Y'know, all of the sudden Trump & Co.'s decision to not use the formal powers of the Presidency in order to go straight after these guys is beginning to look like political genius. Or at least good sense.

quote:

Originally posted by rh:
screen capture from Deep state in the United States Wikipedia article edited anonymously from US Senate

Sorry, what are we looking at and what does it mean?

quote:

Originally posted by Sigmund:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/c...ials-wife-1477266114

How to share articles from the Wall Street Journal

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

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by rh:
screen capture from Deep state in the United States Wikipedia article edited anonymously from US Senate

Sorry, what are we looking at and what does it mean?

Someone anonymously edited the Wikipedia article Deep state in the United States from a device using the IP address 156.33.241.41. and added a "shh it's pop secret" joke. The Tweet that I posted came from @congressedits on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/congressedits ) which describes itself as "I’m a bot that tweets anonymous Wikipedia edits that are made from IP addresses in the US Congress." That means it is software that scans for edits to Wikipedia made from devices from U.S. Congress.

What it means is that someone in Congress (Senate) made a joke on Wikipedia about the deep state's efforts to insure that Candidate Trump did not become President Trump. In a previous version of this post, it was conjecture on my part that member(s) of the Senate were aware of what was transpiring during the unsuccessfully rigged Presidential campaign / election. For any not getting the joke, "pop secret" is play on "top secret" and means "popular secret", which led to my conjecture that what the FBI (and CIA?) did was breaking news to some in Congress. I think it's OK to laugh at the joke since we have President Trump, and the FBI got caught.

(I will try be more careful in the future while mixing Financial trading <-> Financial Twitter with SIGforum. That was too interesting and humorous not to try to share as soon as it popped up on my Twitter feed.)

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

There is even a Wikipedia article about the Wikipedia edit: Deep state in the United States: Difference between revisions

I used to think the "deep state" government in the U.S. was just an invention of government conspiracy theorists. The Deep State does seem to exist. I already knew about the NSA's snooping before Edward Snowden revealed their activities to the world, but I did not realize how corrupt the upper echelons of the FBI had become.

ETA: Wikipedia articles, especially controversial articles, are edited even more frequently that my posts. An edit was made to the other Wikipedia "Deep State" article sometime during or after my first post here about the Wikipedia incident which caused the lack of clarity in that post.

Trump Dossier Author Christopher Steele Worked With FBI’s McCabe & DOJ’s Ohr on Russian Organized Crime Long Before 2016 Election

Ex-FBI Director James Comey and lawmakers have tried to make it seem like Christopher Steele, who wrote the Trump Dodgy Dossier, was a new player on the Intel scene in 2016.

But Steele was well known by the Bureau and CIA long before that and shared Intel with both agencies on cases with British links, especially dealing with MI6’s interest in Russian Organized crime, federal law enforcement sources said.

It is little wonder the Justice Department and the FBI refuse to release any documents dealing with Steele. Or the payments from government coffers — including the FBI — to Steele or Fusion GPS.

We are getting definitive Intel from FBI and federal law enforcement sources that Christopher Steele worked with the FBI when he was a MI6 Agent working Russian Organized Crime. Before his retirement from the British spy agency.

That’s the same desk and the exact same time frame FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe worked before coming the Washington, D.C., heading up the FBI Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force in Manhattan, along with NYPD Intel sources and resources.

And on the Justice Department side, also in New York at the very same time, Bruce Ohr was working organized crime for the DOJ in the Southern District of New York, beginning in the 1990s through the identical timeline of Steele and McCabe.

That’s the same Bruce Ohr who was just demoted at DOJ for conducting secret meetings with Fusion GPS, who hired Steele to write the Trump Dossier. And Fusion GPS also hired Ohr’s wife, a former CIA employee.

“You’re finding that they all worked together,” one FBI source said. “That’s huge.”

If you wonder how Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson met Steele, look no further than Ohr. Or Ohr’s wife. Or McCabe.

Ohr ran the DOJ’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section from 1999 to 2011, mostly out of New York City. McCabe ran the FBI Eurasian Task Force up until 2006.

Ohr’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section and the FBI were debriefed by Steele in London in 2010 on the FIFA corruption crime scheme, a major case for the DOJ.

