Tag: Carter Page

Commentary: ‘Russia Forever’ Is an Anatomy of a Left-Wing Obsession

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The more candidate Trump in 2016 trolled the Clinton campaign (e.g., “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press”), the more the irate left bought into hysterical conspiracy theories.

Finally, the left became completely unhinged after the 2016 victory. An Obama-era Pentagon lawyer published an essay exploring the chance for a military coup. Retired lieutenant colonels called for a Pentagon intervention. Retired four-stars could not decide whether he was Hitler-like, Mussolini, or the architect of Auschwitz. Celebrities competed to find the most savage image of eliminating Trump—whether by combustion, incineration, decapitation, lethal shooting, or stabbing.

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Bipartisan Effort to Reform FISA, End Abuses Could be Iced by GOP Outrage of Durham Report Findings

Just the News

Congressional Democrats have joined in bipartisan effort to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amid abuses but GOP outrage over the findings in the Durham Report, including recent calls to impeach Attorney General Merrick Garland over such matters, has likely hurt such efforts.

Congressional reauthorization of FISA is due in December, with particular focus on Section 702 of the law, which permits the government to conduct targeted surveillance on foreign people outside the U.S., with the assistance of electronic communication service providers, to acquire foreign intelligence information.

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Commentary: Abandon the Swamp and Let it Rot

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Suppose a document drops in the wilderness and no one is around to hear it. Does it make a sound? I submit that John Durham just tested this Bishop Berkeleyesque query. The special counsel spent four years beavering away in the forests of the deep state and what did he produce? Three hundred pages telling us what, for the most part, we already knew and with the result that exactly nothing, apart from a little hand wringing, will happen. 

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Little Recourse, Little Consequence: Court Rulings Signal Impunity for Spygate Perpetrators

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Over a one-week period, both Donald Trump and former Trump 2016 campaign aide Carter Page saw federal judges dismiss their separate lawsuits alleging improper conduct by the FBI, Hillary Clinton, and others during the Russia collusion investigation.

The dual dismissals on back-to-back Thursdays — one this week, one last week — shine a particularly harsh light on what critics say has become a pattern in the aftermath of the Trump-Russia probe: a lack of accountability.

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Commentary: The FBI Is Now the ‘Federal Bureau of Intimidation’

RealClearWire

Nothing symbolizes the decline of the American republic better than the weaponization of justice that we saw last week when the FBI raided the home of former President Trump.

And nothing better represents the divide that now exists between Democrats and Republicans than the fact that some people still have faith in the FBI.

Aren’t they paying attention? Heck, that’s like a citizen of the old Soviet Union saying they had faith in the KGB – yeah, to crush dissent and lock up opponents of the regime in a Siberian gulag.

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Commentary: To Spy on a Trump Aide, the FBI Pursued a Dossier Rumor the Press Shot Down as Nonsense

RealClearWire

The FBI decision to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser hinged on an unsubstantiated rumor from a Clinton campaign-paid dossier that the Washington Post’s Moscow sources had quickly shot down as “b******t” and “impossible,” according to emails disclosed last week to a D.C. court hearing the criminal case of a Clinton lawyer accused of lying to the FBI.

Though the FBI presumably had access to better sources than the newspaper, agents did little to verify the rumor that Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page had secretly met with sanctioned Kremlin officials in Moscow. Instead, the bureau pounced on the dossier report the day it received it, immediately plugging the rumor into an application under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to wiretap Page as a suspected Russian agent.

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Commentary: Christopher Steele Is a Product of Corrupt FBI

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Just as the special counsel’s investigation into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane—the FBI counterintelligence probe launched in the summer of 2016 to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—is showing signs of life, one of the central figures in the hoax is attempting to burnish his sullied image.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos has produced a documentary featuring Christopher Steele, the man responsible for the so-called dossier bearing his name. “Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier,” streamed on Hulu Monday night; promotional clips hinted that, far from a hard-hitting interview exposing Steele for the charlatan he is, Stephanopoulos gave Steele a chance to spin his story ahead of possible new indictments related to John Durham’s inquiry into the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax.

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Investigation: Biden Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Tied to Alleged 2016 Clinton Scheme to Co-Opt the CIA and FBI to Tar Trump

RealClearWire

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan figures prominently in a grand jury investigation run by Special Counsel John Durham into an alleged 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign scheme to use both the FBI and CIA to tar Donald Trump as a colluder with Russia, according to people familiar with the criminal probe, which they say has broadened into a conspiracy case.

