The Cabal; the Weaponization of Government - deel V

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Nellie Ohr Testimony Confirms Her Work for the CIA

Nellie Ohr, the wife of former high-ranking Justice Department (DOJ) official Bruce Ohr—both of whom played pivotal roles in the FBI’s investigation into the Trump 2016 presidential campaign—worked for the CIA as an independent contractor for as long as six years.

Ohr was hired as a researcher by Fusion GPS—the company hired by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to produce the now-infamous Steele dossier—in 2015.

She conducted open-source research into members of the Trump campaign for Fusion GPS—which describes itself as a commercial research and strategic intelligence firm—that may have been used in the Steele dossier. She also provided her husband with a USB stick containing all her research from her time at Fusion GPS to pass on to the FBI in late 2016 after she had officially left the firm.

Prior to her work for Fusion GPS, Ohr worked for an internal open-source division of the CIA named Open Source Works from 2008 to at least June 2010; it appears likely that she remained in that role until 2014.

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Op zondag 17 maart 2019 23:49 schreef dellipder het volgende:

Deposition Reveals Late Senator McCain’s Role in Spygate Scandal

twitter:

ZoeTillman twitterde op vrijdag 22-03-2019 om 22:04:08 BREAKING, IT'S DONE: Special counsel Robert Mueller has concluded his investigation, according to a letter submitted this afternoon to Congress https://t.co/mV6jU8edB4 reageer retweet

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According to a transcript of Steele’s deposition unsealed Thursday, Gubarev’s lawyer asked Steele what information he had gathered on Gubarev or his companies, Webzilla and XBT Holdings. Gubarev sued Steele and BuzzFeed News for defamation for publishing what he claims are false allegations that he hacked Democrats.

Steele responded to the lawyer, Evan Fray-Witzer, by citing a July 28, 2009, article published at CNN’s iReports website.

Fray-Witzer pointed out to Steele that CNN’s iReports articles “are nothing more than any random person posting things on the Internet.”

Steele said he was not aware of that.

“No, I, obviously, presume that if it is on a CNN site that it has some kind of CNN status. Albeit that it may be an independent person posting on the site,” said Steele, who admitted the iReports article was the only open source research he did on Gubarev.

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Old CNN website was source of unvetted 'random' info used by author of anti-Trump dossier, docs reveal

[...] Steele was asked during the deposition how he verified allegations about Gubarev's companies and whether he found “anything of relevance concerning Webzilla,” according to the newly released transcripts of the deposition.

“We did. It was an article I have got here which was posted on July 28, 2009, on something called CNN iReport,” Steele said.

But CNN iReport, which appears to be no longer active -- though archives remain accessible online -- states that it’s a “user-generated site” and warns that “the stories submitted by users are not edited, fact-checked or screened before they post.”

“The stories submitted by users are not edited, fact-checked or screened before they post.”
— CNN iReport disclaimer

Even the site’s banner included the slogan “Unedited. Unfiltered. News.”

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New Texts Show the Obama White House May Have Been Briefed About Spying on the Trump Campaign

Fox News just released a bombshell report about the extent of FISA abuse at the FBI during the 2016 presidential election.

The first big news details how a DOJ official issued reservations about going forward with surveillance on Trump campaign associate Carter Page. The individual cited that the source behind the FBI's justification for doing so, British Spy Christopher Steele, was biased. The FBI kept pushing for it anyway and were eventually successful. Text messages between former FBI attorney Lisa Page and fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe tell the story. From the report:

The most significant Page-McCabe communications made plain the DOJ's worries that the FISA application to surveil Trump aide Carter Page was based on a potentially biased source -- and underscored the FBI's desire to press on.

Fox News is told the texts were connected to the ultimately successful Page application, which relied in part on information from British ex-spy Christopher Steele – whose anti-Trump views are now well-documented – and cited Page’s suspected Russia ties. In its warrant application, the FBI assured the FISA court on numerous occasions that other sources independently corroborated Steele's claims but did not clearly state that Steele worked for a firm hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Next, while Page and McCabe are refusing to clarify, it appears the Obama White House may have been directly briefed on the matter.

On Oct. 14, 2016, Page again wrote to McCabe, this time concerning a meeting with the White House.

