The Intelligence Community of the United States of America has been weaponized against the incumbent leader’s political opposition, having even turned the spy agencies of our closest allies against the leading Republican candidate.
This is the inescapable conclusion to be drawn if a bombshell report released last week is accurate.
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The House Judiciary Committee next week will hear testimony from Special Counsel John Durham on his report into the Russia-Trump collusion hoax, and two Wisconsin congressional members on the committee say they expect some startling revelations to come out.
Released last month, Durham’s scathing report found the Department of Justice and FBI “failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity of the law” when they launched an investigation against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016.
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Federal officials have allegedly discovered unused files from Robert Mueller’s unsuccessful Special Counsel investigation, and may decide to release them soon as an “alternative” report, according to Politico.
The documents recently found amongst Department of Justice (DOJ) files consist of findings by one of Mueller’s deputies, Andrew Weissmann, that were not included in the final report that was made public in early 2019. Weissmann first discussed his unreleased findings in a book he published last year called “Where Law Ends.”
“At least for posterity, I had all the members … write up an internal report memorializing everything we found, our conclusions, and the limitations on the investigation,” Weissman claims, “and provided it to the other team leaders as well as had it maintained in our files.”
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Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office gathered evidence suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee launched a political “smear job” in spring 2016 tying Donald Trump to Russia collusion through the lobbying work of his campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Ukraine, according to memos that were excluded from the prosecutor’s final report.
The evidence, reviewed by Just the News, includes information obtained by State Department officials from a trusted Ukrainian source, a private investigator’s report, and an email exchange suggesting Tony Podesta — a Manafort business associate and brother of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta — tried at one point to slow down the opposition research project.
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Data from more than 25 government-issued phones used by members of the special counsel’s team was wiped or deleted during the course of the Trump-Russia probe, according to Justice Department records released on Thursday.
Several prosecutors on the special counsel’s team claimed they accidentally wiped their devices by entering incorrect passwords too many times. Others said they intentionally deleted data from their phones.
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Andrew Weissmann, a top prosecutor on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, is seeking a re-do of sorts in the investigation, saying in an op-ed Tuesday that Roger Stone should be hauled before a grand jury to answer questions about his interactions with President Donald Trump in 2016.
Writing in The New York Times, Weissmann also pushed a false claim about the criminal charges against Stone, whose prison sentence Trump commuted on Friday.
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The Supreme Court announced Thursday that it will hear a case that will decide whether Congress can see redacted portions of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The case’s arguments will most likely be heard in the fall after the presidential election, and the Supreme Court will likely reach a decision in 2021, The New York Times reported. The case came after the House Judiciary Committee requested grand jury documents the Department of Justice redacted from the Mueller report.
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The Supreme Court temporarily blocked House Democrats on Wednesday from gaining access to a trove of grand jury documents from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian intervention in the 2016 election.
The Court granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to keep the materials secret while the president’s legal team works to appeal their release. The House Judiciary Committee went to the Court to gain access to the redacted material from Mueller’s 2019 report after the Department of Justice declined to produce the information upon Democrats’ request.
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Two years ago, a controversial memo first alerted the public to the politicized use of a secret court to spy on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. At the time, most Americans—myself included—knew next to nothing about the clandestine workings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
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A federal judge on Thursday accused Attorney General William Barr of displaying a “lack of candor” regarding his public statements about the special counsel’s report on the Russia probe.
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WASHINGTON – Roger Stone, a longtime friend and ally of President Donald Trump, was found guilty Friday of witness tampering and lying to Congress about his pursuit of Russian-hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election bid.
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An Italian newspaper released an audio statement provided by someone claiming to be Joseph Mifsud, the mysterious Maltese professor whose contacts in 2016 with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos were a central but unresolved aspect of the special counsel’s Russia probe.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit temporarily halted the release of grand jury materials from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation Tuesday, just hours ahead of their scheduled distribution.
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What began as an administrative review of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation is reportedly now a full-blown criminal probe.
