Ex-FBI Boss Has ‘Grave Concern’ FISA Court Was ‘Defrauded Intentionally’ in Russia Probe

“I have grave concern that the court was defrauded intentionally … There was some type of agenda, an inappropriate agenda beyond an objective intelligence or criminal investigation,” said Kevin Brock, a retired FBI assistant director for Intelligence who helped implement most of the intelligence and informant rules the FBI uses today.

“I struggle to find any other explanation,” Brock told the John Solomon Reports podcast. “Any other explanation just doesn’t pass the smell test. I mean, the glaring — the Steele dossier, for an experienced counterintelligence agent in the field, was blinking red lights Russian disinformation campaign, and yet you’re going to have the highest levels of the FBI executives use that to create an investigation?”

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

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

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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Sen. Ron Johnson Subpoenas FBI Director Christopher Wray for All Crossfire Hurricane Documents

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray last week for all documents related to Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation of the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia.

The subpoena, issued on Aug. 6, calls for Wray to produce all of the documents related to the probe by Aug. 20.

Johnson is also demanding that Wray hand over all records that the FBI provided the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general for its scathing report on Crossfire Hurricane.

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

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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Appeals Court Orders Dismissal of Michael Flynn Prosecution

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the dismissal of the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said in a 2-1 ruling that the Justice Department’s decision to abandon the case against Flynn settles the matter, even though Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to prosecutors in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

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Eight More Key ‘Russiagate Investigators’ US Attorney John Durham is Likely Investigating

The multiple investigations of the U.S. government’s intelligence-gathering activities against the Trump campaign have typically focused on the actions of the same small group of former officials: James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, John Brennan, James Clapper and a few others.

But just as significant to the efforts to get to the bottom of the government’s Trump-related surveillance are a handful of current and former FBI and Justice Department employees whose names are not as well known to the public.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham Says He’s Been Denied Access to FBI Employees Who Interviewed Key Dossier Source

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that he has been denied access to interview an FBI agent and FBI analyst who met with a key source for the Steele dossier who disavowed the salacious document.

Graham has sought interviews with the FBI case agent and supervisory intelligence analyst to discuss their interview in January 2017 with the primary source for Christopher Steele, the former British spy who investigated the Trump campaign for Democrats.

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Tennessee Star National Correspondent Neil McCabe Speculates About Rod Rosenstein’s Hearing and Questions Antifa’s Network

Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –  host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Star National Correspondent Neil McCabe to the newsmakers line.

During the third hour, McCabe weighed in on the Rod Rosenstein Senate hearings and questioned Antifa’s roll in the George Floyd riots.

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Once a Staunch Opponent of De-Classification, Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff Now Calls for Releasing ‘Any Flynn Transcripts’

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff on Friday called for transparency in the release of a transcript of former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s phone calls in late December 2016 with a Russian ambassador.

“We need to ensure a transparent and complete public record free of political manipulation,” Schiff wrote in a letter to Richard Grenell, the acting director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

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FBI Informant Stefan Halpert Bragged About Connections to Russian Spies to Papadopoulos Spies in Secret Recordings

by Chuck Ross   It wasn’t long into his conversation with George Papadopoulos at a prestigious social club in London weeks before the 2016 election that FBI confidential informant Stefan Halper mentioned his links to several retired Russian spies. “I have a lot of friends in Russia,” Halper told Papadopoulos during their conversation, which occurred over drinks, and which the FBI recorded. “My point is that,” Halper said, “the Russians can be very helpful to us at this time and we’ve got some great information coming out.” Halper, a former Cambridge professor, rattled off the names of the Russians, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Leonid Shebarshin, and Yuri Traughtoff, according to a transcript of the secretly recorded conversation released on Thursday. Halper was not bluffing about his friendship with at least one of the ex-Russian spies. He has collaborated with Trubnikov, the former head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR. Halper hosted Trubnikov at two intelligence seminars at Cambridge in 2012 and 2015, and interviewed the former Kremlin insider for a 2015 study on China-Russia relations he did for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA). Halper’s goal in bringing up his Kremlin links was to get Papadopoulos to reveal whether he or the Trump campaign were working…

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Newspaper Giant McClatchy ‘Taking a Close Look’ at Its Cohen-Prague Reports in Wake of New Evidence

McClatchy news service says it is reviewing two reports published in 2018 that claimed to validate a key part of the infamous Steele dossier after declassified information showed that Russian operatives may have fed disinformation to dossier author Christopher Steele.

