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WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Wednesday seeking answers to questions regarding the way a consulting firm hired by Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company, appears to have used Hunter's Biden's role on Burisma's board to possibly influence State Department matters. Recently obtained State Department emails, made public through a FOIA request, indicate Burisma's consulting firm noted "two high profile U.S. citizens (including Hunter Biden as a board member) affiliated...

Relatedly, Representative Collins asserts that HJC's investigation cannot be "preliminarily to" an impeachment trial until the full House passes a resolution authorizing a "formal impeachment proceeding." Collins Mem. at 1. DOJ equivocates on this proposed bright line test to meet the "preliminarily to" requirement, Hr'g Tr. at 69:10-11, but seems to indicate that the House must go at least that far, see DOJ Resp. at 28. Like all bright-line rules, this "House resolution" test is appealing in terms of being easy to apply. Yet, the reasoning supporting this proposed test is fatally flawed. The precedential support cited for the "House...

The FBI under James Comey "unilaterally" made the decision to interview retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, excluding input from the Justice Department, ignoring the White House counsel and leading Flynn to believe agents were arriving as friends to discuss terrorism, his lawyer says. ... "When the Director of the FBI, and a group of his close associates, plot to set up an innocent man and create a crime -- while taking affirmative steps to ensnare him by refusing to follow procedures designed to prevent such inadvertent missteps -- this amounts to conduct so shocking to the conscience and so inimical...

Earlier this week, Michael Flynn's star attorney, Sidney Powell, filed under seal a brief in reply to federal prosecutors' claims that they have already given Flynn's defense team all the evidence they are required by law to provide. A minimally redacted copy of the reply brief has just been made public, and with it shocking details of the deep state's plot to destroy Flynn. ... What is most striking, though, is the timeline Powell pieced together from publicly reported text messages withheld from the defense team and excerpts from documents still sealed from public view. The sequence Powell lays out...

An explosive new court filing from Michael Flynn's legal team alleges that FBI agents manipulated official records of the former national security adviser's 2017 interview that led to him being charged with lying to investigators. It's Flynn's lawyers latest attempt to get the case thrown out. ... Whether the combative filings will persuade the court in a case where Flynn has already pleaded guilty remains to be seen. Prosecutors have strongly rejected claims they're hiding evidence, saying "the government has exceeded its discovery and disclosure obligations in this matter," including by providing Flynn with thousands of pages of documents. Federal...

In this case, high-ranking FBI officials orchestrated an ambush-interview of the new president's National Security Advisor, not for the purpose of discovering any evidence of criminal activity--they already had tapes of all the relevant conversations about which they questioned Mr. Flynn--but for the purpose of trapping him into making statements they could allege as false. This is no paranoid "conspiracy" delusion, as the government implies. It is well documented by the evidence already made public, which was long known to the government -- yet withheld from the defense--until after Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty and in clear violation of Brady v....

Oct 24, 2019 Citing string of classified leaks, Grassley & Johnson call for public accountability WASHINGTON - The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) is again refusing to provide any assurances that a steady stream of sensitive and classified leaks from the nation's intelligence personnel are being investigated. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) are voicing concern that the ICIG's failure to assure the public of any efforts to investigate the leaks will further erode public trust in critical intelligence agencies. In a letter to ICIG Michael Atkinson,...

Bunch of "whereas" followed by: Resolved, That the Senate-- (1) calls on the House of Representatives, prior to proceeding any further with its impeachment in- vestigation into President Trump, to vote to initiate a formal impeachment inquiry; (2) calls on the House of Representatives to provide President Trump, like every other American, with due process, to include the ability to confront his accusers, call witnesses on his behalf, and have a basic understanding of the accusations against him that would form any basis for impeachment; and (3) calls on the House of Representatives to provide members of the minority with...

Michael T. Flynn ("Mr. Flynn") requests this Court order the filing of his proposed redacted Reply on the public docket. ... From June 6, 2019, as evidenced by defense counsel's confidential letter to the Deputy Attorney General, the government attached in its response, new lead counsel for Mr. Flynn has given the government every opportunity to dismiss this case in the interest of justice on its own because of the rampant wrongdoing of government agents from the inception of the "investigation" and prosecution of Mr. Flynn. Instead of doing so, the government has continued to defy its constitutional, ethical and...

As the Justice Department's review into the now-debunked Russia collusion probe becomes more public, one issue likely to dominate debate is whether the FBI treated Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump differently during the 2015-16 presidential election. Exhibit One in that debate may involve a December 2015 event that has been kept from public view for most of the last three years. A half dozen sources with direct knowledge tell me that Clinton's presidential campaign was given a defensive briefing from U.S. intelligence that month about a possible foreign threat. Government officials have known for months about the briefing but were...

