Free Republic

Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Mike Johnson, R-La., on Monday night said FBI Director Christopher Wray "has declined to respond" to their May 4 letter seeking information and interviews with key FBI officials after the bombshell revelations in the Michael Flynn case -- prompting the lawmakers to take matters into their own hands. "Because Director Wray has declined to respond to our request, we are forced to write to you directly," Jordan and Johnson wrote in an extraordinary letter to FBI agent Joe Pientka, who participated in the January 2017 White House interview that led to Flynn's prosecution. Fox News...

Have we all forgotten when Obama was caught on an open mike telling the #2 Russian leader, Medeyev, that he (Obama) would work with Putin to reduce European capabilities to defend themselves against Russian IRBM and ICBM attacks? Medeyev then promises Obama that "I will tell Vladimir" (Putin), then claps Obama on arm and promises him "I will stand with you." These are not claims! This is videotape from less than 5 years ago!!!

WASHINGTON — A key former F.B.I. official cast doubt on the Justice Department’s case for dropping a criminal charge against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn during an interview with investigators last week, according to people familiar with the investigation. Department officials reviewing the Flynn case interviewed Bill Priestap, the former head of F.B.I. counterintelligence, two days before making their extraordinary request to drop the case to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. They did not tell Judge Sullivan about Mr. Priestap’s interview. A Justice Department official said that they were in the process of writing up a report...

An FBI agent's newly released testimony undercuts top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr's denial of a conflict of interest between his Trump-Russia efforts and his wife’s work for Fusion GPS, producer of the discredited Steele dossier. The agent, Michael Gaeta, told congressional probers that Ohr had pressed him to make sure the FBI was “doing something” with the dossier. According to Gaeta, Ohr pushed Steele's collection of memos alleging nefarious ties between the Trump campaign and Russia in part because Ohr’s wife Nellie worked for the same company that had hired ex-British spy Christopher Steele. Gaeta's testimony was released last...

In 1980, 15-year-old Amy Carter left a burnt cake in the oven of the White House’s family quarters in a reflex of childish revenge for her father’s landslide loss to Ronald Reagan. In 2017, Barack Obama and Joe Biden avenged Donald Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton by leaving what they claim was a Russian agent in the West Wing. That conclusion inevitably follows if one accepts as credible the FBI’s supposed predicates for launching the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign and the four related probes into George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, and Michael Flynn. On July...

Now that the Justice Department belatedly has admitted that the entire investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was a sham, it is time to turn to the bigger picture.On August 2, 2017, acting attorney general (for all matters involving the Trump-Russia collusion hoax) Rod Rosenstein signed a memorandum expanding the jurisdiction of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Almost a year after Mueller released his report, the expanded jurisdiction memorandum remained a secret until Wednesday. A third jurisdiction memorandum remains secret.It is unclear why the Department of Justice says it kept this memo secret until now or why it...

The Justice Department’s closing of its criminal case against President Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on Thursday came as new red flags emerged from recently released documents revealing the FBI’s handling of the matter. Former FBI agents and federal prosecutors tell RealClearInvestigations that the documents show suspiciously irregular handling and editing of Flynn’s FD-302 form, the official document used to record what happens in FBI interviews. That form served as a key record used to charge Flynn with lying to federal agents. He pleaded guilty to that charge in December 2017 but had been trying to withdraw the...

The chilling words contained in the newly released handwritten notes of William Priestap, the assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division at the time of the FBI's January 24, 2017 interview with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, confirm the worst suspicions of Flynn’s defense team. Flynn’s lead defense attorney Sidney Powell believes with good reason that the retired three-star general was set up for a perjury trap by senior officials at the FBI. The handwritten notes and other released FBI documents provide her with more ammunition for the defense team’s motion to dismiss the case against Flynn. The motion...

Bill Priestap was the assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division until 2018 The DOJ on Wednesday produced more previously hidden documents to General Michael Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell. Unsealed FBI notes reveal the intent of the FBI’s January 24, 2017, White House interview of General Flynn: “What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute [Flynn] or get him fired?” The FBI framed General Flynn! Here’s how they planned to get Flynn removed: 1) Get Flynn “to admit to breaking the Logan Act”; or 2) Catch Flynn in a lie. On Wednesday night...

Documents released last week by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham give insight into a bombshell revelation about the “role of John Kerry’s State Department in fueling the FBI’s dubious Russia collusion probe, showing it was the State Department that provided ‘information’ leading to the controversial surveillance of Carter Page” reports Breitbart. Amongst the redactions released are parts of the Obama administration’s FISA warrant applications used to spy on Page. As Breitbart reports, the disclosures of the text claim Page was “an agent of a foreign power” and that “the status of the target was determined in or about October...

