cases, potentially sensitive information, now recategorized as “classified,” was sent to Clinton’s unsecure inbox.

State Department investigators began contacting the former officials about 18 months ago, after President Trump’s election, and then seemed to drop the effort before picking it up in August, officials said.

Senior State Department officials said that they are following standard protocol in an investigation that began during the latter days of the Obama administration and is nearing completion.

“This has nothing to do with who is in the White House,” said a senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing probe. “This is about the time it took to go through millions of emails, which is about 3½ years.”

To many of those under scrutiny, including some of the Democratic Party’s top foreign policy experts, the recent flurry of activity surrounding the Clinton email case represents a new front on which the Trump administration could be accused of employing the powers of the executive branch against perceived political adversaries.

State Department officials vigorously denied there was any political motivation behind their actions, and said that the reviews of retroactively classified emails were conducted by career bureaucrats who did not know the names of the subjects being investigated.

“The process is set up in a manner to completely avoid any appearance of political bias,” said a second senior State Department official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the mechanics of an internal probe.

^^^

About damn time. Anyone who touched that classified info going to or from Hillary's un-secure private server is guilty of a felony.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:

...To many of those under scrutiny, including some of the Democratic Party’s top foreign policy experts, the recent flurry of activity surrounding the Clinton email case represents a new front on which the Trump administration could be accused of employing the powers of the executive branch against perceived political adversaries...

Another impeachable offense!

/sarcasm off/