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Wary political commentators on the Right have noted that the ginned up outrage over President Trump’s call with the Ukranian president serves two political purposes: One, to supply the impeachment goods that Special Counsel Robert Mueller could not deliver and two, to obfuscate the ongoing investigations led by Attorney General William Barr into how the Obama White House unleashed the country’s most powerful government agencies against the Trump presidential campaign in 2016.
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Democrats have been trying and failing to impeach President Donald Trump, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said on Fox News Sunday.
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If Democrats want to get rid of President Donald Trump, they’re going to have to do it at the ballot box in November 2020. There is not going to be any impeachment now.
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Former special counsel Robert Mueller asked lawmakers 48 times to repeat questions throughout Wednesday’s testimony regarding his investigation into potential Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
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On Tuesday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Gill and Leahy talked to One America News Networks Neil McCabe about Mueller’s upcoming testimony and how the Democrats hope that he will say things that were not in the report in effort to open up impeachment hearings. The team noted that if Mueller does answer questions from Democrats that this would leave the window open for Republicans to hold him in contempt. Towards the end of the segment, the team discussed the possibility that the Mueller team had been leaking to Democrats during the entire investigation. Gill: A lot of stuff going on and to help us sort out some of it, Neil McCabe from One America News Network. Neil, good to have you back with us. McCabe: Hey, good morning. How’s it going? Gill: It tires me out just going down the list of all the stuff that’s going to happen. Leahy: Yeah. Neil, so you interviewed reporter John Solomon the other day. What did he have to tell you about James Comey and Robert Mueller? McCabe: What’s interesting is everyone talks about the Mueller…
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by Reuters Former special counsel Robert Mueller will testify before two U.S. House of Representatives committees on July 24, one week later than originally scheduled, the chairmen of the panels said in a statement on Friday. Mueller, who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, has agreed to appear for “an extended period of time,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said. Mueller had been scheduled to appear for two-hour public hearings before each panel. The earlier uncertainty presented a distraction for Democrats, who have billed Mueller’s testimony as a potential watershed moment that could focus attention on segments of his 448-page report that raise troubling questions about President Donald Trump’s efforts to impede the federal investigation. The Judiciary Committee also sought to interview former Mueller aides Aaron Zebley and James Quarles behind closed doors. But Rep. Steve Cohen told reporters they would not appear after the Justice Department directed them not to. Judiciary Committee members balked at the unofficial, earlier arrangement for Mueller, because many of the panel’s less senior lawmakers would not get time to ask questions. “Everyone on the committee wants an opportunity to examine Mr. Mueller,”…
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Special counsel Robert Mueller has agreed to provide open testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee next month. The chairmen of the two panels, Rep. Jerrold Nadler and Rep. Adam Schiff, announced in a letter late Tuesday that Mueller would appear July 17, and that they and all Americans looked forward to hearing from him. Mueller led a nearly two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and allegations that President Donald Trump obstructed justice by trying to shut down the probe. He issued a report, a redacted version of which was made public in April, that concluded the Trump campaign had not colluded with Russia during the election, but reached no conclusion on the question of obstruction of justice. Trump has been highly critical of the process, repeatedly calling the investigation a “witch hunt.” His reaction shortly after Tuesday’s announcement came in the form of a tweet: “Presidential Harassment!” Mueller’s only public comments to this point have been at a news conference in May during which he read a prepared statement, but took no questions. Nadler and Schiff had issued subpoenas seeking to compel Mueller to testify, explaining that while they noted…
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Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH-13) said the House “must begin impeachment proceedings” in a statement released Tuesday morning. Republicans criticized Ryan, a 2020 hopeful, for using the impeachment issue to “breakthrough in a crowded primary field” and “satiate his radical base.” But Ryan claims he came to the decision “after much thought and consideration and after both reading the Mueller report and hearing directly from the Special Counsel.” “In America, no one is above the law. In America, we have an elected president, not a king. In America, the people govern,” Ryan began his statement. “We must fully expose the lawlessness which has already occurred and prevent additional lawlessness from occurring. While it is unlikely that we will see a conviction in the Senate with its present Republican leadership more concerned with power and party than their constitutional duties and the rule of law, we can no longer sit by while a lawless president remains unchecked,” he continued. Statement on Impeachment pic.twitter.com/8pzx1zQnhC — Tim Ryan (@TimRyan) June 4, 2019 Ryan went on to suggest that avoiding impeachment would enable “this kind of lawless behavior to continue and to metastasize.” “Our republic cannot survive if we acquiesce to the view held…
