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Antony Blinken represents neither the beginning nor the end of the info ops run to convince voters the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Revisiting the contemporaneous coverage of the laptop story in light of last week’s revelations about Blinken reveals the scandal extends far beyond the Biden campaign and involves government agents. Last week, news broke that a former top CIA official, Michael Morell, testified as part of a House Judiciary Committee investigation that Blinken, now-secretary of state and then-Biden campaign senior adviser, had contacted Morell to discuss the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story. Blinken and Morell...

Claims by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) that he had no contact with the intelligence community whistleblower at the center of the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump are disputed in a new book. In Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump, authors Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian reveal a meeting between the whistleblower’s attorney, Andrew Bakaj, and lawyers working for the House Select Committee on Intelligence. This occurred in the run-up to the fall 2019 launch of an impeachment inquiry into Trump over allegations he demanded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to initiate corruption investigations into now-President...

Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra are being eyed for possible top cabinet positions in President-elect Joe Biden's administration, said two sources familiar with the discussions. Yates, who currently serves on the advisory board to Biden's transition team, is "no doubt" being considered as a candidate to become the country's next Attorney General, said one of the two, who asked to remain anonymous because no decision has been reached.

Months before a whistleblower complaint that would spark the Democrat effort for impeachment, a shadowy liberal group founded and staffed by Obama administration alums and former Democrat congressional staffers launched an outside investigation into whether President Trump’s allies were seeking “foreign interference” from Ukraine in the 2020 elections. The group, American Oversight, began investigating the issue in May — more than two months before the “whistleblower” filed a complaint alleging Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals.” The group’s purpose is to...

An attorney representing a whistleblower in the intelligence community who filed an inspector general complaint at the center of the impeachment proceedings lashed out at Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Tuesday, accusing the congressman of lying and spreading conspiracy theories. Andrew Bakaj tweeted Tuesday that Jordan had lied about who the unnamed whistleblower had contacted before filing a report with the intelligence community's inspector general. "Congressman @Jim_Jordan - I AM TIRED OF YOU LYING IN A HOUSE COMMITTEE ROOM IN FRONT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. My client hired ME - no one else in leading up to filing the disclosure...

Fox News’ Gregg Re has just reported that a second whistleblower, possibly a real one this time, filed a complaint last week with the Intelligence Community Inspector General about the original whistleblower, alleged to be Eric Ciaramella. Re wrote that Ciaramella “may have violated federal law by indirectly soliciting more than a quarter-million dollars from mostly anonymous sources via a GoFundMe page.” So far, 6,000 donors have contributed a total of $227,000. The new whistleblower alleges that these funds: clearly constitute gifts to a current intelligence official that may be restricted because of the employee’s official position pursuant to 5...

Andrew Bakaj, one of the attorneys for the whistleblower – whose report led to House Democrats' impeachment proceedings – sent a cease and desist letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone, telling President Trump to stop attacking his client, CNN reports. "I am writing to respectfully request that you counsel your client on the legal and ethical peril in which he is placing himself should anyone be physically harmed as a result of his, or his surrogates', behavior," Bakaj wrote, adding that the president is "engaging in rhetoric and activity that places my client, the Intelligence Community Whistleblower, and their...

Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump's son published on Wednesday the name of the alleged anonymous whistleblower whose complaint fired the impeachment inquiry against Trump, breaking strict conventions for protecting officials who reveal wrongdoing in government. Amid calls by the president himself to expose the whistleblower, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted the name of a CIA analyst which has circulated online for weeks, and linked to a Breitbart news article implying the person was pro-Democrat and anti-Trump. AFP could not independently verify the whistleblower's identity and is not publishing the name. But the revelation by the president's son comes as the...

(CNN)Mark Zaid, an attorney for the anonymous whistleblower whose allegations about President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine ignited the House impeachment inquiry into the President, said Sunday he offered to have Republican lawmakers submit questions to his client directly without having to go through the committee's Democratic majority. The whistleblower previously offered to answer lawmakers' questions under oath and in writing if they were submitted by the House Intelligence Committee as a whole. This new offer would be a direct channel of communication with the Republicans who are in the minority on that committee. Republican leadership has complained that the...

AN Newsroom UPDATED 3:25 PM PT — Saturday, November 2, 2019 The whistleblower’s legal team is saying it won’t hesitate to take legal action against media outlets that identify him. Speaking to the Daily Caller, the whistleblower’s attorneys said any organization that reports his name will be personally liable if that person is physically harmed.

Mark S. Zaid, the activist attorney representing the so-called whistleblower at the center of the impeachment movement targeting President Donald Trump, advocated for Robert S. Mueller III to become an anti-Trump whistleblower. On April 25, 2018, while Mueller’s Office of the Special Counsel was investigating ultimately collapsed claims of collusion between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign, Zaid co-authored an oped in the New York Times calling for Mueller and his staff to become “lawful whistle-blowers.” The scheme outlined by Zaid was an option to be implemented if Trump had moved to fire Mueller and dismantle the Special Counsel’s office. Zaid...

One of the attorneys representing the anonymous “whistleblowers” accusing President Donald Trump of conspiring with foreign leaders to interfere in the next U.S. presidential election used to report directly to former director of national intelligence James Clapper. Charles McCullough, an attorney now representing the whistleblowers with Andrew Bakaj, a former staffer for Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, was previously the inspector general of the intelligence community (ICIG) at the height of the Clinton email scandal. Now a partner at the Compass Rose Legal Group, McCullough’s professional biography on the law firm’s website notes that he reported directly to Clapper...

Andrew P. Bakaj is the lawyer representing the whistleblower who came forward with information about President Donald Trump and his conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about an investigation into 2020 democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. The whistleblower’s intel, which has now been turned over to Congress confidentially, pushed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to announce a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump on September 24, 2019. Lead counsel on this high-profile case is the 36-year-old Bakaj, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, who now works as the founding & managing partner of Compass Rose Legal...

Whistleblower lawyers work with nonprofit to launch GoFundMe page seeking $100G ahead of possible testimony Lawyers for the whistleblower who has alleged possible wrongdoing by President Trump in his July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky worked with a nonprofit group to establish a GoFundMe page seeking to raise an initial $100,000 for the whistleblower's legal defense, Fox News has learned. John Tye, a onetime whistleblower who founded the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid, told Fox News he was working with the whistleblower's lawyers at the Compass Rose Legal Group as a matter of principle. Their fundraising page, which can be found...