Russian Dossier

Durham Releases Sussmann Timeline

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is the timeline via JUST THE NEWS… the entire article is worth a read:

July 5, 2016: The same day that the FBI clears Hillary Clinton of criminality in the mishandling of classified emails on her hard drive, Steele walks into an FBI agent he knows in London and delivers his first version of the dossier alleging collusion between Trump and the Kremlin. The field office doesn’t act on it immediatetely.

Month of July 2016: A group of computer executives aligned with Clnton and working with Sussmann’s law firm begin looking for evidence in Internet domain name service logs to tie Trump to Russia, eventually coming up with the Alfa Bank theory. “Tech Executive-1 tasked these researchers to mine Internet data to establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’ tying then-candidate Trump to Russia,” Durham wrote in Monday’s court filing. “In doing so, Tech Executive-1 indicated that he was seeking to please certain ‘VIPs,’ referring to individuals at Law Firm-1 and the Clinton Campaign.”

July 26, 2016: CIA Director John Brennan tells President Barack Obama about intelligence that Hillary Clinton has personally approved a plan “from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services” in the election. That briefing is captured in Brennan’s handwritten notes.

July 30-31, 2016: Frustrated by inaction by the FBI in London, Steele travels to Washington to meet his friend, senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, to relay his research on Trump. Ohr takes the information directly to FBI headquarters and the bureau’s senior leadership, where Steele is eventually brought on as a confidential informant.

July 31, 2016: FBI formally opens the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into alleged Russia-Trump collusion.

Sept. 7, 2016: CIA sends FBI Director James Comey and others the same warning it gave Obama, namely that Clinton has approved a plan to tie Trump to Russia to distract from her email scandal.

Sept. 15, 2016: Another lawyer at Sussmann’s firm briefs the Clinton campaign on the Russia collusion research and efforts to plant a story in the media leaking some of the findings.

Sept. 19, 2016: Sussmann brings the Alpha Bank angle of Russia collusion to the FBI through Baker. The FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Team, on the same day, gets six of Steele’s memos from the dossier and asks for permission to seek a FISA warrant.

Sept. 21, 2016: FBI lawyers urged Crossfire Hurricane to refocus the FISA on Carter Page predominantly and not fellow Trump adviser George Papadopolous, according to the inspector general.

Sept. 23, 2016: First information leaked from Clinton campaign’s Russia research appears in Yahoo News, including information gleaned from Steele.

Oct. 13, 2016: Steele breaks FBI protocol and goes to the State Department, meeting with senior official Kathleen Kavalec, where the former MI6 agent working for the Clinton campaign briefs officials on his dossier and the Alpha Bank allegations and admits he’s also talking to major news media.

Oct. 21, 2016: FBI secures first FISA warrant targeting former Trump adviser Carter Page in Russia probe.

Oct. 31, 2016: The first news story leaks about the Alpha Bank allegations, and Hillary Clinton calls attention to it as well as putting out a statement by her adviser Jake Sullivan, now President Biden’s national security adviser. “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank,” Clinton tweeted. Sullivan boasted the allegations in the article “could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow[,] that “[t]his secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia[,]” and that “[w]e can only assume that federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia.”

Nov. 8, 2017: Donald Trump wins the election.

Feb 9, 2017: Sussmann takes Alfa Bank allegations and new information to the CIA, again denying he is acting on behalf of a client.

SEE ALSO:

  • Durham Filing: Text Message Implicates Hillary Clinton Campaign in ‘Conspiracy’ (BREITBART)
  • Lawyer charged in Durham case asks to block dossier evidence (BREITBART)

Russia Gate: Glenn Greenwald’s “Media MOAB” and More

Published by Papa Giorgio

Shepard Smith at one point reported [and believed] the Steele Dossier as fact, or at least not disproven. Which at that time it was — both in conservative news sources, Congressmen (like Devin Nunes), and the like — shown to be a fabrication. We even knew quite some time ago that the FBI knew it was a complete fabrication. EVEN personalities on FOX NEWS were saying it was bunk! And these three indictments by Prosecutor Durham, the most recent of Igor Danchenko, prove this contention.

I will combine snaps of the Tweets with other media in them by Glenn Greenwald as well as text provided by THREAD READER:

GLENN’S THREAD

The employees of these media corporations know, deep down, what they did. They did the worst thing you can possibly do while calling yourself a “journalist”: they drowned US politics for years in a fake conspiracy theory funded and concocted by criminals for partisan gain.

