Devin Nunes

They Can Make All Russiagate Documents Classified Again (Kash Patel)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Kash Patel: Now That FBI Has Another “Ongoing Counterintel Investigation” They Can Make All Russiagate Documents Classified Again (REAL CLEAR POLITICS)

TRANSCRIPT:

KASH PATEL: And, look, it starts and ends with Russiagate. The corruption and the two-tiered system of justice that Devin and I exposed during Russiagate has been carried out, to the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation scandal, to the Hunter Biden laptop, to Jan. 6, and now to the raid on President Trump’s home.

And let me clarify. Basically, the same corrupt FBI government gangsters, the same agents that were involved in Russiagate, the same counterintelligence agents that were involved in making the bad false call on Hunter Biden’s laptop, you’re going to see are the same counterintelligence agents that helped raid or assist in the raid to President Trump’s home.

And why is that a problem? Because these agents knowingly break their — violate their oath of office and the law, get promotions. And we need to demand their names, guys like Auten (ph) and Tibbels (ph) and other guys who also stood up to fake Whitmer prosecution in Michigan.

When Devin and I first marched down to DOJ to expose the likes of Peter Strzok, they laughed us out of the building, but what happened? He was placed on administrative leave because he broke his oath of office. And you’re going to find that exactly is what’s happening here.

And that is a counterintelligence investigation. It means it’s being run on an FBI headquarters as a national security case by these same select few of corrupt politicians who are acting as FBI agents.

…

President Trump named me his — his representative to the National Archives months ago. And we have been in a bureaucratic battle. As Devin and I have always had to, we found whole sets of documents we meted out to the American public from Russiagate. We got out about 60 percent.

That’s why President Trump made it his mission to declassify and be transparent. In October of 2020, he issued a sweeping declassification order for every Russiagate document and every single Hillary Clinton document. Then, on the way out of the White House, he issued further declassification orders, declassifying whole sets of documents.

And this is a key fact that most Americans are missing. President Trump, as the sitting president, is the unilateral authority for declassification. He can literally stand over a set of documents and say, these are now declassified, and that is done with definitive action immediately.

The fact that the bureaucrats at NARA, who referred — remember, the National Archives are the ones that referred this to the Department of Justice. But they — the same principle failed to refer Hillary Clinton to the Department of Justice when they got their hands on the classified e-mails from those servers.

And switching gears a little bit to the national security officials involved, me, as a former national security prosecutor in the National Security Division, where this case is being run out of, it’s no surprise that the likes of John Carlin, who was the assistant attorney general for national security, who authorized the Russiagate hoax to begin with, is now the number three officials at DOJ.

And Lisa Monaco is the number two official, who was his superior back then.

These folks — and this is — this is a thing I want to stress with. Now that this is a — quote, unquote — “ongoing FBI counterintelligence investigation,” they will come out to the American public and be able to say, ongoing C.I. investigation. You will never be allowed to see the Russiagate docs or any other docs that President Trump lawfully declassified.

And they will hide it from the public.

And Congress has a monumental lift ahead of them. Come November, they better start subpoenaing these documents immediately and putting these people before the American public. Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray have failed in their mission to uphold the law. They have become political hucksters. And they are completely destroying our Constitution and putting on a two-tiered system of justice.

Some Sober Articles Regarding ‘Dominion Software’ (UPDATE ADDED)

Published by Papa Giorgio

UPDATE REGARDING DR. COOMER’S ANTIFA/ANTI-
POLICE LOVE AFFAIR AT BOTTOM OF POST

There are a lot, and I mean A LOT, of information floating around the WWW about the software/voting machines. Much of it conjecture… some of it I wish is reality! Nonetheless, it is a topic that will surely infect this and future elections. By “infect” I mean having to be dealt with or a future topic of fair elections. First however, this is not just a “GOP Conspiracy” cooked up the last month… there have been bipartisan worry about this for years. PJ-MEDIA notes this:

…last year, three Democrat senators, including former presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), sounded the alarm about the vulnerabilities of voting machines.

In a December 6, 2019, letter, Warren, Klobuchar, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), issued a formal complaint about these three companies, which they said “threaten the integrity of our elections.”

Here is a key paragraph from the letter, which is still available via Senator Warren’s Senate website.

In 2018 alone “voters in South Carolina [were] reporting machines that switched their votes after they’d inputted them, scanners [were] rejecting paper ballots in Missouri, and busted machines [were] causing long lines in Indiana.”14 In addition, researchers recently uncovered previously undisclosed vulnerabilities in “nearly three dozen backend election systems in 10 states.”15 And, just this year, after the Democratic candidate’s electronic tally showed he received an improbable 164 votes out of 55,000 cast in a Pennsylvania state judicial election in 2019, the county’s Republican Chairwoman said,”[n]othing went right on Election Day. Everything went wrong. That’s a problem.”16 These problems threaten the integrity of our elections and demonstrate the importance of election systems that are strong, durable, and not vulnerable to attack.

This may not prove Trump’s claim of votes being switched, but it proves that these allegations of problems began long before he was saying they were a problem.

(More can be seen about the above issue at JUST THE NEWS)

That last sentence is important. “This may not prove Trump’s claim of votes being switched, but it proves that these allegations of problems began long before he was saying they were a problem.” And the system was rejected twice by Texas and has been known to have issues.

I will post these next few articles in the time-frame I read them, first read to last. I posted these on my Facebook Page as they seemed sober enough to post (whether you agree or not with them, they are not “wild eyes” in the “Alex Jones” sense.

