The Cabal; the Weaponization of Government - deel V

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The Russian collusion hoax meets unbelievable end

As the Russia collusion hoax hurtles toward its demise, it’s important to consider how this destructive information operation rampaged through vital American institutions for more than two years, and what can be done to stop such a damaging episode from recurring.

While the hoax was fueled by a wide array of false accusations, misleading leaks of ostensibly classified information, and bad-faith investigative actions by government officials, one vital element was indispensable to the overall operation: the Steele dossier.

Funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee, which hid their payments from disclosure by funneling them through the law firm Perkins Coie, the dossier was a collection of false and often absurd accusations of collusion between Trump associates and Russian officials. These allegations, which relied heavily on Russian sources cultivated by Christopher Steele, were spoon-fed to Trump opponents in the U.S. government, including officials in law enforcement and intelligence.

The efforts to feed the dossier’s allegations into top levels of the U.S. government, particularly intelligence agencies, were championed by Steele, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, and various intermediaries. These allegations were given directly to the FBI and Justice Department, while similar allegations were fed into the State Department by long-time Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal.

Their efforts were remarkably effective. Officials within the FBI and DOJ, whether knowingly or unintentionally, provided essential support to the hoax conspirators, bypassing normal procedures and steering the information away from those who would view it critically. The dossier soon metastasized within the government, was cloaked in secrecy, and evaded serious scrutiny.

High-ranking officials such as then-FBI general counsel James Baker and then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr were among those whose actions advanced the hoax. Ohr, one of the most senior officials within the DOJ, took the unprecedented step of providing to Steele a back door into the FBI investigation. This enabled the former British spy to continue to feed information to investigators, even though he had been terminated by the FBI for leaking to the press and was no longer a valid source. Even worse, Ohr directly briefed Andrew Weissmann and Zainab Ahmad, two DOJ officials who were later assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. In short, the investigation was marked by glaring irregularities that would normally be deemed intolerable.

According to Ohr’s congressional testimony, he told top-level FBI officials as early as August or September 2016 that Steele was biased against Trump, that Steele’s work was connected to the Clinton campaign, and that Steele's material was of questionable reliability. Steele himself confirmed that last point in a British court case in which he acknowledged his allegations included unverified information. Yet even after this revelation, intelligence leaders continued to cite the Steele dossier in applications to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

It is astonishing that intelligence leaders did not immediately recognize they were being manipulated in an information operation or understand the danger that the dossier could contain deliberate disinformation from Steele’s Russian sources. In fact, it is impossible to believe in light of everything we now know about the FBI’s conduct of this investigation, including the astounding level of anti-Trump animus shown by high-level FBI figures like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, as well as the inspector general’s discovery of a shocking number of leaks by FBI officials.

It’s now clear that top intelligence officials were perfectly well aware of the dubiousness of the dossier, but they embraced it anyway because it justified actions they wanted to take — turning the full force of our intelligence agencies first against a political candidate and then against a sitting president.

The hoax itself was a gift to our nation’s adversaries, most notably Russia. The abuse of intelligence for political purposes is insidious in any democracy. It undermines trust in democratic institutions, and it damages the reputation of the brave men and women who are working to keep us safe. This unethical conduct has had major repercussions on America’s body politic, creating a yearslong political crisis whose full effects remain to be seen.

Having extensively investigated this abuse, House Intelligence Committee Republicans will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous individuals involved in these matters. These people must be held to account to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future. The men and women of our intelligence community perform an essential service defending American national security, and their ability to carry out their mission cannot be compromised by biased actors who seek to transform the intelligence agencies into weapons of political warfare.

Throwback wiretapping/GCHQ

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zaterdag 04-03-2017 om 12:35:20 Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism! reageer retweet

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Good Morning America! Unless you are @thamburger and @IgnatiusPost at WaPo whose day is about to get ruined. (THREAD) (1)


Tom Hamburger (The Washington Post)


David Ignatius (The Washington Post)

They have 'interesting' friends and sources. (2)


Stefan Halper


Christopher Steele

Tom Hamburger's job is to polish turds. He flew to Cambridge to clean up Halper's mess. Imagine, he managed to get Halper described as a patriot!