But we have heard so little about these indictments from these media figures. Why? Because they know that as long as they stay united in silence, the only people who will point out what they did are those they have frozen out of their circle and trained their audience not to hear

The NYT, the WPost, CNN, NBC and the digital liberal outlets are all vastly more guilty of what they have spent years claiming Trump and the GOP are: they basically ran a dangerous disinformation campaign, full of lies, in conjunction with CIA/FBI, and now won’t own up to it.

From the start, Russiagate — which drowned US politics and dangerously ratcheted up tensions with a major nuclear-armed power — was concocted from whole cloth by serial liars paid for by the Clinton campaign and spread by their media servants: David Corn, Isikoff, Frank Foer.

They all made gigantic profit from this set of lies: all of them. Their ratings skyrocketed by scaring liberals about Kremlin control of the US. They wrote best-selling books and gave themselves Pulitzers based on this massive fraud. FBI lied to the FISA court. CIA fueled it all.

The indictments “cast new uncertainty on some past reporting on the dossier by news organizations, including The Washington Post?” LOL The dossier wasn’t just paid for by the Clinton campaign – which they lied about for a year – but the info in it came from a Clinton operative.

What Rachel Maddow in particular did makes her one of the most disgraceful and unhinged media figures ever to work for a major media corporation. Her derangement and lies were off the charts. Yet the liberal networks are bidding for her: because DNC disinformation is their model!

Anyway, for all of those who lied to the public for years — the NYT and WPost reporters, the rich and insulated CNN and NBC hosts, the countless charlatans and politicians like Adam Schiff & John Brennan who wrote bestselling books — none of this will matter. Lies are rewarded.

Polarization of media means virtually every major media corporation — CNN, NBC, NYT, WPost, NPR -have an exclusively Dem audience. These Dems don’t want to hear that they were lied to and, even if they knew, they’d be fine with it: for the right cause. So zero consequences.

But if you are someone who hates these media outlets and the liars who work for them to your core, know that your hatred is valid, justified and righteous. They are a toxic force in US political life. They don’t lie, smear and propagandize on occasion: it’s their core function.

MEDIA….

Jesse Watters

Jesse Watters discusses how the media latched on to the Russia collusion narrative on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’

(Key in the below is that he worked for a Russian energy company. Why would Russians want Trump out? See my past “Bullet Points” on the issue.)

Dan Hoffman

Former CIA station chief Dan Hoffman reacts to federal agents arresting the primary sub-source who contributed to the Trump-Russia dossier

Jonathan Turley

Brett Tolman

Former federal prosecutor Brett Tolman reacts to the principle source of the Steele Dossier being charged with five counts of lying to the FBI.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY

TWITCHY hat-tip:

James Comey January 12th (2017) “Tri-Fecta” | John Solomon

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Eye on the bouncing ball… don’t lose track of this story over time)

I have been busy and so I cannot post here or at my Rumble (https://tinyurl.com/t2yuse3k​) as often as I would like. But I wanted to post a truncated and reshuffled appearance of John Solomon on the Sean Hannity Radio Show. The most important portion is the January 12th, 2017, mention of James Comey self-refuting actions/intel briefings (Mark: 0.00 to 2:53​).

I include some extra content after this, enjoy.

 

Senate Hearing On FBI Investigation In President Trump and Russia

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Eye Still On The Ball) Congressional Oversight in the Face of Executive Branch and Media Suppression: The Case Study of Crossfire Hurricane. Two people I respect greatly:

  • Sharyl Attkisson’s Amazon Books are HERE;
  • Lee Smith’s Amazon Books are HERE.

Some Examples of NYTs Faux Pas’

Published by Papa Giorgio

DAILY CALLER zeroes in on the first claim:

The New York Times has issued an absurdly written correction to a story about President Trump and Russian meddling.

White House reporter Maggie Haberman falsely claimed in her report that 17 intelligence agencies all agreed Russia tried to interfere in the presidential election, reiterating a thoroughly debunked liberal talking point.

[….]

Haberman’s story repeated a claim liberals began circulating following a declassified report from the Director of National Intelligence in October on the Russian influence campaign. Since the DNI heads up 17 agencies, it was easy to frame the declassified report as a consensus built on 17 separate assessments. In fact only the three agencies who reviewed the matter signed off on that consensus.

