Posted on 05/15/2018 12:56:13 PM PDT by Mount Athos
New revelations that FBI agents pressed a Russian oligarch with ties to independent counsel Robert Mueller to help build an election collusion narrative only reinforce the likelihood of a conspiracy to frame President Donald Trump, according to a former federal prosecutor.
Joseph diGenova, who served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia under Ronald Reagan, reacted to a report in The Hill that FBI agents met with Oleg Deripaska in September 2016. They were in search of information that Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort was conspiring with the Russian government to throw the presidential election to the Republican nominee.
Despite an ongoing legal dispute with Manafort, Deripaska reportedly laughed at the notion.
“What’s going on now is the unraveling of a very substantial plot that had two goals — to exonerate Hillary Clinton illegally and, if she lost the presidency, to frame Donald Trump and his associates of crimes they did not commit,” he said Tuesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”
“Robert Mueller has produced not a scintilla of evidence that anybody in the Trump campaign engaged in any illegal activity regarding illegal contact with Russian officials.”
After a year on the case, it is fair to ask what Mueller is investigating, diGenova said.
"The answer seems to be — anything but that," he said.
DiGenova (pictured above) said the FBI agents who talked to Deripaska most likely "crossed a number of lines."
According to The Hill's report, Mueller was FBI director when the agency persuaded Deripaska to put up millions of dollars of his own money to try to free a CIA agent held captive in Iran.
That history creates a definite conflict of interest for Mueller, diGenova said. He noted that the indictment charging Manafort with a number of financial crimes involves activities involving the aluminum industry magnate.
"And yet, Bob Mueller kept Deripaska's name out of the indictment completely," he said. "There was no reason to do that. There was no reason to keep his name out, other than to cover up the fact that Mueller had been dealing with him for years."
DiGenova spread blame around but directed the majority of it at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the man who appointed Mueller. DiGenova accused Rosenstein of acting not based on a legal judgment but out of a pique of anger because the president undercut the official justification for the firing of FBI Director James Comey.
Rosenstein had prepared a memo outlining Comey's violations of Department of Justice (DOJ) policy during his handling of the FBI's investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for official government business. But then Trump told "NBC Nightly News" anchor Lester Holt that the real reason was the Russia investigation.
"At that point, that is when Rod Rosenstein, I am told by people in the department, got mad, was embarrassed by what the president had said — and, therefore, made him look like a fool — and it was that day he decided to appoint Mueller, whom he had interviewed the day before, to be the next FBI director [for a second tour] to replace James Comey," he said.
DiGenova called Rosenstein "an incompetent liar." He said his sources indicate that neither Rosenstein nor Attorney General Jeff Sessions are secure in their jobs.
"Jeff Sessions — a man who I love dearly and have known for years — is clueless," he said.
Related: Oligarch Laughed at FBI's Trump-Russia Collusion Theory
Former CIA Director John Brennan is the worst director that agency ever has had, diGenova said. Not only has he "denigrated" the agency, diGenova added, but it also has become clear that he lied about the genesis of the counterintelligence investigation that morphed into the Mueller probe.
Part of the justification was a dossier prepared by a retired British spy working for an opposition research firm hired by Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
DOJ officials used that dossier — filled with salacious allegations against Trump — to obtain a warrant to conduct surveillance on his associates. But the Justice Department evidently did not specify the source of the material when it asked a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court for the warrant.
"This is without a doubt the greatest political scandal in American history," diGenova said.
Numerous admissions like this lately!
What Next?/!
++++++++++++++++++++++
I actually had one of those cameras as a kid. LOL
“Jeff Sessions — — is clueless,” he said. ////
I believe he’s complicit.
Despite an ongoing legal dispute with Manafort, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska comments: “What’s going on now is the unraveling of a very substantial plot that had two goals — to exonerate Hillary Clinton illegally and, if she lost the presidency, to frame Donald Trump and his associates of crimes they did not commit,” he said Tuesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”
“Robert Mueller has produced not a scintilla of evidence that anybody in the Trump campaign engaged in any illegal activity regarding illegal contact with Russian officials.”
The FBI has been meddling in politics since J. Edgar Hoover days. Mark Felt, Louis Freeh, Eric Holder, and now James Comey and Andy McCabe are carrying on this odious tradition
Time for some serious punishment of the FBI as an institution.
Gestapo Chief Müller needs to spend the rest of his life in Spandau Prison
He’s right and I the mark. According to the history of the 2016 campaign, so fed as it ha played out, the demonicrats accused Trump of exactly what they (the dems) we’re doing. How much would you bet that somewhere there is (or was) a peeing tape starring Bill Clinton instead?
True. There is no investigative journalism these days. It is repeat the fake BS and or add more BS from a so called secret source. Had I or any military type run our mouths like Comey, Brennan and all these clowns do about TS INFO we’d still be in Leavenworth or the post cemetery.
I did too. It was a cheesy piece of junk that barely worked - not unlike Robt. Mueller.
I once sent in some box tops and got back a gelatin based reproduction device. You’d put some sort of fluid on it, and build your original document, and run off copies.
A gadget freak since birth, that thing fascinated me.
I was big-time for about a day, until the concept grew tiresome.
“:^)
Aw, those were the days.
Perhaps a pedo island souvenir?
Lumper20, that would seem to cover tens of people back there who have divulged state secrets, or mishandled classified information to the point it was compromised easily.
The whole lot of them should be in prison before this is done.
Hillary, Huma, Weiner, Comey...
Then if they weren’t giving away state secrets, they were participating in an attempted coup.
Could Sessions’ Mr. Magoo act really be sand bagging?
Nah.
5.56mm
Me, too! And it was worth all that was paid for it. I was bummed. Particularly after waiting 6-8 weeks for delivery.
I think the one clear blunder, maybe the only blunder of the Trump Admin was when he did not publish Rosenstein’s memo outlining Comey’s firing.
It looks clear that the Russian lawyer woman was let into the country specifically to try to entrap Donald Jr. and Jared. The Papadopoulos kid seems like a brainless idiot who was used by the Obama/Clinton people to justify spying on the Trump campaign. And now we have evidence the FBI was trying to manufacture fake evidence of collusion.
Of course the members of the public who don't watch Fox News may never hear of Oleg Deripaska.
Mueller is probably still hoping to drag things out until after the November election and then gives what he hopes will be a Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee a bill of particulars to use in impeachment.
Mueller can undoubtedly get the DC grand jury to do whatever he wants--if he can get an indictment against a company which did not exist. Maybe an indictment against Donald Jr. and Jared for their conversation with the Russian lawyer, with the President as "unindicted co-conspirator" (like Nixon), then firing Comey as obstruction of justice, and maybe some other charges based on some of President Trump's tweets.
True. It is hard to believe our top agency that conducted our BI’s for TS clearances is full of leakers today. Yes, the FBI had an agent talk to people about me who were our neighbors at every address we lived prior to service.
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