occasionally there is a long article or transcript that seems worthy of posting in full. I think this Rush Limbaugh report is one of those. I will break it into 2 posts to help readability.

Limbaugh part 1

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/d...of-a-cold-civil-war/

There Is No Whistleblower, Just a Leaker! We’re in the Midst of a Cold Civil War

There really is no whistleblower. This is just a leaker who followed procedures that have been established to give whistleblowers protection.

The whole thing is a sham. It’s nothing more than the Steele dossier 2.0, as I have been saying all week. A couple people now have come to this conclusion. It’s the same people, it’s the same scam, it’s the same objective, and I’m gonna add a name to potential Democrat presidential nominees coming up soon.

Bottom line, there isn’t anything really new here. This is just the next phase of “Get Trump.” This is the next phase of the operation to overturn the election results of 2016. It’s the same players, it’s the same technique, it’s the same play. The whistleblower report, it was probably prepared with the assistance of House Intelligence Committee staffers.

Nothing about this is genuine. There’s no real whistleblower who’s terribly alarmed and upset over what Trump said in a phone call. The whistleblower didn’t even hear it. It’s just the next phase. It’s the same play run to the different side of the line. Let’s put it that way. And the whistleblower report is the Steele dossier all over again. Some people think that it is the same technique with Christine Blasey Ford. But that whole thing was an extension of the original play.

What is this really all about? What is this really, really all about? It’s all about overturning the election results of 2016. Why is that so important? It goes beyond just the fact that the deep state lost. I think what it’s about is what I have long thought it’s about. It’s about making sure the American people do not learn the extent of the corruption in the Obama administration and the Democrat Party at large, and particularly among these people in the deep state who did what they did to deny Trump his election victory.

And that’s why Pelosi’s out there today saying that Bill Barr has gone rogue. If you need any evidence that they scared to death of what Barr and his team are investigating as to the origins of all of this, Pelosi out of the blue saying that Barr has gone rogue, they are doing everything they can to destroy everybody on the other side of this.

There’s nothing that’s true. You know what really is hard about this is that we’re dealing with nothing but a series of abject lies. Everybody on the left is lying. Every allegation about this is a lie. Trump hasn’t broken any laws. Trump has not engaged in any corruption. In fact, Trump is the most investigated president in the history of the country, and they still haven’t found a crime! They’re still looking for a crime. They haven’t found a crime, so they’re making things up.

The media is not media. It’s just Democrats who work in the media, and the whole group of ’em is aligned. And what we are in the middle of now, folks, is a Cold Civil War. It has begun. It is a Cold Civil War as opposed to hot. There’s no hostilities declared. There’s no two clear sides of this. And certainly no shots have been fired. But nevertheless we’re in the midst of a Cold Civil War, and it encompasses a lot of things.

...

Limbaugh part 2

It encompasses overturn the election results of 2016, it is about protecting and defending the deep state, the Washington establishment going forward. Their careers, their fortunes, their corruption. There are terribly big stakes involved here for these people. And Trump is on the cusp of overturning it and exposing it. They cannot allow that to happen.

Now, I’ve had a number of people mention this to me as well, so this is not an original thought of mine. But as I’ve thought about it, it makes perfect sense.

On this whistleblower story, there isn’t a whistleblower! Just like there wasn’t a dossier. Not a real one. It was manufactured political opposition research. This whistleblower report is manufactured political opposition research. The lies are impossible to keep up with. Eric Swalwell was on Fox this morning saying, “Well, the president’s confessed.”

Confessed? What’s the president confessed to?

“Well, he’s confessed to trying to hide the information in the whistleblower report!”

The president hasn’t confessed. What did Adam Schiff do yesterday? Adam Schiff goes up as the chairman of the committee and says that the president called the president of Ukraine and ordered him, “Dig up dirt, lots of it — and don’t call me back until you get it — on Joe Biden.” That didn’t happen. Trump hasn’t done anything they are accusing him of doing. Swalwell, after saying that Trump had confessed, then pointed out that, “Well, look what Trump did. Trump took the transcript of the phone call and he put it over here in this secure area.