“We are taking a close look at this new information and will update or correct our story based on its merits. Until then, we continue to stand by our reporting,” McClatchy said in a statement to The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple.

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Identified: The FBI Agent Faulted in FISA Report for ‘Significant Errors’

An FBI agent faulted for some of the most significant problems laid out in the Justice Department’s inspector general report on FISA abuse against a Trump campaign associate has been identified.

The New York Times, citing people familiar with the FBI’s Russia probe, identified Stephen A. Somma, a counterintelligence investigator who works out of the bureau’s New York field office, as “Case Agent 1” from the inspector general’s (IG) report.

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Commentary: The FBI’s Darkest Hour

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’

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

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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Commentary: The Colluders, Obstructionists, and Leakers Project Onto ‘Trump World’ What They, Themselves Do

by Victor Davis Hanson   Before the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the idea that the Russians or anyone else could warp or tamper with our elections in any serious manner was laughed off by President Obama. “There is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could even rig America’s elections,” Obama said in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election. Obama was anxious that the sure-to-be-sore-loser Trump would not blame his defeat on voting impropriety in a fashion that might call into question Clinton’s victory. After Clinton’s stunning defeat, Russian “collusion” – thanks initially to efforts by Obama holdover Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to go after Michael Flynn and the successful attempts of the CIA and FBI to seed the bogus Steele dossier among the government elite – became a club to destroy the incoming Trump Administration. Colluders, Inc. How ironic that Russian “collusion” was used as a preemptive charge from those who actually had colluded with Russians for all sorts for financial and careerist advantages. The entire so-called Uranium One caper had hinged on ex-President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and their Clinton Foundation uniting with Russian or Russian-affiliated oligarchs to ease…

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Attorney General Barr Appoints John Durham to Look at Origins of Russia Probe

  Attorney General William Barr has appointed long time U.S. attorney John Durham to examine the origins of the Russia investigation and determine if intelligence collection involving the Trump campaign was “lawful and appropriate,” a person familiar with the issue told The Associated Press on Monday. Durham’s appointment comes about a month after Barr told members of Congress he believed “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign in 2016. He later said he didn’t mean anything pejorative and was gathering a team to look into the origins of the special counsel’s investigation. Barr provided no details about what “spying” may have taken place but appeared to be alluding to a surveillance warrant the FBI obtained on a former Trump associate, Carter Page, and the FBI’s use of an informant while the bureau was investigating former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. Trump and his supporters have seized on both to accuse the Justice Department and the FBI of unlawfully spying on his campaign. The inquiry, which will focus on whether the government’s methods to collect intelligence relating to the Trump campaign were lawful and appropriate, is separate from an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general. The agency’s watchdog…

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Commentary: #NeverTrump GOP Senators Messing with Donald Trump Jr.

by George Rasley   Just when you thought that #NeverTrump Republicans in the Senate might, just might be ready to “move on” as Majority Leader McConnell put it, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (an alleged Republican) has subpoenaed the President’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr to testify on matters related to the Mueller investigation. The Don Jr has already testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in December of 2017, as part of their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. And the Mueller report made no recommendations against him. But Burr, not generally thought of the sharpest knife in the Senate’s GOP drawer, apparently decided to give the Democrats, including his odious Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), one more opportunity to grandstand for the cameras and to set a perjury trap for Don Jr. According to ABC News, a source close to Don Jr. said there was an agreement between the president’s son and the committee that he would only have to come in and testify once as long as he was willing to stay for as long as they’d like, which the source said he did, having stayed with the panel for more than nine hours back…

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Analysis: The Steele Dossier and the ‘Raw Intelligence’ Canard

by Chuck Ross   Defenders of the FBI’s activities during the 2016 campaign have adopted a familiar refrain over the past 28 months to describe the Steele dossier, that infamous document that served as a road map for the conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. “It’s raw intelligence,” according to countless politicos and pundits, including CNN contributor Asha Rangappa, Democratic Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, former CIA executive John Sipher and numerous other commentators. The spy term, which describes information directly from a source that has not been fully analyzed, is intended to downplay the dossier’s significance to the collusion narrative. Christopher Steele, the dossier author, gathered his intelligence from a trusted network of sources, the argument goes, and provided it to seasoned investigators to analyze. But the charitable defense faces new challenges, especially in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report. The problem with the “raw intelligence” canard is that it ignores questions about how Steele obtained his information and what the former spy did with it once he received it. The FBI also treated Steele’s allegations as more than mere raw intelligence. The bureau relied heavily on Steele’s work, even though it was unverified, to obtain spy…