The former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said as much in a May Senate hearing. The assessment was a “coordinated” product from the FBI, the NSA and the CIA, he said, working under the “aegis” of the DNI. It was not signed off on by 17 agencies. That makes sense, as some of the agencies — Coast Guard intel perhaps most obviously — would have little to do with election hacking.

The Daily Caller News Foundation also addressed the claim in a fact check of a Hillary Clinton interview in May where she again repeated the phrase. Certainly, none of the other agencies disagreed on the record, but that’s to be expected if they didn’t conduct a separate analysis…..

(See also THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER)

MY PAST POSTS ON THE MATTER:

More on the second claim regarding the Steele Dossier being Russian propaganda — even though it was touted for over 2-years in the pages of the NYT:

Who knew? …On Saturday, the New York Times published a story about how the “Mueller Report [was] likely to renew scrutiny of the Steele Dossier.” The Times reports that the dossier’s contents could even have been a Russian disinformation operation aimed at then-candidate Trump. Which comes as no surprise to conservatives who have been following the story.

Remember, the Steele dossier came about because the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC paid a law firm, which then hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump. Fusion GPS then paid a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, who leaned on contacts close to the Kremlin to get information that was used in the preparation of the dossier.

Is it any wonder that those Russians, who wanted to sow discord in the United States, would jump at the opportunity to provide misinformation, knowing that the media would eat it up?…

(THE BLAZE)

ALSO (hat-tip RED STATE):

As it turns out, back in January 2018, New York Times reporter Scott Shane, the lead reporter on this story, was a member of a panel that somewhat resembled the Star Wars cantina scene at the International Spy Museum titled “Unpacking the Russia Story with the Experts Who Have Covered It.” The video is cued up to the appropriate cut for your convenience:

And regarding the New York Times correction to a story about Trump’s tax plan:

The New York Times issued an embarrassing correction after a report that attacked President Donald Trump’s recently passed tax plan got the numbers about as wrong as could be.

The lengthy Feb. 23 feature, headlined, “Get to Know the New Tax Code While Filling Out This Year’s 1040,” sought to detail how Trump’s tax plan would hurt middle-class families. A hypothetical couple — christened Sam and Felicity Taxpayer — would see their tax bill rise by nearly $4,000, according to the story.

Then came the correction saying the family would actually see taxes go down.

The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman mocked the Times piece before the Old Gray Lady issued the correction.

“Even perennial tax-increase advocate Warren Buffett is now acknowledging the economic benefit of the Trump tax cuts, but The New York Times newsroom still won’t concede the point,” Freeman wrote on Feb. 27. “Will criticism from a liberal law professor persuade The Times to reconsider?”

Well, The Times did reconsider — but it may still not be 100 percent accurate…..

(FOX NEWS)

A FEW MORE

The New York Times had to issue an embarrassing correction to its story about another decades-old accusation of sexual misconduct against US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — because it failed to tell readers that the alleged victim doesn’t even remember the incident.

As The Post reported in its front-page story Monday, the Times piece omitted that crucial fact.

The Times article had been adapted from a book on Kavanaugh by two of its reporters, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly. The newspaper claimed that Max Stier, a former classmate of the justice years ago at Yale University, had allegedly seen Kavanaugh pull his pants down at a party, and his friends then pushed his penis into the hands of a female student….

(NY POST | See also the NEW YORK INTELLIGENCER)

5 Biggest Screw-Ups by The New York Times So Far This Year

  1. Corrects Claim That 17 Intel Agencies ‘Agree’ on Russia
  2. Mistakes Parody Twitter Account for North Korea’s Official One
  3. Flubs Story on Food Stamps and Soda—Twice
  4. Editor Forced to Correct Statement on Attorney General
  5. Corrects Editorial Attacking Sarah Palin With Debunked Conspiracy Theory 

(DAILY SIGNAL)

The New York Times was forced to issue four corrections to a failed hit piece against Foundation for Defense of Democracies founder Mark Dubowitz.

Last week, the Times published a piece aimed at portraying Dubowitz as corrupt, unethical, and incompetent because he opposed former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and applauded President Donald Trump for withdrawing the U.S. from the horrendous pact.

The embarrassing article falsely claimed that a GOP donor with financial ties to the United Arab Emirates gave FDD $2.7 million to fund an anti-Qatar conference; that Dubowitz “paid himself” twice as much as others who head think tanks; that Dubowitz created his own salary to far exceed his peers in the industry; and that the FDD is connected to Israel’s Likud Party.