“He’s clearly hiding it. That’s a political move. The president’s ashamed. It’s the same as confessing that he’s guilty. We must move forward with impeachment.” There’s no confession! Trump has confessed to nothing. Trump hasn’t done anything! Trump has committed no impeachable offense. He has committed no illegal act. They didn’t find a single thing! Yet they lie through their teeth. This sequestering of the transcript of the call into a private, secure area? Let’s call it “the secure enclave” just to be different. Do you know they’ve been doing that for two years?

It’s not tied to this transcript. It has nothing to do with this call. And do you know why transcripts and other records of presidential conversations involving Trump are sent over to the secure enclave? Because they’ve got a leak problem! Because they’ve got some deep state, administrative state traitors in there who were opposed to Trump, who are leaking like sieves, and so they’re sequestering this stuff for the sake of national security!

They’re not hiding it for political reasons! They’re trying to protect it! They’re trying to protect the integrity of presidential conversations and everything that they entail. But here’s Eric Swalwell today lying through his teeth saying, “Trump has confessed.” “The attorney general, Bill Barr, has gone rogue. We must speed up the impeachment process.” There is no whistleblower. There was no legitimate Steele dossier.

All we have is a deep state leaker probably related in some way to John Brennan. The New York Times already outed the guy as a disgruntled CIA person, and the guy simply leaks a bunch of stuff, has his report written with the assistance of staffers on the Democrat side on the House Intelligence Committee, and calls himself a “whistleblower” for the protections that it offers! You watch. Every other future leak of major consequence like this is all of a sudden gonna be called “whistleblower” because of the statutory protections that are granted to whistleblowers .

I can’t emphasize enough that there isn’t anything real about any of this like there wasn’t anything real in Trump-Russia collusion. Let me clarify. There was a lot real in Trump-Russia collusion, but it was all the things committed by Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Obama, McCabe, Strzok Smirk, and that whole cast of characters. That was real. That effort to undermine Trump — to spy on Trump, to get the election result overturned — all of that stuff was real.

The things they were alleging Trump did, none of it happened. They’re still lying about the Mueller report. Democrats are out there saying the Mueller report proves that Trump colluded, 16 different times now. No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t say that at all. The Mueller report concludes that there wasn’t any collusion between Trump and Russia. But the Mueller report was written as a pre-impeachment document anyway. The Mueller report was written to be used as it is.

It was written with all the footnotes and the careful sentence structure to be able to be cited the way the Democrats are citing it. “Robert Mueller found collusion 16 different times!” No, he didn’t. “Well, right there it is: The president probably… The president might have this and that… Somebody here said…” It’s nothing but hearsay. There’s nothing. But the sheer power of the ruling class is what is on display here, and their literal panic and fright over having it all upended.

It appears there is ample evidence of multiple crimes. By multiple figures who have been IDENTIFIED. We know who they are and what they did. The majority of them anyway.

So, convene a Grand Jury and start indicting these miscreants. NOW! TODAY! Because the clock has been running and time is running out. Enough already! Get on with it Mr Barr! Regards 18DAI

sdy,

Thanks for putting up the Limbaugh Report.

I listen to him when I can, but do not get his reports.

Please give us more of his reports when they are particularly good.

“John Durham’s Ukrainian Leads

What the prosecutor has found may be quite different from what the Democrats are looking for…”

www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.c...an-leads-11569786611

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
“John Durham’s Ukrainian Leads

What the prosecutor has found may be quite different from what the Democrats are looking for…”

www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.c...an-leads-11569786611

I'd like to read the article but it's behind a pay wall. Can you cut and paste it?

^^^^^^^^
Funny, I don’t have a WSJ subscription, but have no trouble viewing the article. It’s too long to paste the whole article, but here’s the most relevant part of it.

“…True, much media and political effort has gone into sometimes close and often willful parsing of President Trump’s July 25 conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky—ironic when you consider Mr. Trump’s well-known linguistic promiscuity—not to mention the celebrated whistleblower complaint, which contains no firsthand information. Little notice has been given, however, to another document lying in plain sight: a Justice Department press release issued the day the conversation transcript became public.

That Justice Department statement makes explicit that the president never spoke with Attorney General William Barr “about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former Vice President Biden or his son” or asked him to contact Ukraine “on this or any other matter,” and that the attorney general has not communicated at all with Ukraine. It also contains the following morsel: “A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. While the Attorney General has yet to contact Ukraine in connection with this investigation, certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating.”
The definitive answer to the obvious question—what’s that about?—is known only to Mr. Durham and his colleagues.