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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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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH-04) slammed his Democratic colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday for voting to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress. “Bill Barr is following the law, and what’s his reward? Democrats are going to hold him in contempt,” Jordan began his remarks. “I don’t think today’s actually about getting information. I don’t think it’s about getting the unredacted Mueller report. I don’t think last week’s hearing was actually about having staff question the attorney general. I think it’s, as my colleague said earlier—I think it’s all about trying to destroy Bill Barr because Democrats are nervous he’s going to get to the bottom of everything.” As The Minnesota Sun reported, the House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines Wednesday to hold Barr in contempt of Congress for failing to hand over Mueller’s full, unredacted report. Twenty-four Democrats on the committee voted in favor of the motion. Jordan suggested before the vote that Democrats are nervous Barr will discover “how and why this investigation started in the first place.” Jordan noted that during his testimony before the Senate Finance Committee Barr said there was “a failure of leadership at the upper echelons of the…
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Steven Dettelbach, former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio and 2018 Democratic attorney general candidate, joined nearly 800 U.S. Department of Justice alumni in suggesting that President Donald Trump obstructed justice in a Monday letter. “Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting president, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice,” the letter begins. It goes on to state that the “Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge.” These acts include, according to the letter, conduct “that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process.” The letter claims that the “evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceeding is overwhelming.” It discusses in detail the “attempts to fire Mueller and then create false evidence,” the “attempts to limit the Mueller investigation,” and the evidence of “witness tampering and intimidation.” “As former federal prosecutors, we recognize that prosecuting obstruction of justice cases is critical because unchecked obstructions—which allows intentional interference with criminal investigations to go unpunished—puts our…
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by Kevin Daley The Trump administration has directed former White House counsel Don McGahn not to cooperate with a congressional subpoena seeking certain records relating to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. McGahn lawyer William Burck told the House Judiciary Committee in a Tuesday letter that McGahn would defy their subpoena at the White House’s instruction, teeing up another clash between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration over the reach of executive privilege and congressional oversight. “Where co-equal branches of government are making contradictory demands on Mr. McGahn concerning the same set of documents, the appropriate response for Mr. McGahn is to maintain the status quo unless and until the committee and the executive branch can reach an accommodation,” Burck said in a letter to the Judiciary Committee. In a separate letter to Burck, White House counsel Pat Cipollone said the records the subpoena seeks contain sensitive internal information, which is subject to executive privilege. “The White House provided these records to Mr. McGahn in connection with its cooperation with the special counsel’s investigation and with the clear understanding that the records remain subject to the control of the White House for all purposes,” Cipollone wrote. “The White House records…
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U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) his upped the ante with his rhetoric by mocking Attorney General William Barr, whom he called a “chicken” — and the Democrat held up a chicken statue and ate fried chicken for effect. Breitbart reported on the tirade at a press conference by the Memphis congressman. The remarks came after Barr said he would not attend a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report showing there was no collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice. #ChickenBarr won’t be appearing before @HouseJudiciary tomorrow. The Attorney General shouldn’t be afraid of taking questions from counsel or members. Contemptible behavior. Fortunately, we have subpoenas ready. pic.twitter.com/a4QecbqcHN — Steve Cohen (@RepCohen) May 1, 2019 The Commercial Appeal reported that Cohen brought the chicken statue and a KFC bucket to the hearing. Barr reportedly refused to attend the hearing because House Democrats demanded that staff attorneys, in addition to lawmakers, be allowed to question Barr over his summary of the Mueller report — a condition that Barr refused to comply with. Before the morning hearing started, however, Cohen ate the chicken in his KFC bucket, Fortune reported. Regarding his analogy, Cohen said in a press release, “The…
