Free Republic

Former CIA Director John Brennan had harsh words for House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes on Sunday morning, calling the controversial four-page “FISA memo” created by Nunes’ staffers “exceptionally partisan” and that Nunes has “abused the office” by refusing to allow Democrats on his committee to make their own rebuttal document public. “That Devin Nunes and Republicans denied the ability of the minority, the Democratic members of that committee, to put out its report is just appalling. I think it, it really underscores just how partisan Mr. Nunes has been. He has abused the office of the chairmanship of HPSCI. And...

WASHINGTON – As part of their ongoing oversight efforts to ensure that the FBI’s law enforcement activities are free of improper political influence, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) yesterday sent six letters seeking information and documents regarding Christopher Steele’s work on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary for America. The letters seek information and documents relating to those political organizations’ knowledge of and involvement in Mr. Steele’s work and his reported interactions with the FBI while he was working on behalf of these political organizations....

Radical left-wing icon former California Democratic Rep. Ron Dellums was a hired lobbyist for Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. June 9, 2016, the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned. Dellums, who represented liberal San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., is a long-time darling of left-wing political activists. He served 13 terms in Congress as an African-American firebrand and proudly called himself a socialist. He retired in 1996. The former congressman is one of several high-profile Democratic partisans who was on Veselnitskaya’s payroll, working to defeat a law that is the hated object of...

...Baumgartner had been working alongside Simpson as a Russian translator for a New York law firm defending a Russian holding company, Prevezon, in a money-laundering suit filed by the US Justice Department in Manhattan. Owned by Denis Katsyv, a Putin-tied oligarch, Prevezon was sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act. Also defending Prevezon was Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer who Simpson helped lobby Congress to repeal the Magnitsky Act by attacking William Browder, the banker-turned-human-rights-activist who championed it. “He speaks Russian,” Simpson said of Baumgartner, after Senate Judiciary Committee staff asked about “subcontractors” he’d hired. “So he would work with the lawyers...

To understand the Four Page House Intelligence Memo at the heart of today’s FISA Abuse stories, it helps to understand why the memo is needed. We wrote about the issue in a March 2017 outline called: “The Nunes Paradox” – SEE HERE As the year-long story has unfolded, there are two central components at the heart of the political corruption and weaponization of the DOJ and FBI: ♦First, corruption within the DOJ and FBI that included their use of unlawful use of FISA-702 exploits; and ♦Second, how that intelligence information was extracted, passed along to those outside government, repackaged, and...

TEL AVIV — Glenn R. Simpson, the co-founder of the controversial opposition research firm Fusion GPS, stated in testimony it “makes sense” to him that the FBI paid for a trip to Rome by the former British spy who was contracted by Simpson’s company to produce the largely discredited 35-page anti-Trump dossier. Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent, to do the work cited in the anti-Trump dossier. Last July, Steele reportedly traveled to Rome, where he met with an FBI contact to supply the agency with the anti-Trump dossier and other information he found during the...

The House Intelligence Committee unanimously voted Thursday to release hours of private testimony from an interview with the co-founder of the firm that compiled the infamous anti-Trump dossier, Fox News has learned. The Committee voted to make public the transcript of the November interview with Fusion GPS’ Glenn Simpson, who testified behind closed doors. The transcript will be posted to the committee’s website Thursday afternoon. “Democrats and Fusion GPS supporters will get some unwelcome surprises if this is published,” a Republican source told Fox News ahead of the vote. Simpson and Fusions' co-founder Peter Fritsch penned an Op-Ed for The...

A close friend, advisor and confidant of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was allegedly interviewed by the FBI in connection with the controversial dossier that was used ‘in part’ as evidence by the bureau to obtain a warrant to investigate members of President Trump’s campaign team, according to several sources who spoke to this reporter. Sidney Blumenthal, a former journalist and a close friend of Clinton, was interviewed by the FBI in 2016 regarding the dossier that alleged Trump colluded with Russia, the sources stated. Department of Justice officials, however, declined to comment on Blumenthal or the dossier. FBI officials declined...

If we are to believe the transcript of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, released unexpectedly by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the search for a smoking gun in the dossier scandal may lead us to a dead body, at least according to Simpson's lawyer: During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in August 2017, Glenn Simpson was questioned about whether he tried to "assess the credibility" of sources behind information uncovered by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent who compiled the dossier. "Yes, but I'm not going to get into sourcing information," Simpson...

Ever since the transcript of Fusion-GPS Co-Founder Glenn Simpson’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee was released by Senator Dianne Feinstein, several inquisitive media outlets have begun questioning the relationship between the FBI investigators, Glenn Simpson and dossier author Christopher Steele. What we have discovered not only highlights the answer to that question, but it also answers a host of other questions, including: Did the FBI pay Christopher Steele? Yes, but now how media thinks. Was the FBI connected to the creation of the Steele Dossier? Yes, but not in the way the media is currently outlining.

