Weekly Update: JW Exposes Comey-Mueller Coordination

Judicial Watch is number one when it comes to providing independent oversight on what your government is up to – including the out-of-control Mueller investigation.

The Justice Department has disclosed that it may soon provide us with previously withheld material from the heavily redacted August 2 memorandum in which Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein granted broad authority to Special Counsel Mueller three months after Mueller’s appointment.

The initial, highly controversial appointment memo , controversially, was written in May 2017. The Justice Department’s notice to us came almost immediately after the explosive District Court hearing in which Judge T.S. Ellis III demanded the full memorandum be made available to the court in two weeks , by May 18.

In a May 4 response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit we filed, the Justice Department revealed that it is now “processing the August 2 memo to determine if it can release additional portions that have not already been filed publicly.” The agency had previously refused to acknowledge that any such “scope” documents exist.

We filed our FOIA lawsuit against the Justice Department on October 5, 2017, after the agency failed to respond to a July 10, 2017, request ( Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:17-cv-02079)). Judicial Watch is seeking:

A few hours after Judge Ellis’s explosive hearing (here’s ), the Justice Department officially admitted to us that a scope memo existed:

We are pleased, especially after Judge Ellis’s hearing, that our lawsuit is causing the Justice Department to rethink its cover-up of the “scope memo” for Mueller. We have never before seen this level of secrecy and cover-up surrounding the operation of a special or independent counsel.

In the August 2 memorandum we obtained, Rosenstein reiterated the broad authority he gave Mueller in his May order authorizing the special counsel:

The August Rosenstein memorandum also included a section providing Mueller a “more specific description of your authority,” authorizing the special counsel to expand his prosecution of former Trump advisor Paul Manafort by investigating:

The Justice Department then redacted additional material apparently detailing the “crime or crimes” relating to Ukraine that Mueller was authorized to investigate.

We are pursuing numerous additional FOIA lawsuits related to the surveillance, unmasking, and illegal leaking targeting President Trump and his associates during the FBI’s investigation of potential Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election.

These Deep State actors have assumed great authority for themselves and we must hold them accountable. On its face, Mueller’s quest has gone off the rails. It is high time we get the DOJ back under control through transparency and accountability through the courts.

FBI Advised Comey to Consult with Mueller’s Office Prior to Testifying

Chelsea Clinton and Viktor Pinchuk who donated $29 million to Clinton Foundation in Kiev, Ukraine 8/21/16.

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http://observer.com/2017/01/ukraine-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-election/http://observer.com/2017/01/ukraine-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-election/

OPINION Ukraine Tried to Tip the Election in Clinton’s Favor
Evidence reveals that Ukraine intervened to tilt the election in favor of its national interests
By Michael Sainato • 01/12/17

Politico reported that the Ukrainian Government worked to aid Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential elections. The actions taken by government officials included disseminating “documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers.”

Those documents implicated Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who worked as an adviser for now-ousted Ukrainian President Viktor F. Yanukovych. However, the concerns that the documents raised weren’t in fact over any quasi-Russian ties, though partisan reporting pushed his narrative. Rather, the documents raised the question of whether Manafort declared the income that he had received from the position. The Podesta Group, a lobbying firm co-founded by Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta, also conducted work for Yanukovych.

However, the Manafort narrative not only painted Trump as pro-Russian, but also provided the Clinton campaign with a smear campaign while reaffirming its stance against Russia. It was in Ukraine’s best interest to tilt the election in support of Clinton, who strongly advocated for providing Ukraine with military aid and financial support in order to fight Russian separatists in the country.

Politico noted that Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American working as a consultant for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), met with top Ukrainian Officials in Washington D.C. about forcing Manafort’s resignation in order to perpetuate the narrative that Trump is connected to Russia. Both Chalupa and her sister Andrea have strongly pushed the anti-Russian narrative on social media, in addition to advocating that the electors of the electoral college defect from Trump. The report added, “Politico’s investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another’s elections.”

In addition to the Chalupas, the co-founder and CTO of Crowdstrike, the cyber security firm that the DNC hired to investigate the alleged hacks, Dmitri Alperovitch, also serves as a senior fellow to the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council, which is an openly anti-Russian organization partly . The Atlantic Council is funded by Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, who also happens to be one of the most prolific donors to the Clinton Foundation. The DNC denied multiple requests from the FBI to access their servers, effectively forcing the FBI to rely on CrowdStrike’s assessment of the hacks.

The Atlantic Council has propagated anti-Russian sentiment and advocated for bolstering NATO forces in anticipation of a military conflict between with Russia long before Wikileaks released emails from the DNC and Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta. In 2013, the Atlantic Council awarded Hillary Clinton its Distinguished International Leadership Award. In 2014, the Atlantic Council hosted one of several events with former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who took over after pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was removed in early 2014. In August, Politico reported that Donald Trump’s favorable rhetoric to Russia was concerning Ukraine. The article stated, “Russia wants Trump for U.S. president; Ukraine is terrified by Trump and prefers Hillary Clinton.”

In response to their preferred candidate losing the election, Ukrainian officials are now scrambling to revert from their lobbying for Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko recently signed a $50,000-a-month contract with a lobbying firm to set up meetings with U.S. officials in the new administration. Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk wrote an op-ed on December 29 in the Wall Street Journal in which he argued that Ukraine needs make compromises to establish peace with Russia. After the election, reports surfaced that Pinchuk donated to Trump’s charity to try to gain the same favor and access that his donations to the Clinton Foundation afforded him. “The sole reason the Victor Pinchuk Foundation has reached out to President-elect Trump—as well as other world leaders—has been to promote strengthened and enduring ties between Ukraine and the West,” a spokeswoman for the Pinchuk foundation told ABC News.

While past elections in Ukraine have been viewed as proxy battles between the U.S. and Russia, it appears that the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. faced similar influence from two foreign countries attempting to influence an election outcome preferable to their own national interests.

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Justice May Provide Redacted Portions of Rosenstein Mueller “Scope” Memo

FBI Advised Comey to Consult with Mueller’s Office Prior to Testifying