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Commentary: The Russia Collusion Hoax Lays Bare the Urgent Need for FISA Reform

by Robert Romano   By far the biggest takeaway from the failure of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to establish that there was any coordination or conspiracy with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election by President Donald Trump, his campaign or any American is that we need immediate and swift reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court system that was weaponized against a political campaign to investigate a crime that was never committed. The FISA warrants taken out against the Trump campaign that began in Oct. 2016 relied upon the dossier full of phony allegations by former British spy Christopher Steele that was paid for by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign. It gave the government access to campaign emails, phone calls, text messages and other communications. This was the same dossier that was briefed to then-President-elect Donald Trump in Jan. 2017 by former FBI Director James Comey, who later told Congress that it was “salacious and unverified” and then was used again when the warrants were renewed. The dossier alleged that President Trump was a bought and paid for Russian agent, that former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page while on a trip to Moscow where he delivered a commencement address at the…

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House Judiciary Committee Chair Nadler Falsely Claims Don Jr. Was Offered Stolen Information in Trump Tower Meeting

by Chuck Ross   New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, falsely claimed in an interview on Sunday that Donald Trump Jr. was offered stolen information in the infamous meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016. “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd failed to correct Nadler when he made the inaccurate statement. “I do not understand why he didn’t charge Don Jr., and others in that famous meetings with criminal conspiracy,” Nadler said of Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the interview. “They entered into a meeting of the minds to attend a meeting, to get stolen material on Hillary. They went to the meeting. That’s conspiracy, right there,” he added. Despite that claim, Trump Jr. was not offered stolen material before accepting the June 9, 2016 meeting. WATCH: Should Mueller have charged anyone for meeting with Russians in Trump Tower? #MeetThePress #IfItsSunday@repjerrynadler: "I do not understand why he didn't charge Don Jr. and others in that famous meeting." pic.twitter.com/2h0c3Mfimp — Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) April 21, 2019 Trump Jr. accepted the meeting after a music publicist named Rob Goldstone emailed him on June 3, 2016 saying that a Russian attorney wanted to meet with the campaign to…

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Commentary: And Then When That Didn’t Work…

by Victor Davis Hanson   Right after the 2016 election, Green Party candidate Jill Stein – cheered on by Hillary Clinton dead-enders – sued in three states to recount votes and thereby overturn Donald Trump’s victory in the Electoral College. Before the quixotic effort imploded, Stein was praised as an iconic progressive social justice warrior who might stop the hated Trump from even entering the White House. When that did not work, B-list Hollywood celebrities mobilized, with television and radio commercials, to shame electors in Trump-won states into not voting for the president-elect during the official Electoral College balloting in December 2016. Their idea was that select morally superior electors should reject their constitutional directives and throw the election into the House of Representatives where even more morally superior NeverTrump Republicans might join with even much more morally superior Democrats to find the perfect morally superior NeverTrump alternative. When that did not work, more than 60 Democratic House members voted to bring up Trump’s impeachment for vote. Trump had only been in office a few weeks. Then San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer toured the country and lavished millions on advertisements demanding Trump’s removal by impeachment – and was sorely disappointed when he…

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Rep. Devin Nunes to Make Criminal Referrals to DOJ for ‘Conspiracy’ and Leaking Classified Information

by Chuck Ross   California Rep. Devin Nunes said Sunday he plans to submit eight criminal referrals to the Justice Department this week related to the Obama administration’s handling of the Trump-Russia investigation. Nunes said on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that the referrals will be made for alleged leaks of classified information to the media, for manipulating intelligence and for misleading foreign intelligence surveillance court judges regarding the infamous Steele dossier. Nunes declined to identify the Obama officials who will be subject to the referrals. He said that five of the referrals name specific government officials he believes have lied to Congress, misled Congress or leaked classified information. “We believe there is a conspiracy to lie to the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court, mislead the FISA court, by numerous individuals that all need to be investigated and looked at,” said Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The second conspiracy one is involving manipulation of intelligence,” said Nunes, adding that “we’ve had a lot of concerns with the way intelligence was used.” Nunes is also making what he calls a “global leak referral.” “There are about a dozen highly sensitive, classified information leaks that were given to…

