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The depositions given by former British spy Christopher Steele and a longtime associate of John McCain must be unsealed, a federal judge said Thursday. U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro overruled the objections of both Steele and David Kramer to make the depositions public. The pair gave testimony in a lawsuit brought against BuzzFeed in December 2018 by a Russian Internet entrepreneur. The businessman, Aleksej Gubarev, was referenced in the infamous dossier compiled by Steele about President Trump’s alleged connections to Russia. Gubarev objected to BuzzFeed’s publishing of the dossier in January 2017, which accused him of using his companies...

FBI General Counsel James Baker, testifying under oath before a joint Congressional committee, stated that he took possession of Dennis Montgomery’s evidence. Baker dispatched FBI Special Agents Walter Giardina and William Barnett to the FBI Miami Field Office in August 2015 to pick up Montgomery’s computer hard drives. Baker testified before Congress in October 2018: "So his client was an individual named Dennis Montgomery, who I believe, to the best of my recollection, he said that he had been a U.S. Government contractor and, in the course of that work, had come across evidence of unlawful surveillance by the government...

The alleged main Russian source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier has claimed anti-Russian bias could stop him from getting a fair trial. Igor Danchenko’s lawyer, Danny Onorato, raised the issue during a pretrial hearing on Monday. The lawyer backed up the claim, noting there are a number of Ukrainian flags around Alexandria, Virginia, amid Russia's invasion, which started in February. The attorney suggested the defense team may try to find a way to address that issue in the questionnaire for jurors during the selection process in the trial, brought by special counsel John Durham. Danchenko was charged last year...

Reality Winner smuggled a top-secret NSA dossier out of her office at a US government IT contractor by hiding it in her pantyhose, she told special agents.That's according to a transcript, released this week, of her interview with investigators who showed up at her house in Georgia, USA, to grill her. If you've ever wondered what it must be like being interrogated and coaxed by Uncle Sam's g-men, wonder no more: it's all laid out in this court filing, revealing the special agents' interviewing techniques.Winner, 25, is accused of printing off NSA files that claim Russian spies hacked at least...

Revealing letter from Senator Chuck Grassley pertaining to the FBI coordinated effort with the DNC to label the Hunter Biden laptop as “disinformation”. Grassley alleges there’s a grander conspiracy by the FBI and DOJ to assist the DNC in election fraud. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/chuck-grassley-fbi-justice-department-downplay-hunter-biden-information/ Now, it would appear everyone has forgotten, but claims of the FBI/DOJ being corrupt and/or working with the DNC/Deep State, used to be considered kooky Q stuff. Now it’s widely considered as a reality. Just a friendly reminder that this is a proof, not red lines and numerology. What I find most curious, is the timing of all...

...she is a whistleblower who sent suspicious activity reports to BuzzFeed News after trying in vain to work through lawful channels. Her actions became the basis for the global FinCEN Files investigation. They also described her disclosures as “unparalleled in FinCEN’s history,” having sent approximately 50,000 documents, including 2,000 SARs, to Leopold over the course of a year and running searches within internal systems at his request.

The U.S. Department of Justice "ignored a lawful instruction" from President Trump to declassify and release to the public hundreds of pages of information about how it participated in the now-debunked Russia collusion conspiracy against the president. That conspiracy, dreamed up by Democrats including Hillary Clinton, falsely contended that the Trump campaign from 2016 "colluded" with Russia on the election. The DOJ, FBI and other federal agencies jumped on the political agenda, created false documents to submit to the courts and then obtained permission from those courts to spy on Trump associates. A multi-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller...

In the final hours of the Trump presidency, the U.S. Justice Department raised privacy concerns to thwart the release of hundreds of pages of documents that Donald Trump had declassified to expose FBI abuses during the Russia collusion probe, and the agency then defied a subsequent order to release the materials after redactions were made, according to interviews and documents. The previously untold story of how highly anticipated declassified material never became public is contained in a memo obtained by Just the News from the National Archives that was written by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows just hours...

The infamous phone call between then-incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, like so many tales of Russian collusion, is not as it first appeared. In light of new evidence, it’s likely there’s no truth to the running narrative about the December 29, 2016 phone call that has been the basis of Flynn’s legal nightmare for more than three years. The case against the three-star general, concocted by Barack Obama’s corrupt FBI, centers on the accusation that Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions with Kislyak and later lied about it to the FBI. And now that we know...

The Pulitzer Prize Board gave the 2018 award for National Reporting jointly to the New York Times and Washington Post. The recognition was for their reporting on the alleged conspiring, coordination, and collusion between the Donald Trump presidential campaign and the Russian government with the goal of electing Trump president at the expense of Hillary Clinton. The papers implied Trump and many in his inner circle were beholden to Vladimir Putin. In bestowing the award, the Pulitzer judges praised the two papers. The judges wrote “For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s...