Cambridge University perch gave FBI source access to top intelligence figures — and a cover as he reached out to Trump associates

Remember, you must not never ever under any circumstances whatsoever called a spy on Trump campaign Halper, 'a spy on Trump campaign'. Washington Post wants you to refer to Halper as 'the FBI source who assisted the Russia investigation' Got it? (4)

So here is how Washington Post came into my life. On 1 March 2017, the same day as the Wall Street Journal were accusing me behind my back to my University colleagues, of having an affair with Gen Flynn, David Ignatius emails me. (5)

I never heard of Ignatius. But some reason my university professor, who I now understand is a friend of Ignatius, gave him my personal email address. Which was very nice as I have given birth few weeks earlier and still recovering from a shock of the WSJ attack (6)

It transpired that Ignatius has flown to England in March'17 to 'investigate' the fake story about Flynn and I based on one public dinner in 2014. You all know that story by now. Here is the email (7)



I received an email from my professor who encouraged me, a new mother with a 1 moth old baby, a woman who he knew has been accused of being a whore that morning by WSJ, to meet with a top WaPo reporter. Who wants to share insight on Gen Flynn. Remember: I met Gen once in 2014(8)



I had no idea about the Ignatius' role in bringing down Gen Flynn. But given that it was a second contact from a US paper on the same day, I was very suspicious. My partner issued a statement on my behalf which is a flat denial of any inappropriate relationships with Gen Flynn (9)

Ignatius responded he understood. And nothing was published, because as he told me later, he interviewed witnesses at the 'Flynn dinner' and found nothing (10).

WSJ published their lies, followed by the Lying Luke from the Guardian. I contacted Ignatius to ask if he is planning to publish anything, and he said no as there is nothing and that if anyone else contacted me, to say he investigated and found nothing (11)

Roll forward May 2018, and Halper is exposed as FBI operative. Ignatius writes 'I'd like very much to ask you about Halper'. We spoke, & I caught him off-guard with a direct question: did he know he was a spy? To which he said 'I always found him very reliable', then hung up(12)

Next thing I know Tom Hamburger to Cambridge on a tidy up mission. WaPo must have a big budget to keep flying reporters across the pond to go after Gen Flynn and protect Stef Halper! (13)

Hamburger tries to interrogate me AGAIN over the Flynn dinner. I refer him to Ignatius. Then he tries the Kremlin penetration of the Cambridge Seminar line. I read him out Halper resignation email proving that Halper did not tell the truth (14)

We row for days. I tell him he is about to publish smears and untruths. He claims he has spoken to Richard Dearlove but later admitted it was 'sources close to' Dearlove, not Dearlove himself (15)

I told Hamburger (&have it time-stamped): 'You reveal you have not had contact with Dearlove. So if the principals in the story have not confirmed their knowledge/statements personally, then the journalists do not have evidence, but only hearsay, and this should be stressed. (16)

I also told Hamburger that Halper's false allegation about Russian intelligence penetration of the Cambridge seminar has been investigated by outside Counsel and found 'no case to answer'. I said 'If anything, FBI (Halper), not SVR “penetrated” the Seminar.' (17)

I also confirmed that Gen Flynn DIA liaison Dan O'Brien had been on the record with WaPo to confirm he left 2014 dinner with Flynn and nothing happened. Now let's turn to what Hamburger wrote (18)

'During a dinner Flynn attended, Halper and Dearlove were disconcerted by the attention the then-DIA chief showed to a Russian-born graduate student who regularly attended the seminars, according to people familiar with the episode.' (19)

No mention of the fact that his colleague Ignatius interviewed everyone at dinner a year before, and there were no concerns. Interesting... (20)

So in turd-polishing 6 page article of May 2018, WaPo suppressed vital information: Halper has history of not being truthful. He did not tell the truth about his resignation, made up stories of Kremlin penetration, Gen Flynn and I etc (21)

I've previously made numerous complaints to the WaPo and have been ignored. So now I call on the @washingtonpost to retract the story by Tom Hamburger and print everything they know about the #Russiagate hoax. (22)

Separately, there has to be a public inquiry into the alarming links between WaPo reporters and those with access to Classified Information. (23). THE END bron

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Get to know David Ignatius! (Thread) (1)



(2)



(3)

Ignatius response to my concern that reporters are making me look like a traitor and a whore is to give me a switchboard number.



(4)



(5)

PS: So Halper is whitewashed as a 'Patriot' and I am left being known as a Russian spy. Thank you WaPo. And they expected me to Die in the Darkness. bron

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Cambridge Academic Reflects On Interactions With ‘Spygate’ Figure

• A Cambridge University post-graduate student is speaking out about her interactions with Stefan Halper, a former Cambridge professor who was revealed in 2018 as a longtime FBI and CIA informant.[/*]
• Svetlana Lokhova claims Stefan Halper was behind false allegations provided to U.S. intelligence that she attempted to compromise Michael Flynn at an event held at Cambridge in 2014.[/*]
• Halper is known to have made contact with three Trump campaign aides — Carter Page, Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulos. His links to Flynn have largely gone unexplored.


Svetlana Lokhova did not get along with Stefan Halper, which is what she says made a dinner invitation to the Cambridge University professor’s home in January 2016 all the more peculiar.