“Just called," Page said to McCabe. "Apparently the DAG [Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates] now wants to be there, and WH wants DOJ to host. So we are setting that up now. ... We will very much need to get Cohen’s view before we meet with her. Better, have him weigh in with her before the meeting. We need to speak with one voice, if that is in fact the case.” ("Cohen" is likely then-Deputy CIA Director David Cohen.)

McCabe responded within the hour: "Thanks. I will reach out to David." On Oct. 19, Page wrote to McCabe that the "meeting with WH counsel is finally set up."

Neither Lisa Page nor McCabe responded to Fox News' inquiries as to whether the meeting was designed to brief the White House on the FISA application or some other matter.

The Obama White House has denied knowing anything about surveillance or spying on the Trump campaign or any American citizen.

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Op dinsdag 26 maart 2019 15:06 schreef dellipder het volgende:
Ik vind het onvoorstelbaar dat mensen persisteren in leugens verspreiden, dat het Steele dossier een product is dat betaald werd door Republikeinen en dat de special counsel werd ingesteld omdat James Comey memo's via Daniel Richman naar The New York Times lekte.

Wat wel klopt en al een tijdje publiekelijk toegankelijke informatie is , is dat de Washington Free Beacon via Paul Singer Fusion GPS in 2015 inhuurde voor opposition research voor meerdere presidentskandidaten, waaronder Donald Trump, maar de diensten van Fusion GPS werden beëindigd in mei 2016 toen Trump de Republikeinse nominatie te pakken had. bron

Mark Elias, advocaat van Perkins Coie, huurde Fusion GPS in april 2016 tot eind oktober 2016, enkele dagen voor de verkiezingsdag in namens de Hillary Clinton campagne en de DNC. bron bron

In juni 2016 huurde Fusion GPS Orbis Business Intelligence het inlichtingenbedrijf van Christopher Steele in. bron bron

Nadat Jeff Sessions op 2 maart 2017 zichzelf verschoonde van de lopende Rusland-onderzoek was er niemand van de nieuwe Trump-regering die toezicht hield op de activiteiten van de DoJ en de FBI. bron
Op 26 april 2017 werd Rod Rosenstein aangesteld als de nieuwe Deputy Attorney General. bron
In deze periode kwam de toenmalige FBI-directeur James Comey onder toenemende druk te staan als gevolg van zijn acties in de aanloop van de verkiezingen, met name die betrekking hadden op de afhandeling van de Hillary Clinton e-mailcontroverse. bron bron
Op 9 mei 2017 schrijft Rod Rosenstein de aanbevelingsbrief om FBI-directeur James Comey te ontslaan. Comey wordt dezelfde dag ontslagen. bron
Op 11 mei 2017 praat president Trump over het lopende Rusland-onderzoek in het interview met Lester Holt van NBC.

“Look, look, let me tell you. As far as I’m concerned, I want that thing to be absolutely done properly,” the President said. “When I did this now I said, I probably, maybe will confuse people, maybe I’ll expand that, you know, lengthen the time because it should be over with, in my opinion, should have been over with a long time ago. Cause all it is, is an excuse but I said to myself, I might even lengthen out the investigation but I have to do the right thing for the American people. He’s the wrong man for that position.”

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Met beeld:

Donald Trump and Lester Holt on James Comey firing

Ergens tussen 15-16 mei 2017 lekte James Comey via Daniel Richman zijn memo's naar The New York Times. bron
Comey verklaarde later dat hij dit deed met de intentie om een special counsel onderzoek af te dwingen. bron

Op de ochtend van 16 mei suggereerde Rod Rosenstein tegen de acting director van de FBI Andrew McCabe dat hij in het geheim gesprekken met de Amerikaanse president zou opnemen. bron
Het desbetreffende artikel van The New York Times was gebaseerd op de memo's van de inmiddels ontslagen McCabe.
Rosenstein heeft in een officiële verklaring de beschuldigingen ontkend. bron
De vermeende opmerkingen van Rosenstein vonden plaats in een meeting waarin Andrew McCabe het ministerie van Justitie wilde bewegen om een onderzoek te openen naar de Amerikaanse president.
Dezelfde dag had president Trump een meeting met Robert Mueller. bron
Er werd gesuggereerd dat dit een verkennende gesprek voor de functie van FBI-directeur was, maar dit is vrij onwaarschijnlijk.
Mueller had reeds deze positie bekleed van 2001-2013 en dit was al twee jaar langer dan de gebruikelijke ambtsperiode voor deze topfunctie. bron