The first was a good intro article to the issue by RED STATE. In it they discuss the first known issue “in Antrim County in Michigan when according to a technical ‘glitch,’ 6000 votes that were supposed to go to President Donald Trump were given to Joe Biden in the official totals.” RS continues with the intro and issues,

The Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, claimed that “the clerk accidentally did not update the software used to collect voting machine data and report unofficial results.”

So here’s the question I have with that: how does not “updating” the software result in the transposition of the votes to your opponent? And again, if it did, does that not suggest there is a problem in the function or design of what they have in place if this can occur?

As my colleague Jennifer Van Laar reported this is not only a question for the 47 counties in Michigan, but everywhere this system has been employed which interestingly, seems to be in the contested areas including Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia. She also reported about how there have been prior problems with this system and that there was also a problem in Georgia on Tuesday, also related to an “update” causing a “glitch.”

From POLITICO:

A technology glitch that halted voting in two Georgia counties on Tuesday morning was caused by a vendor uploading an update to their election machines the night before, a county election supervisor said.

Voters were unable to cast machine ballots for a couple of hours in Morgan and Spalding counties after the electronic devices crashed, state officials said.

The companies “uploaded something last night, which is not normal, and it caused a glitch,” said Marcia Ridley, elections supervisor at Spalding County Board of Election.

Notice the similar language in both Michigan and Georgia related to uploading an update, although one crashed when it was uploaded and the other supposedly caused the issue when it wasn’t uploaded.

SO HOW MANY PLACES HAD THIS “UPDATE?”….

([EMPHASIS ADDED] The rest of the article is worth reading… as well as this RED-STATE article)

Another article I thought was worthy is an article by by Sharon Meroni in THE POST & EMAIL. The article dates from September 1st, 2016, and catalogs some [in my mind] critical vote security issues. (Again, the entire article is worth while):

On Friday, August 26th, during a meeting at the Illinois State Board of Elections, the Vice President of Engineering for Dominion Voting, Dr. Eric Coomer*, was asked if it was possible to bypass election systems software and go directly to the data tables that manage systems running elections in Illinois. His response was, “Yes, if they have access.”

Bypassing the election systems software means whoever has access can potentially manipulate the vote without many risks of detection. So the question needs to be asked, who has access to these data tables?

We asked Dr. Coomer that question. Dr. Coomer replied, ‘Vendors, election officials, and others who need to be granted access.’

This is explosive information. Dr. Coomer’s statement is an admission that various vendors, election officials, and others have access to the back end data tables that permit bypassing the operating system’s configuration. It is notable that when someone accesses these systems from a data table, their actions are not logged by the system; thereby making detection much more problematic. This contradicts Dr. Coomer’s assurances that the system is secure.

[….]

VIDEO BREAK

[….]

And that is not all! The Board asked Dr. Coomer if he had any comments [above video]. In direct response to the Illinois State Board, Dr. Coomer made the following statement:

“We are constantly assessing different threat models against all of our systems we have fielded across the US and internationally as well. Due to the certification environment that we are in, no we are not allowed to do routine updates without having to go through re-certification efforts, but we do routinely give guidance on how to best secure systems and also going back again, to the final mitigation against all of this is a robust auditing canvasing process which all of our jurisdictions have implemented.”

Dr. Coomer failed to mention that Illinois does not have any auditing procedure for absentee mail-in ballots. In 2014, mail-in paper balloting was 8% of the vote. Across Illinois, many election jurisdictions are working to increase this percentage! Illinois does not require any justification when audits show a vote discrepancy. They simply correct the total votes that are reported to the new totals found in the audit. Further, it is not a blind audit.  Auditors know what vote totals were reported before they begin the post-election re-count. So much for Coomer’s robust auditing process…

Dr. Coomer’s statement brings to light a very serious issue all voters should understand. Voting systems must be re-certified each time they make changes to the hardware or software. Recertification is an expensive and time consuming process. What Dr. Coomer told the Board is that Dominion Voting does not go back for recertification of software when threats to their code are discovered. Rather, they rely on post-election audits and providing advice to election jurisdictions about security. I have reviewed all of the recertification documents produced by Dominion, and I do not recall any software adjustments for security purposes.

This is the reality of the security of your vote. Software systems that count and record the vote across Illinois and throughout the USA are not updated to address security problems, and even if they were, the software can be completely bypassed by going to the data tables that drive the systems.

I am not an expert on how other states audit the vote after an election. I do know that in Illinois, at least 8% of the vote never see any post-election audit. At least that amount of the vote is vulnerable to be manipulated without much chance for detection….

In yet a more recent article discussing the Georgia recount, REAL CLEAR INVESTIGATIONS references the possibility of the vote in Georgia being changed by the Dominion software. In their article entitled, “Pro-Biden Bug Also Suspected in Georgia’s Vote-Counting Software,” they cover this issue as well as other ballot tabulation issues:

A curious thing happened as Fulton County, Ga., election officials counted mail-in ballots at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena in the days after the election. In the early hours of Nov. 5, a surge of some 20,000 mail-in votes suddenly appeared for Joe Biden, while approximately 1,000 votes for President Trump mysteriously disappeared from his own totals in the critical swing state, where Biden holds a razor-thin lead.

A poll watcher noticed the suspicious shift in votes while monitoring the interim election results on the Georgia secretary of state website.

“I concluded from looking at these results that this was an irregularity, since there was no obvious reason for President Trump’s totals to have decreased while former Vice President Biden’s totals increased dramatically,” Voter GA co-founder Garland Favorito swore in an affidavit he filed this week with the secretary of state’s office.