“Halper was a lurking presence with a horrible aura — I avoided him,” said Lokhova, a Cambridge post-graduate student who studies Soviet-era espionage.

Lokhova dodged the invitation to Halper’s home, which she said was sent to her by Christopher Andrew, a Cambridge professor and official historian for MI5, the British domestic intelligence service. But the past three years have revealed new details about Halper and other activities that went on at Cambridge that have caused Lokhova to question why she was asked to that dinner at Halper’s.

For one, a series of stories that appeared in the press in early 2017 heavily implied Lokhova was a Russian agent who tried to suborn Michael Flynn at a dinner hosted at Cambridge on Feb. 28, 2014. Flynn served at the time as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

A year after those stories appeared, The Daily Caller News Foundation reported Halper cozied to three Trump campaign advisers, Carter Page, Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulos. In May 2018, Halper was revealed as a longtime CIA and FBI informant, a revelation that led President Donald Trump to accuse the FBI of planting a spy in his campaign. The Republican coined the term “Spygate” to describe the alleged scandal.

After Halper’s links to American intelligence were revealed, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported he and another Cambridge luminary, former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove, raised concerns about Lokhova’s contacts with Flynn that were subsequently passed to American and British intelligence.

Lokhova blames Halper for distorting her brief interaction with Flynn into “an international espionage scandal” in which she wound up as collateral damage.

“What Halper staged is a textbook ‘black-op’ to dirty up the reputation of a political opponent. He needed an innocuous social event to place Flynn in a room with a woman who was ethnically Russian. I was unlucky he picked me,” Lokhova told TheDCNF.

Lokhova, a dual Russian and British citizen, has spoken out before about Halper and the allegations about her in the media. She accused Halper of making “false” and “absurd” claims about her in 2018 interviews with TheDCNF. She has also taken to Twitter to criticize reporters who published allegations about her and Flynn.

The Guardian’s Luke Harding is one target of Lokhova’s ire. She has criticized the British reporter for a March 31, 2017, story that contained thinly veiled allegations she tried to compromise Flynn.

According to the report, which was based on anonymous sources, American and British intelligence developed concerns about Lokhova’s interactions with Flynn at the February 2014 dinner, which was hosted by the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Halper, Dearlove and Andrew are co-conveners of the seminar, which hosts events for current and former spies.

The Wall Street Journal also published an innuendo-laden story March 18, 2017, about Flynn and Lokhova. The hook for the story was that Flynn had failed to report his contact with Lokhova to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Lokhova, who has lived in the U.K. since 1998, vehemently denies the insinuations in the articles that she is a Russian agent or that she tried to seduce Flynn. She has provided emails and photographs to TheDCNF to help back up her case. She also notes that all of the allegations about her have been made anonymously.

Dan O’Brien, a Defense Intelligence Agency official who accompanied Flynn to the Cambridge event, told TheWSJ he saw nothing untoward involving Lokhova. Lokhova’s partner, David North, has told TheDCNF he picked Lokhova up after the event.

Since learning more about Halper, Lokhova has reflected back on the few interactions she had with him over the years at Cambridge.

A veteran of three Republican administrations, Halper joined Cambridge in 2001. From his perch at the stories university, Halper wrote books about American politics and the geopolitical threat that China poses to the West. He also received over $1 million in contracts from the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment to write studies on Russia, China and Afghanistan.

Lokhova says she first remembers seeing Halper in November 2013, when she gave a talk about her research on Soviet-era spy archives. The pair had few direct interactions over the next several years, even though they attended the same academic seminars. Lokhova recalls one interaction in 2014 or 2015 when Halper sat down at a table with her and North.

“The guy looks at us like we’re completely horrible people, and then gets up and sits across the room.”

Lokhova also said she learned from a Cambridge faculty member that Halper was spreading rumors that she was linked to Russian intelligence.

On March 25, 2018, TheDCNF reported on Halper’s contacts with the Trump campaign.

Halper, whose late father-in-law was legendary CIA official Ray Cline, made contact with Page at a political forum hosted at Cambridge on July 11, 2016, nearly three weeks before the FBI opened its investigation of the Trump campaign. Page attended the event after receiving an invitation in June 2016 from a Ph.D. student who studied under Halper.

Halper reached out to Papdopoulos in September 2016, and offered the young Trump aide $3,000 and a trip to London to write a policy paper on energy issues.

Two months after TheDCNF report, the Times and Post identified Halper as a longtime FBI and CIA informant sent to gather intelligence on the Trump campaign. The newspapers also reported Halper was one of those at Cambridge who had expressed concerns about Lokhova’s interaction with Flynn.

The Times reported May 18, 2018, that Halper “was alarmed by the general’s apparent closeness with a Russian woman who was also in attendance.”