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by Chuck Ross Special counsel Robert Mueller expressed frustration to William Barr about how the attorney general described the findings of his investigation regarding obstruction of justice to Congress, according to a new report. The Washington Post reported that Mueller sent the letter on March 27, three days after Barr sent a letter of his own to Congress laying out what he said were the principal conclusions of the special counsel’s 22-month investigation. The revelation of Mueller’s letter comes on the eve of Barr’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the special counsel’s probe. Barr said in the March 24 letter that Mueller did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 presidential campaign. More controversially, Barr said that Mueller made no decision on whether charges were warranted against President Trump for obstruction of justice. Mueller neither recommended charges nor exonerated Trump, Barr told lawmakers. But he said that after consulting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Justice Department lawyers, the Justice Department would not pursue a case against Trump, partially because there was no underlying conspiracy claim. President Trump’s supporters touted Barr’s remarks, saying that the Republican was…
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Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN-02) hosted her fourth town hall last week and received several questions from constituents on moving forward with impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump. Up until Tuesday’s town hall, Craig had taken a relatively moderate position on the issue of impeachment and believed it shouldn’t be discussed until Mueller completed his investigation. “I believe the next step is for the Congress to request the unredacted version of the report. I believe the next step is for the committee chairmen to call a number of folks forward to testify, to fill in the facts for the American people,” Craig told her constituents Tuesday. “I am very troubled by the number of the potential areas of obstruction of justice that are mentioned in the report.” Some took the comments to mean that Craig supports moving forward with the impeachment process, including the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Yesterday Craig laid out for her constituents how exactly Congress should waste more of Minnesotans’ taxpayer money on baseless impeachment claims,” NRCC spokeswoman Carly Atchison said. “It is bizarre that Angie Craig now decides to pursue baseless impeachment, but regardless, she should stop peddling conspiracy theories and focus on Minnesotans.” Former Congressman…
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by Stephen B. Presser It is one of the puzzles of history that Republicans once sought to impeach Bill Clinton. Predictably, they failed to convict him in the Senate with the requisite two-thirds vote, and then Republicans lost the midterm elections that followed, all while President Clinton’s popularity increased dramatically. Even if the Republican effort to remove the president had succeeded, however, he simply would have been replaced by Al Gore, his vice president, and Gore probably would have been positioned to do better in his election bid than he did in his eventual match with George W. Bush in 2000. In hindsight, the impeachment of Bill Clinton looks like nothing so much as a grave political miscalculation; something Republicans never should have undertaken in the first place. Why, then, did they do it, and what does their behavior teach us that might be relevant to the current rumblings about impeaching President Trump? The Republicans moved against President Clinton because they believed that he had committed perjury and sought to obstruct justice in matters ultimately connected to the private lawsuit brought against him by Paula Jones, who had accused him, of sexual harassment, years earlier, when she had been…
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by Henry Rodgers President Donald Trump threatened Congress over impeachment Wednesday morning saying he would immediately head to the Supreme Court and alleging that the Democrats were the ones who committed crimes. Trump mentioned special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which found no collusion or obstruction by the president, saying the report was written by “Angry Democrats and Trump Haters” and that he “DID NOTHING WRONG,” in a pair of tweets Wednesday morning. The Mueller Report, despite being written by Angry Democrats and Trump Haters, and with unlimited money behind it ($35,000,000), didn’t lay a glove on me. I DID NOTHING WRONG. If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only…… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 24, 2019 Trump also mentioned there were no “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” and that all of the crimes that were committed were done by former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and “Dirty Cops.” The president also said Republicans “won” after the Mueller report was released and that Democrats are looking at Congress “as last hope!” …..are there no “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” there are no Crimes by me at all.…
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President Donald Trump is continuing to lash out at special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, a few days after a redacted version was released to the public, calling it a “total hit job.” “The Trump Haters and Angry Democrats who wrote the Mueller Report were devastated by the No Collusion finding! Nothing but a total “hit job” which should never have been allowed to start in the first place!,” Trump said Sunday, adding in a separate tweet that “Despite No Collusion, No Obstruction, The Radical Left Democrats do not want to go on to Legislate for the good of the people, but only to Investigate and waste time.” The Trump Haters and Angry Democrats who wrote the Mueller Report were devastated by the No Collusion finding! Nothing but a total “hit job” which should never have been allowed to start in the first place! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2019 The 448-page report outlined the findings of the 22-month probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and if Trump . Investigators determined no one on Trump’s campaign knowingly conspired with Russia, however they declined to exonerate the president on charges that his actions obstructed justice. The report describes…
