Posted on 12/21/2018 6:01:35 AM PST by Mr. Mojo
NEW YORK — In testimony, James Comey admitted that when he infamously briefed then President-elect Donald Trump about the controversial dossier, Comey did not inform the incoming president about who financed the document.
The detail, contained in a second round of Comey’s testimony released earlier this week, is particularly relevant since the embattled former FBI director admitted in testimony two weeks ago that he was aware the dossier authored by former British spy Christopher Steele was financed by Democrats who opposed Trump.
Comey’s seeming withholding of information from Trump about the political origins of the dossier raises further questions. Comey last year stated that he pushed back against a request from Trump to possibly investigate the origins of “salacious material” – meaning the dossier — that the agency possessed in the course of its investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
In testimony before the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees on Monday, Comey was asked whether he informed Trump about the dossier’s financing.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) asked: “In this meeting, did you tell the President who had financed the dossier?”
“No,” was Comey’s simple reply.
Jordan was referring to Comey’s early January 2017 official briefing to Trump about the dossier. That briefing was subsequently leaked to the news media, with CNN on January 10, 2017 breaking the story that the contents of the dossier were presented during classified briefings one week earlier to Trump and then-President Barack Obama.
Prior to CNN’s report leaking the briefings, which was picked up by news agencies worldwide, the contents of the dossier had been circulating among news media outlets, but the sensational claims were largely considered too risky to publish.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
The Obama intelligence bureaucracies spied on the Donald Trump campaign: FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrants were granted because of a Hillary Clinton-funded and unverified document, national-security letters were issued to allow warrantless spying, and the unprecedented but not-illegal-per-se unmasking of Trump officials’ conversations with non-U.S. persons was shockingly routine.
Yet the news of a CIA-connected human source operating as far back as April or May of 2016 is about more than just spying. It is the latest example in what now looks to be a long line of attempted setups by the Clinton team, many times aided and abetted by our intelligence bureaucracies. These events should anger any red blooded American who believes in representative democracy and the importance of the rule of law. Let’s review eight examples.
1. CIA And FBI ‘Human Intelligence’ We’ve just learned about Stefan Halper, a CIA-connected Cambridge professor who — working for the FBI — contacted Trump advisers Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and Sam Clovis during the 2016 election, to investigate what they might know about suspicions of collusion with Russia. Former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo has claimed that he was approached by an unknown second U.S. intelligence community asset in early May of 2016. The FBI says that the Russia investigation began in July, because of something Papadopoulos said to an Australian diplomat in May. Papadopoulos had supposedly told the Australian diplomat something about Russia having information that “could be damaging” to Clinton. Papadopoulos allegedly heard this from Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese-born professor who allegedly claimed to have close ties with Russia. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team charged Papadopoulos — unconvincingly — with lying to investigators, because Papadopoulos said his contacts with Mifsud began before he was on the Trump campaign. Actually, the contacts started after he “learned he would be a foreign policy advisor for the campaign,” but before the campaign made a public announcement that he was to be an advisor. Mifsud is strangely now in hiding, possibly fearing for his life. Lee Smith details Mifsud’s ties to Western intelligence agencies, and Margot Cleveland suspects Mifsud may have been a U.S. intelligence plant along with Halper.
2. The Trump Tower Meeting Whenever Democrats or David French types talk about Trump and Russia collusion they look to the Trump Tower meeting as definitive proof. There are several problems with that. First, no presidential campaign in American history would pass up the chance of hearing evidence of crimes being committed by their opponent, no matter the source. In fact, some would say you’re doing the country a favor if you let everyone know that your opponent is subject to blackmail from a not-so-friendly foreign power (just don’t have your son and son-in-law sit in on the meeting). More problematic is that Glenn Simpson — head of Fusion GPS, the firm being paid by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to prove (or create) ties between Trump and Russia — met with the two Russians who attended the Trump Tower meeting both before and after the meeting. Simpson’s excuse for doing so? Because he was working with the two Russians on a different issue, the repeal of the anti-Kremlin Magnitsky Act. In other words, at the very least, the firm that created the dossier for Clinton and the DNC — using Russian intelligence sources — was the same firm that was working with the Kremlin to repeal a law passed by Congress because Putin’s thugs beat an innocent man to death in Russian prison. At most, this was yet another setup.
3. Mike Flynn And The Logan Act During the 2016 campaign, Democrats howled about the need to prosecute Trump campaign officials under an obscure 1799 law called the Logan Act. Byron York has documented that this was the pretext Obama-appointed former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates used to unmask former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s side of highly-appropriate phone conversations with the Russian ambassador that occurred during the transition period, and then send FBI agents to interview Flynn about those conversations. Although the FBI has tried to cover this up, we now know that the agents who interviewed Flynn — including the disgraced and hugely anti-Trump Peter Strzok — didn’t believe that Flynn had lied. Nevertheless, Mueller’s team charged Flynn with lying to the FBI. After Mueller’s charge had nearly bankrupted Flynn, and after Mueller threatened to go after Flynn’s son, Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI.
4. Andrew McCabe Sets Up Reince Priebus After an intelligence briefing at the White House in early 2017, former FBI number two Andrew McCabe asked to meet privately with former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. A story had just dropped — anonymously sourced from multiple intelligence community officials — that Trump aides had multiple contacts with Russian intelligence during the election. McCabe wanted to tell Priebus that the FBI didn’t think the story was true. Of course, Priebus asked McCabe if the FBI could publicly say just that. McCabe said he would have to check. But former FBI Director James Comey called Priebus to say that the FBI couldn’t publicly shoot down the story. Days later, the “breaking news” on CNN was that the White House had tried to pressure the FBI into batting down the reports on supposed ties between Trump and Russia. So not only was the White House supposedly colluding, now there were allegations of obstruction of justice.
