Free Republic

Representative Elise M. Stefanik is a young, freshman republican congresswoman from the Albany New York area. And using a probative questioning timeline, she single-handily pulled the mask from FBI Director James Comey, yet no-one seemed to notice. Obviously Ms. Stefanik has not been in the swamp long enough to lose her common sense. In the segment of the questioning below Rep. Stefanik begins by asking director Comey what are the typical protocols, broad standards and procedures for notifying the Director of National Intelligence, the White House and senior congressional leadership (aka the intelligence Gang of Eight), when the FBI has...

Lawyers are trained never to ask a question of a witness if they don’t already know the answer. But it is quite different in journalism – at least in principle, if the principle is getting at the truth. But alas, in these days of fake news and fanatical dead-ender opposition to President Trump, those MSM TV networks committed to driving Trump from office might want to consider retraining for their talking heads. Make them more like lawyers and avoid embarrassnents like that suffered by CNN’s Brian Stelter. Courtesy of Grabien, here is a disastrous interview in which the guest, Larry...

Whistleblower Tapes: Trump Wiretapped By ‘The Hammer,’ Brennan’s and Clapper’s Secret Computer System By Mary Fanning and Alan Jones President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper and his Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Brennan oversaw a secret supercomputer system known as “THE HAMMER,” according to former NSA/CIA contractor-turned whistleblower Dennis Montgomery. Clapper and Brennan were using the supercomputer system to conduct illegal and unconstitutional government data harvesting and wiretapping. THE HAMMER was installed on federal property in Fort Washington, Maryland at a complex which some speculate is a secret CIA and NSA operation operating at a US...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has opened an inquiry into allegations the FBI worked with the British spy who authored a controversial opposition research dossier on President Trump during the 2016 election.

President Obama’s director of national intelligence identified one claim made in the dossier on Donald Trump that U.S. officials have corroborated, though it is likely to underwhelm Trump’s critics.Speaking to ABC News this week, James Clapper said that officials have corroborated the part of the dossier that asserts that Russian president Vladimir Putin has a “rabid animus” for Bill and Hillary Clinton.But that’s all that Clapper would cite as decidedly accurate in the dossier, which was compiled by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele.That Putin has intense hatred for the Clintons is not news, nor is it among the more salacious...

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told ABC News he did not see anything to suggest that Russia successfully infiltrated Donald Trump’s presidential campaign or recruited any of Trump’s advisers – at least as of Jan. 20, when the retired three-star general left office. "There was no evidence whatsoever, at the time, of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians," Clapper, a career intelligence officer, told ABC News' Brian Ross in an interview Monday for "World News Tonight." The Clapper comments came amid a fight between the Trump administration and the FBI over the wiretapping claim the President...

It now seems clear what occurred to bring down CIA Director David Petraeus: some months ago his paramour Paula Broadwell sent threatening emails to another woman warning her to keep away from Petraeus, seemingly unaware that computers and emails have signatures that can be identified by investigators. The woman, identified by the Associated Press as Jill Kelley, became alarmed over being threatened and notified the FBI, which got into the emails to discover that there was an affair in progress, leading to an investigation of Petraeus to determine if any classifed information had been leaked. Broadwell was subsequently interviewed by...

What he said was probably true, but what he didn’t say was more revealing. In Monday’s Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty usefully outlined some intriguing statements made by former Obama national intelligence director James Clapper regarding the FISA surveillance controversy. Clapper’s remarks, in an interview by NBC’s Chuck Todd on Meet the Press on Sunday, are being taken as a blanket denial of the allegations that the Obama administration used the Justice Department and FBI to investigate Trump-campaign figures, potentially including Trump himself. But what Clapper said is far from a wholesale rejection of the allegations. To be sure, General Clapper’s...

In a report Monday morning, CNN’s Brian Stelter took a shot at conservative radio host Mark Levin’s “incendiary idea” that started this whole wiretapping brouhaha. In it, Stelter accused Levin of “cherry-picking” stories that supported his conclusion and ignoring evidence against it. Here's my @CNN story about @marklevinshow's "incendiary idea" (a "silent coup") that prompted his open letter https://t.co/0HusCipjrh— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) March 6, 2017 Fmr Obama Secret Service agent Bongino shares info on Obama wiretaps – it’s about to ‘blow wide open’ What Stelter is referring to in the Tweet is Levin’s brutal counter-punch. In an open letter to...