Sullivan is facing scrutiny, sources say, over potentially false statements he made about his involvement in the effort, which continued after the election and into 2017. As a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton, Sullivan spearheaded what was known inside her campaign as a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin through dubious email-server records provided to the agencies, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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DOJ ‘Unlikely’ to Represent FBI Officials Sued by Carter Page for Misconduct in Russia Case

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The Justice Department has informed current and former FBI officials sued by Russia probe target Carter Page that it is unlikely to represent them in the civil case, signaling they will need to get private lawyers, according to new court filings.

At least two defendants — fired FBI Director James Comey and current FBI intelligence analyst Brian Auten — have already hired private counsel and notified the presiding judge in the case of their representation.

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Once-Secret FBI Informant Reports Reveal Wider-Ranging Operation to Spy on Trump Campaign

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Once-secret reports show the FBI effort to spy on the Trump campaign was far wider than previously disclosed, as agents directed an undercover informant to make secret recordings, pressed for intelligence on numerous GOP figures, and sought to find “anyone in the Trump campaign” with ties to Russia who could acquire dirt “damaging to Hillary Clinton.”

The now-declassified operational handling reports for FBI confidential human source Stefan Halper — codenamed “Mitch” — provide an unprecedented window both into the tactics used by the bureau to probe the Trump campaign and the wide dragnet that was cast to target numerous high-level officials inside the GOP campaign just weeks before Americans chose their next president in the November 2016 election.

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FBI’s Desperate Pretext to Keep Spying on Carter Page: He Might Write a Book!

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Nine months into a relentless effort to spy on Carter Page with the most awesome surveillance tools the U.S. possesses, the FBI had no proof the former Trump adviser had colluded with Russia to hijack the 2016 election.

In fact, the bureau hid from the FISA court the fact that it knew Page was actually a U.S. asset who had helped the CIA and that in a secret recording with an informant he had denied all the core allegations against him with significant proof.

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Nunes Plans Criminal Referrals to DOJ Following Release of Strzok’s Internal FBI Messages

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Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday he plans to make new criminal referrals to the Justice Department following the release of internal FBI messages from the account of Peter Strzok, the top FBI investigator on Crossfire Hurricane.

In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Nunes said the messages, which the Justice Department and FBI declassified earlier this month, should have been provided to Congress years ago when Republicans began investigating whether the FBI abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in order to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

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John Durham Sought Christopher Steele’s Notes from a Meeting with The FBI in Which an Agent Said the Ex-Spy ‘Wasn’t Truthful’

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John Durham, the U.S. attorney investigating aspects of the Trump-Russia probe, has sought notes that former British spy Christopher Steele took during his interviews in 2016 with the FBI regarding a since-debunked dossier he penned that accused the Trump campaign of colluding with the Russian government.

An FBI agent who took part in one of the interviews with Steele told Justice Department investigators that the ex-spy “clearly … wasn’t truthful” regarding his contacts with members of the media.

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Trump Praises Carter Page’s Lawsuit Against FBI and DOJ, Asks ‘Where’s Durham?’

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Trump was lamenting that the Justice Department was not investigating allegations of voter fraud in various swing states. He brought up an investigation led by U.S. Attorney John Durham into FBI and CIA intelligence-gathering activities related to the Trump campaign in 2016.

Republicans had high hopes for Durham’s investigation when it started in April 2019, but have recently grown frustrated at a lack of public revelations from the probe.

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Carter Page Is Suing the People Who Spied on Him for $75 Million

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Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page sued the Justice Department, the FBI and multiple officials involved in Crossfire Hurricane on Friday for $75 million, saying that he was the victim of “unlawful spying” as part of the government’s investigation of the Trump campaign.

Page asserts in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington D.C. on Friday, that investigators violated “his Constitutional and other legal rights in connection with unlawful surveillance and investigation of him by the United States Government.”

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DOJ Lawyer Who Signed Carter Page Spy Warrants Now Regrets Doing So

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The Justice Department attorney who signed the four surveillance warrant applications against Carter Page says they would not have done had they known of the information withheld by the FBI, according to a letter sent to the Senate this month.

Sen. Lindsey Graham read portions of the letter at the beginning of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with former FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday.

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FBI Source’s Claim About Michael Flynn Was Inaccurate, Special Agent Said

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The FBI’s lead agent on its investigation of Michael Flynn told prosecutors that a confidential source’s allegation about an incident involving the former national security adviser in 2014 was likely false, according to a government document.