U.S. Frustrated By Elusive Justice Served to USS Cole Plotters May 04, 2008 It's been called "the forgotten attack" but it's one of the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history. Eight years after the USS Cole was attacked by a motorboat packed with explosives, all of the six men convicted of the strike have escaped from prison, or been freed by Yemeni officials. Seventeen sailors were killed and 40 more wounded in the strike, blamed on Usama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Jamal al-Badawi, who helped organize the Cole plot, has reportedly escaped from Yemeni prisons twice. He is supposedly...

The information presented below confirms the participation of each of the listed individuals in the Derkach tapes disinformation campaign, demonstrates the connection between them, as well as the coordinated nature of their actions. On January 11, 2021, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on a number of Ukrainian politicians and civil servants for interfering in the US presidential elections by spreading disinformation. The decision concerned the individuals involved in the publication, legitimization and distribution of the disinformation concerning so-called “Derkach tapes”, in which allegedly Joe Biden and Petro Poroshenko discuss issues of Ukrainian politics and raise the topic of Burisma....

Former Vice President Joe Biden is reportedly set to announce this week that Tony Blinken, who supported the idea of “Russia collusion,” would be his Secretary of State. Bloomberg News reported Sunday evening: President-elect Joe Biden intends to name his longtime adviser Antony Blinken as secretary of State, according to three people familiar with the matter, setting out to assemble his cabinet even before Donald Trump concedes defeat. In addition, Jake Sullivan, formerly one of Hillary Clinton’s closest aides, is likely to be named Biden’s national security adviser, according to two people familiar with the matter. An announcement is expected...

The trial of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann is coming to an end [ZH: has now ended with Sussman’s acquittal] but rather than provide definitive answers to the origins of the Russiagate hoax, the trial has thrown up many new mysteries and unanswered questions.Special Counsel John Durham arrives at federal court in Washington on May 16, 2022. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)Durham’s overarching trial narrative was that the FBI was duped by Sussmann when he presented them with data purportedly tying Trump to the Kremlin via the Russian Alfa Bank. It may have been Durham’s only viable strategy given the fact he...

Michael Sussmann, a lawyer representing Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, has been found not guilty of a single count of lying to the FBI when he said he was not working on behalf of any client when he alleged a covert communications channel between the Trump Organization and Russia's Alfa Bank. Sussmann was charged under 18 U.S.C. 1001 with lying to the FBI during a meeting with then-FBI general counsel James Baker when he came forward with what he claimed was evidence of possible covert communications between the Trump organization and Alfa, a Russian bank. Sussmann allegedly concealed that he was...

CTH always falls back upon timelines to see the larger motives, intents and operational objectives of participants.  No matter which entrance hole you follow down into the labyrinth – eventually you end up finding yourself in the same chamber, the treasury. Every motive seems to consistently boil down to money. Ideology without financing is as useful as a pancake to paddle a canoe.

Today we saw some important testimony in the Michael Sussmann case. First, Rodney Joffe, an FBI confidential human source, went around his FBI handler to relay dubious Alfa Bank information to a friend at the FBI. Second, there were indications that Joffe previously worked on Russia cyber security matters. This leads us to ask whether Joffe was in some way involved in the Trump/Russia investigation. More on that below. The testimony of retired FBI Agent Tom Grasso. Grasso, a witness for Sussmann, was a Special Agent with the FBI whose “primary responsibility involved investigating cyber crimes.” He was part of...

(CNN)The FBI is conducting an internal review into possible misconduct related to the Trump-Russia investigation, including potentially improper handling of a surveillance warrant that was used early in the investigation, an FBI agent revealed Tuesday in federal court. FBI supervisory agent Curtis Heide testified that an administrative inquiry is underway, and that multiple FBI agents are being scrutinized, including himself. Heide said the inquiry is being handled by the FBI's Inspection Division, which conducts internal audits and can refer any wrongdoing it finds to the Office of Professional Responsibility, which can recommend discipline or even firings.

The Washington Post was accused of bias on Monday after publishing a piece that claimed there is "no evidence" Hillary Clinton triggered the Russian probe despite her former campaign manager testifying that she approved distributing materials alleging a secret communications channel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank to the media, despite not being "totally confident" in the legitimacy of the data. On Friday, ex-Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook testified that his former boss approved the move when grilled during the trial of ex-Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who has been charged with making a false statement to the...

The Russia-Trump collusion narrative of 2016 and beyond was a dirty trick for the ages, and now we know it came from the top—candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. That was the testimony Friday by 2016 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook in federal court, and while this news is hardly a surprise, it’s still bracing to find her fingerprints on the political weapon. Mr. Mook testified as a witness in special counsel John Durham’s trial of Michael Sussmann, the lawyer accused of lying to the FBI. In September 2016, Mr. Sussmann took claims of a secret Trump connection to Russia’s Alfa Bank...