According to the Guardian, Steele trekked to Rome in 2010 to also swap Intel on FIFA with a FBI contact from its Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force. That was McCabe’s old squad.

A portion of the FBI’s official bio on McCabe helps tell the story:

“Mr. McCabe began his career as a special agent with the FBI in 1996. He first reported to the New York Division, where he investigated a variety of organized crime matters. In 2003, he became the supervisory special agent of the Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force, a joint operation with the New York City Police Department.”

McCabe was the supervisory special agent of the Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force from 2003 to 2006 and based on source Intel, the task force iliasoned with MI6 and Steele. Steele was on the Russian desk of the British spy agency until 2009 and worked Russian organized crime in the United States, the identical beat of McCabe and Ohr.

So, how did Steele simply waltz into FBI HQ in Washington, D.C, before the 2016 election?

Was it McCabe then who dialed up his old contact Steele to help plot and wage a coup against President Donald Trump?

And helped pay Steele to write Trumps bogus dossier with tax dollars.

Or was it Ohr? Or both?

“This means that basically they are paying a foreign power to take down the presidential candidate slash sitting president now,” one FBI source said. “This is crazy.”

https://truepundit.com/trump-d...efore-2016-election/

Who knows more about organized crime and racketeering than these guys?

The Trump team is probably not going to seek to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller. To do so would be to provoke Trump’s crucial supporters in Congress. Instead, they seem to be seeking to discredit him and his investigation.

This is apparently designed to achieve two possible results: the first is to put pressure on the special prosecutor to lean over backwards in order to avoid any accusation of bias against Trump and his team. Mueller cares deeply about his reputation for integrity and will want to emerge from this process with that reputation intact. Accordingly, he may err – consciously or unconsciously – in favor of Trump in close cases so that the public will regard him as unbiased and fair-minded.

This is a classic tactic used by lawyers, athletic coaches, business people and others in how they deal with decision makers. The great Red Auerbach, former coach of the Boston Celtics, once told me that when he screams loudly at officials, he generally gets the next close call in his favor. I have heard the same from baseball managers regarding balls and strikes.

This is a somewhat risky strategy in the context of law, because attacking the decision maker could also backfire. Whoever thinks about using this tactic should understand the particular decision maker against whom it is directed. Mueller seems like an appropriate target because of his concern for his reputation for fairness.


Even if this tactic were not to work, the attack on Mueller gives the Trump team some legal weaponry in the event of an indictment or a recommendation for impeachment. If a significant portion of the country believes that the special counsel was unfair, this could help in legal proceedings before judges or jurors.

So attacking Mueller may appear to be a win-win tactic for the team – certainly a lot better than firing Mueller. Fortunately for the Trump team, Mueller has played into their hands by his sloppiness in conducting the investigation. He has been incautious with his choice of personnel – too many of them seem biased against Trump, not only by their backgrounds, but by their tweets and messages. When you go after a president, you must be Caesar’s wife – above suspicion or reproach. Mueller seems to be failing the Caesar’s wife test. Moreover, the manner by which he acquired emails and other documents from the Trump transition team may raise some legal questions. The same may be true if he used the questionable dossier against Trump as a basis for securing warrants.

All in all, the Trump team is in a better position continuing to challenge Mueller than trying to get rid of him as the special counsel.

This is not a game, of course. Lives and liberty are at stake, but gamesmanship has always been part of our legal system, for better or worse.

Mueller can improve his situation in several ways. First, he should appoint an ethics expert to advise him – a former judge who is beyond reproach. Names like George Mitchell, Louie Freeh, and Justice David Souter come to mind. That advisor could assure him in going forward there will be no more embarrassing revelations of messages or emails that create the appearance, if not the reality, of bias. He must also be more careful in how he obtains evidence. The last thing he should do is give ammunition to defense attorneys to challenge his evidence gathering methods.

In setting out this analysis, I am not taking sides. I am simply sharing my 50 years of experience as a criminal defense lawyer who has seen the criminal justice system up-close, warts and all. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 51 “Perhaps everyone will agree that if we were all angels, no state would be necessary, and if angels were the governors, they would require neither internal nor external constraints to ensure that they governed justly.” Neither the Trump team nor the Mueller team are angels. They are human beings with human limitations. But an investigation of a president must be as close to angelic as any human endeavor can be. Otherwise the public will not have confidence in the results.