Favorito suspects a variety of factors, including that votes were “artificially inflated” for Biden while using the same Dominion Voting system used by Antrim County, Mich., which erroneously transferred 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden. Last year, Georgia contracted with Dominion to automate vote tabulations in all 159 of its counties.

“The software appears to have thrown votes from Trump to Biden here too,” he said in a RealClearInvestigations interview. “Or Biden ballots were manufactured.”

The large disparity of gains between the two candidates “was something I had never witnessed before in my years of election monitoring,” said Favorito, a career IT professional who has been a leading advocate for election integrity in the state over the past two decades. He says he is not a Republican or Trump supporter.

On Nov. 10, Favorito sent his affidavit to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, recommending a full, by-hand ballot recount. The next day, his office announced it will conduct such an audit for the presidential race. Biden currently leads Trump by more than 14,000 votes in the state.

[….]

On Dominion Voting’s website, a page titled “Election 2020: Setting the Record Straight” says “claims about Dominion switching or deleting votes are 100% false.” 

While noting that “no election is without isolated issues,” Dominion states:  “Election safeguards – from testing and certification of voting systems, to canvassing and auditing – prevent malicious actors from tampering with vote counts and ensure that final vote tallies are accurate.”

But Favorito, who lives in the Atlanta area, said the Fulton County shift was so dramatic it seemed as if someone had “dumped” a huge batch of mail-in ballots for Biden into the system overnight.

“One candidate could not go up by 20,000 and the other do nothing — in Fulton County or any county in Georgia,” he asserted. “That’s just not going to happen.”

Added Favorito: “I think they’re going to find the root cause of the irregularity was something electronic, and I think it’s going to change the results substantially.”

He suggested it may have been the result of a software or equipment malfunction or possibly even vote-swapping “malware” infecting the system. Of greatest concern, however, is the possibility of intentional misconduct by an election official or worker…..

So, these seem to be reasonable issues and concerns. There are others as well, but I wanted to stay focused on the Software Issue. As I was doing this post, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State, Kathy Boockvar, has said she will not order an audit of the votes. However, I am curious to see where the chips fall in Georgia — that may be a good “bellwether” state that if changed dramatically, may require other states using the software to recount/audit.

I will end with the indomitable California Rep., Devin Nunes, in his interview via NEWSMAX TV. He said on Friday that “conservatives should be wary about glitches and security issues with voting machines, given an apparent sea change in support from President Trump to Joe Biden since election eve.” Here is the interview:

UPDATE:

Social media is swarming around the claims that a current (or former, as his position has been scrubbed from the internet) vice-president with Dominion Voter Systems who previously admitted that it was possible for hackers to hack into their voting systems, allegedly, posted several anti-cop, anti-Trump and, frankly anti-American social media posts.

If you search the company’s profile Eric Coomer has since been removed from their page of directors.

Also, another question is being asked, does the CEO of dominion is an Antifa activist?

According to the Conservative Daily Podcast host Joe Oltmann, Dominion Voting Systems co-owner and inventor, Dr. Eric Coomer has made social media posts in the past directly connecting him to Antifa. Dominion Voting is based in Denver, Colorado. Coomer graduated with a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and began working in the elections industry in 2005 with a company called Sequoia Voting Systems as their Chief Software Architect. In 2008, after Sequoia was acquired by Dominion, Coomer took the position as the Vice-President of US Engineering, overseeing development in the Denver, Colorado office.

With so many questions swirling about Dominion Voting, there are clearly issues if the co-inventor and owner of that company might be connected to the Antifa (idea, myth, organization, way of life, terrorists…You choose).

According to Oltmann, Coomer’s now-deleted Facebook posts include his sharing songs tilted “Dead Cops,” “Dead Prez,” and “ACAB.” One post of particular interest is a long “statement” from Antifa he shared in June in response to President Trump declaring Antifa a terrorist organization……

(More at CONSERVATIVEUS)

Schiff Caught Lying… AGAIN! (UPDATED!)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The below is hilarious — why!? — because Schiff called Nunes’ work lies since he put the memo out detailing the abuses of the FBI to the FISA Court. The IG Report said almost the same thing as Nunes has been saying this WHOLE TIME! In fact, on MSNBC we can see (July of 2018) Schiff knowingly lying!

UPDATES
HATRED OF NUNES

ACE OF SPADES is the author of compiling the below… read it all:

“Do you think he’ll get called on the carpet by anybody who has been following this story for two years?” Bream asked.

“Well, one of the wonders, to me, of modern media is the failure of my colleagues in this business to see through this guy Schiff,” Hume said. “He has been dishonest repeatedly. He made extravagant claims about the amount of evidence he had of Russia collusion, evidence that it turned out that not even the Mueller team with all of its investigative powers did not discover and that he, Schiff, never specified. Of course the report came out and basically blew up this whole Russia collusion theory.

“Now comes this whole question of FISA abuse and he’s still telling whoppers about that. It’s amazing that he isn’t called out. And then of course he gets tapped by Nancy Pelosi to lead the impeachment inquiry. Wow!”

Schiff isn’t the only person who owes apologies to Devin Nunes and anyone who believed his lies — many NeverTrumpers also swore up and down that Devin Nunes was a liar (and that Adam Schiff was truthful), but refuse to acknowledge this, retract prior claims, and explain what partisan fury caused them to get so many things so wrong for so long.

Below, some flashbacks of the media denouncing Devin Nunes, first in reaction to his press conference announcing FISA abuse, then in reaction to his memo documenting this abuse.