Special Agent William Barnett said in an interview with a federal prosecutor on Sept. 17 that the Crossfire Hurricane team obtained the information about Flynn from a confidential human source (CHS) who provided information regarding Carter Page.

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FBI Investigated Steele Dossier Source as a Possible Russian Spy Years Before Trump Probe

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The FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation on the primary source for dossier author Christopher Steele, and considered obtaining a warrant to wiretap him in 2010, according to a document released Thursday.

The FBI was also aware of the information about the source, identified elsewhere as Igor Danchenko, by December 2016, according to the document.

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Peter Strzok Defends FBI Against FISA Abuse Allegations, Says Agents Were ‘Overworked’

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Former FBI official Peter Strzok defended the bureau’s surveillance of former Trump aide Carter Page in an interview aired Sunday, attributing failures found in a government watchdog report to agents being “overworked.”

“I don’t think at all that it’s anything improper. You get people who are overworked, who make mistakes — and don’t get me wrong, inexcusable mistakes,” Strzok said in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning.”

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Justice Department Announces FISA Reforms to Prevent Another Carter Page Debacle

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The Justice Department announced a series of reforms to its procedures for obtaining Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders on Tuesday aimed at preventing abuses that the FBI committed during its investigation of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Attorney General William Barr issued two memos laying out the reforms Tuesday. One memo announced the creation of an FBI Office of Internal Auditing, which will review all factual allegations submitted in FISA applications. The other memo deals with surveillance of elected federal officials and candidates seeking federal office.

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Exclusive: Why Nicholas Sandman’s Lawyer Joined Carter Page’s Lawsuit Team

Neil W. McCabe

The Atlanta-based attorney, who represents Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandman, told the Star Newspaper Group he will get justice for his new client, Dr. Carter W. Page in Page’s lawsuit against Yahoo! and the Huffington Post.

“They accused him of being a traitor to the United States of America,” said L. Lincoln “Lin” Wood, who joined Page’s legal team just before the defamation lawsuit was filed in Delaware Superior Court July 27. “I can’t think of a more heinous accusation to make against a man based on zero evidence.”

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Commentary: Time to Grab Some Popcorn as Attorney Lin Wood Agrees to Take on Carter Page’s Case

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Lin Wood, the attorney representing a Kentucky teenager in a number of defamation lawsuits against major media outlets, announced a settlement Friday with the Washington Post. The terms of the agreement between the family of Nicholas Sandmann – the Covington Catholic High School student accused of disrespecting a “native elder” while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat during the January 2019 March for Life – remain secret. 

Wood and Sandmann settled a similar lawsuit against CNN earlier this year. Cases still are pending against NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Gannett.

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EXCLUSIVE: Trump Campaign Staffer Speaks Out after Targeted by Collusion Hoaxers

Neil W. McCabe

A former national security advisor to New York City developer Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign told Star Newspapers about his ordeal as he was hounded by Russian Collusion Hoaxers, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and their allies in the mainstream media.

“It was a waking nightmare for several years because of the chain reaction sparked by that opinion column,” said J.D. Gordon, who was also a national security advisor for the 2012 Herman Cain and the 2016 Michael Huckabee presidential campaigns.

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DOJ IG Checked 29 More FBI Spy Warrants, and Found Problems with All of Them

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The Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General has a “lack of confidence” in the FBI’s procedures to validate information used to obtain spy warrants on American citizens, the watchdog said in a report released Tuesday.

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found errors in all 29 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications that were subject to the review.

The audit is a follow-up to an investigation of the FBI’s surveillance of Carter Page, the former Trump campaign aide.

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Christopher Steele Refuses to Cooperate with US Prosecutor Looking Into Origins of Trump-Russia Probe

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by Chuck Ross   Dossier author Christopher Steele will not cooperate with U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, telling an audience at Oxford University that he believes U.S. investigators have acted in “bad faith.” Steele, a former British spy, said at the Oxford event on Friday that he and his firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, had already “done our duty” by cooperating with a Justice Department inspector general’s (IG) investigation of the FBI’s surveillance of Trump campaign aide Carter Page. According to The Daily Beast, which attended the Oxford event, Steele also criticized the IG, saying that he cooperated with the probe for “four or five months,” and observed “very bad qualities” on the part of government officials. He said some acted in “bad faith.” Reuters reported on Friday that Durham’s team has recently approached Steele seeking an interview. The former MI6 officer rejected the request because he believes that he would not be treated fairly, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Numerous questions remain unanswered about how Steele collected information for his dossier, and how many of his allegations about Trump associates turned out to be inaccurate. Steele alleged that the Trump campaign, including Page,…

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Commentary: The FBI’s Darkest Hour

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by Adam Mill   One can imagine the unspoken question hanging in the darkness during the January 2017 ride back to the airport. A small gaggle1 of FBI agents had just concluded their long-overdue interview with Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source. The silence must have been deafening. Steele had tried to conceal2 his source from the FBI. But the FBI knew his identity and set up an interview behind Steele’s back, and the interview contradicted several Steele assertions. The downcast agents waited for somebody to ask the question on all of their minds: “Now what?” The right answer would have been to admit to the court that Steele was an unreliable source who exaggerates and lies and put an end to spying on Americans in pursuit of the mirage of Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia. When presented one last opportunity to do the right thing, the FBI instead pushed harder for their now-discredited hypothesis justifying the investigation. Peter Strzok had promised his lover, Lisa Page, he would “save” the country from Donald Trump. Given a choice between bringing the FBI back into the light of the Constitution or the darkness of blind hatred of Donald Trump, the conspirators choose darkness. It was at…

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FBI’s Top Lawyer During Russia Probe ‘Distressed’ Over Scathing FISA Report: ‘Sloppiness Is Completely Unacceptable’

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Former top FBI lawyer James Baker: “Sloppiness is completely unacceptable. That is not the way you operate in front of a federal court. I don’t know what word you want to use, it’s terrible, it’s unacceptable, it shouldn’t happen. That is not the way we should be filing matters in front of a federal court.”

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What to Expect in the Justice Department’s FISA Report

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Michael Horowitz

The Justice Department’s watchdog will release a much-anticipated report Monday scrutinizing the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016.

Republicans have eagerly awaited the report, believing it will reveal that the FBI abused the foreign surveillance court process in order to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Democrats hope the report will show that the FBI had a sound basis to investigate the Trump campaign.

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Barr Says Official Explanation for Trump Surveillance Isn’t Adding Up

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by Chuck Ross   Attorney General William Barr says that official statements about the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation “are just not jiving” with information he has learned during his short stint in office. “I assumed I’d get answers when I went in and I have not gotten answers that are well satisfactory, and in fact probably have more questions,” Barr said in an interview with CBS News, adding that “some of the facts that…I’ve learned don’t hang together with the official explanations of what happened.” “[T]here’s some questions that I think have to be answered, and I have a basis for feeling there has to be a review of this,” he told CBS. Barr is investigating government agencies’ surveillance activities against the Trump campaign, as well as the FBI’s rationale for opening a counterintelligence investigation against Trump associates in July 2016. Barr caused a stir during a Senate hearing on April 9 when he said that he believed that “spying did occur” against the Trump campaign. He has since defended using the term “spying,” saying that there is nothing wrong with intelligence agencies spying. But he said he wants to find out whether there was a proper predicate for…

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Commentary: The FISA Footnote that Could Doom Collusion Hoaxsters

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James Comey, Andrew McCabe

by Julie Kelly   It is the controversial footnote to the most infamous application in American political history: The application submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for approval to wiretap Trump campaign aide Carter Page. And it could lead to the downfall of the Trump-Russia collusion schemers, as it will help make the case they misled the secret court to target an innocent man in an effort to thwart Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. In an application filed with the FISA court in October 2016, former FBI Director James Comey accused Carter Page, a Trump campaign aide, of being a Russian agent. (The initial warrant also was signed by former deputy attorney general and Trump foe Sally Yates.) The document is symbolic of how the Obama Justice Department was weaponized against the Trump campaign by corrupt partisans, many of whom—thankfully—now find themselves under investigation. The FISA application at issue claimed the Russian government, in coordination with Page, was attempting to “improperly and illegally influence the 2016 presidential election.” The FISA court approved the FBI’s request, subsequently unleashing the most powerful government surveillance methods possible against Page: “It’s an order by the court to basically monitor that person 24/7, not just tap their…

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Commentary: Of Course the Obama Administration Spied on the Trump Campaign – That’s What a FISA Is For

