Category: Russiagate

When The President Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal

Drain The Swamp Russiagate 25 Comments

FoxNews;

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified documents that revealed former CIA Director John Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s purported “plan” to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server” ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Fox News has learned.
 
Ratcliffe declassified Brennan’s handwritten notes – which were taken after he briefed Obama on the intelligence the CIA received – and a CIA memo, which revealed that officials referred the matter to the FBI for potential investigative action.
 
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence transmitted the declassified documents to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on Tuesday afternoon.
 
“Today, at the direction of President Trump, I declassified additional documents relevant to ongoing Congressional oversight and investigative activities,” Ratcliffe said in a statement to Fox News Tuesday.
 
A source familiar with the documents explained that Brennan’s handwritten notes were taken after briefing Obama on the matter.

More: President Trump Tweet-Storm: Reauthorizes Declassification of all Documents – Will This Time Make A Difference?…

When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal

Drain The Swamp Russiagate 28 Comments

The Insurance Policy; (sorry! Updated with link)

It is a violation of FBI policy to open a counterintelligence case file on a US Person with no present intention to conduct a counterintelligence investigation of the US Person. It might even be a crime.
 
And yet that is exactly what Special Agent Barnett says FBI Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Peter Strzok did with regard to General Michael Flynn, decorated U.S. war hero.

When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal

Drain The Swamp Russiagate 10 Comments

Third post for the day…

More from Kimerly Strassel: So Christopher Steele’s main source for the dossier? He was the subject of a nearly two-year long FBI counter-intel investigation (2009-2011), under suspicion of being a Russian spy and a “threat to national security.”

Byron York: More on the Steele sub-information

When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal

Drain The Swamp Russiagate 17 Comments

Thread.

The Flynn Defense Memo (filed today).

A summary at The Federalist.

When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal

Bill's Wife Drain The Swamp Russiagate 3 Comments

Washington Examiner;

U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating the handling of the FBI’s investigation of possible bribery and pay-to-play at the Clinton Foundation as part of his broader inquiry of the Trump-Russia investigators, according to a new report.
 
The New York Times reported Thursday that Durham “has sought documents and interviews about how federal law enforcement officials handled an investigation … into allegations of political corruption” at the Clinton Foundation, founded by former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Durham was picked by Attorney General William Barr in 2019 to investigate the origins and conduct of the Trump-Russia investigation, and the outlet said that “Durham’s team members have suggested to others that they are comparing the two investigations.” The article claimed that “it was not clear whether Mr. Durham’s investigators were similarly looking for violations in the Clinton Foundation investigation.”

And now, new Flynn documents. See the next post.

When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal

Drain The Swamp Russiagate 17 Comments

“I have very deep misgivings about the institutional response of the FBI to the congressional investigation into the Hillary Clinton email matter. … Put simply: I don’t believe the handling of the material I have by the FBI is ethically or morally right. But my lawyer’s advice — that I simply put my SSA on notice should cover me — is that I have completed CYA [Cover Your Ass], and I have done so,” Robertson wrote. “Further, I was told by [Kramer] that should I ‘whistleblow,’ I will be prosecuted.”

And much more. You might grab a coffee.

When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal

Democrats Drain The Swamp Russiagate 18 Comments

More on this thread.

The top echelon of the FBI has been completely captured by organized crime. Change my mind.

When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal

Drain The Swamp Russiagate 12 Comments

Bumped for breaking news: Sally Yates has thrown Comey under the bus.

On Wednesday, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the January 2017 FBI interview of incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn was done without her authorization, and that she was upset after finding out about it.
 
“I was upset that Director Comey didn’t coordinate that with us and acted unilaterally,” Yates said in response to a question from committee chairman Senator Lindsay Graham.
 
“Did Comey go rogue?” Graham asked.
 
“You could use that term, yes,” Yates replied
 
Yates was also unaware that Michael Flynn was being wiretapped, only learning about it after a now-infamous January 5, 2017, briefing in the Oval Office about Russian election interference with FBI Director James Comey, Vice President Joe Biden, CIA Director John Brennan, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. President Obama asked Yates and Comey to “stay behind” after the briefing was over, and it was during this more private meeting that Obama spilled that he was aware of wiretapped conversations of incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn, a man he previously fired from his administration, and whom Obama had personally warned Trump not to hire.

