President Trump

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LOCK THEM UP! Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein, Weissmann, FBI, DOJ Used Steele Dossier From 2016 to 2019 KNOWING It Was Bogus Report Filled with Lies

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/0 ... with-lies/


Two excellent reports were released today pertaining to the Special Counsel investigation and attempted coup on President Donald Trump.

Award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon released a report today that proves FBI-DOJ operatives knew the junk Steele dossier was a fraudulent document back in October 2016 10 days before the FISA warrant was obtained on Trump Campaign adviser Carter Page.

As TGP’s Cristina Laila reported – Solomon obtained memos from a high-ranking government official who met with former British spy Christopher Steele in October of 2016, who determined that Steele’s ‘dirt’ on Trump was inaccurate and likely leaked to the media.


The official Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec caught several completely false assertions in the junk dossier. One red flag Kavalec caught was that Steele claimed that ‘payments to those recruited by the Russians to target the election were made out of the Russian Consulate in Miami.’ There’s only one problem with this claim — there is no Russian Consulate in Miami.

And yet according to investigative reporter Paul Sperry at Real Clear Investigations the FBI and DOJ, including Rod Rosenstein, James Comey, Sally Yates, Andrew Weissmann, Robert Mueller used the bogus document in their final report for the special counsel.

Mueller also met with and paid Fusion GPS, who was behind the bogus dossier during the investigation and likely used them in compiling their controversial final report.

Mueller’s team worked closely with dossier author Steele, a long-retired British intelligence officer who worked for the Clinton campaign. Mueller’s investigators went to London to consult with Steele for at least two days in September 2017 while apparently using his dossier as an investigative road map and central theory to his collusion case. Steele now runs a private research and consulting firm in London, Orbis Business Intelligence.

It’s not clear if Mueller’s office paid Steele, but recently released FBI records show the bureau previously made a number of payments to him, and at one point during the 2016 campaign offered him $50,000 to continue his dossier research. Steele was also paid through the Clinton campaign, earning $168,000 for his work on the dossier…

…Washington-based Judicial Watch suspects Mueller’s office may have farmed out work to the private Washington research firm Fusion GPS or its subcontractor Steele, both of whom were paid by the Clinton camp during the 2016 presidential election. Several law enforcement and Hill sources who spoke with RCI also believe Steele and Fusion GPS were deputized in the investigation.

The government watchdog group has requested that the Justice Department turn over the contracting records, along with all budget requests Mueller submitted to the attorney general during his nearly two-year investigation. It’s also requested all communications between the Special Counsel’s Office and the private contractors it used.

A Judicial Watch spokesman said its Freedom of Information Act request is pending.

The DOJ and FBI continue to push conspiracies on the American public. It is time for these crooked deep state operatives to face justice.
The lies and deceit in the FBI-DOJ must stop.

[Free]

FBI's Steele story falls apart: False intel and media contacts were flagged before FISA
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... re-flagged

The FBI’s sworn story to a federal court about its asset, Christopher Steele, is fraying faster than a $5 souvenir T-shirt bought at a tourist trap.

Newly unearthed memos show a high-ranking government official who met with Steele in October 2016 determined some of the Donald Trump dirt that Steele was simultaneously digging up for the FBI and for Hillary Clinton’s campaign was inaccurate, and likely leaked to the media.

The concerns were flagged in a typed memo and in handwritten notes taken by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec on Oct. 11, 2016.

Her observations were recorded exactly 10 days before the FBI used Steele and his infamous dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the campaign’s contacts with Russia in search of a now debunked collusion theory.

It is important to note that the FBI swore on Oct. 21, 2016, to the FISA judges that Steele’s “reporting has been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings” and the FBI has determined him to be “reliable” and was “unaware of any derogatory information pertaining” to their informant, who simultaneously worked for Fusion GPS, the firm paid by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign to find Russian dirt on Trump.

That’s a pretty remarkable declaration in Footnote 5 on Page 15 of the FISA application, since Kavalec apparently needed just a single encounter with Steele at State to find one of his key claims about Trump-Russia collusion was blatantly false.

In her typed summary, Kavalec wrote that Steele told her the Russians had constructed a “technical/human operation run out of Moscow targeting the election” that recruited emigres in the United States to “do hacking and recruiting.”

She quoted Steele as saying, “Payments to those recruited are made out of the Russian Consulate in Miami,” according to a copy of her summary memo obtained under open records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United. Kavalec bluntly debunked that assertion in a bracketed comment: “It is important to note that there is no Russian consulate in Miami.”

Kavalec, two days later and well before the FISA warrant was issued, forwarded her typed summary to other government officials. The State Department has redacted the names and agencies of everyone she alerted. It is unlikely that her concerns failed to reach the FBI.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee and ranking member of its Subcommittee on Government Operations, told me late Thursday he had confirmed with U.S. officials that Kavalec's memo was forwarded to the FBI in the Oct. 13, 2016, email.