In his “Meet the Press” interview on Sunday, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper reaffirmed the conclusion reached in a report regarding Russian influence on the presidential election, prepared during his watch by the intelligence services and the FBI. They concluded that there was no evidence of collusion between Donald Trump or his campaign and the Russian government to influence the presidential election in President Trump’s favor. Mr. Clapper said: “We did not include any evidence in our report, and I say, ‘our,’ that's N.S.A., F.B.I. and C.I.A., with my office, the Director of National Intelligence, that had anything, that...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has opened an inquiry into allegations the FBI worked with the British spy who authored a controversial opposition research dossier on President Trump during the 2016 election. In a Monday letter to FBI Director James Comey, Grassley asked for records pertaining to any agreements the agency may have had with Christopher Steele.[snip] “The idea that the FBI and associates of the Clinton campaign would pay Mr. Steele to investigate the Republican nominee for President in the run-up to the election raises further questions about the FBI’s independence from politics, as well as the...

Obama’s National Intelligence Director James Clapper lied to Congress in March when he said the NSA does not spy on millions of Americans.....Edward Snowden later released classified documents that proved Clapper lied to Congress. On Sunday Clapper denied reports that the Obama administration was spying on Donald Trump. The Hill reported: Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper on Sunday denied President Trump’s allegations that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower before the election. During an interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Clapper was asked if he would be aware if something like that had happened. “I would...

TGP reported earlier that the first FISA request came right after AG Loretta Lynch met with Bill Clinton on the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in June of 2016. The second FISA request was submitted in October of 2016 just before the election. Hillary Clinton sent out a tweet on October 31st stating that ‘computer scientists have uncovered a covert server linking the Trump organization to a Russian-based server’. It appears she was tipped off to the wiretapping prior to the election.

Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper on Sunday denied President Trump's allegations that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower before the election. During an interview on NBC's "Meet The Press," Clapper was asked if he would be aware if something like that had happened. "I would certainly hope so ... Obviously I can't speak officially anymore," Clapper said on NBC's "Meet The Press." "But I will say that for the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI, there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time, as a candidate,...

Former NSA Director Mike Rogers may become the hero in all this mess for not playing along and going to warn the President Elect.

Former CIA analyst and retired U.S. Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer during a Wednesday appearance on Fox Business Network named several Obama administration officials he suspected were behind the leaks prompting former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s resignation. Shaffer said the blame lay "squarely at the feet of" the former CIA director John Brennan, former director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper, and former deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes. The Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday reported that Rhodes and others constructed a "behind-the-scenes effort" to "plant a series of damaging stories about Flynn in the national media." This is in line with the theory that Flynn had to be...

The fallout from the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is not over. We have Russia, leaks, and palace intrigue about former Obama administration officials laying the foundation to topple Flynn, who was knows for being staunchly opposed to the Iran nuclear deal. Guy wrote a post about the allegations. Frankly, Flynn misled the vice president, which alone is an act that warrants him being shown the door. Multiple writers, namely Damon Linker at The Week and Eli Lake at Bloomberg have noted another sinister angle to this story, which is the number of leaks of highly sensitive information coming...

Let us concede that short-lived National Security adviser  and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Gen. Michael Flynn did a dumb thing when he misled Vice-President Pence on whether he discussed sanctions on Russia in a conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak fefore President Trump was sworn in January 20. Flynn may even had said some dumb things in a conversation he should have known was being recorded. But an incoming National Security adviser talking with a Russian counterpart a violation of the Logan Act which forbids private citizens from conducting what is essentially foreign policy with foreign governments....

I get the first part of this story, not so much the second. The bit about Obama alumni targeting Flynn? Highly plausible if not likely. Flynn was a harsh Obama critic ever since O fired him from his position as DIA, and Flynn more than anyone else in the administration seemed prepared to guide Trump towards detente with the same Putin regime that had tried to sink Democrats’ chances during the campaign with the DNC and Podesta hackings. Flynn is also famously an Iran hawk, something which the Obama administration was, er, not. Did Team O have the means...

Is the intelligence community responsible for leaking the spurious “dossier” about Trump? To shed light on this question, Trump said he had a “meeting with intelligence” that he told no one about — “and immediately the word got out that I had a meeting.”President-elect Donald Trump has implicitly accused the intelligence community of leaking the unauthenticated “dossier” appended to intel’s report on the alleged Russian scheme to influence the election in his favor. While leaders in the intelligence community deny this and the liberal mainstream media pooh-poohs the idea, Trump took time in his press conference Wednesday to offer his...