Free Republic

What was judicious a few years ago is foolhardy today because the left has learned there are no consequences when they abuse the system to attack conservatives. ... Special Counsel John Durham continues to ignore the FBI’s malfeasance in the Crossfire Hurricane targeting of Donald Trump, a Friday court filing by prosecutors in the criminal case against Igor Danchenko confirms. While that approach may have been prudent and in the country’s best interests three and a half years ago, when then-Attorney General Bill Barr tasked Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia collusion hoax, it is no longer judicious....

The FBI deceived the House, Senate and the Justice Department about the substance and strength of evidence undergirding its counterintelligence investigation of President Trump, according to a recently declassified document and other material. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta A seven-page internal FBI memo dated March 8, 2017, shows that “talking points” prepared for then-FBI Director James Comey for his meeting the next day with the congressional leadership were riddled with half-truths, outright falsehoods, and critical omissions. Both the Senate and the House opened investigations and held hearings based in part on the misrepresentations made in those FBI briefings, one of which...

Cases handled by special counsel John Durham have produced a flurry of notable discoveries that shed more light on the sprawling yearslong investigation. Durham so far has three indictments and one guilty plea under his belt, with some indications that there may be more in the pipeline. Durham was tasked around March-May 2019 with reviewing the 2016-2017 FBI investigation of alleged nefarious ties between candidate and later President Donald Trump and Russia. In October 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham a special counsel. In February 2021, Durham resigned his position as a federal prosecutor after 35 years with the...

Bill Still #2785 on Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson. (Deep state, FISA abuse, illegal NSA access, allegedly whistle blower form changer after the fact).

Typically, a case like Kevin Clinesmith's would end in disbarment, but not this time. Kevin Clinesmith, the former senior FBI lawyer who was placed on probation as a convicted felon for falsifying a surveillance document during the Trump-Russia investigation, has been returned to "good standing" as a member of the D.C. Bar Association. In August of 2020, Clinesmith pleaded guilty to doctoring an email that was then used to justify a surveillance warrant that targeted former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. As a result, Clinesmith was sentenced in January to 12 months probation, though the D.C. bar did not seek...

A former senior FBI lawyer who falsified a surveillance document in the Trump-Russia investigation has been restored as a member in "good standing" by the District of Columbia Bar Association even though he has yet to finish serving out his probation as a convicted felon, according to disciplinary records obtained by RealClearInvestigations. The move is the latest in a series of exceptions the bar has made for Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty in August 2020 to doctoring an email used to justify a surveillance warrant targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Clinesmith was sentenced to 12 months probation last...

John Durham has informed the Department of Justice he will ask a grand jury to indict Michael Sussmann over his making a false statement to the FBI. The report cites "people familiar with the matter." Durham was assigned by then Attorney General Bill Barr in 2019 to investigate. Last December, Attorney General Barr elevated Durham's status to Special Counsel.

Witnesses are getting antsy with special counsel John Durham 's criminal inquiry into the opening and conduct of the Russia investigation. Last week, nearly seven months into the Biden administration, reports said the federal prosecutor had presented evidence before a grand jury , a sign he is considering more criminal charges beyond the one brought against former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted to altering an email about a Trump campaign aide who was under government surveillance. Adding another layer to the public's understanding of the politically charged review, the Washington Post reported some private chatter about Attorney General Merrick...

In August, FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty to a felony count of making a false statement while working to secure FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) surveillance on Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. In the early days of the Russian probe, an FBI official had asked if Page had served as a source for the government, as Page maintained; Clinesmith falsely altered a document by adding "not a source" in a fourth FISA application. Skip Clinesmith's punishment for making a false statement? Prosecutors recommended three to six months, according to Politico. Federal Judge James Boasberg instead sentenced Clinesmith...

If Durham is allowed to proceed with indictments of serious power players, then the conclusion that we are becoming a banana republic without the bananas can be suspended for a while. The shockingly lenient treatment of FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who lied to a federal judge in order to keep spying on Carter Page, has led many of us to despair that justice will never be done in the greatest political scandal in American history, the use of the FBI and intelligence community resources to spy on the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and to bring him down once elected....