“The concern was strong enough that it prompted another person to pass on a warning to the American authorities that Mr. Flynn could be compromised by Russian intelligence, according to two people familiar with the matter.”

The Post reported June 5, 2018, that Halper and Dearlove were “disconcerted” by Flynn and Lokhova’s interactions in 2014. Those concerns were provided to American and British intelligence, though it is unclear if Halper and Dearlove were direct sources for the government agencies. Dearlove met prior to the 2016 U.S. election with Christopher Steele, the former MI6 officer who authored the infamous anti-Trump dossier alleging a “well-developed conspiracy” between the Trump campaign and Kremlin.

Christopher Andrew’s Jan. 12, 2016, dinner invitation sticks out in Lokhova’s mind not just because of its randomness — “it came out of the blue,” she says — but also because of all of the other events that unfolded at that time.

Lokhova says Christopher Andrew emailed her asking her to keep Feb. 13 and Feb. 20, 2016, open on her calendar to attend a dinner for Halper’s wife.

Lokhova, who wrote her dissertation under Andrew’s direction, says she was caught off guard by the invitation, both because she had barely spoken to Halper and because she did not know Halper’s wife.

Lokhova has no proof that she was being lured to meet with Halper in order to gather dirt on Flynn, but she is now suspicious because of the timing of the invite.

In December 2015, a month before the invitation, Flynn attended a gala hosted by RT, the Russia-owned news agency. The Moscow visit is often cited as evidence of Flynn’s too-close links to Moscow. Flynn joined the Trump campaign as an informal adviser in February 2016.

The allegations about Flynn and Lokhova came out of nowhere.

In an essay at the London Times on Feb. 19, 2017, Christopher Andrew wrote of the “impulsive” former national security adviser he had met for the first time three years earlier.

Andrew’s essay was a response to Flynn’s firing as national security adviser. Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, was forced to resign Feb. 14, 2017, after allegedly lying to the White House about his contacts in December 2016 with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn would later plead guilty to lying to the FBI about those contacts.

Lokhova says she was taken aback by Andrew’s article. For one, Andrew had not told her that he would be writing the article even though they were in frequent contact. At the time, Lokhova and Andrew were working together on a book based on Lokhova’s research of Soviet intelligence archives. Andrew’s piece also contained clear sexual undertones, including the suggestion that a Russian student (Lokhova) had “charmed” Flynn.

Reporters came out of the woodworks following Andrew’s story, says Lokhova.

Emails seen by TheDCNF show she was contacted by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who said he had been in contact with Andrew and wanted to speak to her during his planned visit to Cambridge. Ignatius would write a column May 22, 2018, defending Halper after he was outed as a government informant. A source familiar with Halper’s contacts with the Trump campaign has told TheDCNF he suggested the Trump campaign establish a relationship with Ignatius, who did not publish a story on Lokhova.

The Times also contacted Lokhova to inquire about Flynn, but the newspaper did not run a story about her or Flynn.

TheWSJ and Guardian, however, did publish articles.

Both reports, published in March 2017, suggested Flynn had failed to report his encounter with Lokhova to the Defense Intelligence Agency. But the real meat of the story was that U.S. intelligence officials had “serious concerns” about Flynn’s interaction with Lokhova.

The reports do not say whether those concerns were raised in 2014 or years later, but the timeline is important.

If Halper was concerned about Lokhova as early as 2014, why was she invited to his home two years later for dinner? Lokhova speculates that Halper intended to do what he did with Page and Papadopoulos. But if Halper waited until 2016 or later to raise concerns, was he truly worried about her contacts with Flynn?

As for the core allegations of the 2014 Cambridge event, Lokhova calls them “preposterous.”

She points to an email Andrew sent her April 19, 2017, to say he had told a Guardian reporter she was not a Russian asset.

“This material is quite sufficient to dispose of conspiracy theories about SL somehow serving some Russian interest,” Andrew wrote Lokhova in the email, which she provided to TheDCNF.

Lokhova notes the dinner Flynn attended was a small event and that all of the attendees had been vetted by DIA. Photos Lokhova provided to TheDCNF show she did not sit next to Flynn at the dinner, as the Journal’s sources claimed. Lokhova says she interacted with Flynn, but that others, including Dearlove and Andrew were close by. And though Lokhova was the only Russian at the dinner, most others Flynn met with were non-American. No stories were published suggesting that he had failed to report his contacts with a group made up largely of Brits.

Lokhova has also provided TheDCNF an email which showed she was invited by Cambridge officials to meet with Flynn’s predecessor, Gen. Vincent Stewart, on May 1, 2015. If Lokhova was a threat to Flynn, why would she not have been a threat to his successor, she wonders.

Andrew, Dearlove and Halper have avoided comment. Cambridge reportedly instructed faculty to avoid discussing the topic because of its sensitive nature.

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How Obama Holdover Sally Yates Helped Sink Michael Flynn

Sally Yates’ Justice Department had no legitimate reason to believe Michael Flynn was either compromised or susceptible to compromise, yet they carried on as if it were so.

In late January 2017, President Obama’s deputy attorney general Sally Yates made a couple of urgent trips from the Department of Justice building to the White House, carrying information she believed to be critical to U.S. national security.

Yates was aware, likely through intercepts of Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s communications, that the newly seated national security advisor, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, had discussed with Kislyak Russia’s response to the Obama administration imposition of sanctions for Russia’s attempts to meddle in the 2016 elections. According to news reports, Flynn had asked Kislyak to wait a few weeks and allow the incoming Trump administration a chance to review the issue before Russia retaliated. Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak occurred on December 29, the day Obama announced the sanctions.

Recall that this period between the election of Trump in early November and his inauguration in late January was characterized by a frenzy of questionable and as-yet unexplained actions taken by the Obama White House, intelligence agencies, and the State Department. The Steele dossier was in circulation at various levels of government and media officialdom; Carter Page’s communications—and those of anyone with whom he communicated, and anyone with whom they communicated—were being monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency.

The Great Unmasking had also begun, with unprecedented numbers of requests forwarded from various Obama administration officials to the NSA to reveal the identities of American citizens otherwise protected in their reporting and transcribing of intercepts of foreign official communications. Distribution regulations were relaxed to allow wider access to these NSA intercepts, and the word went out throughout the halls of every government agency to get everything into the system, lest these barbarians coming into office destroy evidence and deny their roles as Russian agents.

The David Ignatius Leak

It was inevitable, then, that David Ignatius of the Washington Post would publish a column on January 12 describing Flynn’s December 29 phone calls with Kislyak, information he attributed to “a senior U.S. government official.” Ignatius’ column began thusly:

‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,’ mutters Marcellus as ghosts and mad spirits haunt Elsinore castle in the first act of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet.’

After this past week of salacious leaks about foreign espionage plots and indignant denials, people must be wondering if something is rotten in the state of our democracy. How can we dispel the dark rumors that, as Hamlet says, “shake our disposition”?

The “senior U.S. government official” who leaked both the name of a U.S. citizen captured in an intercept of a foreign government official’s communications, and the fact that the foreign official was under NSA surveillance, has not been identified. Nor has there been any indication that a thorough investigation has been, or is being, carried out in search of his or her identity.

The leak of Flynn’s conversation occurred two days after CNN published a separate leak from “U.S. officials with direct knowledge” and “two national security officials” that then-FBI director James Comey had briefed Trump on parts of the Steele dossier after a more expansive briefing on Russian meddling by the directors of the NSA, FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, and national intelligence. That CNN leak was the “hook” that provided journalistic license to publish the details of the unsubstantiated dossier, which media organizations hadn’t considered appropriately vetted and sourced to merit publication—until the leak.

The FBI and Yates were similarly galvanized by the “hook” the Ignatius leak provided on January 12. Less than two weeks later, on January 24, FBI agent Peter Strzok and his partner were in Flynn’s office, questioning him on the Kislyak phone call. Yates made her first trip to the White House two days after that, on January 26.

Her message? Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Kislyak, and the vice president was erroneously telling reporters Flynn didn’t discuss sanctions during those calls. Flynn was in great danger of being compromised by the Russians, who were aware of the true nature of the conversations.

Planting the Idea of Flynn Being Compromised

Don McGahn, the former White House counsel to whom Yates reported her concerns, asked a valid question: “Why does it matter to the Department of Justice that one White House official lied to another?” According to Yates, the answer to that question was simple: No administration should want its national security advisor to be in a position where he is compromised with the Russians.

Yates is right—no administration should want that, and it’s pretty safe to assume that none do. The only entity that seemed to “want that” was Yates’ Justice Department, as they had no legitimate reason to believe Flynn was either compromised or susceptible to compromise based on the facts at hand, yet they carried on as if it were so.

A compromise is a relatively simple concept. In this case, it would be a foreign government possessing derogatory information on a U.S. official, the threatened exposure of which would be embarrassing or damaging enough to compel the U.S. official to enter an illicit agreement with the foreign government to do their bidding when called upon. This could come in the form of passing classified information, favorably influencing foreign policy, or calling off the dogs in the event of a dispute between the two countries.

For a compromise to be effective, two things must exist: A secret, significant act worthy of treason to keep hidden from exposure; and an individual whose lack of character and integrity allow for the possibility of becoming a traitor.

As Yates was and is aware, neither of those elements were present in the Flynn case. Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak were no longer secret—they were public knowledge. Everyone in government knew it, and everyone on earth who followed U.S. news knew it. The exposure element was gone. There was no hook for Russia to employ against Flynn, nothing secret to threaten to expose to gain his cooperation. So the first element was missing.

The second element—the susceptibility of an individual to commit an act of treason to protect himself from embarrassment or dismissal from his position—is perhaps the most offensive and ridiculous piece of this manufactured madness.

Flynn is a complicated man, with some questionable judgement in business dealings after he retired from military service. His consulting engagements with Turkey and other foreign entities, while not illegal, required Foreign Agents Registration Act and other notifications that he apparently failed to complete in a timely manner. While he seems to dispute the charge, he has nonetheless pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversation with Kislyak. All of this suggests he was certainly susceptible to occasional lapses in judgement, worthy of whatever penalty and punishment may come his way.

What it does not suggest, by any stretch of the imagination, is that this retired lieutenant general with 33 years of distinguished service to his country, including multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, directorship of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and numerous national-level intelligence leadership positions—a highly decorated and admired military intelligence professional—would be willing to commit treason against the country he had dedicated his life to serving in order to keep the Russians from telling the world he asked their ambassador to hold off on taking adverse action against the United States until the Trump administration had a chance to weigh in.

It is, quite literally, a notion worthy of ridicule. Yet, for some reason, Yates chose to run to the White House and get it on the record that she believed Flynn to be in imminent danger of becoming a compromised national security liability, despite being fully aware that such compromise was impossible. The very fact that she was having that conversation with McGahn eliminated the clandestine element necessary for a compromise. Everybody knew.

Yates Explained Her Motivations to Rachel Maddow

One can speculate as to what was really driving Yates those three or four days in January 2017. Perhaps she saw the Flynn affair as a last stand against an administration she’d come to despise in the very short time she served under Trump’s leadership. Perhaps she needed one last scalp before she moved on to private life. Who knows?

What we do know, however, is the level of contempt with which she viewed Flynn, and her willingness to assassinate his character in her quest for whatever satisfaction she sought. We know this because she made it clear in this conversation with Rachel Maddow in July of last year:

Maddow: ‘What are the potentially practical consequences of the kind of compromise you were worried about with Flynn?’

Yates: ‘Well, you know, the Russians are pretty crafty with this – they can do the overt type of threats that you described there, but they can also do the more subtle forms, where they can just let you know that they have evidence that would be embarrassing and troubling to you. And here, where this had become a big public thing about whether or not General Flynn had been talking to the Russians about sanctions – it had become such a big, public thing and there were denials out there by various members of the White House all the way up to the Vice President, saying that this had not happened. Then, when the Russians had what we expected were recordings that would prove that it did, that’s the kind of thing you can hang over someone’s head. You know, no administration should want their National Security Advisor to be in a position where he or she is compromised with the Russians.’

Maddow: ‘Because what they could do with that leverage is to get him, theoretically, to hand over intelligence that they shouldn’t have, to hand over the names of spies in Moscow that are working for U.S. intelligence that they could then go take out and kill. Is that – ?’

Yates: ‘Any number of things, or, even more subtly, not necessarily a specific quid pro quo, but they could put the National Security Advisor in a position where he never wants to get cross-wise with the Russians.’

Maddow: ‘And so he inclines himself towards the Russian point of view (Yates nodding head) almost as a matter of course rather than any individual transactional thing.’

Yates: ‘Right.'

One would expect such an outrageous, shameless attack on Flynn’s character from Maddow—after all, Flynn was working for The Devil and Maddow is in the business of hyping up false claims, allegations, and innuendo about The Devil and anyone associated with him.

But Yates is a career DOJ official with adequate understanding of the character of the military personnel she encountered over the years, and the patriotic mindset of career military and government officials. That she sat across from Maddow and accepted her suggestion that Flynn would “hand over intelligence” to the Russians is bad enough. That she didn’t stop Maddow in her tracks when she suggested Flynn would provide Russia the names of spies working for U.S. intelligence so they could be taken out and killed is unforgivable.

It’s a sign of the times that Yates would sit still for such slander. It’s a stain on her own character that she seemed to agree with it.

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Lawyers for Greg Craig, ex-Obama White House counsel, say they expect him to be charged with foreign lobbying violations

Greg Craig, who formerly served as counsel to the Obama White House, is expected to be charged with foreign lobbying violations, his lawyers reportedly said Wednesday.

The case against Craig stemmed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, centering around the lobbying work he performed in 2012 for the Russian-backed president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, while Craig was a partner at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

Craig allegedly never registered as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which requires lobbyists to declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders, governments or their political parties.

