Where Is The Dangerous Irresponsibility Jeopardizing National Security

HOT AIR pulls out an excellent point/quote by Jonathan Turley:

….However, he points out another problem which isn’t getting nearly as much attention. What happened to the dire threats to national security we were told were contained in this memo?

My greatest concern is what is not in the [memo]: classified information “jeopardizing national security.” Leaders like Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared that the committee had moved beyond “dangerous irresponsibility and disregard for our national security” and “disregarded the warnings of the Justice Department and the FBI.”

Now we can read the memo. There is a sharp and alarming disconnect between the descriptions of Pelosi and the House Intelligence Committee’s Ranking Minority Member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and the actual document. It clearly does not contain information that would reveal sources or methods.

The memo reaffirms concerns over the lower standards that apply to FISA applications as well as the misuse of classification authority. Most of this memo references what was already known about the use of the dossier. What was added was testimonial evidence and details to the publicly known information. Yet, the FBI vehemently objected to the release of the memo as threatening “grave” consequences to national security…

The FBI opposition to declassification of this memo should be a focus of both Congress and the public. The memo is clearly designed to avoid revealing classified information. For civil libertarians, this is a rare opportunity to show how classified rules are misused for strategic purposes by these agencies. The same concern can be directed toward members who read this memo and represented to the public that the release would clearly damage national security.

In that first paragraph above, Turley is quoting the statement Pelosi put out about the memo on Tuesday. However, she made a similar claim on CNN during that contentious interview with Chris Cuomo. “Putting this aside in terms of tit for tat, which you seem to—well, with all due respect to you—trying to make it look like Democrats vs. [Republicans]. It isn’t about that,” Pelosi said. She added, “It’s about our national security.” In the same interview, she said, “We’re not talking about some issue that we’re having a fight about, we’re talking about our national security.”

The point is, this was raised many times this week by Democrats eager to prevent the release of the memo. In retrospect, it’s difficult to see how anyone could have thought it represented a grave threat to national security. Maybe the subsequent release of the Democrats’ own memo will shed some additional light on whatever threat they see in it, but at the moment it looks as if those warnings were overblown. As Turley puts it, “it proved to be an empty ‘grave’ after weeks of overheated hyperbole.”

Brian Mudd Fills In For Mark Levin — Nunes Memo

Brian Mudd fills in for Mark Levin, on the day of the Nunes’ memo release. Brian goes through the incontrovertible facts… which have not (and will not) be shown to be false. Here is Mudd’s TWITTER:

READ THE MEMO (Via Powerline)

Greg Jarrett & Tom Fitton Discuss The Memo

Hannity interviews Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch and Greg Jarrett of Fox News regarding the legalities and criminal activity involved in the Nunes Memo revelations. KEY PLAYERS are named!

✦ Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch | Twitter
✦ Greg Jarrett of Fox News | Twitter

READ THE MEMO (Via Powerline)

Obama Admin/DOJ Broke FISA Law

GATEWAY PUNDIT says of the following report:

A Report was released in April of 2017 that received no publicity until recently.

The report was a ruling on the results of an investigation or audit into FISA searches made by Obama’s FBI and DOJ during Obama’s time in office.

The report shows Obama’s FBI and DOJ participated in widespread criminal searches and criminal sharing of data with non authorized entities outside of government.

On April 26, 2017, an unsealed FISA Court Ruling unveiled a number of criminal activities that Barack Obama’s FBI and DOJ participated in during his time in office.  The report to date received little attention.  Now interest is brewing due to the recent actions of Congress and the report that is expected to be released in the upcoming weeks….

Here is the report referenced in GP’s post:

FISA searches can be conducted on any foreign person without issue.  All non-U.S. citizens on the entire planet can be searched 24/7/365 no issues.  FISA searches on foreign people have no restrictions at all.

However, when the FISA search returns data identifying a U.S. citizen, everything changes. Those changes are under the identifying term “702”.  A “702” is an American person.

All U.S. citizens are protected by the fourth amendment against unlawful search and seizure. All searches of U.S. people must have a valid reason.  Title III says any search for a potential criminal investigation must have a judicial warrant.  Additionally, any criminal search of the FISA database must also have a warrant (technically, ‘approval’).

Any FISA searches of foreign subjects, might need FISA Court approval if the returned data includes a U.S. subject (“702”).

[…..]

non-compliance rate of 85% raises substantial questions about the propriety of using of [Redacted – likely “About”] query FISA data.