Op 17 mei 2017, dus een dag na de meeting tussen Trump en Mueller en een dag na de ontmoeting van Rosenstein en McCabe stelde Rosenstein Robert Mueller aan als special counsel.
Wat hiermee feitelijk gebeurde is dat de controle over het Rusland-onderzoek verschoof van de FBI, Andrew McCabe en Peter Strzok naar Mueller.
Het special counsel onderzoek viel onder de autoriteit van Rosenstein en elke uitbreiding daarvan kon alleen doorgang vinden met de toestemming van Rosenstein.

The Battle Between Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe

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So until election day, the “working group at Langley” was trying to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign and wasn’t coming up with any. But Brennan didn’t want his efforts to go to waste, so he leaked to Senator Harry Reid the existence of the counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign.
He couldn’t leak any damning findings from that probe because there weren’t any. But he could inflict political damage by getting Reid to tell the press darkly of the probe’s existence. He also got Reid to write a public letter to Comey about the probe, which was designed to deepen the FBI’s reliance on Hillary’s paid dirt-digger, Christopher Steele.
Reid, as a reliable Democratic hack in the tank for Hillary, went along with Brennan’s scheme, but he felt manipulated enough by Brennan that he complained to Corn and Isikoff about Brennan’s odd intensity — an “ulterior motive” that Reid sensed in Brennan.”

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Op vrijdag 29 maart 2019 14:49 schreef dellipder het volgende:
De leider van de minderheid in de House Judiciary Committee, Doug Collins heeft andermaal een transcriptie van een Congres getuigenverklaring vrijgegeven, deze keer van Nellie Ohr.

Nellie Ohr Interview Transcript 10.19.18

Nellie Ohr is de vrouw van Bruce Ohr de voormalig vierde man in de hiërarchie van de DoJ.
Ohr werd ingehuurd door Glenn Simpson van Fusion GPS om tegen eind 2015 oppositieonderzoek naar Donald Trump uit te voeren. Het werk van Nellie Ohr werd gebruikt door Christopher Steele bij het samenstellen van het Steele dossier en vervolgens gedeeld met de DoJ en de FBI om president Trump politiek te beschadigen.
Nellie Ohr behaalde haar bul in Russische geschiedenis en literatuur aan Harvard University en promoveerde op geschiedenis aan Stanford University.
Ze spreekt vloeiend Russisch, gaf les aan het Vasser college en was een Russische specialist aan het Wilson Center. Ohr werkte ook freelance voor onderzoeks- en vertaalprojecten met betrekking tot Russische wetenschap en technologie. bron bron

Nellie Ohr werkte zes jaar op freelance basis voor de CIA. bron
Ze vertegenwoordigde de “Open Source Works”-werkgroep van de CIA in een 2010 rapport over internationaal organiseerde criminaliteit samen met haar Bruce Ohr en Glenn Simpson.

[ afbeelding ]

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Deze achtergrond was voor Fusion GPS een motivatie om Nellie Ohr in te huren, naast een nog duidelijkere reden van de DoJ-connectie van haar man, die zich in een positie bevond om Fusion GPS te voorzien van informatie over Donald Trump dat verzameld werd door de Amerikaanse inlichtingendiensten.

Nellie Ohr verklaart dat zij Fusion GPS-eigenaar Glenn Simpson benaderde voor een baan.

[ afbeelding ]

[ afbeelding ]

Met deze bekentenis wordt het mogelijk, misschien waarschijnlijk dat de inlichtingeninformatie die door Nellie Ohr werd ingebracht afkomstig was van de CIA als onderdeel van het witwassen van inlichtingeninformatie.
Het werk van Ohr werd bezorgd aan Christopher Steele, die het materiaal daar waar hij kon voorzag van een tweede verificatie, daarna stelde hij het samen als een officieel inlichtingendossier en vervolgens werd dit bestand geretourneerd aan de FBI.
Deze stijl en manier van werken komt overeen met wat al bekend is over de CIA en haar gebruik van buitenlandse inlichtingenbronnen (GCHQ, FVEY, etc.) tegen kwetsbare medewerkers van de Trump-campagne om hen in opspraak te brengen en de indruk te geven die nodig was om het contra-inlichtingenonderzoek op te starten dat nu bekend staat als Crossfire Hurricane. bron