The unverified dossier alleging connections between President Trump’s campaign and the Russians was used as evidence by the FBI to gain approval from a secret court to monitor members of Trump’s team, this reporter has learned. A large portion of the evidence presented in the salacious 35-page dossier put together by former British spy Christopher Steele, has either been proven wrong or remains unsubstantiated. However, the FBI gained approval nevertheless to surveil members of Trump’s campaign and “it’s outrageous and clearly should be thoroughly investigated,” said a senior law enforcement source, with knowledge of the process. Multiple sources told this...

FOX News host Sean Hannity tonight invited Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, Rep. Jim Jordan and Circa News reporter Sara Carter on to discuss the latest breaking news that the intelligence community used the phony Russia dossier to spy on the Trump campaign. Sean Hannity told his audience he spoke with three separate sources who told him the phony Trump dossier was used to obtain the FISA warrant to spy on Donald Trump. The only item that was verified from the phony dossier was that Carter Page traveled to Moscow. Fusion GPS, the company behind the Hillary Clinton funded dossier,...

Two top Republican senators have formally recommended that the Justice Department and FBI investigate the author of the controversial anti-Trump "dossier," in the first known criminal referral from Congress

GOP senators request criminal investigation of Trump dossier author © Greg Nash Two Republican senators are asking the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into Christopher Steele, the author of a controversial research opposition dossier on President Trump. Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray asking that they investigate if the former MI6 agent lied to federal authorities. "I don’t take lightly making a referral for criminal investigation. But, as I would with any credible evidence of a crime unearthed in the course...

WASHINGTON — More than a year after Republican leaders promised to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election, two influential Republicans on Friday made the first known congressional criminal referral in connection with the meddling — against one of the people who sought to expose it. Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior committee member, told the Justice Department they had reason to believe that a former British spy, Christopher Steele, lied to federal authorities about his contacts with reporters regarding information in the dossier, and they...

Wednesday is the latest deadline for the Department of Justice to cough up records related to its use of a Clinton-funded anti-Trump dossier in its 2016 investigation of the party out of power. The big question is whether our government used fake news paid for by a political campaign to turn the surveillance apparatus of the federal government against a political rival..it will perhaps be chilling to those who participate in American politics to learn that mentioning that you’ve heard a report that the Russians have dirt on an American politician is enough for the FBI to investigate you and...

A former Trump campaign aide who took a guilty plea in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe was the linchpin of the FBI’s investigation of Kremlin influence in the 2016 election, new reports say. In a drunken gossip session with an Australian diplomat in London in May 2016, Trump aide George Papadopoulos claimed that Russia held political dirt on Hillary Clinton, The New York Times said Saturday. Months later, e-mails hacked from the Democratic National Committee showed up on WikiLeaks, and the Australians told the FBI about the Papadopoulos conversation. The disclosure sparked the FBI’s probe into possible collusion between...

In collusion news today, the New York Times has devoted six reporters to producing the “news” that the previously obscure Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos lies at the heart of the putative case. Their story is “How the Russia inquiry began: A campaign aide, drinks and talk of political dirt.” Paul wrote about it last night here. I think the story is ludicrous on its face. The Times has served as a prime purveyor of the Trump/Russia hysteria. Yet reality has deflated it. Now the Times returns to pump it up. The names have changed, but the song remains the...

Everyone suspected the sketchy Steele Dossier was what corrupt FBI and DOJ officials used to get the October 2016 FISA warrant against Trump. FBI and DOJ officials refuse to answer that question publicly. Despite a hundred different ways congressional investigators have asked the question, and despite numerous on-camera questions to FBI and DOJ officials about the 2016 FISA process, no-one had definitively confirmed the Christopher Steele ‘Russian Dossier’ was the underlying evidence for the 2016 FISA application to gain wiretaps and electronic surveillance upon presidential candidate Donald Trump. UNTIL NOW. Senator Lindsey Graham just confirmed the sketchy Steele Dossier was...

Byron York is reporting today that House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes has issued a subpoena to David Kramer (pictured left), the aid to John McCain who was used as an arms-length go-between -traveling to Surrey, England- to meet with Christopher Steele and retrieve the Steele “Russian Dossier” in November 2016. Kramer was not given the dossier in England; rather he was briefed in England, by Steele, and later given the dossier by Glenn Simpson (Fusion GPS) in the U.S. A back-story timeline refresher: Dossier author Christopher Steele reached out to Sir Andrew Wood, Britain’s former Ambassador to Russia (’95-’00) in...