(SEE ALL the pertinent released FISA/FBI documents at THE MARKETS WORK)

To wit, Democrat Representative Adam Schiff — leading on the “Russia Collusion” and impeachment thingies — says the public should not view the memo because the American public would not understand its talking points without the accompaniment reports to which the memo refers (GP h-t):

CABRERA: “Why not allow peel to look at it and let Americans make the decision for themselves about whether it’s useful information or not?”

SCHIFF: “Well, because the American people unfortunately don’t have the underlying materials and therefore they can’t see how distorted and misleading this document is. The Republicans are not saying make the underlying materials available to the public. They just want to make this spin available to the public. I think that spin, which is a attack on the FBI, is just designed to attack the FBI and Bob Mueller to circle the wagons for the White House. And that’s a terrible disservice to the people, hard working people at the bureau, but more than that, it’s a disservice to the country.”

Lo-and-behold… Schiff’s wish is gonna be granted — although I doubt that is what he wanted. Ooops.

Again, GATEWAY PUNDIT:

According to the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York, Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) huddled together Saturday to discuss a “never-before-used procedure” for releasing the “shocking” FISA abuse memo. 

Washington Examiner reports:

There’s no doubt Republicans want the public to see the classified memo. To get it out, they are studying a never-before-used procedure whereby House Intelligence Committee members would vote to make the memo public, after which the president would have five days to object.

If the president had no objection, the memo would become public after those five days. If the president did object, the matter would go to the full House, which could vote to overrule the president’s objections and release the memo anyway.

In addition to the procedure, the three lawmakers are plotting how to go about releasing additional intelligence in support of the FISA memo. In a statement to CNN, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said he is in favor of the move.

CNN reports:

Republicans appear to be charging ahead with their plan to publicly release the document and potentially some of the underlying intelligence so long as sources and methods are not disclosed. “If we’re going to go through the process anyway of declassifying the memo, are there some of the supporting documents that might not reveal sources and methods but might answer key questions that the memo does raise?” said Rep. Matt Gaetz […] “Chairman Goodlate and Chairman Gowdy and Chairman Nunes each sort of have jurisdiction over elements, and they are meeting and discussing a process now that I think will lead to greater transparency.”

[…..]

While one may not think these are related…. they are. We are uncovering a massive cover up of illegal activity meant to sway an election:

Sean Hannity Making Clear Democrat Crimes

Hannity brings on Reps. Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz to discuss FISA (1-18-18)

Sean Hannity (1-19-18) — will start at the 8:25 mark:

Rush Limbaugh Talks About the DOJ/FBI/FISA Memo

The news that was revealing to me was that Christopher Steele didn’t write the dossier much at all. It was turned over to Russian sources who wrote most of it. WOW! Hillary and the DNC literally paid for Kremlin propaganda to use against another campaign/sitting President.It is worse than Watergate because it is using U.S. resources and intelligence agencies to overthrow another political figure. Rush Limbaugh touches on the Intelligence Committee (FBI/FISA) memo that all of Congress has seen now.

The revealing it to all of Congress was a party line vote by-the-way… the Democrats who originally saw it did not want others to see it. And the reason Democrats haven’t leaked the information therein so far is because they KNOW it will harm their efforts against Trump… nor is the anti-Trump media wanting the information, as, they want to protect Democrat efforts. The plot has thickened a while back as well.

Ben Shapiro Explains REAL Russian Collusion

HOT AIR covers the POLITICO story:

Did the current administration “collude” with Russia? So far no evidence at all has emerged to support that hypothesis, but Politico’s Josh Meyer digs deep into another curious set of circumstances in the Obama White House and its own operations with a foreign power.  Perhaps the media will start asking whether the previous administration colluded with Iran to let terrorists and drug dealers go free in order to score one of the worst deals ever in international relations.

Before Barack Obama decided to pursue the nuclear deal with Iran, the DEA had a major operation called Project Cassandra. This operation had identified Hezbollah as a major supplier of cocaine to the US and other countries, along with its usual terrorist activities on behalf of its sponsors in Tehran. The DEA and FBI had built criminal cases against major players in Hezbollah’s drug and arms networks, succeeding in getting sealed indictments and finding witnesses for prosecution.

And then the Obama administration stepped in to drain it of all resources, just to protect its deal with Iran:

One Obama-era Treasury official, Katherine Bauer, in little-noticed written testimony presented last February to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, acknowledged that “under the Obama administration … these [Hezbollah-related] investigations were tamped down for fear of rocking the boat with Iran and jeopardizing the nuclear deal.”