Which the NeverTrumpers all denied, along with their ally Adam Schiff.

The FISA Court Should Be Shut Down

Published by Papa Giorgio

AMERICAN GREATNESS has more on this… here is a snippet of the video:

“The point here Martha is the court knew about all of this,” Nunes said. “I’m glad they’ve acted, I’m glad they said something, but the court needs to be ended,” he argued.

The California Republican voiced concern that neither the FBI and FISA judges can be trusted with powerful surveillance powers on Sunday as well, telling Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that the FISA court is in “tremendous jeopardy.”

“We cannot support the FISA court right now,” he said flatly. “The judges are refusing to take action against these dirty cops and dirty lawyers who did this.”

REMEMBER, Judge Collyer signed off on a Carter Page warrant… (July 2018) via, “DOJ Releases Carter Page FISA Applications – Critics Proven Right”

RIGHT SCOOP notes the case presented to Judge Collyer 2-and-a-half years ago explaining all that the IG Report just confirmed:

Mark Levin’s Landmark Legal Foundation filed a secret motion with the FISA court to act on application abuses all the way back in 2017, but just five days later the FISA court, via Judge Rosemary Collyer, denied their claim. Below is a statement from Mark Levin:

Over 2 1/2 years ago, a Landmark Legal Foundation asked Judge Collyer to act on the FBI abuses committed on the court and she denied our request. Now, she asserts she has the power to act. Better late than never, I guess, but the judge should have acted much earlier.

This is the same Judge Rosemary Collyer who rebuked the FBI today.

It just goes to show you how Landmark Legal was on this well before the OIG was ever asked to investigate the FISA abuses. Levin is right though, the FISA court should have acted then as some of this was known back in 2017…..

RIGHT SCOOP has the letter to the FBI. Devin Nunes had it right on Sunday…. shut down the FISA court!

Some More Commentary On IG Related Stuff

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Hat-Tip to OK BOOMER) Trey Gowdy shares his biggest takeaways from the DOJ Inspector General’s FISA abuse report on ‘The Story with Martha MacCallum.’

The next article is thanks to AMERICAN GREATNESS: “Ratcliffe: Dems Withholding Transcript That Reveals How ‘Whistleblower Got Caught With Chairman Schiff’”

…Ratcliffe pointed out that Democrats keep using the word “demand” do describe Trump’s suggestion to the Ukraine president that corruption involving former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden should be looked into.

“Guess which word isn’t anywhere in the transcript?” Ratcliffe asked before informing the committee that the word is “demand.”

“Nowhere in that transcript does the president make a ‘demand,’” he declared. “Do you know where the word ‘demand’ came from? It came from the whistleblower.  That’s the first time we heard the word demand,” Ratcliffe explained.

When he notified the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community, he said President Trump made a demand! He thought he could do that because he thought no one would ever be able to prove that because what president would take the unprecedented step of releasing a transcript with a foreign leader. This president did! Something that the whistleblower never expected.

President Trump, we keep hearing, got caught. President Trump, we keep hearing, is obstructing justice. The president that took the unprecedented step of releasing a transcript so that everyone could see the truth is not obstructing congress. The president didn’t get caught. The whistleblower got caught. The whistleblower made false statements. The whistleblower got caught with Chairman Schiff!

Ratcliffe noted that rather than run the impeachment inquiry out of the House Judiciary where it belonged, Democrats put the highly conflicted chairman of the Intelligence Committee in charge of the case.

“The person who got caught with the whistleblower!” Ratcliffe exclaimed.

The Texas Republican recalled how Schiff had initially denied having any contact with the anti-Trump complainant identified online as Eric Ciaramella (seen below shaking hands with former president Barack Obama).

[….]

When questioned by Ratcliffe during his closed door testimony on October 4, Atkinson revealed information about a potential link between Schiff or his staff and the whistleblower.

Responding to a question about the transcript on Twitter last month, Ratcliffe said: “It’s because I asked IG Atkinson about his ‘investigation’ into the contacts between Schiff’s staff and the person who later became the whistleblower. The transcript is classified ‘secret’ so Schiff can prevent you from seeing the answers to my questions.”

This article excerpt comes by way of RED STATE: “Kimberley Strassel: ‘Buried in the IG Report is a Line that Poses an Enormous Question, Central to Everything’”

On Wednesday evening, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel noticed something peculiar in the IG report and posed a question via a twitter thread:

Buried in the IG report is a line that poses an enormous question, one that is central to everything, and really must be answered. Remember: According to all relevant players, prior to July of 2016, nobody had a Trump-Russia collusion narrative on their minds.

Indeed, the FBI says it was only the Downer tip-off at end-July that spurred the investigation. Downer for his part says it was public revelation in July of the DNC hack that caused him to finally wonder about collusion and connect his spring conversation with Papadopoulos.

Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson, meanwhile, in Senate testimony, “stress[ed]” he hired Steele in May to look at Trump’s “business activities” in Russia….By Simpson’s telling (under penalty of perjury), Steele just sort of stumbled on this much “broader” “political conspiracy.”

But here is what Steele told the IG: That in May 2016, Simpson approached Steele to “assist in determining Russia’s actions related to the 2016 election”; “whether Russia was trying to achieve a particular election outcome”; and…

“whether there were any ties between the Russian government and Trump and his campaign.” (Page 93) Seems Simpson had a pretty good bead on the “narrative” long before the govt. claims to have had it and before even his own source had reported it to him. Huh.

Let’s hope Attorney John Durham provides some answers on who exactly knew what in the spring of 2016.