Dershowitz

Link

http://www.foxnews.com/politic...lated-testimony.html

On Tuesday, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe is set to appear before the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors, after his previously scheduled appearance was scrapped due to what Justice Department officials called a last-minute "scheduling error."

McCabe is expected to face questions about Peter Strzok’s role in the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Strzok, a former deputy to the assistant director at the FBI, was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's staff after Mueller learned Strzok had exchanged anti-Trump texts with a colleague and mistress.

all the nasty stuff comes out from anonymous sources, but when critical testimony occurs, it is frequently behind closed doors. This is BS. The American people need to know what is going on.

Before members depart for Christmas break, the Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to hear closed-door testimony Monday from Bruce Ohr, the former associate deputy attorney general who was demoted at the Justice Department following revelations about undisclosed meetings he had with officials from Fusion GPS.

Fusion GPS is the company that commissioned the anti-Trump dossier containing salacious allegations about then-candidate Donald Trump. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked at Fusion GPS during the summer and fall of 2016, specifically on Trump-related issues.

quote:

all the nasty stuff comes out from anonymous sources, but when critical testimony occurs, it is frequently behind closed doors. This is BS. The American people need to know what is going on.

This is the worst part. After the interview the left will flock to the microphone saying how this is a witch hunt, how he is above reproach and a sold agent. The right will say stuff like they heard some things that "distrubed" them, but will never say what.

I have a feeling we will NEVER get to the truth behind this because the elites just don't want us to. On both sides.

No links, but I heard that Ohr failed to show for his closed door hearing today

Time to send the US Marshals on a house call

https://mobile.twitter.com/Fox...s/942872718558539776

This message has been edited. Last edited by: feersum dreadnaught,

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v...4001/?#sp=show-clips

yep, Bruce Ohr did not show up for the testimony to the senate committee

quote:

Originally posted by feersum dreadnaught:
Time to send the US Marshals on a house call

I'd pay good money to see this phony in handcuffs.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by feersum dreadnaught:
Time to send the US Marshals on a house call

I'd pay good money to see this phony in handcuffs.

+1000

a reminder that Bruce Ohr is head of the Justice Department's Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces.

If Ohr won't talk to congress, DoJ should immediately take action to make him very "uncomfortable". I don't know all the approaches that DoJ could take, but I would like to see the most damaging ones start to be implemented.

Let's think for a moment, how did Muellar handle people who weren't cooperating ?

***********

BTW, another little trick by CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/15/...bruce-ohr/index.html

But Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that Ohr had "no role" in the Russia investigation

now doesn't that sound odd?

Here is what Rosenstein actually said (from another CNN source):

Dep AG Rod Rosenstein says Bruce Ohr, DOJ official whose wife worked for Fusion GPS, "was part of my office when I arrived" & "I never involved Mr. Ohr in the Russia investigation, so he had no role assigned by me"

Ohr worked for Sally Yates. Ohr directly met w Simpson of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele

Maybe this is ok...

Bruce Ohr, the former associate deputy attorney general who was demoted at the Justice Department in the wake of revelations about undisclosed meetings he had with officials from Fusion GPS, had his scheduled testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee postponed until later this week, sources told Fox News.

Ohr was set to appear before the Senate panel Monday, but the appearance was delayed after the committee secured new related documents, which members wanted to review before hearing from him.

Fusion GPS is the company that commissioned the anti-Trump dossier containing salacious allegations about then-candidate Donald Trump.

Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, worked at Fusion GPS during the summer, specifically on Trump-related issues.

Together, the Fusion connections for the couple have raised Republican concerns about objectivity at the Justice Department, and even spurred a call from Trump’s outside counsel for a separate special prosecutor.

Fox News previously reported last week that Bruce Ohr had been demoted.

Evidence collected by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., indicates that Ohr met during the 2016 campaign with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the “dossier.”

Republican lawmakers have spent the better part of this year investigating whether the dossier, which was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, served as the basis for the Justice Department and the FBI to obtain FISA surveillance last year on a Trump campaign adviser named Carter Page.