Every single one of those claims is completely false, and the Times was forced to issue a lengthy correction admitting that its error-ridden piece had to be updated.

As noted by the correction, here’s the truth: Dubowitz’s compensation is determined by a board of directors, meaning he doesn’t arbitrarily create his own salary; his annual salary is almost identical with other think tank leaders; the FDD is not directly tied to the Likud Party in any way; and GOP donor Elliott Broidy gave $360,000 for the  FDD conference, not $2.7 million….

These weren’t minor errors where someone’s name was misspelled or the date of an event was wrong. This was intended to be a disgusting, salacious, hit piece against Dubowitz because he gave credit to Trump for pulling out of the Iran deal.

The piece is uniquely embarrassing because of the volume of the embarrassing errors and how easy it should have been for editors to catch the erroneous claims.

In fact, the errors are so egregious it appears like the Times deliberately inflated figures and peddled falsehoods to ramp up the heat on Debowitz….

(I LOVE MY FREEDOM)

ETC., ETC., ETC….

Steele Dossier Was Exclusively Used (UPDATED)

Published by Papa Giorgio

UPDATE BELOW

NEWSBUSTERS notes this about the Steele Dossier:

  • While CNN previously insisted that the FISA warrant against Page did not use the infamous and debunked Steele dossier, in a Senate hearing on Wednesday, IG Michael Horowitz confirmed that the warrant was “entirely” reliant on it. The report also showed that FBI investigators knew the dossier was bogus and presented it to the FISA court as a reliable source of information.

They link to this excellent article by THE FEDERALIST:

In an astonishing admission, the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz conceded to lawmakers Wednesday that the FBI’s FISA applications used to continue surveillance on the 2016 Trump campaign were based entirely on sources for the widely discredited Steele Dossier funded by the Democrats.

“The FISA applications relied entirely on information from the Steele… from the primary sub-source’s reporting to support the allegation that Page was coordinating with the Russian government on 2016 U.S. presidential election activities. However, the FBI did not share this information from department lawyers, and it was therefore omitted from the last two renewal applications,” Horowitz said.

The Democrat-funded Steele Dossier was basis for the grand Russian conspiracy theory peddled by deep-state government officials and the media that lead to a two-and-a-half year special counsel investigation with unlimited resources that ultimately vindicated the president.

The Horowitz report illustrates how the primary sub-source’s information fed to the Steele Dossier undercut the dossier’s own claims….

BTW, for 2-years I was told that the Steele Dossier was only PART of the warrants. NOPE. I was right, others woefully wrong.

Some Additional Stuff

In an article noted by POWERLINE, Tucker Carlson notes how the media is partially responsible for the “cover-up” of facts regarding the spying on an American citizen – via JEWISH WORLD REVIEW:

Thanks to the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report, we now know for certain what has been, for those paying attention, fairly obvious. The Steele dossier played a central role in the genesis of the Russia hoax and was used to justify extensive spying on former naval officer and Annapolis graduate Carter Page.

The top two leaders of the FBI were closely involved in this fiasco. Other powerful people knew what was happening and lied to cover it up. That all was confirmed by the IG report. The report was a disaster for the credibility of top leaders in Barack Obama’s FBI, and it’s also a big problem for the American news media.

For example, in early 2018, Washington Post intelligence and national security correspondent Shane Harris lectured Kim Strassel of The Wall Street Journal about how little she knows about the story.

“Yes,” he wrote, “I am telling you the dossier was not used as the basis for a FISA warrant on Carter Page.” That’s false. And yet, Harris hasn’t apologized or even acknowledged his incompetence.

Or take NBC News’s so-called intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian. In the summer of 2018, he smugly tweeted, “Trump is wrong about Carter Page, the dossier and the FISA warrant.” But it looks like Trump was right, and he was wrong.

CNN Newsroom anchor and chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto did admit the Steele dossier might have been used for the warrant. But don’t be impressed. He lectured readers that “the FBI would corroborate information in the dossier on its own before using such intel to justify the FISA warrant.” Of course, that didn’t happen. In fact, the FBI hid information showing the dossier was false. Did Sciutto issue a correction? Of course not. But it does seem a little unfair to focus on Jim Sciutto. He was merely following the lead of almost everyone else at CNN, all of whom were frantically trying to convince us that the dossier was irrelevant:

Evan Perez, CNN senior justice correspondent: “You know, a lot of people will focus on the dossier, a lot of people will focus on a FISA, of Carter Page, and they’ll say they were spying on a campaign. But at the beginning, this is all about what Russia was doing.”