“This once again shows officials at the FBI and (Department of Justice) DOJ were well aware the dossier was a lie — from very early on in the process all the way to when they made the conscious decision to include it in a FISA application,” he said. “The fact that Christopher Steele and his partisan research document were treated in any way seriously by our Intelligence Community leaders amounts to malpractice.”

FBI and DOJ officials did not respond to a request for comment.

But it is almost certain the FBI knew of Steele's contact with State and his partisan motive. That's because former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland says she instructed her staff to send the information they got from Steele to the bureau immediately and to cease contact with the informer because "this is about U.S. politics, and not the work of — not the business of the State Department, and certainly not the business of a career employee who is subject to the Hatch Act."

Even if the FBI didn’t get Kavalec's memo, it is just as implausible that the bureau couldn’t figure out, during the many hours that its agents spent with Steele, what Kavalec divined in a few short minutes: He was political, inaccurate, spinning wild theories and talking to the media.

All those concerns would weigh against Steele’s credibility and should have been disclosed to the judges under the honor system that governs the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, experts say.

Kavalec’s handwritten notes clearly flagged in multiple places that Steele might be talking to the media.

“June — reporting started,” she wrote. “NYT and WP have,” she added, in an apparent reference to The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Later she quoted Steele as suggesting he was “managing” four priorities — “Client needs, FBI, WashPo/NYT, source protection,” her handwritten notes show.

Those same notes suggest Steele spun some wild theories to State, including one that the Russians had a “plant in DNC” and had assembled an “HRC dossier,” apparent references to the Democratic National Committee and Clinton.

She expounded in her typed memo. “The Russians have succeeded in placing an agent inside the DNC,” she quoted Steele as saying.

Steele offered Kavalec other wild information that easily could have been debunked before the FISA application — and eventually was, in many cases, after the media reported the allegations — including that:

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen traveled to Prague to meet with Russians;

Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort owed the Russians $100 million and was the “go-between” from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Trump;

Trump adviser Carter Page met with a senior Russian businessman tied to Putin;

The Russians secretly communicated with Trump through a computer system.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, released last month, dispelled all those wild theories while hardly mentioning Steele, except for a passing reference to his dossier being “unverified.” That’s significant, because the FISA request from October 2016 that rested heavily on Steele’s information was marked “verified application” before the FBI submitted it to the court.

And, as I reported earlier this week, Kavalec’s memo clearly warned that Steele had admitted his client was “keen” to get his information out before Election Day. In other words, he had a political, rather than an intelligence, deadline.

David Bossie, head of Citizens United, called on State and the FBI to release the rest of Kavalec's information they redacted: "Christopher Steele was a political operative. The American people have a right to know why the FBI took this garbage to the FISA court."

Kavalec’s notes aren’t the only red flag that should have caught the FBI’s attention before the bureau vouched for Steele’s credibility.

Notes and testimony from senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr make clear Steele admitted early on that he was “desperate” to get Trump defeated in the election, was working in some capacity for the GOP candidate’s opponent, and considered his intelligence raw and untested. Ohr testified that he alerted FBI and other senior Justice officials to these concerns in August 2016.

Steele eventually was fired by the FBI for leaking to the press — in violation of his source agreement with the bureau — and lying about it. But that did not happen until Nov. 1, 2016 — after the FISA warrant was secured. And, even then, the court wasn’t notified until a few months later, well after Election Day.

Steele’s admission of media contacts on Oct. 11, 2016, and the mere existence of his meeting at the State Department likewise violated his confidentiality agreement with the bureau and clearly were discoverable well before the FISA warrant was secured Oct. 21, 2016.

If the State Department and Ohr could figure out that Steele was a partisan, paid by a political client and facing an Election Day deadline to broadcast raw intelligence that in some cases probably was false, the FBI should have done the same before it ever envisioned taking his evidence to a FISA court.

John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports.

[brianscharp]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 745348f8b6
The big unanswered question at the core of Trump’s corruption

The blockade on counterintelligence materials. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is demanding that the Justice Department brief his Intelligence Committee on the findings of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, which isn’t documented in the Mueller report, unlike those from the criminal probe.

As Schiff told Rachel Maddow, such materials could shed more light on contacts between Trumpworld figures and Russians, and on additional findings that raise counterintelligence but not criminal concerns.

“We still don’t know what the counterintelligence findings are,” Schiff said, adding that the committee is legally entitled to that information, and that the Justice Department has ignored his requests for it.

Ryan Goodman notes that such information might further illuminate collusion-like behavior that didn’t rise to the level of criminal conspiracy, or reasons for believing that Americans were witting or unwitting Russian assets or were subject to Russian leverage.