The answer could be that Glenn Simpson and his wife, Mary Jacoby, wrote the script a long time ago.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) appeared on Fox News’  “Hannity” in the spring to discuss the origins of the Steele dossier. He said it should really be called the “Simpson” dossier. Although Christopher Steele likely contributed “stories” to the dossier, and his years of experience in British intelligence lent credence to the document, Nunes said he believed that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson may actually have written the majority of it.

[….]

Simpson hired Christopher Steele in June 2016. According to Smith, Steele had been “identified as a British spy in 1999.” He had been chief of the “Russia desk when Russian assassins killed FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko in London and was hardly in a position to make discreet inquiries. Still, Simpson must have thought Steele’s name at a minimum would be useful in marketing whatever his firm pulled together. Reportedly, Steele had a good relationship with the FBI, and journalists love spies who spill secrets.”

IG Report Slams FBI and Others (UPDATED)

Published by Papa Giorgio

JUMP to the FACEBOOK CONVO | JUMP to DAVID FRENCH

During that December 2018 hearing, Rep. Trey Gowdy posed this question to Comey: “Late July of 2016, the FBI did, in fact, open a counterintelligence investigation into, is it fair to say the Trump campaign or Donald Trump himself?”

“It’s not fair to say either of those things, in my recollection,” Comey retorted. “We opened investigations on four Americans to see if there was any connection between those four Americans and the Russian interference efforts. And those four Americans did not include the candidate.”

[….]

So, not only did the Obama administration’s FBI target the Trump campaign in the heat of the 2016 presidential election, but they used an intelligence briefing of candidate Trump to gather “evidence,” and even memorialized Trump’s comments in official FBI documents related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Nonetheless, Comey lied to Americans in order to keep up the appearance that the Steele dossier was in some way legitimate or that he was unaware of it’s illegitimacy.

The new report from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed former CIA Director John Brennan lied to Congress about whether the dossier authored by Christopher Steele was used in the Obama administration’s Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).

An example of a lie by ADAM SCHIFF, which he KNEW was a lie when he said it:

FBI and officials did not “abuse” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign.

In fact, DOJ and the FBI would have been remiss in their duty to protect the country had they not sought a FISA warrant and repeated renewals to conduct temporary surveillance of Carter Page, someone the FBI assessed to be an agent of the Russian government. DOJ met the rigor, transparency, and evidentiary basis needed to meet probable cause requirement, by demonstrating: contemporaneous evidence of Russia?s election interference;

Christopher Steele’s raw intelligence reporting did not inform the decision to initiate its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016. In fact, the FBI’s closely-held investigative team only received Steele’s reporting in mid-September more than seven weeks later.

(DEF-CON)

An example of a JOHN BRENNAN lie… which he knew was a lie when he said it:

Mr. Gowdy: Do you know if the Bureau ever relied on the Steele dossier as any — as part of any court filings, applications, petitions, pleadings?

Mr. Brennan: I have no awareness.

Mr. Gowdy: Did the CIA rely on it?

Mr. Brennan: No.

Mr. Gowdy: Why not?

Mr. Brennan: Because we — we didn’t. It wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done. It was — it was not.

[….]

Except, on Page 179 of the FISA report we find that former FBI Director James Comey told investigators that he remembers being “part of a conversation, maybe more than one conversation, where the topic was how the [Steele] reporting would be integrated, if at all, into the IC assessment.” 

Comey added that Brennan and other officials argued that the Steele dossier was found credible by intelligence community analysts, and that while they did not want to include it in the main body of the ICA, “they thought it was important enough and consistent enough that it ought to be part of the package in some way, and so they had come up with this idea to make an [appendix]. 

In an exclusive interview, Attorney General William Barr spoke to NBC News’ Pete Williams about the findings on the Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the Russia investigation and his criticisms of the FBI.

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr sits down with the Wall Street Journal to discuss the information released within the IG report on FBI 2016 election surveillance against candidate Trump; and FISA exploitation for use therein.

FACEBOOK MEANDERINGS

As I was driving around today in slow or stopped traffic, I gave my thoughts about what I was hearing today:

Just a quick note here. The four U.S. citizens spied on by the government we’ll have a great case to make in court to sue set government (during the whole Russian Collusion conspiracy against Trump). So not only did the original investigation cost many millions of dollars, it is possible that many millions more is going to be doled out.

Now… Adam Schiff has himself (against proper procedure) gone and gotten metadata from phone companies and then matched it up with journalist an opposing political persons phones. Without a warrant. I assume another criminal case will start around this… And, much like the other case millions of dollars may be doled out to these individuals who had their metadata illegally seized by the government.

BY THE WAY, you can read here “Democrats” when I say government. Ultimately all the taxpayers will have to — and have paid for it. But these incurred cost come by way of Democrats alone. (As well as never Trumper’s)

So two articles of impeachment have been put forward. Bribery was what CNN says was the Crux of the case a few weeks ago. However, remember all the terms changed over time: quid pro quo, to extortion, to bribery, to obstruction of justice. None of these are part of the impeachment articles. One impeachment article is “obstruction of Congress” (read here Democrats). What a joke! I think a bulk of the American voters see through this sham/witch Hunt.

RESPONSE:

After another quick link of mine linked to this REASON.ORG article, a friend said this on Facebook:

IG Report, Chapter 12: Conclusions & Recommendations (p. 411)–CHS refers to “confidential human sources”:

“We did not find any documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision to conduct these operations. Additionally, we found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any CHSs within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign.”