Shimon Prokupecz, CNN crime & justice correspondent: “Now Republicans were trying to claim that the dossier was key to getting the FISA, the surveillance warrant for Carter Page. But the Democrats memo clearly shows it wasn’t key.”

James Clapper, CNN national security analyst: “Even the earlier version of the redacted FISA authorization to me had enough information in it to indicate that the dossier was certainly not used as the primary source.”

Everything you just read turned out to be wrong. Has CNN retracted the comments or apologized? That’s a rhetorical question. Apologies require introspection and integrity. At CNN, they’re doubling down. CNN’s Don Lemon explained that, by definition, everything CNN reported was true….

Back in September of 2017, the EMPTY WHEEL was already noting John Sipher’s defense of the dossier as indefensible: “John Sipher’s Garbage Post Arguing the Steele Dossier Isn’t Garbage” And my post documenting the hard work of MYRDDRAAL showing that almost nothing was confirmed as true or fitting reality is here: “Past CIA Head of Russia Clueless“

CHUCK ROSS add to the media blame by noting that a Washington Post reporter is going back and doing a series on how the Steele Dossier was proffered as fact. In this latest article, Rachel Maddow is under the microscope: “WaPo Columnist Rips Rachel Maddow For Hyping Steele Dossier“

…According to the IG report, the FBI was unable to corroborate any of Steele’s allegations of collusion involving the Trump campaign. Steele’s primary source for the dossier also disputed key allegations in the document. Steele told FBI agents in October 2016 that one of the main sub-sources for the dossier was a “boaster” and “embellisher,” the report further stated.

Wemple laid out a timeline of Maddow’s coverage of the dossier, noting that she tended to hype developments that cut in favor of Steele’s reporting, while ignoring information that undermined the ex-spy.

“When small bits of news arose in favor of the dossier, the franchise MSNBC host pumped air into them,” wrote Wemple. “At least some of her many fans surely came away from her broadcasts thinking the dossier was a serious piece of investigative research, not the flimflam, quick-twitch game of telephone outlined in the Horowitz report.”

“She seemed to be rooting for the document,” he noted.

According to Wemple, Maddow touted reports from other news outlets that claimed parts of the dossier were corroborated. On May 3, 2017, she said on her show that “more and more” aspects of the dossier had been “independently corroborated.”

On Oct. 5, 2017, she said that “a lot” of the claims in the dossier were “dead to rights.” On April 16, 2018, she hyped a story published by McClatchy that the special counsel’s team had received evidence backing up the dossier’s allegation that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen visited Prague in August 2016 to meet Kremlin operatives. The IG report said that the allegation was “not true.”

Maddow appeared so convinced of the dossier’s accuracy that she aired an hour-long special report on Dec. 8, 2017 hyping Steele’s reporting.

[….]

Maddow has only mentioned the Steele dossier once on her show since the release of the IG report. But instead of discussing the report’s critique of Steele, Maddow asserted that the IG debunked a GOP theory that the dossier was the spark for the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign.

“She was there for the bunkings, absent for the debunkings — a pattern of misleading and dishonest asymmetry,” says Wemple.

And where is the full-court-press in discussing how Adam Schiff has been shown to be woefully wrong at best, and a liar at worst (THE LID):

….Schiff ‘s also lied when he claimed the Justice Department was truthful with the FISA court about “Steele’s prior relationship with the FBI.”

Page 364 of Horowitz report says the “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 FBI handling agent, as required by the Woods Procedures”

[….]

Schiff claimed 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. But Horowitz disagreed on Page 383 and 384 of his report.

We determined that prior to and during the pendency of the FISAs the FBI was unable to corroborate any of the specific substantive allegations against Carter

Page contained in the election reporting and relied on in the FISA applications, and was only able to confirm the accuracy of a limited number of circumstantial facts,\ most of which were in the public domain, such as the dates that Page traveled to Russia, the timing of events, and the occupational positions of individuals referenced in the reports.

In addition to the lack of corroboration, we found that the FBI’s interviews of Steele, the Primary Sub-source, and a second sub-source, and other investigative activity revealed potentially serious problems with Steele’s description of information in his election reports.
None of this was told to the court.