His attorneys on Wednesday night told The Associated Press in a statement that the "government's stubborn insistence on prosecuting Mr. Craig is a misguided abuse of prosecutorial discretion."

FARA violations were only rarely prosecuted until Mueller took aim at Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman, for his lobbying work in Ukraine.

There is no indication that Craig improperly colluded with a foreign government while he was serving in any official capacity. Craig worked as White House Counsel from 2009 to 2010 and previously worked in the Clinton administration on impeachment matters.

Craig also represented John Hinckley, Jr., the man who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, according to The New York Times. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

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Op donderdag 26 april 2018 16:26 schreef dellipder het volgende:
Greg Craig van advocatenkantoor Skadden Arps heeft abrupt onslag genomen, nadat het kantoor onder de loep werd genomen door special counsel Robert Mueller vanwege zijn connecties met Paul Manafort. Skadden Arp werkte voor de Oekraïense regering om een analyse te maken over de vervolging van premier Yulia Tymoshenko, de belangrijkste politieke rivaal van president Viktor Janoekovitsj.
Paul Manafort en vaste zakenrelatie Rick Gates gebruikte een offshore rekening om $4.000.000 door te sluizen als betaling voor het rapport, een betaling die uit de boeken gehouden werd.
Het rapport werd door bondgenoten van Janoekovitsj gebruikt om kritiek op het vermeende machtsmisbruik en gebrek aan bewijs bij de vervolging en het vastzetten van Tymoshenko te weerleggen, maar werd door velen verworpen als een gebrekkige poging om de misstanden van de Janoekovitsj goed te praten.

Greg Craig was de juridische adviseur van president Barack Obama tussen 2009-2010 en hij gaf leiding aan een team dat het rapport voor rechtvaardiging van de vervolging van Tymoshenko schreef. Hij was een van de oprichters van U.S. Committee on NATO, een belangenorganisatie die zich toewijdde op de expansie van Amerikaanse invloed via de NAVO. Craig verdedigde, als onderdeel van een advocatenteam -waar ook Cheryl Mills deel van uitmaakte- de voormalige president Bill Clinton tijdens zijn impeachement perikelen.
In de betaling voor het rapport was Greg Craig betrokken die Paul Manafort inhuurde voor toegang tot een lobbykanaal in Oekraïne. Cliff Sloan een andere advocaat van Skadden Arps, die ook hiervoor werd ingehuurd was speciaal gazant voor het sluiten van Guantanamo Bay van Obama's ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken. Sloan en Craig hebben samen hierover een opiniestuk geschreven in The Washington Post, dat president Obama geen toestemming van het Congres nodig zou hebben om het dententiecentrum te sluiten. Sloan was ook een vertrouweling van minister van Buitenlandse Zaken John Kerry en werkte samen met Alex van de Zwaan, voormalig Skadden Arps-advocaat, die onlangs nog schuld bekende voor liegen tegen de FBI.

Het betrof hier het accepteren van een pleadeal voor het misleiden van de special counsel over zijn contacten met Rick Gates en zijn claim dat hij niet wilde onthullen dat hij in het geheim zijn gesprekken met Gates -en een derde niet nader bekende partij- op band opnam.
Ondertussen is bekend dat bij de inval van Micheal Cohen's onderkomens special counsel Robert Mueller speciaal geïnteresseerd was naar een betaling van $150.000 van Victor Pinchuk voor een videoconferentie die Donald Trump hield in september 2015. Volgens een rapport van The New York Times accepteerde Trump de uitnodiging om een speech te geven, maar heeft hij het onderwerp van een betaling niet aangesneden. Micheal Cohen heeft echter een dag later het bedrag gevraagd in ruil voor de speech.

Het feit dat de special counsel deze zaak verwezen heeft naar anti-corruptie eenheid van de Southern District of New York (SDNY) en dat Jeff Sessions zich niet verschoond heeft van deze kwestie geeft aanleiding te veronderstellen, dat het hier niet gaat over “Russia collusion”.
De gemene deler hier betreft Oekraïne.

Micheal Cohen is in contact gekomen met Donald Trump via zijn schoonvader Fima Shusterman een genaturaliseerde Oekraïner die op zijn minst vier taxibedrijven in New York in zijn bezit had.
Glenn Simpson, de privédetective die was ingehuurd om de vermeende “Russia collusion”-connecties te onderzoeken getuigde voor de House Intelligence Committee, dat Cohen “had a lot of connections to the former Soviet Union, and that he seemed to have associations with organized crime figures in New York and Florida – Russian organized crime figures”.