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by Robert Romano   “I think spying did occur… but the question is whether it was predicated, adequately predicated?” That was Attorney General William Barr testifying before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Science and Justice on April 10, acknowledging that the Trump campaign was spied on by the Obama administration during the 2016 election campaign. Barr outlined his impending review of the conduct of the Justice Department, the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies in launching surveillance and an investigation of the Trump campaign for conspiring with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election — a crime we now know was never committed. And of course spying occurred. The nearly three-year investigation was complete with Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, approved in federal court, that allowed federal officials to look at Trump campaign emails, listen to phone calls and see other communications. That’s what a FISA warrant does. It’s for surveillance, which is right in the name of the statute. That is spying. What’s worse, the months-long surveillance resulted in individuals being prosecuted for unrelated process crimes and otherwise destroyed people’s lives, only to find out later there was no conspiracy or coordination with Russia after an exhaustive probe…

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Here Is When the FISA Abuse Investigation Will Be Done

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by Chuck Ross   Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday that an inspector general’s investigation into whether the FBI abused the surveillance court process during the Russia probe will be completed by May or June. Barr also told lawmakers during a House Appropriations Committee hearing that he is reviewing how the FBI handled the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign that began in summer 2016. “The office of the inspector general has a pending investigation of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] process in the Russia investigation. I expect that that will be complete, probably in May or June, I am told,” said Barr. “More generally, I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all of the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016,” he added. Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, began investigating on March 28, 2018 whether the FBI mislead the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in applications for FISA warrants against Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser. The FBI relied heavily on the Democrat-funded Steele dossier to obtain four FISA warrants against Page. The dossier, authored by a former British spy, alleged that Page acted…

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Portman Resists Lindsey Graham’s Call for New Special Counsel to Investigate FBI

Anthony Gockowski

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and other Republicans are calling for an investigation, and possibly the appointment of a new special counsel, into the FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign. Graham told reporters on Monday that he wants to investigate the surveillance warrants obtained by the FBI against Carter Page, an adviser to the Trump campaign, which were ultimately used to wiretap Page. The warrants, however, were granted partially based on material contained in the infamous and uncorroborated “dossier” produced by Christopher Steele. Graham and his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee want to get to the bottom of the matter, and determine if the warrants were used as “a back-door to spy on the campaign.” “Whether or not it’s illegal, I don’t yet know,” Graham said. “What makes no sense to me is that all of the abuse by the Department of Justice and the FBI—the unprofessional conduct, the shady behavior—nobody seems to think that’s much important. Well that’s going to change, I hope.” Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), however, told The Columbus Dispatch that he opposes calls to have Attorney General William Barr appoint a new special counsel to investigate what Graham called “the other side of the story.” Portman…

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The Carter Page FISA Application: Four Key Takeaways (Plus One More)

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Carter Page and Trump

As experts comb through the newly-released, heavily redadcted FISA application to surveil former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, John Hinderaker at PowerLineBlog noticed four key takeaways. First, he notes, the application – which was renewed several times by the Obama-Holder-Lynch Department of Justice – strongly suggests Page is a Russian agent actively engaged in criminal activity. However, to date, Page has never been charged with a crime. Secondly, the government describes Christopher Steel and the origin of the dossier in a way that Hinderaker generously calls “misleading at best.” The application says: US-based law firm had hired the identified US person to condict research regarding Candidate #1’s ties to Russia (the identified US person and Source #1 have a long-staning relationship). The identified US person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified US person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified US person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign. Legend: Identified US person = Glenn Simpson, the head of Fusion GPS Source #1 = Christopher Steele Candidate #1 = Donald Trump Hinderaker explains: The…

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INDICTED: Senate Select Intel Staffer Criminally Charged After Targeting Trump Campaign Adviser In Aggressive Leak Campaign

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Carter Page and Trump

by Chuck Ross   Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was the primary target of a Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSIC) staffer indicted for lying about his contacts with reporters, according to an indictment released on Thursday. James Wolfe, the former director of security for the SSIC panel, was in contact with at least three reporters at around the time they published articles about Page, an energy consultant who is a central player in the investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government. Wolfe, 57, is charged with lying to the FBI during a Dec. 15, 2017 interview about whether he knew the journalists and had contact with them on certain dates. In one case, Wolfe denied knowing a reporter with whom he had been in a romantic relationship for four years. He is also charged with lying about giving that reporter, Ali Watkins, information about Page. The indictment cites one message that Wolfe wrote in December to Watkins, a former BuzzFeed reporter who now works for The New York Times. “I always tried to give you as much information that I could and to do the right thing with it so you could get that scoop…

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