Original post below.

The media have a problem, then, given that they repeatedly led viewers and readers to believe Steele was a master spy. They can almost get away with ignoring the recent news that once again shows their previous reporting was catastrophically wrong. In fact, some media outlets did just that.
 
But after breathlessly reporting — day in and day out for years — what they claimed were important updates buttressing Steele’s collusion narrative, they can’t completely hide the on-the-record revelations showing how the collusion narrative was invented and used to undermine the Trump campaign and administration.

When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal

Drain The Swamp Russiagate 31 Comments

Captain Obvious;

Long-sought documents finally pried from U.S. intelligence agencies prove that the Obama administration used the occasion of providing a standard intelligence briefing for major-party candidates as an opportunity to investigate Donald Trump on suspicion of being a Russian asset.
 
I say investigate Donald Trump advisedly.
 
As I contended in Ball of Collusion, my book on the Trump-Russia investigation, the target of the probe spearheaded by the FBI — but greenlighted by the Obama White House, and abetted by the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies — was Donald Trump. Not the Trump campaign, not the Trump administration. Those were of interest only insofar as they were vehicles for Trump himself. The campaign, which the Bureau and its apologists risibly claim was the focus of the investigation, would have been of no interest to them were it not for Trump.
 
Or do you suppose they moved heaven and earth, surreptitiously plotted in the Oval Office, wrote CYA memos to cover their tracks, and laboriously sculpted FBI reports because they were hoping to nail . . . George Papadopoulos?

Indeed. But read it all anyway.

When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal

Drain The Swamp Media Russiagate 18 Comments

Jonathan Turley with one of the best short summaries I’ve seen to date.

It is astonishing that the media refuses to see what is one of the biggest stories in decades. The Obama administration targeted the campaign of the opposing party based on false evidence. The media covered Obama administration officials ridiculing the suggestions of spying on the Trump campaign and of improper conduct with the Russia investigation. When Attorney General William Barr told the Senate last year that he believed spying did occur, he was lambasted in the media, including by James Comey and others involved in that investigation. The mocking “wow” response of the fired FBI director received extensive coverage.
 
The new document shows that, in summer 2016, FBI agent Joe Pientka briefed Trump campaign advisers Michael Flynn and Chris Christie over national security issues, standard practice ahead of the election. It had a discussion of Russian interference. But this was different. The document detailing the questions asked by Trump and his aides and their reactions was filed several days after that meeting under Crossfire Hurricane and Crossfire Razor, the FBI investigation of Flynn. The two FBI officials listed who approved the report are Kevin Clinesmith and Peter Strzok.
 
Strzok is the FBI agent whose violation of FBI rules led Justice Department officials to refer him for possible criminal charges. Strzok did not hide his intense loathing of Trump and famously referenced an “insurance policy” if Trump were to win the election. After FBI officials concluded there was no evidence of any crime by Flynn at the end of 2016, Strzok prevented the closing of the investigation as FBI officials searched for any crime that might be used to charge the incoming national security adviser.
 
Documents show Comey briefed President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden on the investigation shortly before the inauguration of Trump. When Comey admitted the communications between Flynn and Russian officials appeared legitimate, Biden reportedly suggested using the Logan Act, a law widely seen as unconstitutional and never been used to successfully convict a single person, as an alternative charge against Flynn. The memo contradicts eventual claims by Biden that he did not know about the Flynn investigation. Let us detail some proven but mostly unseen facts.

When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal

Drain The Swamp Media Russiagate 17 Comments

An epic media takedown.

More here: Judiciary Committee Releases Declassified Documents that Substantially Undercut Steele Dossier, Page FISA Warrants

New: Christopher Steele text messages revealed at first day of dossier defamation trial

The lawsuit is the first to dossier-related case to go to trial in either the U.S. or the U.K. The judge presiding over the Gubarev lawsuit ruled against Steele in other dossier-related litigation earlier this month. In that case, the judge awarded damages to the owners of Alfa Bank, who also sued Steele over the dossier. That case did not go to trial.
 
Gubarev’s lawyers argue that not only are Steele’s dossier allegations inaccurate, but that the ex-spy helped circulate them to reporters without first verifying the underlying information.
 
The various lawsuits against Steele have provided a roadmap of how the retired spy and his dossier client, Fusion GPS, spread allegations about Trump through the press.

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