The Steele report also contended that the Russians had evidence that while staying at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow Trump hired a hooker to give him a “golden shower,” ignoring the fact that the POTUS is something of a germaphobe and would never do that with a stranger.  Page 188 of the Horowitz report explains the FBI knew the source who told Steele about the supposed incident was joking:

The Primary Sub-source explained that his/ her information came from “word of mouth and hearsay;” “conversation that [he/she] had with friends over beers; ” and that some of the information, such as allegations about Trump’s sexual activities, were statements he/she heard made in “jest.” 

The Primary Sub-source also told WFO Agent 1 that he/she believed that the other sub-sources exaggerated their access to information and the relevance of that information to his/her requests. The Primary Sub-source told WFO Agent 1 that he/she “takes what [sub-sources] tell [him/ her] with ‘a grain of salt.”

[….]

The Horowitz report proves that Adam Schiff, the man who is leading the effort to impeach President Trump, lied to America about the FISA report….

All this is a travesty to truth.

James Baker Lied Then With What We Now Know

Published by Papa Giorgio

LIBERTARIAN HUB notes this recent rumination from Baker and then the FLASHBACK video:

…In an interview on CNN, Baker went further in his critique of the bureau than did FBI Director James Comey, who said Sunday that he believed the FBI was “sloppy” in its efforts to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Page.

“Sloppiness is completely unacceptable. That is not the way you operate in front of a federal court. I don’t know what word you want to use, it’s terrible, it’s unacceptable, it shouldn’t happen. That is not the way we should be filing matters in front of a federal court,” Baker told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

“I was distressed about it. I was completely distressed about it,” Baker said of his response to the inspector general’s (IG) findings.

Baker has testified that he personally reviewed the FISA applications against Page, given their political sensitivity….

Lisa Page Admits “Insurance Policy” Linked To Investigation

Published by Papa Giorgio

She all but admits that “the insurance policy” was an investigation. Our benighted heroes. Remember, no one on Trump’s team was colluding with Russia… but she thought so (and maybe still does) at the time? Or this was merely a cover-up (CYA) moment:

Stating that the infamous “insurance policy” text exchange was not hers but Strzok’s, Page explained it as an “analogy.”

“We’re talking about whether or not we should take certain investigative steps or not based on the likelihood that he’s going to be president or not,” she said. “You have to keep in mind, if President Trump doesn’t become president, the national security risk if there is somebody in his campaign associated with Russia, plummets.”

“So, don’t just hope that he’s not going be elected and therefore not press forward with the investigation hoping, but rather press forward with the investigation just in case he does get in there,” Maddow clarified, earning an “exactly” from the former FBI lawyer.

FBI “Effectively Meddled” in 2016 Presidential Campaign

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via POWERLINE:

  • Quotable quote: “The DNC pays for the Steele dossier, solicits the Steele dossier, and then gets the Federal Bureau of Investigation to go get FISA warrants, surveil an American citizen, surveil a presidential campaign, all on the basis of this manufactured garbage that they paid for. I mean that’s extraordinary. That has got to be a first time in history. In fact, let me just ask you, Mr. Horowitz, are you aware ever of another presidential campaign being targeted by the FBI during the campaign like the Trump campaign was?” (Answer: No.)

Senator Josh questioned Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz about his report detailing widespread misconduct related to the 2016 counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign. Senator Hawley expressed deep concern about the revelation that the FBI doctored evidence to obtain a surveillance warrant against a Trump campaign official asking, “Is it worse to have a foreign government trying to meddle in our elections, or is it worse to have our own government meddling in the election?”

Sen. Hawley also asked Inspector General Horowitz if this was the first time the FBI used partisan-funded opposition research to obtain FISA warrants against an American presidential campaign saying, “The DNC pays for the Steele Dossier, solicits the Steele Dossier, and then gets the Federal Bureau of Investigation to go get FISA warrants, surveil an American citizen, and surveil a presidential campaign all on the basis of this manufactured garbage that they paid for. I mean that’s extraordinary. That has got to be a first time in history. In fact let me just ask you, Mr. Horowitz, are you aware of ever of another presidential campaign being targeted by the FBI like the Trump campaign was?”

Inspector General Horowitz told Senator Hawley that to his knowledge that to his knowledge this was the first time a presidential campaign had been targeted in this manner

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.”

Carter Page On IG Report

Published by Papa Giorgio

(I have said for a long time he will be a rich man.)

Former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page discusses the details of the IG report, allegations of FISA court abuse and his meeting with Russians in 2016.

Sydney Powell weighs in: