Free Republic

A newly declassified transcript calls into question the entire Crossfire Hurricane investigation: Why was it started, and why did it continue? Attorney General William Barr said last week that “the evidence shows that we’re not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness” in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Rather, “there is something far more troubling here.” “Without any basis,” Barr added in his sit-down interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, “they started this investigation of [Trump’s] campaign, and even more concerning actually is what happened after the campaign, a whole pattern of events while he was president to sabotage his presidency —...

These facts establish the FBI used Russia’s meddling with the 2016 election as a pretext to investigate Donald Trump and the special counsel’s office was complicit in this ploy. On Friday, the Department of Justice released newly declassified information from an inspector general report on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse, revealing for the first time that the FBI had received information indicating the Christopher Steele dossier contained Russian disinformation. The newly unredacted portions of the IG’s report also confirmed there was no “network of sources” backing up Steele’s reporting. While both revelations provide further fodder for attacking the Carter...

Declassified footnote lays out intelligence community concerns about Steele's ties to Russia and disinformation Key FBI officials failed to review an intelligence file identifying Christopher Steele's ties to Russian oligarchs and were later advised some of the information he provided agents in his dossier appeared to be misinformation planted by Russian intelligence, according to declassified information made public Friday. The explosive revelations were contained in footnotes that had been originally redacted from Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz's December report on FBI failures in the Russia case. The information was provided to two Senate committees in recent days. One of...

The FBI was warned sections of the controversial Steele dossier could have been part of a "Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations," according to newly declassified footnotes from a government watchdog report.... Footnote 350 in the IG report addresses the FBI's knowledge of Russian contacts with Steele and the potential for disinformation. Steele had "frequent contacts with representatives for multiple Russian oligarchs, we identified reporting the Crossfire Hurricane team received from (redacted) indicating the potential for Russian disinformation influencing Steele's election reporting." The footnote also indicates that warnings to the FBI's Russia probe became more pronounced over time.......

US Attorney General Bill Barr told Fox News host Laura Ingraham there was ‘no basis’ for the FBI’s ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation into then-candidate Donald Trump. Recall, FBI counter-intel chief Peter Strzok opened a CI investigation into Trump’s campaign in July of 2016 dubbed ‘Crossfire Hurricane,’ based on bogus claims his camp was working with the Russians. Barr said what happened to Trump was one of the greatest travesties in American history. Even more alarming was the pattern of events after the campaign to sabotage Trump’s presidency. “I think what happened to him [Trump] was one of the greatest travesties in...

In late October 2016, less than two weeks before the presidential election, a former adviser to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, George Papadopoulos, denied to an FBI confidential source that the campaign was involved in the circumstances surrounding the hack of the Democratic National Committee's email system, calling the idea "illegal." CBS News has now reviewed the transcript of the conversation between Papadopoulos and the confidential source working for the FBI, and has published key excerpts below. The recorded conversation between Papadopoulos and the confidential source working for the FBI was documented in the December report issued by Justice Department Inspector...

The inspector general detailed devastating, systematic FBI failures in executing procedures designed to ensure the accuracy of FISA applications. On March 31, Inspector General Michael Horowitz released an interim report on his audit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s compliance with procedures to protect Americans’ civil rights in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act cases. Horowitz’s “Management Advisory Memorandum” detailed devasting and systematic failures by the FBI in executing the procedures designed to ensure the accuracy of the applications submitted under oath to the FISA court.Contrary to the left’s spin, the FBI’s incompetence in handling more (Most? All?) FISA cases is not...

The FBI under James Comey underhandedly sent a senior member of the team investigating alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to conduct a standard official FBI security briefing for presidential campaigns with then-candidate Donald Trump and his then national security advisor, Michael T. Flynn. Unbeknownst to both Trump and Flynn, that FBI investigator memorialized that briefing, which included exchanges with Flynn and Trump, in an official document that was added to the Crossfire Hurricane case file probing the Trump campaign over unsubstantiated and ultimately discredited charges of Russian collusion. The FBI file documenting the August 2016 briefing describes...

A month before the 2016 presidential election, the FBI met Christopher Steele in Rome and apparently unlawfully shared with the foreign opposition researcher some of the bureau’s most closely held secrets, according to unpublicized disclosures in the recent Justice Department Inspector General report on abuses of federal surveillance powers. What’s more, Steele, the former British spy who compiled the “dossier” of conspiracy theories for the Hillary Clinton campaign, was promised $15,000 to attend the briefing by FBI agents eager to maintain his cooperation in their Trump-Russia collusion investigation codenamed Crossfire Hurricane. That investigation was so closely guarded that only a...

VINDICATION: U.S. Senate Acquits President Donald Trump in Baseless Impeachment Proceedings Judicial Watch Uncovers Emails Showing Involvement of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page in Launching of FBI’s Operation Crossfire Hurricane Judicial Watch Study Uncovers Dirty Voting Rolls in Iowa VINDICATION: U.S. Senate Acquits President Donald Trump in Baseless Impeachment Proceedings Congratulations to President Trump on the overwhelming vote by the U.S. Senate to acquit him and reject the baseless impeachment charges against him. Thankfully, the U.S. Senate rejected this act of tyranny by the Pelosi-Schiff coup cabal that controls the House of Representatives. That was “Vindication Day” for the...