Yes, there were problems with some aspects of FISA, but those issues were later. The investigation began earlier, based on reports from a friendly government that there might be connections between Russia and the Trump campaign. Bottom line: the Trump accusation that this was all a witch hunt with political motives has been debunked.

This was my response[s], and it is solid!

JIM G. — two things, well, three. The first is, Horowitz had no subpoena power. So, for instance, he wanted to interview Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS. Glenn simply declined. In other words, Horowitz had an incomplete picture. (Durham and Barr traveled to Italy and other places to talk to what we [not you] know were players involved in those countries.) That is number one.

Number two… and this is a common sense one. Of all the mistakes documented plus the Woods violation… Why didn’t a single one break in Trump’s favor? In other words, FBI director Wray is putting forward 40-changes to stop this from happening again. (Which wouldn’t have happened is Hillary were elected.) If Director Wray were to say, “wow, that was something from this whole thing that worked well. We should keep that.” Or if half, or even a quarter of the mistakes broke in Trump’s favor, I wouldn’t be skeptical.

And third, remember, the Steele Report (as I said in the past) was almost the exclusive bulk of the info to obtain the FISA warrants. Prior to this multiple voices in the FBI warned against Steele. The CIA warned the FBI NOT to use it. Yet:

…DOJ IG Michael Horowitz, who assumed his position during the Obama administration, and his team reported that “Steele’s handling agent” in the FBI “told us that when Steele provided him with the first election reports in July 2016 and described his engagement with Fusion GPS, it was obvious to him that the request for the research was politically motivated.”

In addition, the “supervisory intelligence analyst who supervised the analytical efforts for the Crossfire Hurricane team (Supervisory Intel Analyst) explained that he also was aware of the potential for political influences on the Steele reporting.”

The Horowitz report explained that the FBI was still able to use the Steele dossier even if it was clear that it contained opposition research connected to the Hillary Clinton campaign….

(PJ-MEDIA)

I also just found out that Horowitz wanted to speak to Comey (supporting point #1). But he couldn’t because Comey didn’t sign back up for his top secret clearance, so he couldn’t be interviewed in depth. Durham has the ability to compel testimony.

ACE OF SPADES has this great

The IG report might have falsely claimed that there was no evidence of political bias in the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, BUT IT FOUND THAT ALL OF DEVIN NUNES’ CLAIMS ABOUT LIES TOLD TO SECURE THE FISA WARRANT WERE TRUE, AND ALL OF ADAM SCHIFF’S COUNTER-CLAIMS WERE FALSE:

The memo from the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee reported:

  • A salacious and unverified dossier formed an essential part of the application to secure a warrant against a Trump campaign affiliate named Carter Page. This application failed to reveal that the dossier was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
  • The application cited a Yahoo News article extensively. The story did not corroborate the dossier, and the FBI wrongly claimed Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, was not a source for the story.
  • Nellie Ohr, the wife of a high-ranking Justice Department official, also worked on behalf of the Clinton campaign effort. Her husband Bruce Ohr funneled her research into the Department of Justice. Although he admitted that Steele “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,” this and the Ohrs’ relationship with the Clinton campaign was concealed from the secret court that grants surveillance warrants.
  • The dossier was “only minimally corroborated” and unverified, according to FBI officials.
  • All of these things were found to be true by the Inspector General Michael Horowitz in his December 9 report. In fact, Horowitz detailed rampant abuse that went far beyond these four items.
  • The Democratic minority on the committee, then led by Rep. Adam Schiff, put out a response memo with competing claims:
  • FBI and DOJ officials did not omit material information from the FISA warrant.
  • The DOJ “made only narrow use of information from Steele’s sources about Page’s specific activities in 2016.”
  • In subsequent FISA renewals, DOJ provided additional information that corroborated Steele’s reporting.
  • The Page FISA warrant allowed the FBI to collect “valuable intelligence.”
  • “Far from ‘omitting’ material facts about Steele, as the Majority claims, DOJ repeatedly informed the Court about Steele’s background, credibility, and potential bias.”
  • The FBI conducted a “rigorous process” to vet Steele’s allegations, and the Page FISA application explained the FBI’s reasonable basis for finding Steele credible.
  • Steele’s prior reporting was used in “criminal proceedings.”

Each of these claims were found by Horowitz to be false….

(EMPHASIS ADDED)

DAVID FRENCH FODDER

One of the many nuggets from ACE OF SPADES is this from MSNBC: National Review Writer On Why Nunes Should Step Down (March 2017). In the video from MSNBC we see David French retroactively go down in flames! ALSO:

Suffice it to say, ACE destroys David French and Adam Schiff!

Here is more regarding the IG REPORT with thanks to FLOPPING ACES!

The DOJ Inspector General’s report disclosed a multitude of FISA violations by the FBI. As noted by John Solomon, there were 51 Woods violations and nine false statements made to the FISA Court.

To understand just how shoddy the FBI’s work was in securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant targeting the Trump campaign, you only need to read an obscure attachment to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report.

Appendix 1 identifies the total violations by the FBI of the so-called Woods Procedures, the process by which the bureau verifies information and assures the FISA court its evidence is true.

The Appendix identifies a total of 51 Woods procedure violations from the FISA application the FBI submitted to the court authorizing surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page starting in October 2016.

A whopping nine of those violations fell into the category called: “Supporting document shows that the factual assertion is
inaccurate.”

For those who don’t speak IG parlance, it means the FBI made nine false assertions to the FISA court. In short, what the bureau said was contradicted by the evidence in its official file.

More at the link.