A very interesting development that could prove to be quite important. Today Michael Flynn’s counsel received a letter from the DOJ notifying his defense the Missouri U.S. Attorney, who was brought in to review all of the evidence in the case, has delivered new evidence and information on the case filed under seal. Here’s the letter: https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/flynn-case-april-24-2020.jpg Further reporting from Sean Davis at the Federalist gives some background on the sealed evidence that indicates the provided information is exculpatory. According to Davis’s sources the internal investigative documents “will reflect poorly on the FBI.” […] The new documents, which were filed...

How could former FBI director James Comey and his accomplices be so bold as to think they could get away with spying on Carter Page, a 2016 Trump campaign adviser, when they objectively knew Page was not a Russian agent? Answer: Because they had already corrupted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court system. Applications for warrants to spy on Americans were being approved without truthful and accurate corroboration of their allegations. The standard for the government to obtain warrants under FISA is the highest in U.S. law because preventing terrorism and foreign danger involves the otherwise unconstitutional invasion of...

The Senate Judiciary Committee has just released a bunch of documents, some of which were on the original 2018 congressional request for declassification. The documents are considerably interesting; perhaps even EXPLOSIVE. The documents include more Papadopoulos transcripts from wired conversations with FBI confidential human source Stefan Halper; and also for the first time less redacted version of all three Carter Page FISA applications. It’s going to take some time to go through this. The declassification and release includes some seriously interesting documents the DOJ submitted to the FISA court, as far back as July 2018, which completely destroy the prior...

Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declassified a slew of footnotes from Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse. Yesterday, Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declassified a slew of footnotes from Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse. In a cover letter to Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, the Republican senators who had pushed for the declassification, Grenell noted that “transparency is now needed more than ever.” Grenell added that Attorney General William Barr concurred in the declassification decision as it relates to DOJ interests. Wednesday’s declassification follows...

These facts establish the FBI used Russia’s meddling with the 2016 election as a pretext to investigate Donald Trump and the special counsel’s office was complicit in this ploy. On Friday, the Department of Justice released newly declassified information from an inspector general report on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse, revealing for the first time that the FBI had received information indicating the Christopher Steele dossier contained Russian disinformation. The newly unredacted portions of the IG’s report also confirmed there was no “network of sources” backing up Steele’s reporting. While both revelations provide further fodder for attacking the Carter...

The Justice Department’s report on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane probe is the first official account of sources relied on by Christopher Steele to write a dossier that damaged President Trump, energized the FBI and ultimately proved to be untrue. The Justice Department inspector general’s report shows that an anonymous phone call with a Steele source provided the unverified conspiracy theory to trigger a Trump campaign wiretap. Mr. Steele talked to the FBI but refused to reveal his murky network. But the FBI was able to locate his “primary sub-source.” After interviewing the Moscow-based person three times in 2017, the results...

THE JUSTICE Department’s inspector general has followed up his devastating December report on the FBI’s securing of a secret intelligence-gathering warrant on U.S. citizen Carter Page and, once again, the news is not flattering. In December, the inspector general, Michael Horowitz, found that the FBI supplied a secret panel of judges with unverified, inaccurate and, in one case, falsified data in support of its warrant applications regarding Mr. Page. Mr. Horowitz’s new report, released March 31, makes clear that this was not an isolated incident. In 29 cases drawn from five years’ worth of FBI secret warrant applications, Mr. Horowitz...

The inspector general detailed devastating, systematic FBI failures in executing procedures designed to ensure the accuracy of FISA applications. On March 31, Inspector General Michael Horowitz released an interim report on his audit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s compliance with procedures to protect Americans’ civil rights in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act cases. Horowitz’s “Management Advisory Memorandum” detailed devasting and systematic failures by the FBI in executing the procedures designed to ensure the accuracy of the applications submitted under oath to the FISA court.Contrary to the left’s spin, the FBI’s incompetence in handling more (Most? All?) FISA cases is not...

“Even if the statements at issue — published by third parties named in Page’s first failed lawsuit — could be attributed to Defendants, those statements were substantially true, and thus cannot be defamatory as a matter of law,” the DNC’s attorneys asserted.

The Democratic National Committee’s legal team, bolstered by Obama White House lawyers, moved to dismiss a lawsuit from onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, arguing the "gist" of British ex-spy Christopher Steele's controversial dossier was true. In January, Page filed a lawsuit against the DNC, powerhouse law firm Perkins Coie, and its lawyers Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann, alleging they maliciously engaged in a defamatory conspiracy in 2016 that cast false light on his character and interfered with his ability to make a living. “The Defendants are private actors who used false information, misrepresentations, and other misconduct to direct the...