Met het resultaat van het special counsel Robert Mueller, de concluderende samenvatting van procureur-generaal William Barr en het vrijgeven van alle documenten inzake het Russia collusion delusion onderzoek (zoals het EC-document, FISA-applicaties, FD-302's, et cetera) kunnen consequenties omvatten voor (actoren in) meerdere landen. bron bron

Het lijkt er sterk op dat Nellie Ohr Glenn Simpson benaderde voor een betrekking bij Fusion GPS en haar rol bij het bedrijf onderzoek te doen naar leden van de Trump-campagne was, dat gebruikt werd in het Steele dossier.
Ohr's connectie met de CIA zou kunnen duiden dat Fusion GPS als een maskering werd gebruikt om corrupte CIA-broodkruimels te voeden aan Christopher Steele, die deze vervolgens compileerde tot het beruchte dossier.
Nellie Ohr's communicatie met officials binnen de overheid en de inlichtingengemeenschap hierover zou een enorm risico zijn, omdat de NSA grote hoeveelheden data verzamelt en opslaat.
Haar vergunning voor een korte band radio, die op 23 mei 2016 wordt verleend -dat precies in de tijdlijn valt waarin de Clinton-campagne officieel Fusion GPS inhuurde voor oppositieonderzoek- is de communicatiewaarborg. bron
Dit is bovendien in dezelfde periode wanneer NSA-directeur Micheal Rogers FISA-misbruik ontdekt en de toegang tot de NSA-database voor overheidscontractanten permanent blokkeert. bron
Vanuit de Office of Inspector General is op 29 januari jongstleden een kleine inkijk gegeven over zijn review van deze ongeautoriseerde toegang. bron

Oud CIA-directeur John Brennan bracht de informatie over het bestaan van een contra-inlichtingenonderzoek in de politieke arena via Harry Reid.
[..]

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quote:

The Tables Turn in Russian Collusion Hunt

The irony of the entire Russian collusion hoax is that accusers who cried the loudest about leaking, collusion, lying, and obstruction are themselves soon very likely to be accused of just those crimes.

Now that Robert Mueller’s 674-day, $30 million investigation is over and has failed to find the original goal of its mandate—evidence of a criminal conspiracy between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian government to sway the 2016 election—and now that thousands of once-sealed government documents will likely be released in unredacted form, those who eagerly assumed the role of the hunters may become the hunted, due to their own zealous violation of the nation’s trust and its laws.

Take Lying

Former FBI Director James Comey’s testimonies cannot be reconciled with those of his own deputy director Andrew McCabe. He falsely testified that the Steele dossier was not the main basis for obtaining FISA court warrants. On at least 245 occasions, Comey swore under oath that he either did not know, or could not remember, when asked direct questions about his conduct at the FBI. He likely lied when he testified that he did not conclude his assessment of the Clinton illegal email use before he had even interviewed Clinton, an assertion contradicted by his own written report. I guess his credo and modus operandi are reflected in the subtitle of his recent autobiography A Higher Loyalty: “Truth, Lies, and Leadership.”

Andrew McCabe currently is under criminal referral for lying to federal investigators about leaking to the media. He and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein each have accused each other of not telling the whole truth about their shared caper of trying to force President Trump out of office by invoking the 25th Amendment.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has admitted to lying under oath to Congress—and since lied about his earlier admission of that lying. His recent sworn congressional testimony of not having leaked information about the Steele dossier to the media is again likely to be untrue, given that Clapper had admitted to speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper about the dossier’s contents. CNN, remember, would in turn go on to hire the mendacious Clapper as an analyst. And once on air, Clapper would insist that Trump was both a Russian asset and thus guilty of collusion crimes greater than those of Watergate. Lies. All lies.

Former CIA Director John Brennan has admitted to lying under oath to Congress on two occasions. He may well face further legal exposure. When he lost his security clearance, he repeatedly lied that Trump was guilty of collusion, however that non-crime is defined. And as the Mueller probe wound down, Brennan with pseudo-authority and trumped-up hints of phony access to secret intelligence sources deceitfully assured the nation that Trump within days would face indictment—perhaps along with his family members.