Horowitz also identified 17 “significant errors or omissions” in the FISA application. Among them:

1. Omitted information the FBI had obtained from another U.S. government agency detailing its prior relationship with Page, including that Page had been approved as an “operational contact” for the other agency from 2008 to 2013, and that Page had provided information to the other agency concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers, one of which overlapped with facts asserted in the FISA application;

2. Included a source characterization statement asserting that Steele’s prior reporting had been “corroborated and used in criminal proceedings,” which overstated the significance of Steele’s past reporting and was not approved by Steele’s handling agent, as required by the Woods Procedures;

3. Omitted information relevant to the reliability of Person 1, a key Steele sub-source (who was attributed with providing the information in Report 95 and some of the information in Reports 80 and 102 relied upon in the application), namely that (1) Steele himself told members of the Crossfire Hurricane team that Person 1 was a “boaster” and an “egoist” and “may engage in some embellishment” and (2) INFORMATION REDACTED

4. Asserted that the FBI had assessed that Steele did not directly provide to the press information in the September 23 Yahoo News article based on the premise that Steele had told the FBI that he only shared his election-related research with the FBI and Fusion GPS, his client; this premise was incorrect and contradicted by documentation in the Woods File- Steele had told the FBI that he also gave his information to the State Department;

5. Omitted Papadopoulos’s consensually monitored statements to an FBI CHS in September 2016 denying that anyone associated with the Trump campaign was collaborating with Russia or with outside groups like Wikileaks in the release of emails;

6. Omitted Page’s consensually monitored statements to an FBI CHS in August 2016 that Page had “literally never met” or “said one word to” Paul Manafort and that Manafort had not responded to any of Page’s emails; if true, those statements were in tension with claims in Report 95 that Page was participating in a conspiracy with Russia by acting as an intermediary for Manafort on behalf of the Trump campaign; and

7. Included Page’s consensually monitored statements to an FBI CHS in October 2016 that the FBI believed supported its theory that Page was an agent of Russia but omitted other statements Page made that were inconsistent with its theory, including denying having met with Sechin and Divyekin, or even knowing who Divyekin was; if true, those statements contradicted the claims in Report 94 that Page had met secretly with Sechin and Divyekin about future cooperation with Russia and shared derogatory information about candidate Clinton.

Do read the rest. 17 major “mistakes” and not one of them goes Trump’s way.

The FBI knew that the dossier was nearly 100% without substance, but acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe demanded it be used in the ICA. The CIA was reluctant….

(READ IT ALL)

INSTAPUNDIT notes the FBI campaign against Trump is not necessarily new:

And I have noted before the same on my site:

This is the same tactic Andrew Weissmann used on Flynn (WASHINGTON TIMES | THE FEDERALIST)….

UPDATED POST by POWERLINE intros the video for us:

In the memoir Cardiac Arrest: Five Heart-Stopping Years as a CEO on the Feds’ Hit List (written with Stephen Saltarelli), Howard Root tells the story of his experience as chief executive officer of Vascular Solutions caught in the crosshairs of the federal government when prosecutors sought to put his company out of business and to send him to the big house. Howard touched on one aspect of his story in the Wall Street Journal column “Sally Yates’s legacy of injustice at the Department of Justice.”

Howard is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. Among other things, he is a corporate lawyer turned entrepreneur, inventor, and corporate executive.

Howard faced down the government. The jury didn’t think much of the government’s case. It returned with a verdict of acquittal on all charges after a day of deliberations, and that includes the time spent electing a foreman.

Howard’s case is important in its own way. The crimes charged were bogus. The government procured testimony through serious prosecutorial misconduct. The prosecution represented fruit of the poisonous Yates Memo tree. Howard had the resources to fight the government’s case against him and his company, but it exacted an enormous toll. The case cries out for study and reform.

Howard has thus sought to engage prosecutors in discussion of the case in person before professional audiences of lawyers and businessmen for whom it holds immediate relevance. The prosecutors and their superiors in the department have sought to keep Howard from speaking to such audiences. When I wrote the Department of Justice to request its explanation for what it was doing, it declined to comment (a week after I asked the question).

Former Assistant United States Attorney Andrew McCarthy was more forthcoming. He called out the Department of Justice’s behavior as “a disgrace.”

The Department of Justice declines to answer to Howard or me but it has at long last responded to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Utah Senator Mike Lee. Senators Grassley and Lee sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein seeking an update on the Justice Department’s inquiry into professional misconduct committed by prosecutors and higher-ups who brought the charges against Howard and have since sought to prevent him from being heard. I posted the Grassley/Lee letter in “Fear & loathing at the DoJ, cont’d.”

In their letter Senators Grassley and Lee noted that “reports suggest a pattern of threatened and actual retribution against defendants and witnesses borne out of the Department’s disappointment with the outcome of a particular case. This not only casts doubt on the Department’s ability to accept the results of judicial proceedings in a professional manner befitting the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency, but it significantly undermines our confidence in its commitment to hold government attorneys accountable for questionable actions that may have occurred in the course of this case or other cases.” …..

Dems Had Their Asses Handed To Them (Day 3)

Published by Papa Giorgio

In the fight between left vs right, Democrats vs Republicans, progressives vs conservatives, the sides are clear. The motives are clear. One side will say what they believe helps them the most and hurts their opponents at the same time. It may be ugly, but it’s honest (at least in their intentions if not in substance).