But publicly available reports, including by Andrew McCarthy in his new book, “Ball of Collusion,” suggest that during the 2016 campaign the Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to get evidence from Ukrainian government officials against Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, to pressure him into cooperating against Mr. Trump. When you grope through the miasma of Slavic names and follow the daisy chain of related people and entities, it appears that Ukrainian officials who backed the Clinton campaign provided information that generated the investigation of Mr. Manafort—acts that one Ukrainian court has said violated Ukrainian law and “led to interference in the electoral processes of the United States in 2016 and harmed the interests of Ukraine as a state.”

Cool stuff.
But when is someone going to jail? An American that is.
Anything less than indictments and identifying the guilty parties (treasonous bastards) and the DOJ will have ZERO credibility earned.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
|
JUDICIAL WATCH >> https://www.judicialwatch.org/...epartment-officials/

JUDICIAL WATCH: DOCUMENTS REVEAL EXTENSIVE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DOSSIER AUTHOR STEELE AND TOP OBAMA STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIALS
===================================
........
"The documents obtained by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit show that, from May 2014 to November 2015, Steele filed dozens of reports with his close associate at State, Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer, who would then pass them to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. The reports focused mainly on the Russia-Ukraine crisis and U.S. sanctions on Russia.

The documents show that Steele’s work was also distributed to State Department Coordinator for Sanctions Policy Daniel Fried and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Paul Jones, whose focus in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs was on Russia and Ukraine policy.".....
.......
"Judicial Watch obtained the documents in a FOIA lawsuit filed on April 25, 2018, on behalf of itself and the Daily Caller News Foundation against the State Department after State failed to respond to three separate FOIA requests (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:18-cv-00968)). The lawsuit seeks:

All records of communications between State Department officials, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, on the one hand, and British National Christopher Steele and/or employees or contractors of Steele’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence, on the other hand.
All records and/or memoranda provided by Christopher Steele and/or his firm Orbis Business Intelligence or by others acting on Steele’s/Orbis’s behalf, to State Department officials.
Any and all records in the custody of the State Department related to the provision of documents to British national Christopher Steele and/or his firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, or the receipt of documents from Steele or his firm. Time period is January 20, 2009 through the present.
All records created in 2016 by Jonathan M. Winer relating to research compiled by Christopher Steele"......

.........."“The more we dig, the more access we see the disgraced spy behind the ridiculous dossier had at State. And we’re going to keep on digging until we learn just how deep this went,” said Christopher Bedford, editor in chief of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“These new documents show that Clinton spy Christopher Steele had an outsized influence at the Obama State Department that proved useful when the Clinton campaign needed help smearing Trump in 2016 and beyond,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

The new documents show that:.......
....
.............

quote:

But when is someone going to jail?

When the ducks are all lined up.

I also have fits of impatience. This smacks in the face of all we stand for, and continuing this without retribution for too long will render us a banana republic.

I have to think that the AG and other players know this, and [hopefully] are skillfully timing their actions.

quote:

I also have fits of impatience. This smacks in the face of all we stand for, and continuing this without retribution for too long will render us a banana republic.

So would a failed attempt against those responsible. This is why it's important that everything is lined up as perfect as it can be prior to action being taken. We have one shot at it, and if we miss.........

Yes, I, too, am thoroughly fed up with being told that "THE (insert whatever report) IS ABOUT TO BE RELEASED!!"

Repeatedly, I have counseled patience to the members of this forum and it is in our best interest to be patient and to allow the glacier to move at its maddeningly slow pace. I preach this because I believe it is necessary to allow the wheels to turn and not be forced, and furthermore because the only alternative is for us to scream and shout and stomp our feet in impotent rage.

There's one thing, though, that I would be most grateful for to happen, and that is that the talking heads on news shows stop telling us that "IT'S ABOUT TO BE RELEASED!!"

Just.

Fucking.

STOP IT

The IG report will be released when it is released. These wonks have been saying "IT'S ABOUT TO BE RELEASED" for months. Stop it. You're beginning to piss everybody off with your cheerleading. Just fucking stop it. Don't say another Goddamned word about it until the report is released.