President Donald Trump will be addressing the Country from the White House after the senate found him NOT GUILTY on both counts in the senate Impeachment Trial. The President has now been FULLY Acquitted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyLbNJMiAvw 

President Donald Trump’s defense team falsely claimed the Justice Department was already investigating him even before the 2016 election and distorted the facts about a dossier of opposition research into Trump’s ties to Russia. A look at some of the claims Tuesday during Trump’s impeachment trial: TRUMP LAWYER JAY SEKULOW: “The president of the United States, before he was the president, was under an investigation. It was called Crossfire Hurricane. It was an investigation led by the FBI.” THE FACTS: Trump was not under investigation before he took office. In fact, Trump says he was told that directly and repeatedly...

Last week, President Trump triggered the left when he tweeted a Photoshopped picture that portrayed former President Barack Obama perched midair outside Trump Tower, binoculars and listening device in hand.The liberal outlet Vox condemned the president for his “increasingly bad tweets,” before declaring “there’s no evidence the Obama administration spied on Trump.” Vox then regurgitated the false narrative that, while the FBI did surveil former Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page, “that didn’t happen until after Page left the campaign.” For years, conservatives tried to correct the record, noting that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order gave the...

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was behind the leak of text messages between the FBI ‘s Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to the press. A court filing by the Department of Justice late Friday revealed the admission in a five-page statement by Rosenstein on the text messages between the FBI agent and lawyer back in 2016 as they were both working on investigations, Politico reported. (Image: YouTube screenshot) Rosenstein, who stepped down from his position last year, apparently released the messages as a way to protect the FBI employees who criticized then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign....

The Justice Department released its fourth batch of documents from the special counsel’s probe Friday, including notes of FBI interviews with former Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. The documents include the FBI’s interviews conducted in 2017 with Papadopoulos and with Page, as well as interviews with Russian associates of Page. The records were provided to BuzzFeed News and CNN in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for FBI notes, known as 302s, that were used in the Trump-Russia probe. Papadopoulos and Page were two of the four original targets of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI counterintelligence investigation...

The report established that the special counselÂ’s office was complicit in the FISA abuse, the probe was a witch hunt, and its report was a cover-up for systematic government malfeasance. Shortly after the release of the special counsel report last year, I posited that Robert MuellerÂ’s failure to investigate whether Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election by feeding dossier author Christopher Steele disinformation established that Mueller was either incompetent or a political hack. Now, with the release of the inspector generalÂ’s report on FISA abuse, we know the answer: He was both.The IGÂ’s report on the U.S. Department of...

The Justice Department fired Mr. McCabe in the spring of 2018, citing Mr. Horowitz’s conclusions. Mr. McCabe is suing the Justice Department for wrongful termination, alleging President Trump ordered his firing. When FBI investigators confronted Mr. McCabe about the leak, he denied authorizing the disclosure to the Journal. He also presented himself as a “victim,” according to the agent who conducted the interview.Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe admitted he misled investigators about his role in a media leak and apologized for it, according to transcripts of his interviews with investigators released Thursday. The transcripts were released by the Justice...

Iranian Terrorist Attack Against U.S. Revealed How Bill Clinton concealed it from the public and U.S. intelligence. October 7, 2015 Arnold Ahlert    A bombshell report by the Washington Times reveals that fecklessness in the face of terror isn’t a condition exclusive to the Obama administration. "Bill Clinton’s administration gathered enough evidence to send a top-secret communique accusing Iran of facilitating the deadly 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist bombing,” the Times states, "but suppressed that information from the American public and some elements of U.S. intelligence for fear it would lead to an outcry for reprisal, according to documents and interviews.” Nineteen American...

Inspector General Michael Horowitz's long-awaited report this week on FBI and Justice Department surveillance abuses does not provide the name of an unidentified FBI supervisory special agent (SSA) who made a series of apparent oversights in the bureau's so-called "Crossfire Hurricane" probe into the Trump campaign. However, a review of Horowitz's findings leaves little doubt that the unnamed SSA is Joe Pientka -- someone who could soon play a prominent role in the ongoing prosecution of Michael Flynn, as the former Trump national security adviser fights to overturn his guilty plea on a single charge of making false statements. Specifically,...

The report of the I.G.'s findings on the use of FISA in the FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation is an outrage. As a 22 year FBI Agent, I have personally conducted multiple investigations using both Title III "wiretaps" and FISA authorized intercepts. From this perspective, I can only see two possible interpretations of the actions of the FBI and DOJ. Either scenario should anger and frighten every fair minded citizen who takes the time to read the report and understand its implications. . . snip If the heinous abuses documented in the I.G.s report result in a weakening or loss of...