On Tuesday, Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) laid out the Republican case against impeachment in his opening statement as the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. In his statement, he did as most expected and attacked the Democrats’ case, but the real meat and potatoes from his statement came in the form of attacks against mainstream media. (NOQ REPORT)

Rep. John Ratcliffe, notes that Democrats have called Trump’s conduct “bribery” and then pulls out a mountain of papers of deposition transcripts. He says at no point have witnesses described his conduct as “bribery” in the last six weeks. He says the word appears only once — and that’s in relation to former Vice President Joe Biden’s alleged conduct.

LEGAL INSURRECTION — Rep Elise Stefanik!

OTHER VIDEOS

RIGHT SCOOP:

Here’s a few notable clips from this evening’s hearing, the first of which is both Tim Morrison and Kurt Volker agreeing that Zelensky had no idea that the Ukraine ad was being held up at the time of the July 25th phone call…

Volker also testified that there was no quid pro quo or ‘bribery’, as they are now calling it:

And finally, Morrison, who was listening in on the July 25th phone call between Trump and Zelensky says nothing concerned him about the call:

RIGHT SCOOP:

 

Dems Had Their Asses Handed To Them (Day 2 | Perjury Update)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Remember, just like in Clinton’s case… the impeachment fortified his popularity with the people. SO TO is this happening (as predicted) with Trump… already his popularity is up 4-points. And it is rooted in people seeing the following ass-whoopin’ by the GOP on Democratic shenanigans. NUNES hits another one out of the ballpark. House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes makes his opening statement during the second public impeachment hearing.

30-second tear-down (GOP setting records):

BTW, for your reading pleasure: LEGAL INSURRECTION, excellent write up of Elise Stefanik. Here is more from RIGHT SCOOP:

…Stefanik points out that Yovanovitch testified that she participated in practice confirmation hearings in the Obama administration, taking practice questions specifically regarding Hunter Biden being hired on Burisma’s board.

Stefanik then drops her payload:

“So for the millions of Americans watching, President Obama’s own State Department was so concerned about potential conflicts of interest from Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma that they raised it themselves while prepping this wonderful ambassador nominee before her confirmation. And yet our Democratic colleagues and the chairman of this committee cry foul when we dare ask that same question that the Obama state department was so concerned about.”

So there you go. It was a huge concern for Obama’s own state department but nobody else is allowed to bring it up? And remember, this ‘prepping’ was well before Biden’s infamous comments on it that gave life to Republican concerns about it.

Levin responded to Stefanik’s testimony this way:

Two MIC DROP moments from yesterday!

PERJURY UPDATE

IN FACT, RED STATE points out that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch may have perjured herself:

…But another thing caught my eye and the eye of several other conservatives following things live – It really, really looks like Yovanovitch committed perjury today. 

I remember seeing this live and thinking “huh?”

Early on in her testimony, she stated under oath that the issue of Hunter Biden and Burisma was never brought up to her by the previous administration. Later, though, Rep. Stefanik finally got to ask some questions and that’s where things went off the rails. Under intense questioning, including reading of her prior closed-door testimony, Yovanovitch was forced to admit that the previous administration had indeed brought up the Biden/Burisma issue to her.

And lest someone argue it may have been a forgettable affair, it wasn’t just in passing. The Obama officials prepping her were apparently so concerned about the issue being raised that it was part of her mock Q and A to get ready for her nomination hearing. These are issues she studied up on and she clearly was aware that the previous administration had briefed her on the matter. Yet, we see her pretty clearly lie about it early on in today’s hearing, only admitting it after being pressed with her prior testimony.

That sure sounds like perjury to me….

The DAILY WIRE also notes the discrepancy in testimony:

…Yet, earlier during the hearing Yovanovitch gave what appeared to be contradictory remarks.

Yovanovitch said, “And although I have met former Vice President Biden several times over the course of our many years in government service, neither he nor the previous administration ever raised the issue of either Burisma or Hunter Biden with me.”

[…]

WOW! And this may not be the only time — unfortunately (FEDERALIST):

  • Yovanovitch Emailed With Dem Staffer After Whistleblower Complaint, Contradicting Under-Oath Testimony: What makes the email particularly unsettling is that it indicates former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch possibly committed perjury during her ‘impeachment inquiry’ deposition, where  he was questioned under oath.

Dems Had Their Asses Handed To Them (Day 1)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Rep. Devin Nunes, D-Calif., the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, questioned George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, in the first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. The probe centers around a July phone call in which Trump asked the president of Ukraine to investigate former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Both Kent and Taylor testified to lawmakers in October behind closed doors.

JORDAN!

Another lie by Schiff (LEGAL INSURRECTION):

…From Townhall:

At the beginning of the first public impeachment inquiry hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who was temporarily moved to the Intelligence Committee, asked Schiff when they could vote on having the whistleblower testify since it was he who wanted to hear their testimony in the first place.

“You are the only member who knows who that individual is, and your staff is the only staff of any member of Congress who has had a chance to talk with that individual,” Jordan said. “We would like that opportunity. When might that happen in this proceeding today?”

“First, as the gentleman knows, that’s a false statement. I do not know the identity of the whistleblower and I’m determined to make sure the identity is protected,” Schiff replied. “But as I said to Mr. Conway, you’ll have an opportunity after the witnesses have testified to make a motion to subpoena any witness and compel a vote.”

Well, Schiff needs to look at reports from September and October.

Back in October, the Intelligence Community Inspector General said “the whistleblower did not disclose contact w Schiff/Committee staff – so IG never looked into it.”

A few days before that The New York Times reported Schiff knew about the whistleblower’s accusation before anyone filed a complaint.

Even The Washington Post gave Schiff four Pinocchios because for two months he kept claiming no one on his committee spoke to the whistleblower….