Why hasn’t this information been forthcoming? Who is blocking it? Schiff thinks Attorney General William P. Barr and the White House are. All this merits further journalistic scrutiny. And why the blockade, if Mueller found “no collusion” and proved Trump was right all along about the Russian “hoax"?

https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1126873724475584513

And it’s important to note that no member of the Gang of Eight— including McConnell, Ryan, Burr, Nunes—have refuted this statement by Andy McCabe: that none of them objected when FBI/DOJ told them FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation on POTUS.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/ ... ce-1315767
House Intel Republicans offer rare praise for Adam Schiff

The GOP sources added that any sense of camaraderie that’s developed in recent weeks is likely to be short-lived, as the committee inches closer to treacherous political issues connected to Mueller’s probe, including the Democrat-led investigation into Trump’s finances and allegations that he is compromised by foreign actors.

[Free]

Brian, all you are doing is documenting the extent of your delusion. To be fair, you are victim to serious brainwashing but also suffer your own self imposed ignorance.
You were given a starting place for the wake up red pill and you continue downing the blue pills. I thought maybe you could do just a bit of personal education that could lead to personal enlightenment when I gave you the gay frog link. It was a simple feat for you to read that it was a serious Berkley study that proved the connection.
But you blew it off, I guess.
If you couldn't even peek that far into the rabbit hole because of fear and brainwashing there is little hope for you to ever break the mind bonds of the Rachael Maddows and the corrupt sleaze of Adam Pencil Neck Schiff. Have you any idea of who Joseph Mifsud or Nellie Orr are, and what was their role in Hillary's scandal? Ever heard of either?

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05- ... jor-crimes

I had always thought your postings were the work of a brash young man but have since read where you started flying many years ago, making you kind of an old timer.
My mom used to have a saying that 'there is no fool like an old fool' but she was talking about old men chasing younger women.
How old are you Brian?

[brianscharp]

I had always thought your postings were the work of a brash young man but have since read where you started flying many years ago, making you kind of an old timer.
My mom used to have a saying that 'there is no fool like an old fool' but she was talking about old men chasing younger women.
How old are you Brian?

viewtopic.php?p=10266&sid=e7d243e96d6f08ad9e1b4f442dfb2efb#p10266

[brianscharp]

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... rises-poll
Support for impeaching Trump rises: poll

Wonder how news from the ongoing counterintelligence investigation/s will affect the support.

[brianscharp]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... 18d9c8a8b8
What happened to the Trump counterintelligence investigation? House investigators don’t know.

A few weeks before he was fired by President Trump in May 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Intelligence Committee. During that testimony, he confirmed something that had already been reported.

“I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” he said, “and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”

To a layperson, this issue may seem to be resolved. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III completed his work in March, after all, finding insufficient evidence to establish that Trump and his campaign coordinated with the interference effort undertaken by the Russian government.

But, in fact, it isn’t. Mueller’s investigation into possible coordination was an offshoot of a broader probe into how or where members of Trump’s team — the candidate included — might have been working to aid Russian interests.

Where that investigation stands now, though, is a mystery — even to congressional leaders. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) spoke with The Washington Post by phone Tuesday and explained how he and his colleagues have been stymied in their efforts to learn how and if the probe is moving forward. The interview has been edited for clarity.

The Post: What, as you understand it, is the current status of that investigation into the president?

Schiff: The short answer is: We don’t know. Just as a reminder, this all began as an FBI counterintelligence investigation into whether people around then-candidate Trump were acting as witting or unwitting agents of a foreign power. So it began as a counterintelligence investigation, not as a criminal investigation. Now obviously a criminal case — many criminal cases — were spun off of this but we don’t know what happened to the counterintelligence investigation that James Comey opened.


We would get briefed, predominantly at a Gang of Eight level, up until Comey was fired. And, after that point, while we continued to get quarterly — although often they missed the quarterly nature of it — counterintelligence briefings, they excluded the most important counterintelligence investigation then going on, that involving Donald Trump.

The Post: Is there any reason to believe that the counterintelligence investigation has been closed?

Schiff: You know, I have not been able to get clarity on that. We have been seeking to get it, to get an answer from the Justice Department, from the counterintelligence division at the FBI, and we don’t have clarity, which is concerning.

There is a reference in the Mueller report to counterintelligence FBI personnel who were embedded in Mueller’s team [Volume One, p. 13] which then reports back to headquarters, although those reports may have dealt with counterintelligence issues that the special counsel felt were beyond his scope. But we don’t know whether the Mueller team itself or others in the Mueller team or others outside the Mueller team continued the counterintelligence investigation after the criminal probe was opened or whether at some point it was closed.


The Post: NBC News reported that there was supposed to have been an update on this shortly after the Mueller report came out. That just didn’t happen?