Brennan in 2016 also reached out to foreign intelligence services, primary British and Australian, to surveille and entrap Trump aides, as a way of circumventing rules preventing CIA monitoring of American citizens. And he may well have also reverse-targeted Americans, under the guise of monitoring foreign nationals, in order to build a case of so-called Trump collusion.

Finally, Brennan testified to Congress in May 2017 that he had not been earlier aware of the dossier or its contents before the election, although in August 2016 it is almost certain that he had briefed Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on it in a spirited effort to have Reid pressure the FBI to keep or expand its counterintelligence investigation of Trump during the critical final weeks of the election.

Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin likely also lied to FBI investigators when they claimed they had no knowledge while working at the State Department that their boss, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was using an illegal private email server. In fact, they had read her communications on it and actually inquired about its efficacy.

Samantha Power, the former U.N. ambassador, in her last year in office requested on more than 260 occasions to unmask names of Americans monitored by the government. Yet Power later claimed that most of these requests were not made by her. And yet she either does not know or does not cite who exactly used her name to make such requests during the election cycle. In any case, no one has come forward to admit to the improper use of Power’s name to request the hundreds of unmaskings.

Susan Rice, the former Obama national security advisor, could have made a number of unmasking requests in Power’s name, although she initially denied making any requests in her own name—a lie she immediately amended. Rice, remember, repeatedly lied on national television about the cause and origins of the Benghazi attack, denied there were cash payments for hostages in the Iran deal, misled about the conduct of Beau Bergdahl, and prevaricated over the existence and destruction of weapons of mass destruction in Syria.

Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr did not tell the truth on a federal written disclosure required by law when he omitted the key fact that his wife Nellie worked on Christopher Steele’s Fusion GPS dossier. Ohr’s testimony that he completely briefed key FBI officials on the dossier in July or August 2016 is not compatible to what former FBI attorney Lisa Page has testified to concerning the dates of her own knowledge of the Steele material.

Take Foreign Collusion

Christopher Steele is a foreign national. So are many of the Russian sources that he claims he had contacted to solicit dirt on Donald Trump and his campaign aides. In fact, John Brennan’s CIA, soon in consultation with the FBI, was used in circuitous fashion to facilitate surveillance of Donald Trump’s campaign through the use of foreign nationals during the 2016 campaign.

Foreigners such as Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, and former Australian minister for foreign affairs Alexander Downer and an array of intelligence contractors from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) mysteriously met with minor Trump aide George Papadopoulos and others. It is likely that to disguise American intelligence agencies’ efforts to besmirch, surveille, and leak to the press damaging unfounded rumors about the Trump campaign that John Brennan enlisted an entire cadre of foreign nationals. And it is likely to be the most egregious example of using non-U.S. citizens to affect the outcome of an election in our history. If there is a crime of foreign collusion—a conspiracy of U.S. officials to use foreigners to interfere with an American election—then Brennan’s efforts are the textbook example.

Take Leaking

Many of the names unmasked by requests from Samantha Power and Susan Rice were leaked illegally to the media. James Comey himself leaked confidential memos of presidential conversations to the press; in at least one case, the memo was likely classified.

Former FBI general counsel James Baker is currently under criminal referral for improperly leaking classified documents. He seems to have been in contact with the media before the election and he may have been one of many FBI officials and contacts, along with Christopher Steele, that reporters such as David Corn, Michael Isikoff, and Julia Ioffe anonymously referenced in their pre-election published hit pieces on Russian collusion—all the result of the successful strategies of Fusion GPS, along with some in the FBI, to seed unverified anti-Trump gossip to warp the election. Andrew McCabe also is under criminal referral both for leaking classified information and then lying about it.

In a fashion emblematic of this entire sordid mess, the always ethically compromised James Clapper in January 2017 had leaked the dossier to Jake Tapper of CNN and likely other journalists and then shortly afterwards publicly deplored just this sort of government leaking that had led to sensational stories about the dossier.

Take Obstruction of Justice

A number of FBI and Department of Justice high ranking employees such as James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, and Sally Yates all signed off on FISA warrants to surveille Carter Page without apprising the courts that they knew that their chief evidence, the Steele Dossier, was unverified, was paid for by Hillary Clinton, and was used in circular fashion as the basis for news accounts presented to the court. Nor did the Justice Department and FBI officials apprise the FISA justices that Christopher Steele had been terminated as a FBI source.