We've had patience and shall continue to have patience in this matter, because we have no control over it and therefore we must be patient, but I am fed up- and I know others here and across this nation are fed up with the nonstop false encouragements.

Just yesterday, for example, Dan Bongino was on FoxNews saying "IT'S ABOUT TO BE RELEASED!!" Listen- nothing personal, Dan, but FUCK YOU, man. Hear me? Fuck you. Just stow that shit and let's wait for the report. You're pissing people off with your cheerleading bullshit. All your "RAH!! RAH!! YAY, TEAM!!" shit does is discourage people when you are once again WRONG.

quote:

STOP IT

Yeah, I can't even watch Hannity anymore.
Even though he's on the right track, it's like he's hyperventilating all the time. It gets old.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

STOP IT

Yeah, I can't even watch Hannity anymore.
Even though he's on the right track, it's like he's hyperventilating all the time. It gets old.

I pulled the plug on him back when he had the annoying obsession of playing the Howard Dean scream tape 1000 times on his radio show then another 1000 times on his television program. Damn he was obsessed with that! Haven't listened to or watched him since.

I have COMPLETLY stopped listening to Hannity, Bongino, and Digenova. I won't even read anything they write.

According to long standing DOiJ policy about prosecutions/investigations in the run up to an election we have until about April to see something happen (their 6 month policy). Barr always talks about policy, seems to be a stickler for it. So if nothing gets started by April, well folks, nothing is going to get started at all.

Hopefully McConnell will tee up the impeachment trial pretty quick so they can get it discharged and done with.

Then Trump can hit the campaign trail full force and start reading declassifed docs at campaign rallies and drive the leftist corruption home.

in the President Trump thread there is a post about a recent ltr from Sen Grassley to AG Barr.

Here is that ltr

As you read it, think how ridiculous the DEM "whistleblower" conspiracy is.

quote:

Yes, I, too, am thoroughly fed up with being told that "THE (insert whatever report) IS ABOUT TO BE RELEASED!!"...
The IG report will be released when it is released.

Also, it's probably not a good idea to put too much faith and hope in the IG report....

IG Horowitz - A Democrat Donor - Feared Pulling Punches To Protect Establishment Operatives

Inspector General Michael Horowitz - tasked with investigating and exposing wrongdoing at the highest levels - is feared by some to be pulling punches in order to protect establishment darlings, according to RealClear Investigations' Paul Sperry.

Of note, Horowitz "volunteered on the political campaigns of several Democrats while in college and later donated to the campaign of Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, a former colleague who is seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination – and who has slammed Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin," according to Sperry.

Horowitz is also married to a former Democratic political activist, Obama donor Alexandra Kauffman Horowitz, who helped run campaigns for liberal Democrats before producing content for CNN's Washington bureau.

While acknowledging that Horowitz is widely respected, these critics say his work has long been hampered by biases, conflicts and a tendency to play favorites, as in past probes of former FBI Director James Comey, whom Horowitz worked under in New York.

Their main complaint is that he pulls his punches.

Horowitz’s investigation of the FBI's handling of the Hillary Clinton email case, for example, concluded that many of Comey’s explanations for his dubious actions were “unconvincing," while stopping short of saying that Comey lied to investigators. Comey asserted implausibly that he delayed acting on a mountain of new Clinton email evidence discovered on a laptop in New York because he was never briefed about it until nearly a month after his top aides found out about it in September 2016.

In probing whether Comey illegally leaked classified information to the New York Times, Horowitz in the end accepted his argument that the memo of a conversation with President Trump was sensitive but “not classified” – even though the memo contained information about the FBI's ongoing counterintelligence investigation of the president’s national security adviser. -RealClear Investigations

"I see a pattern of him pulling up short and trying to be a bit of a statesman instead of making the hard calls," 24-year FBI veteran Chris Swecker - who served as assistant director of its criminal investigative division, told Sperry. "I’m afraid he’s going to do the same thing with the FISA report – a finding that sounds tough, but in the end, ‘No harm, no foul.’"

To wit, Horowitz hasn't interviewed Carter Page, who the FBI targeted using alleged abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Although Horowitz says he conducted more than 100 interviews of witnesses, including Christopher Steele, who wrote the salacious and unverified anti-Trump dossier the FBI relied on to obtain the wiretap warrant, he failed to interview Page, the target — and alleged victim — of the controversial warrant. Page confirmed to RealClearInvestigations that no investigator from Horowitz’s office asked him questions.