Schiff: We have had a number of discussions now with the Department of Justice and the FBI, but on this point, we still have not gotten clarity, and that does concern us. There is a statutory obligation by the department to keep us currently and presently informed of significant counterintelligence matters, and it’s hard to imagine one more significant than this. So I’m confident we will get an answer, but they’ve yet to be forthcoming on that point.

The Post: As you noted, there is some overlap between what the special counsel was looking at and some elements of the original counterintelligence investigation. What do you see as the important distinctions? What are the things that really stand out from the counterintelligence probe that wouldn’t have been covered under what Mueller was actually looking at?


Schiff: Well, that’s a very good question and really at the heart of why we want to get a briefing and the counterintelligence materials and findings, because we don’t know. Now, certainly some of what Bob Muller wrote about in this report, a great deal of Volume One is counterintelligence information.

The fact that the president, while concealing it from the country, was seeking to make money in Russia, building a massive tower in Moscow and was seeking the Kremlin’s help and then misleading the country and ultimately, through Michael Cohen, the Congress is a counterintelligence nightmare of the first order. Because the Russians, of course, were on the other end of that transaction and knew that when the president was denying any business dealings he was lying. And, interestingly, when, the year after Michael Cohen’s testimony, it became known that he had lied to our committee and that the transaction had gone on much longer than he had said, and, in fact, they had reached out directly to [spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin] Dmitry Peskov for help from the Kremlin. Someone very close to Putin, Peskov issued a statement denying that they had ever followed up on the inquiry. And Peskov was lying. So here you have the prospect of the Kremlin issuing its own false statements to help cover up for the president of the United States.

And so those are quintessential counterintelligence issues. It may not be a crime for a candidate for a president to seek to make money from a hostile foreign power during an election and mislead the country about it. Maybe it should be, and given [Trump attorney] Rudy Giuliani’s aborted trip to Ukraine, they clearly haven’t learned the lesson from 2016. But the counterintelligence concerns go beyond mere violation of criminal law. They’re at one time not necessarily a criminal activity and at the same time potentially far more serious than criminal activity because you have the capacity to warp U.S. policy owing to some form of compromise.


The Post: There has been a subpoena that’s been issued. I saw your interview with Axios on Friday in which you suggested that you might use inherent contempt power to try to fine people who weren’t being responsive to subpoenas broadly. How confident do you feel that you will get a response to the subpoena? How confident do you feel that you will be able to be effective in, if you choose to use the inherent contempt power, how confident you feel that that will actually be an effective tool?

Schiff: Well, I certainly think the president and his lawyer [Attorney General] Bill Barr are being fully obstructive and have adopted a maximalist position of no documents, no way, no how.

But, you know, we are having negotiations over the counterintelligence information that we hope will nonetheless bear fruit. I think the FBI and the intelligence community understand their statutory obligations but they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. While they have a good relationship with our committee and continue to work with us on a whole range of issues, I think that the position the president and Bill Barr have taken makes it very difficult for them to produce the materials they know they’re obligated to. We’re making every effort to achieve compliance without having to litigate the matter. But if necessary, we will.


The Post: The natural follow-up question, particularly given not only your having used the word “obstructive” there but given the recent developments is: How confident do you feel that if there is an ongoing counterintelligence investigation that it will be protected, that it will actually be able to carry to fruition?

Schiff: I think all of us have deep concerns with the attorney general’s conduct and, now, opening some form of investigation of the president’s rivals. The whole adoption of the “Deep State coup” theory, the “spying on the campaign” theory, promulgated by the president through his Twitter account, that is now apparently the policy of the attorney general of the United States, who sees nothing wrong with opening up investigations of rivals that are requested by the president.

And if that’s the case then, yes, it certainly ought to concern us that an attorney general who believes that the president at any time could shut down the special counsel’s investigation because he deemed it unfair could also shut down any counterintelligence investigation for the same reason.


The Post: Do you plan on subpoenaing anyone for testimony in regards to the investigation?

Schiff: That very well may be necessary. We’re talking to a number of witnesses that we’d like to come before our committee. We certainly have every expectation that Bob Mueller will come and testify and we hope that we can organize that without necessity of using any subpoena. I think Bob Mueller’s probably more than willing to testify. I think he understands the importance of it. May or may not look forward to it. I can certainly understand it’s going to be an arduous experience under the best of circumstances, but I think he understands just how important it is for the country to hear directly from him, particularly when the attorney general has so badly misled the public about his report and its conclusions.

There is a lot more at stake here than oversight of the Russia investigation or even oversight of Donald Trump. If Donald Trump, through release obstructionist tactics, can thwart congressional oversight, it means that every president who follows him can do the same. And that will fundamentally alter the balance of power in a way that will make it far more difficult to ferret out corruption and malfeasance of any future president.

[brianscharp]

https://twitter.com/justinamash

[brianscharp]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf3LDYNH7Wg
Why All the Arguments Against Impeachment Are B.S.