As a result, some Hezbollah operatives were not pursued via arrests, indictments, or Treasury designations that would have blocked their access to U.S. financial markets, according to Bauer, a career Treasury official, who served briefly in its Office of Terrorist Financing as a senior policy adviser for Iran before leaving in late 2015. And other “Hezbollah facilitators” arrested in France, Colombia, Lithuania have not been extradited — or indicted — in the U.S., she wrote. …

Asher, for one, said Obama administration officials expressed concerns to him about alienating Tehran before, during and after the Iran nuclear deal negotiations. This was, he said, part of an effort to “defang, defund and undermine the investigations that were involving Iran and Hezbollah,” he said.

“The closer we got to the [Iran deal], the more these activities went away,” Asher said. “So much of the capability, whether it was special operations, whether it was law enforcement, whether it was [Treasury] designations — even the capacity, the personnel assigned to this mission — it was assiduously drained, almost to the last drop, by the end of the Obama administration.”

Cassandra turned out to be an ironic code name for the operation. In Greek mythology, Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam of Troy, was doomed to utter accurate prophecies that went unbelieved by all who heard them. This years-long effort to identify Hezbollah’s drug and arms operations and to find their financial resources ended up going the way of Cassandra’s prophecies, too — being utterly ignored despite their truth. (In fact, the project name derived specifically, if indirectly, from this myth.)……………

FBI Text Messages – Limbaugh

RUSH LIMBAUGH (https://www.rushlimbaugh.com) included a thorough explanation of the issues facing us in the form of a sham democracy – the Mueller investigation. I wasn’t catching why he was talking about Trump’s mistrust of the early intelligence reports., but he tied that one with a nice bow for me.

MORE

 

FBI Text Messages – Carlson

MORE

 

FBI Text Messages – Hannity

POWERLINE!

…….Bruce Ohr held secret meetings last year with the founder of Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, and with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the anti-Trump dossier. When Fox News broke that story earlier this month, Ohr lost his position as associate deputy attorney general, though he remains the director of the DOJ’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.

News that Ohr’s wife worked for Fusion GPS may explain how it came about that her husband met with Simpson and Steele. In that sense, Fox News’ latest story suggests the answer to a question.

It also raises this one: Did the wife of a high ranking official in the Obama Justice Department work on the anti-Trump dossier? As Fox News noted, Ohr is a Russia expert, and Fusion GPS paid her through the summer and fall of 2016.

Then, there’s the question of whether the dossier was used by the DOJ when it applied for the FISA warrant that produced an order allowing the Obama administration to spy on the Trump campaign. Rep. Jim Jordan has surmised that the anti-Trump dossier was dressed up by the FBI, taken to the FISA Court, and presented as a legitimate intelligence document. Jordan suspects that Trump-hating FBI man Peter Strzok did the deed.

The fact that Bruce Ohr’s wife worked for Fusion GPS increases the likelihood that the DOJ made use of the dossier in its FISA application. If his wife worked on the dossier, that increases it further. The more connected the dossier was to high level DOJ officials, the greater the chance DOJ used its information, or so it seems to me.

As this commentator says:

  • It would be explosive if it turned out the October 2016 FISA warrant was gained by deception, misleading/manipulated information, or fraud as a result of the Russian Dossier; and exponentially more explosive if the dossier was -in part- organized by the wife of an investigative member of the DOJ who was applying for the FISA warrant.

THE DAILY WIRE has more:

On Wednesday, CNN published text messages between the former second-in-command in FBI counterintelligence, Peter Strzok, and his mistress and co-worker Lisa Page. Strzok was involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation, instrumental in helping to launch the investigation into supposed collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, and staffed on the Trump-Russia investigation itself. He was fired by special investigator Robert Mueller after these texts were uncovered.

Now, one of those texts may wound the special investigation beyond repair.

That text is dated August 15, 2016. Strzok texted Page, “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in [deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe’s] office that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40…”

This looks an awful lot like motivation for launching an investigation into Trump in order to sink Trump as a hedge against Trump’s victory. The FBI’s investigation into Russian governmental interference in the election began in July 2016, just weeks before Strzok’s text message. And thatmeans that there is now more of a smoking gun of FBI corruption against Trump than there is of Trump colluding with Russia.

How can Mueller come back from that? He’s fired Strzok and Page, but if the investigation was initially a political hit job, how can it now turn into something good and decent, particularly in the absence of a smoking gun regarding collusion? It’s not just that this is fruit of the poisonous tree — there’s no fruit to show, just the poisonous tree. And as Victor Davis Hanson has written, the Mueller team is filled top-to-bottom with political activists who have a specific anti-Trump agenda………

MORE