That is not the first time Horowitz has failed to interview key subjects. With the help of seasoned federal investigators, RealClearInvestigations deconstructed previous probes by his office, combing through the footnotes and appendices of his reports. RCI found numerous instances in which Horowitz stopped short of pursuing evidence and was content to take high-level officials at their word, even in the face of conflicting evidence. -RealClear Investigations

Meanwhile, Horowitz gave former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe special treatment - accepting his explanation for why he failed to recuse himself from the Clinton email case until November 2016, while also accepting McCabe's claim that he had nothing to do with his wife's Senate campaign, even though he:

personally met with her sponsor and fundraiser McAuliffe;
drove her to campaign stops;
attended one of her candidate debates;
discussed the campaign with her on FBI equipment;
appeared in a family photo used in a campaign mailer; and,
posed with her wearing her official campaign T-shirt for a photo distributed on social media to promote her candidacy.

As Sperry notes, "Were such actions violations of the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits federal employees from engaging “in political activity in an official capacity at any time”? If so, the topic didn’t interest Horowitz, who accepted on face value the FBI’s argument in a letter to the Senate that he played no formal role in his wife’s campaign and that his activities were permissible under the law."

Former inspectors general found this questionable, especially in the wake of a Justice Department memo issued in 2014, and again in early 2016, warning department and FBI employees to "be particularly mindful of these rules in an election year." -RealClear Investigations

"Everybody and their mother knew he was engaged in political activities," said former Pentagon IG General Joseph E. Schmitz. "Horowitz could have easily seen to it that he was branded unfit for office and banned from the federal payroll for up to five years."

Protecting Clinton, Strzok and Page

During his 17-month probe into the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails, which he touted as "thorough" and "comprehensive," Horowitz repeatedly declined to use his subpoena power - allowing key players to provide their own evidence.

He also allowed two lead FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, to sort through which of their electronic communications were "personal" vs. "work related" according to the report.

Horowitz subsequently learned through interviews that Strzok drafted classified investigative documents and communicated with Page about them on their private email in violation of department rules, which require officials to communicate through government channels -- the same basis for the Clinton email probe. Yet neither was compelled to turn over the emails.

"The inspector general and I arranged an agreement where I would go through my personal accounts and identify any material that was relevant to FBI business and turn it over,” Strzok said in testifying before Congress. "It was reviewed. There was none. My understanding is the inspector general was satisfied with that action.”

Horowitz never referred Strzok for criminal sanctions for maintaining court-sealed documents on an unsecure computer. Strzok was nonetheless fired last year by the bureau for misconduct. He is now suing the department for unlawful termination.

The IG also failed to demand access to Comey’s private Gmail account, even though he, too, used it for official FBI business. -RealClear Investigations

And while Horowitz is widely credited with having uncovered anti-Trump / pro-Clinton text messages between Strzok and Page while they were in the middle of investigating Trump and Clinton, he only 'found' them after pressure from congressional Republicans - and has apparently given up trying to find still-missing text messages blamed on a tech error.

Horowitz did admonish Strzok and Page for their obvious "political bias," however he concluded that their clear preference for Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump did not influence their investigaions, and that they only exercised "extremely poor judgement" despite the fact that an August 2016 text from Strzok to Page strongly suggests they were actively working against Trump.

"[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!" Page asked Strzok, to which he replied "No. No he won't. We’ll stop it."

In a report echoing the FBI’s determination that Hillary Clinton had been “extremely careless” but not “grossly negligent” in her use of email, Horowitz essentially cleared the FBI agents of fixing the case for Clinton while still acknowledging several irregularities in the email probe. For example, the FBI did not push for a grand jury to compel testimony and obtain the vast majority of evidence, choosing instead to offer unusually generous immunity deals to Clinton aides. Comey drafted a statement exonerating Clinton months before agents interviewed her. -RealClear Investigations

"Undeniably, there was bias against Trump [at headquarters]," according to former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, adding "Clinton was not going to be charged no matter how much evidence there was."

"The inspector general was wrong to conclude that this bias could not be deemed causative of any particular investigative decision in the Clinton emails case," added McCarthy.