No one believes that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch just happened to meet Bill Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac and confined their conservations to a variety of topics having nothing to do with Hillary Clinton—at a time when Lynch’s Justice Department was investigating her. Note the meeting was only disclosed because a reporter got a tip and arrived on the scene of the two adjoining Lynch and Clinton private jets—which suggests that the only thing Lynch and Clinton regretted was being found out. Few believe that Lynch had recused herself as she promised, given her strict oversight of the sort of language Comey’s FBI was allowed to use in its investigation of Clinton.

Take Conflict of Interest

Andrew McCabe never should have been in charge of the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton, given that just months earlier his wife had been the recipient of $675,000 in campaign cash donated by Clinton and Democratic Party-affiliated political action committees. And the apology of a “time line” that suggests conflicts of interest like McCabe’s expired after an arbitrary date is specious. McCabe knew his spouse had been a recent recipient of Clinton-related money, knew that he had substantial influence on the fate of her email investigation, and hoped and assumed that she was likely to be the next president of the United States quite soon.

Rod Rosenstein never should have been appointed acting attorney general in charge of oversight of the Mueller investigation. He knew Mueller well. In circular fashion, he had drafted the rationale to fire Comey that had prompted the Mueller’s appointment. He had signed off on a FISA warrant request without apprising the court of the true nature of the Steele dossier’s origins and nature. He had met shortly before the Mueller appointment with acting FBI director Andrew McCabe to investigate the chance of removing Trump under a distortion of the 25th Amendment. So, in essence, Rosenstein had been one of the catalysts for McCabe to investigate removing Trump for his own part in the removal of Comey and then in Orwellian fashion joined McCabe’s efforts.

Comey deliberately leaked a classified memo of a presidential conversation, in which he had misled the president about his actual status under FBI investigations, in order to cause enough media outrage over his firing to prompt the hiring of a special counsel. That gambit succeeded in the appointment of his own longtime associate Robert Mueller, who would be charged to investigate “collusion,” in which Comey played an important role in monitoring the Trump campaign with the assistance of British national Christopher Steele.

Robert Mueller did not need to appoint a legal team inordinately Democratic, which included attorneys who had been either donors to the Clinton campaign, or had been attorneys for Clinton aides, or had defended the Clinton Foundation. And he certainly should not have included on his investigative team that was charged with adjudicating Russian collusion in the 2016 election both Zainab Ahmad and Andrew Weissman, Obama Justice Department officials, who had been briefed by Bruce Ohr before the election on the nature of the Steele dossier and its use of foreign sources.

It will be difficult to unravel all of the above lying, distortion, and unethical and illegal conduct.

The motives of these bad actors are diverse, but they share a common denominator. As Washington politicos and administrative state careerists, all of them believed that Donald Trump was so abhorrent that he should be prevented from winning the 2016 election. After his stunning and shocking victory, they assumed further that either he should not be inaugurated or he should be removed from office as soon as they could arrange it.

They further reasoned that as high and esteemed unelected officials their efforts were above and beyond the law, and rightly so, given their assumed superior wisdom and morality.

Finally, if their initial efforts were predicated on winning not just exemption from the law, but even promotions and kudos from a grateful President Hillary Clinton, their subsequent energies at removing Trump and investing in the collusion hoax were preemptive and defensive. Seeding the collusion hoax was a way either of removing Trump who had the presidential power to call them all to account for their illegality, or at least causing so much media chaos and political havoc that their own crimes and misdemeanors would be forgotten by becoming submerged amid years of scandal, conspiracies, and media sensationalism.

And they were almost—but so far not quite—correct in all their assumptions.

Barr says he'll release the Mueller report — with a caveat

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Every page of the confidential report provided to Attorney General Barr on March 22nd, 2019, was marked “May contain material protected under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6-e,” a law that protects confidential grand jury information – and therefore could not be publicly released. Given the extraordinary public interest in the matter, the Attorney General decided to release the report’s bottom line findings in his conclusions immediately – without attempting to summarize the report – with the understanding that the report itself would be released after the redaction process.

DOJ fights back against Mueller report, Barr media coverage

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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

quote:

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

quote:

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.

quote:

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.

quote:

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.

quote:

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”.

quote:

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.

quote:

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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