October 2, 2019 The Honorable Eliot L. Engel, Chairman Committee on Foreign Affairs House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 Dear Mr. Chairman: I am writing to strongly object to the abdication of the Foreign Affairs Committee's oversight jurisdiction to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It will damage the credibility of our committee and minimize our Members' expertise in the exercise of that jurisdiction. On September 27, 2019, you and two other chairmen sent a letter to the Secretary of State claiming to "schedule" without subpoena the depositions of five State Department officials to "be conducted jointly by the Committee...

Oct 01, 2019 Butler County, Iowa - Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) made the following comments regarding the intelligence community whistleblower and related issues. "This person appears to have followed the whistleblower protection laws and ought to be heard out and protected. We should always work to respect whistleblowers' requests for confidentiality. Any further media reports on the whistleblower's identity don't serve the public interest--even if the conflict sells more papers or attracts clicks. "No one should be making judgments or pronouncements without hearing from the whistleblower first and carefully following up on the facts. Uninformed speculation wielded by politicians or...

Sep 30, 2019 Ukrainian Records Shed New Light on Biden's Ultimatum to Terminate Prosecutor --- Ukraine-DNC Coordination to Undermine Trump 2016 Campaign Should Not be Overlooked WASHINGTON - Two Senate chairmen want to know whether the Justice Department has acquired information from Ukrainian prosecutors that may contradict the stated reasoning behind former Vice President Joe Biden's threat to withhold U.S. assistance from Ukraine. They are also renewing an inquiry into the department's response to reported efforts by Ukrainians, in coordination with Democratic Party associates, to acquire damaging information on Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign. In a letter to...

Three Democratic senators have written a letter to Ukraine's prosecutor general to "express great concern" over reports that Ukrainian officials had looked to potentially hinder special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Sens. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Patrick Leahy of Vermont wrote in the letter to Yuriy Lutsenko that a recent New York Times report said his office "effectively froze investigations into four open cases in Ukraine in April, thereby eliminating scope for cooperation with the Mueller probe into related issues." ... "As strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine, we believe...

Earlier this month, during a bipartisan meeting in Kiev, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) delivered a pointed message to Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelensky. While choosing his words carefully, Murphy made clear - by his own account - that Ukraine currently enjoyed bipartisan support for its U.S. aid but that could be jeopardized if the new president acquiesced to requests by President Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to investigate past corruption allegations involving Americans, including former Vice President Joe Biden's family. ... The implied message did not require an interpreter for Zelensky to understand: Investigate the Ukraine dealings of Joe Biden and...

RALEIGH, N.C. - Today, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, issued the following statement after the former Fed monetary Vice Chairman Bill Dudley proposed that the Fed meddle in the presidential election to defeat President Trump: I am very disappointed that former Fed monetary Vice Chairman Bill Dudley is lobbying the Fed to use its authority as a political weapon against President Trump. The President is standing up for America against China after 30 years of our country and our workers being ripped off and there is now an effort to get the Fed to...

While prosecutors routinely recite their full knowledge of and compliance with their Brady obligations, in truth they often scoff at them and continue to play games to win convictions at all costs. Meanwhile, the defense does not know what the defense does not know. This problem was demonstrated dramatically in the prosecution of United States Senator Ted Stevens. In fact, it was the prosecutorial misconduct in that case that led this Court to adopt the Brady order it now routinely enters in every criminal case. Unfortunately, the government learned nothing from the rebukes in Stevens. It has engaged in even...

The attorneys for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn called for a court intervention on Aug. 30 as the government continues to deny them security clearances required to view classified documents which they say likely contain exculpatory information. "Our attempts to resolve that issue with the government have come to a dead-end, thus requiring the intervention of this Court," the attorneys for Flynn state in a status report filed on Aug. 30. ... The judge in the case ordered the defense and the prosecution to file a status report on Aug. 30 to brief the court on the status of...

... The Department of Justice Inspector General just fired the first of three cruise missiles trained on Mr. Comey with devastating impact. Comey’s reaction? "Feel free to apologize to me." ... Next up will be the IG's findings regarding Comey’s truthfulness before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court and whether he attested to false or misleading statements in order to electronically monitor a presidential campaign. ... But beyond that, Mr. Durham and his team likely will follow up on emerging indicators that Comey may have colluded with other intelligence community leaders to actually "manufacture" the justification needed for an...

A Google insider who anonymously leaked internal documents to Project Veritas made the decision to go public in an on-the-record video interview. The insider, Zachary Vorhies, decided to go public after receiving a letter from Google, and after he says Google allegedly called the police to perform a "wellness check" on him. ... Vorhies described the incident to Project Veritas: "they got inside the gate, the police, and they started banging on my door ... And so the police decided that they were going to call in additional forces. They called in the FBI, they called in the SWAT team....