Free Republic

Federal agents arrested Igor Danchenko, the primary researcher of a dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, as part of Special Counsel John Durham’s probe into the origins of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into former President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The charges against Danchenko are not yet known, since Durham’s indictment is sealed.

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...

FBI analysts working on the Michael Flynn Russia investigation originally planned to end the inquiry in fall 2016 and eventually bought liability insurance fearing they could be sued after their bosses continued to keep the investigation open based on "conspiracy theories," explosive new text messages showed Thursday. "We all went and purchased professional liability insurance," one analyst texted on Jan. 10, 2017, just 10 days before Trump took office. "Holy crap," a colleague responded. "All the analysts too?" "Yep," the first analyst said. "All the folks at the Agency as well." "Can I ask who are the most likely litigators?"...

Clinesmith falsified documents and helped the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Team omit exonerating evidence about Carter Page on four separate FISA applications. The FBI was told Carter Page was a U.S. intelligence agency source months before the agency began keeping that information from the secret court that authorized spying on him and nearly a full year before the agency altered documents to claim otherwise. Federal charging documents against Kevin Clinesmith, the top FBI attorney who was expected to plead guilty today to altering documents, show that the FBI withheld in three separate spying applications the fact that Page had served as...

The Justice Department Inspector watchdog referred FBI agent Stephen Somma for disciplinary review after an investigation into alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses. Somma, a counterintelligence investigator in the FBI's New York field office, was identified only as "Case Agent 1" in Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report, released in December. Sources told the New York Times that Somma is that official. The FBI did not comment for the report. Somma was “primarily responsible for some of the most significant errors and omissions" during the process of obtaining FISA warrants to wiretap Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016 and 2017,...

Back in December, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified that there were 17 significant "errors and omissions" in the Carter Page FISA application process: The inspector general "identified at least 17 significant errors or omissions in the Carter Page FISA applications and many errors in the Woods Procedures" which guide the FBI's FISA process, according to the 476-page report. "These errors and omissions resulted from case agents providing wrong or incomplete information to the National Security Division’s Office of Intelligence and failing to flag important issues for discussion,” Horowitz said. Horowitz found big problems in the system: “That so many...

BOSTON—A federal bankruptcy judge who resigned after his drunken driving arrest has a new job. Robert Somma has been hired by the Boston law firm of Posternak Blankstein & Lund as a senior counsel in the firm's bankruptcy department. Somma rear-ended a pickup truck at a red light in Manchester, N.H. on Feb. 6 while wearing a cocktail dress and high heels. He resigned from the bench a few days after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor charge of drunken driving and paying a fine.

MANCHESTER – A Boston-based federal judge wore a black cocktail dress, fish-net stockings and high heels when police arrested him for drunk driving after he rear-ended a pickup truck last week, sources said U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Somma, 63, struck a plea deal with the city Wednesday in which he pleaded no contest to a first-offense misdemeanor driving while intoxicated charge in Manchester District Court. In exchange, the judge agreed to pay $600 in fines and penalties and a 12-month license suspension, which can be reduced to six months if he proves he successfully completed a driver education and...