Read the rest of the report here.
https://www.realclearinvestiga...op_brass_120565.html

Then read Sperry's report on how Horowitz cut the Clintons some major slack over the infamous 'tarmac' meeting here.

https://www.zerohedge.com/poli...blishment-operatives

https://www.washingtonpost.com...12d56a80b_story.html

Judge to DOJ: Decide on charging Andrew McCabe by Nov. 15, or face release of FBI records

A veteran federal judge on Monday warned U.S. prosecutors either to charge former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe or to drop their investigation into whether he lied to investigators about an unauthorized media disclosure, saying their indecision was undermining the credibility of the Justice Department.

If a decision is not made, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton of Washington, D.C., said at a hearing that he would order the Justice Department to release internal FBI documents related to McCabe’s firing by Nov. 15.

The extraordinary warning by Walton — a 2001 President George W. Bush appointee and former presiding judge of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — marked the latest turbulence in an investigation that McCabe’s defenders say is a move by the Trump administration to punish the president’s perceived political enemies.

At a brief hearing in an open records lawsuit, Walton confirmed McCabe has not been indicted and that the department still is weighing charges.

Walton spoke after Justice attorneys argued in private before him for the latest postponement in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over documents about the FBI’s investigation of McCabe, which the government has declined to release citing potential interference with a law enforcement proceeding

“I would send this message to those in positions of authority in the U.S. Attorney’s office and the Justice Department . . . that I will not condone further delay,” Walton said, according to a transcript of the unsealed portion of the hearing.

Walton expressed “dismay” to Justice lawyers that the case “is just dragging too long,” adding: “You all have got to cut and make your decision. It’s not a hard decision, and I think it needs to be made. If it’s not made, I’m going to start ordering the release of information because I think our society, our public does have a right to know what’s going on.”

“Attorney General Bill Barr is carrying out a global effort to glean information about the start of the Russia probe – and on a trip to Rome listened to a taped deposition of mysterious Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud.
……
While in Rome, he met with Italian prosecutors at a hastily-planned meeting, where the two [Barr and Durham] officials were particularly interested in what the Italians knew about Mifsud, the Daily Beast reported…”

https://mol.im/a/7527093

This is from the Guardian (antiTrump paper), but similar things are being reported elsewhere.

While DEMs think this is impeachable ammo for them, it is actually very good news that Barr and Durham are talking to these people.


https://www.theguardian.com/us...o-discuss-russiagate

The US attorney general, William Barr, held at least two meetings with Italian intelligence officials in Rome on Friday as he seeks to trace the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s alleged collusion in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign, Italian media reported.

Barr and US attorney John Durham met the officials after getting authorisation from the Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, the Corriere della Sera reported.

The scope of Barr’s investigation in Rome was to find out whether Italy had played a role in the so-called Russiagate affair, whether secret documents had been obtained and, in particular, to collate information on Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor who allegedly told Trump’s former campaign aide George Papadopoulos in 2016 that the Kremlin was in possession of thousands of emails that revealed “dirt” about Hillary Clinton that could help Trump’s campaign.

Barr’s latest trip to Rome comes two months after he met UK intelligence agencies in London to discuss Britain potentially cooperating with Trump’s administration on the inquiry examining the FBI’s investigation into the alleged collusion with Russia, sources told the Guardian. Corriere reported that Barr first came to Rome in mid-August , when he met Gennaro Vecchione, the director general of the security intelligence department (DIS).

The embassy was unable to confirm whether the meeting was held in its offices at Palazzo Margherita, but a justice department spokesperson, Kerri Kupec, confirmed on Monday that a team led by Durham was gathering information from several foreign countries.

“As the Department of Justice has previously announced, a team led by US attorney John Durham is investigating the origins of the US counter-intelligence probe of the Trump 2016 presidential campaign,” Kupec said. “Mr Durham is gathering information from numerous sources, including a number of foreign countries. At attorney general Barr’s request, the president has contacted other countries to ask them to introduce the attorney general and Mr Durham to appropriate officials.”

The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday that Barr and Durham met Italian agents at the US embassy in Rome, where they were shown evidence that Italy had on Mifsud, including a tape he handed over to the authorities when he applied for police protection after disappearing in October 2017. On the tape, he reportedly explained why he might be in danger.