Victor Pinchuk is op zijn beurt een Oekraïense oligarch die banden heeft met de Clinton Foundation. Hij heeft tussen de $10-25 miljoen gedoneerd aan de Clinton's, zelfs toen Hillary Clinton Secretary of State (SoS) was.
Op persoonlijk vlak was er een innige band. Pinchuk heeft zijn privéjet aan de Clinton's uitgeleend, de 65e verjaardag van Bill Clinton bijgewoond en in de hoedanigheid van SoS heeft Hillary Clinton Pinchuk thuis uitgenodigd voor een diner, hoewel ze dit had ontkend.
Er was ook een innige band tussen Department of State en Pinchuk. Tussen september 2011 en november 2012 zette politieke adviseur van Bill Clinton Douglas Schoen
tientallen meetings op tussen ambtenaren van het departement met of namens Pinchuk om de voortdurende politieke crisis in Oekraïene bespreken. Schoen had in deze zijn FARA-documenten op orde.

Pinchuk is ook een grote donateur van de Atlantic Council, een denktank geassocieerd met Oekraïne waarvan het belangrijkste beleidsdoel de confrontatie met Rusland aan te wakkeren lijkt te zijn. De Atlantic Council wordt verder gefinancierd door onder andere de U.S. State Department en de NAVO.
Dmitri Alperovitch is senior partner van deze organisatie en mede-oprichter van Crowdstrike, het door de DNC ingehuurde adviesbureau dat als enige toegang werd verleend de “gehackte” servers te onderzoeken.
De eerste rapporten over de servers en de link met Rusland werd geschreven door George Eliason, hoofd technologie van Crowdstrike.
Eind december 2016 publiceerde Crowdstrike een rapport waarmee het claimde, dat dezelfde Russische malware gebruikt om de DNC-servers te hacken, ook gebruikt werd door Russische inlichtingendiensten om Oekraïense artillerieposities te bestoken. Dit rapport werd grotendeels ontkracht.

In mijn opinie lijkt het rookgordijn dat hier wordt opgetrokken dat van veel Clinton-vertrouwelingen en Oekraïense connecties gebruikt zijn om Donald Trump te framen.
Verschillende mensen die verbonden zijn met de Atlantic Council hebben een sleutelrol gespeeld in het Rusland-narratief.
Evelyn Farkas is een senior partner van de Atlantic Council .
Farkas nam deel aan de praktijken van het onthullen van datacollectie-gegevens en het lekken van deze informatie (naar de media) onder de Obama-regering. Onbedoeld heeft ze deze praktijken op kabeltelevisie uitgelegd (speciale aandacht aan de laatste twee seconden van dit filmpje).

Evelyn Farkas Says Obama Was Spying on Trump - MSNBC 3/27 3/28

Irena Chalupa is een senior partner van de Atlantic Council. Haar zus Alexandra Chalupa was adviseur op het gebied van Buitenlandse Zaken tijdens de 2016 campagne van Hillary Clinton. Alexandra Chalupa werkte ook onder Bill Clinton in het Witte Huis en was staflid en adviseur van de DNC.
De Chalupas waren de belangrijkste verspreiders van het Rusland-narratief. Ze waren ook verantwoordelijk voor het ontslag van Paul Manafort vanwege zijn “Rusland-connectie” met Janoekovitsj. Ze coördinerde een grootschalige Twitter-campagne, zoals #TreasonousTrump en promootten het dossier.
Politico heeft een artikel gepubliceerd dat de Oekraïense inspanningen om Hillary Clinton te helpen en Donald Trump te ondermijnen onthuld.
Mijn theorie is nog steeds dat Paul Manafort (maar ook Rick Gates en George Papadopoulos) spionnen waren die bedoeld waren voor een beeld van “guilty by association”.

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Gregory Craig, voormalig adviseur van oud-president Obama, wordt beschuldigd van het geven van valse verklaringen aan en het achterhouden van informatie voor het Amerikaanse ministerie van Justitie. Craig zou hebben verzwegen dat hij in 2012 lobbywerk deed voor de pro-Russische regering van Oekraïne.

De aanklachten aan het adres van de 74-jarige jurist komen voort uit het Rusland-onderzoek van speciaal aanklager Robert Mueller. Craig is de eerste Democraat die wordt beschuldigd in dat onderzoek. Voor zijn positie in de Obama-regering was hij onder meer ook adviseur in de regering-Clinton.

De advocaten van Craig lieten weten dat hun cliënt onschuldig is. De aanklachten tegen Craig komen op het moment dat het ministerie van Justitie de aanval heeft geopend op ongeregistreerde lobbyactiviteiten voor buitenlandse overheden.

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Op donderdag 11 april 2019 22:20 schreef MangoTree het volgende:
Ook een artikel van de NOS.

Oud-adviseur Obama beschuldigd van liegen over Oekraïne-lobby
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