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Commentary: The Tables Turn in Russian Collusion Hunt

by Victor Davis Hanson   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…

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Commentary: Eighteen Real Attacks on the ‘Rule of Law’

by Adam Mill   Donald Trump, we are told over and over and over again, threatens the “rule of law.” To pick a piece at random, I note that Joel Mathis of The Week recently wrote, “When we talk about Trump and the rule of law, mostly we talk about how he’s flouting and evading the constraint of laws he doesn’t like: His newly declared state of emergency to circumvent Congress’ refusal to appropriate funds for a Mexican border wall is just the best recent example.” You don’t have to take my word for the absurdity of this claim that the emergency declaration flouts the rule of law; read the New York Times: Trump has, at a minimum, a colorable legal claim for this emergency declaration. In the Mathis example, as in most of these cases, the “violation” generally amounts to a policy difference or the departure from a “norm” like the one used to buck presidential oversight of powerful federal agencies. The suffocating sanctimoniousness of the “Trump-is-threatening-the-rule-of-law” crowd is exceeded only by their hypocrisy. Don’t believe me? Here is a list of 18 actual violations of the law and Constitution done in service of removing Trump from office. I’ll bet you can’t find a single objection from any of these “rule-of-law” hand wringers to these flagrant and unpunished transgressions…

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Andrew McCabe Defends FBI’s Use Of Steele Dossier, Confidential Informant In Trump-Russia Probe

by Chuck Ross   Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is defending the FBI’s reliance on the Steele dossier as well as the bureau’s use of a confidential informant to make contact with the Trump campaign as part of an investigation into possible collusion with Russia. In an interview as part of a recent book tour, McCabe disputed Republicans’ claims that the FBI misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court about aspects of the dossier in applications warrants to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. And in his book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, McCabe defended the use of an informant who appears to be Stefan Halper, a longtime FBI and CIA informant who cozied up to Page and two other Trump advisers, Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulos, during the 2016 campaign. “I do believe that we adequately notified the FISA Court of the information we were using, and what we thought of the information,” McCabe told New York Times reporter Adam Goldman in an interview that aired on C-SPAN on Saturday. McCabe, who was fired from the FBI on March 16, 2018, said that the bureau’s applications for FISA warrants…

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Commentary: The Real Reason Democrats Have Postponed Barr’s Confirmation Is All About ‘Russia’ and 2020

by Julie Kelly   After what seemed to be a done deal following a relatively smooth public hearing last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee now has delayed until February 7 the vote to confirm William Barr, President Trump’s nominee for attorney general. The reason, according to news reports, is lingering concerns about how Trump’s incoming attorney general would manage the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which is soon expected to conclude. Despite Barr’s repeated assurances that he will follow Justice Department rules in his handling of Mueller’s final report, as well as a pledge to resist any attempted interference by the White House, Democrats on the committee remain unconvinced. “[Barr’s] answer was not particularly reassuring or clear as to the public disclosure of the Mueller report,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell earlier this week. Democrats also have accused Barr of bias against the Mueller investigation based on a detailed memo he authored last year that objected to the special counsel’s reported interest in whether President Trump obstructed justice. Some have suggested Barr should recuse himself from the investigation, which would be a repeat of a terrible mistake made by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017. The committee’s vote is scheduled to take…

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Half Of America Doesn’t Have Confidence Mueller’s Report Will Be Fair

FBI Mueller and President Trump

by Hanna Bogorowski   The majority of Americans support congressional Democrats’ calls to investigate President Donald Trump’s past communication and financial ties with Russia, but half of them lack confidence that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report will be fair and even-handed. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday showed that 50 percent of Americans surveyed don’t believe Mueller’s probe, which is currently investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, will result in an unbiased, fair report. A random sample of 1,001 U.S. adults were asked between Jan. 21-24 how much confidence they have that Mueller’s report will be even-handed, to which 28 percent responded “Just some” and another 22 percent responded “None at all.” Just 24 percent said they have “A great deal” of confidence in the report, which stands in contrast to the large public support for such investigations. The poll, which had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points, showed that 57 percent of respondents support a Democratic investigation into potential collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, 61 percent support investigations of suspected financial ties between Trump and foreign governments, and 59 percent support investigations into Trump’s relationship and communication with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the same time, a plurality…