Last week, Trump's attorney Jay Sekulow called for the appointment of a separate special prosecutor to look into potential conflicts of interest involving Justice Department and FBI officials.

A group of House Republicans for months has called for the appointment of a second special counsel to probe certain Obama and Clinton-related controversies, something Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reviewing.

http://www.foxnews.com/politic...gps-pushed-back.html

If the committee caused the delay then it wasn't Ohr defying them.

But I hope the

quote:

new related documents

generate a tougher session for the DoJ heavyweight whose wife worked for Fusion GPS.

McCabe draws blank on Democrats’ funding of Trump dossier, new subpoenas planned

EXCLUSIVE: Congressional investigators tell Fox News that Tuesday’s seven-hour interrogation of Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe contained numerous conflicts with the testimony of previous witnesses, prompting the Republican majority staff of the House Intelligence Committee to decide to issue fresh subpoenas next week on Justice Department and FBI personnel.

While HPSCI staff would not confirm who will be summoned for testimony, all indications point to demoted DOJ official Bruce G. Ohr and FBI General Counsel James A. Baker, who accompanied McCabe, along with other lawyers, to Tuesday’s HPSCI session.

The issuance of a subpoena against the Justice Department’s top lawyer could provoke a new constitutional clash between the two branches, even worse than the months-long tug of war over documents and witnesses that has already led House Speaker Paul Ryan to accuse DOJ and FBI of “stonewalling” and HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., to threaten contempt-of-Congress citations against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“It’s hard to know who’s telling us the truth,” said one House investigator after McCabe’s questioning.

Fox News is told that several lawmakers participated in the questioning of McCabe, led chiefly by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.

Sources close to the investigation say that McCabe was a “friendly witness” to the Democrats in the room, who are said to have pressed the deputy director, without success, to help them build a case against President Trump for obstruction of justice in the Russia-collusion probe. “If he could have, he would have,” said one participant in the questioning.

Investigators say McCabe recounted to the panel how hard the FBI had worked to verify the contents of the anti-Trump “dossier” and stood by its credibility. But when pressed to identify what in the salacious document the bureau had actually corroborated, the sources said, McCabe cited only the fact that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had traveled to Moscow. Beyond that, investigators said, McCabe could not even say that the bureau had verified the dossier’s allegations about the specific meetings Page supposedly held in Moscow.

The sources said that when asked when he learned that the dossier had been funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, McCabe claimed he could not recall – despite the reported existence of documents with McCabe’s own signature on them establishing his knowledge of the dossier’s financing and provenance.

The decision by HPSCI staff to subpoena Ohr comes as he is set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Until earlier this month, when Fox News began investigating him, Ohr held two titles at DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, a post that placed him four doors down from his boss, Rosenstein; and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), a program described by the department as “the centerpiece of the attorney general’s drug strategy.”

Ohr will retain his OCDETF title but was stripped of his higher post and ousted from his office on the fourth floor of “Main Justice.” Department officials confirmed that Ohr had withheld from superiors his secret meetings in 2016 with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the dossier with input from Russian sources; and with Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired Steele with funds supplied by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Subsequently, Fox News disclosed that Ohr’s wife Nellie, an academic expert on Russia, had worked for Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016.

Former FBI Director James Comey, testifying before the House in March, described the dossier as a compendium of “salacious and unverified” allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump and his associates. The Nunes panel has spent much of this year investigating whether DOJ, under then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, used the dossier to justify a foreign surveillance warrant against Page, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.

DOJ and FBI say they have cooperated extensively with Nunes and his team, including the provision of several hundred pages of classified documents relating to the dossier. The DOJ has also made McCabe available to the House Judiciary Committee for a closed-door interview on Thursday.

The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment for this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/politic...bpoenas-planned.html

quote:

Investigators say McCabe recounted to the panel how hard the FBI had worked to verify the contents of the anti-Trump “dossier” and stood by its credibility

don't need much more to know McCabe is dirty

I don't know of any new developments, but Senator Rand Paul Tweeted this earlier today



https://twitter.com/RandPaul/s...s/943852014055944192