5. Brennan Shops Dossier To Harry Reid Former CIA Director John Brennan, who may have been the U.S. intelligence official to first push an investigation into the Trump campaign, briefed then-Sen. Harry Reid on the Clinton-funded dossier in August 2016. The briefing did two things: First, it lent some legitimacy to the dossier, and second, it got Reid to pressure the FBI to not drop the investigation. The briefing had the added bonus of allowing Reid to speak publicly about Trump’s ties to Russia, as if he had just gained access to groundbreaking proof of collusion, which was of course covered by the media.
6. Comey And Clapper Give CNN A Reason To Publish The Dossier Comey, at the behest of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, briefed Trump on one of the allegations in the dossier, but not on the main allegation in the dossier, who had funded the dossier, or how that dossier was being used by the FBI. Nevertheless, this briefing looks like one more setup, meant to allow CNN to report on the existence of the dossier as if it were highly verified and being seriously examined by U.S. intelligence community officials. Clapper then leaked information about the dossier and the briefings to CNN, and later looks to have lied about those leaks to Congress. Amazingly, Clapper has previously lied to Congress. Clapper now works for CNN.
7. The Jeff Sessions Recusal Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation after anonymous intelligence community leaks about his contacts with Russians. Specifically, Sessions — as a senator — met with former Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak in his D.C. office. In another meeting, Sessions gave a speech and a gaggle of diplomats — including Kislyak — talked with him for several minutes as he was coming off the stage. The idea behind the unnecessary recusal was that somehow Sessions had misrepresented these contacts to former Sen. Al Franken. Actually, Franken — referring to one of many CNN stories sourced by anonymous officials about supposed Trump and Russia collusion — had clearly asked about whether Sessions had colluded with any Russians during the campaign, not whether Sessions had ever met any Russians.
8. Rosenstein Recommends Comey Firing, Appoints Special Counsel But with Jeff Sessions out of the way, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein became the acting attorney general for all things Russia-investigation-related. Rosenstein then recommended Comey’s firing, and then — overseeing the investigation that stemmed from that firing — appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel. Mueller, a former FBI Director, happened to be a close associate of Comey and Rosenstein, and would surely want to protect the interests of the FBI and the Justice Department. Taken together, these setups indicate a massive effort to aid the Clinton campaign before the election.
---snip---more at thefederalist.com ...
Willis L. Krumholz is a fellow at Defense Priorities. He holds a JD and MBA degree from the University of St. Thomas, and works in the financial services industry. The views expressed are those of the author only.
FISA: 85% of NSA searches by Obama Were Illegal
Freedom Outpost ^ | 01-24-2018 | Tim Brown / FR Posted 1/24/2018 by ReformedMedia
In trudging through the FISA document that came to light on Tuesday, it was discovered that the National Security Agency had been illegally conducting searches on people in the US. The document has gone on to state that those illegal searches, which were conducted under Barack Hussein Obama Soetoro Sobarkah, mounted to a whopping 85% of the total searches involving US person identifiers.
Section 702 data on US persons identifiers may be conducted if they are first “approved in accordance with [internal] NSA procedures, which must require a statement of facts establishing that the use of any such identifier as a selection term is reasonably likely to return foreign intelligence information.” The problem is that querying US persons without a warrant amounts to a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, no matter what “internal NSA procedures” are followed.
The Fourth Amendment is crystal clear: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
On page 81, the FISA report pointed out that “In May and June 2016, NSA reported to oversight personnel in the ODNI and DOJ that, since approximately 2012, use of [redacted] to query communications in [redacted] had resulted in inadvertent violations of the above-described querying rules of Section 702 information.” The NSA claims that “the violations resulted from analysts not recognizing the need to avoid querying datasets for which querying requirements were not satisfied or not understanding how to formulate [redacted] queries to exclude such datasets.” more at freedomoutpost.com ...
Why is this not being asked in the media? How about Congress?
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Because the media is out to get Trump
And Congress wants to get rid of Trump so they can all go back to the uniparty days.
I don’t think anyone with open eyes believes in “the law” anymore.
It wasn’t a dossier! Dossiers are official documents. This was pure fiction.
Because the media is out to get Trump
Not all in the media fit into this, there are some conservative papers out there. My question is why are they not spotlighting this?
And Congress wants to get rid of Trump so they can all go back to the uniparty days.
Ibid. There are several in Congress that should be leading the charge on this. Louie Gohmert comes to mind.
and Hillary just flat out embeazzled millions to pay for the Opposition Reasearch dossier which contributed directly to her campaign
Comey abused his position and was co-conspirator a major dirty cop crime
This guy needs to be ended.
Never because the DOJ is dirty from that AG’s office to newest recruit class & needs a housecleaning.
Comey abused his position and was co-conspirator a major dirty cop crime>>>>>>>>>>>>
Many of us have been pointing out for years that Comey had a network of racketeers doing Democrat/Obama influence peddling in a network that encompassed the FBI, DOJ and the IRS, as well as the EPA.
This network needs to be rolled up in a RICO investigation and a subsequent RICO prosecution IMHO. And the perpetrators need to do jail time for their attempted putsch on the Trump administration.
Comey and everyone in the FBI, DOJ and even Mueller who were aware of the origin of the dossier should go to prison as a “fake document” is not grounds to investigate ANYTHING.
All persons harmed so far have one helluva lawsuit against the Federal Gov. Yes, there is a way to SUE the government.
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