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Comey Admits Dossier Was Unverified Before And After FBI Used It To Obtain Spy Warrants

by Chuck Ross   Former FBI Director James Comey told Congress Friday that the FBI had not verified the Steele dossier prior to relying on the salacious document to obtain spy warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. According to a transcript of Comey’s testimony released on Saturday, the former FBI chief also asserted that it was “not necessary” for the FBI to assess the sources that dossier author Christopher Steele used to compile his report, which was funded by the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign. “I think I’ve dealt with warrants where you just identify that your primary [confidential informant], or primary source, has subsources, and so long as the court is aware of that phenomenon and that you’re speaking to the reliability of the primary source, to my mind, that’s a totally legit warrant application,” he said. Comey told lawmakers that “work was ongoing” by the time he was fired on May 9, 2017, to “to replicate, either rule in or rule out” as much of the dossier as possible. He said that by the time he was fired on May 9, 2017, he “still didn’t know whether there was anything to it,” referring to the investigation into possible…

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Mark Meadows: ‘Strong Suggestion’ that Undercover FBI Sources Taped Trump Campaign

Mark Meadows

by Chuck Ross   North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows said Wednesday that there is a “strong suggestion” that undercover FBI sources secretly taped members of the Trump campaign. “Now whether that was a confidential human source taping an individual, that’s what I believe it is, but it’s important that we look at this because the whole narrative of ‘Spygate’ and tapping and all of that have been narratives that are out there but unproven,” Meadows, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, told Hill.TV. “There’s a strong suggestion that confidential human sources actually taped members within the Trump campaign,” the Republican continued. “There is strong suggestions in that some of the text messages, emails, and so forth who was involved, that extraordinary measures were used to surveil.” Meadows, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, did not specify what information he has seen. But the Department of Justice has recently provided documents about the FBI’s investigation to several House committees, including Oversight and the House Judiciary Committee. Republicans on both committees have formed a task force of sorts aimed at investigating possible FBI abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The FBI obtained four FISA warrants against…

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US House Intelligence Committee to Vote on Release of Trump Russia Transcripts

Reuters   A U.S. House of Representatives committee will vote on Friday on whether to release dozens of transcripts of interviews from its investigation of Russia and the 2016 U.S. election, including conversations with senior associates of President Donald Trump. The House Intelligence Committee is expected to agree to send transcripts of the 53 interviews to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for review before they are made public, congressional aides said on Thursday. That would pave the way for the public to see thousands of pages of conversations with people including the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law and close adviser Jared Kushner, as well as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former advisor to President Trump, Steve Bannon. Interviews with officials from former President Barack Obama’s administration, including former National Security Adviser Susan Rice and United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power are also among the transcripts. The transcripts are likely to provide the first public look at how some key witnesses described events such as a June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower in New York at which a group of Russians offered to provide damaging information about Trump’s Democratic rival at the election, Hillary Clinton.…

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Gowdy: Russia Docs Are ‘Embarrassing’ For John Brennan, DOJ And FBI

by Chuck Ross   South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy said the information in a batch of Russia investigation documents that President Donald Trump was considering for declassification will prove “embarrassing” for the Department of Justice, FBI and former CIA Director John Brennan. Gowdy made the remarks in an interview with Fox News on Thursday. The next day, President Donald Trump retracted his order to the Justice Department to declassify and release the documents. But the Republican left open the possibility that the records could be released down the road. But Gowdy, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, provided a preview of what to expect from the documents if they are eventually released. “I’ve read it. Some of it’s embarrassing for the Department of Justice — some of it’s embarrassing for the FBI. Embarrassment is not a reason to classify something,” said Gowdy. “A lot of it should be embarrassing to John Brennan, and maybe therein lies why he is so adamant that this information not be released.” Brennan suggested Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that government officials resign rather than comply with Trump’s directive to release the records. Brennan, who now serves as an…