Just when you thought the FBI couldn’t fall any further, the Bureau utterly, hilariously, and luridly beclowns itself. In a formal document, a criminal charge. Using a Photoshopped picture from 4-chan, the reviled (by all people who abhor wrongthink) website where a wag substituted a lurid picture for the official portrait hanging on the wall of the US Capitol in the background of a shot of the Viking horn helmet guy and others who stormed in on January 6, 2021. Seamus Hughes was the eagle eye who spotted it, though the arrow in his picture on the following tweet directs...

For the past year, defenders of the FBI have consistently downplayed the significance of an FBI staff lawyer falsifying evidence in the government’s investigation into Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia. They argue Kevin Clinesmith’s crime of altering a CIA document to obscure the fact that former Trump campaign aide Carter Page worked for U.S., not Russian, intelligence was a rare lapse in judgment by an overworked bureaucrat. It was not, his apologists say, part of any broader conspiracy to conceal exculpatory information from surveillance court judges, who never learned of Page’s history with the CIA before approving FBI warrants to...

Special Counsel John Durham is adding prosecutors to his team and making "excellent progress" on his probe into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, Fox News reported on Monday. A federal law enforcement official familiar with the probe told Fox News that it is unclear, however, who those prosecutors are. Durham was appointed by Attorney General William Barr last year after special counsel Robert Mueller completed his investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to sway the 2016 presidential election. Barr then elevated Durham’s status to that of a special counsel, explaining in a letter to the...

John Durham A ray of hope? The White House announced on Tuesday that President Trump signed an order on December 18 giving US Attorney from Connecticut John Durham the authority to present classified information to a grand jury investigating Crossfire Hurricane. Under previous DOJ rules and regulations the Attorney General needed consent from the specific classifying agency which allowed Deep Staters in the CIA to stonewall release of documents. As TGP previously reported, Attorney General Bill Barr appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham as a Special Counsel in October tasked with investigating the Crossfire Hurricane investigation targeting the Trump campaign and...

During an interview last week, Attorney General William Barr gave an update on the criminal investigation into the origin of the Obama-era FBI counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, saying that a “willful if small group of people” were involved in an attempt to “topple” the Trump administration.Barr made the remarks in an interview with Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel in which he noted that he was “in a position in life where I can do the right thing and not really care about the consequences.”Strassel wrote:He reminds me why he took the job in the first place: “The...

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith’s legal team is pleading with a judge not to send him to prison for lying to secure surveillance orders against President Trump’s 2016 campaign adviser Carter Page. Clinesmith agreed in August to plead guilty to making false statements when he doctored an email submitted as evidence to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The discovery was made by US Attorney for Connecticut John Durham’s team reviewing the FBI’s Russia investigation. Durham will serve as a special counsel continuing his work under President-elect Joe Biden.

U.S. Attorney John Durham’s probe into how the FBI’S Russia probe got started is moving “full steam ahead.” Fox News attributed the information to a source familiar with the investigation. And another source confirmed the investigation “is definitely still happening,” according to the news network. Word of the probe’s status came despite concerns from Republicans that the investigation had become dormant following the election. Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI lawyer was charged in August with making a false statement in the first criminal case arising from Durham's investigation into the probe of ties between Russia and the 2016 Donald Trump...

Former US Representative Trey Gowdy was on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo this Labor Day weekend. Gowdy had this to say about the John Durham investigation that has been going on for the past year looking into criminal activities in the Russia collusion scandal. The crimes being looked into are those by the FBI and DOJ holdovers from the Obama administration.

According to “TruePundit,” insiders at the DoJ and FBI say there is substantial evidence implicating Barack Hussein Obama and Joe Biden in “Spygate.”  However, they have been directed to “stand down,” allegedly by Attorney General William Barr, literally giving the ex-president and ex-vice president de facto immunity.  President Trump recently said something along the lines that Barr could be politically correct or he could do the right thing and show that there are not two tiers of justice.  A data point is the plea deal with Kevin Clinesmith.  Whoopee! One of the co-conspirators in Spygate gets a literal pass.  His attorney claims...

FBI Attorney Admits Altering Email Used for FISA Application During "Crossfire Hurricane" Investigation Former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, 38, pleaded guilty today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to a false statement offense stemming from his altering of an email in connection with the submission of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) application, announced John H. Durham, Special Attorney to the Attorney General. Pursuant to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), the guilty plea proceeding occurred via videoconference before U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg. According to court documents and statements made...