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EXCLUSIVE: Released Texts Messages And Emails Show Mueller Team’s Cozy Relationship With Press

by Joe Simonson   Hundreds of pages of emails and texts messages released from the Justice Department’s special counsel office through a FOIA request document shows an ongoing relationship between Robert Mueller’s team and the press, according to an investigation by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The documents, released in September, span months of communication and include messages from reporters ranging from a variety of outlets including TheDCNF to the Washington Post and BuzzFeed. While the vast majority of correspondences between Mueller’s spokesman Peter Carr and a variety of journalists ends with a “no comment,” the messages expose that Mueller’s team was willing to meet with a number of  reporters in private meetings and over the phone. Coordinating such meetings cuts against the narrative that the special counsel has been hesitant to give information to the press, instead opting to give information only through public announcements and statements. Just in August, The New York Times ran a story poking fun at the secrecy of the special counsel, with one reporter writing that Carr’s “‘no comment’ replies have become a running dark joke among the Washington press corps.” Yet on July 21st, 2017, Adam Goldman from The Times sent an email to Carr…

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DOJ Official Bruce Ohr’s Congressional Testimony Contradicts Fusion GPS Founder Glenn Simpson’s

Glenn Simpson, Bruce Ohr

by Chuck Ross   Department of Justice (DOJ) official Bruce Ohr told Congress in August that he met before the 2016 election with Glenn Simpson, a direct contradiction to what the Fusion GPS founder said in a congressional deposition in 2017. Sources familiar with Ohr’s Aug. 28 testimony tell The Daily Caller News Foundation that Ohr said he met with Simpson in August 2016. But Simpson, whose firm commissioned the infamous Steele dossier, told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during a Nov. 14 deposition that he did not have contact with anyone from the DOJ or FBI until after the election. Ohr’s comments came during an exchange with Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, sources tell TheDCNF. “I think you said earlier today sometime this morning that you met with Glenn Simpson twice in person,” Jordan said, according to a transcript of the interview read out to TheDCNF. “But you met in person in 2016, is that right?” Jordan pressed. “That is my recollection,” Ohr said. “Once in August and once in December?” Jordan asked. “Yes,” said Ohr. Simpson told House investigators in November that he had contact with Ohr only after the 2016 election. “Did the FBI ever…

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Nellie Ohr To Testify Before Congress About Work For Fusion GPS

by Chuck Ross   Congress will interview Nellie Ohr, the wife of Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, later this week, Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe said on Sunday. Ratcliffe said Sunday that Ohr is expected to appear for a closed-door interview with the House Judiciary and House Oversight & Government Reform Committees, in an interview on Fox News. Ohr worked during the 2016 election cycle for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that investigated Donald Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC. Fusion hired former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous anti-Trump dossier that was used to obtain spy warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. While she worked for Fusion, Ohr’s husband, Bruce Ohr, was in contact with both Steele and Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS. A former assistant deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, Bruce Ohr was interviewed by the congressional committees on Aug. 28. Republican lawmakers have questioned the Ohrs’ relationship to Fusion GPS and Steele. The husband-and-wife duo met with Steele on July 30, 2016, a day before the FBI opened its counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia. Nellie Ohr began working for Fusion…

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Nunes: Democrats, Journalists Will Be ‘Frightened’ By Declassified Trump-Russia Documents

by Chuck Ross   House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said this week that Democrats and the media are likely to be “frightened” by the information contained in Trump-Russia documents that Republicans are asking President Donald Trump to declassify. Speaking at an event hosted by the Center for Security Policy on Thursday, Nunes said that Trump is close to declassifying portions of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant granted against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. On July 21, the Justice Department released heavily redacted versions of four FISA warrants granted against Page from Oct. 2016 through June 2017. The unredacted portions showed that the FBI relied heavily on the infamous Steele dossier to obtain the warrants. Republicans have accused the FBI of abusing the FISA process by citing the dossier even though it was unverified and financed by Democrats as part of an opposition research project. Before that release, Nunes and other Republicans on the House Intelligence panel sent a letter to Trump calling on him to declassify and release 21 pages of the fourth and final FISA warrant. “In the course of the Committee’s investigation, we have uncovered irregularities with the process by which DOJ and FBI obtained information…

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