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by Thaddeus G. McCotter Long have we dwelt upon how many of those who eschew revealed religion, instead have turned and clung to the left-wing’s regressive “civil religion.” Among these secular believers, one of the fastest growing sects was the Russian Collusion Cult. As with the overarching intellectual fraud, Collusion Cult members derived their benighted world view and unwarranted sense of self-worth from this ideological cesspool; however, unlike the larger practitioners of the civil religion who believe they ultimately would somehow coerce a change in human nature to erect an earthly Eden (a.k.a., “workers’ paradise”), the Collusion Cult had a less ambitious, more immediate Parousia: the impeachment and imprisonment of President Trump. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report was supposed to commence the Collusion Cult’s end times. Trump would be removed from office and frog marched to a federal penitentiary (for violent offenders, not some country club); then, Vice President Mike Pence would be impeached for abetting Trump in his crimes and on general principles (c.f., Mayor Pete); and the first female commander-in-chief, Nancy Pelosi, after taming that pesky Russian runt Vladimir Putin, would regressively govern the country while the slack-jawed corporate left-wing media drooled over the next “The…
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by Mary Margaret Olohan Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee responded to criticisms of President Donald Trump by Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney in a tweet Friday. “Know what makes me sick, Mitt?” Huckabee tweeted. “Not how disingenuous you were to take @realDonaldTrump $$ and then 4 yrs later jealously trash him & then love him again when you begged to be Sec of State, but makes me sick that you got GOP nomination and could have been @POTUS.” Know what makes me sick, Mitt? Not how disingenuous you were to take @realDonaldTrump $$ and then 4 yrs later jealously trash him & then love him again when you begged to be Sec of State, but makes me sick that you got GOP nomination and could have been @POTUS https://t.co/dmidOraRGQ — Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) April 19, 2019 Know what makes me sick, Mitt? Not how disingenuous you were to take @realDonaldTrump $$ and then 4 yrs later jealously trash him & then love him again when you begged to be Sec of State, but makes me sick that you got GOP nomination and could have been @POTUS https://t.co/dmidOraRGQ — Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) April 19, 2019 Huckabee was responding…
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by Chuck Ross The FBI was investigating Michael Flynn’s possible relationship with the Russian government much earlier than previously known, the special counsel’s report revealed. Flynn, who served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, was also under investigation for four separate sets of allegations, says the report, which was released Thursday. It was already known that Flynn was under investigation over phone calls he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in late December 2016, during the presidential transition period. Flynn pleaded guilty in the special counsel’s investigation on Dec. 1, 2017 for making false statements about those phone calls. But special counsel Robert Mueller’s report reveals for the first time that Flynn was a target of the FBI’s Russia probe before the Kislyak calls. “Previously, the FBI had opened an investigation of Flynn based on his relationship with the Russian government,” reads the report, which cited FBI interviews given by former Justice Department official Mary McCord and former FBI Director James Comey. “Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak became a key component of that investigation,” it said. It is unclear what would have prompted scrutiny of Flynn’s ties to Russia prior to his Kislyak calls. Flynn was reportedly one of…
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by Chris White Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report suggests Russia’s troll job likely paved the way for Democratic officials who would eventually go on to create a similar campaign ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. The size, scope, and tactics the Internet Research Agency (IRA) used to troll social media users in the U.S. leading up to the presidential election are virtually identical to those a slew of Democratic operatives allegedly used before a 2017 midterm election in Alabama. The IRA kicked off its ploy in 2014, when operatives focused on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube users to tilt them toward polar political positions. IRA created Twitter accounts in the names of fictitious U.S. grassroots groups and used them to pose as anti-immigration groups, Tea Party activists, Black Lives Matter protesters, among other conservative advocates, according to the report. The technique, which included creating conservative-sounding accounts like @TEN_ GOP, was designed to get some groups within the U.S. animated as elections neared. IRA ultimately worked to support then-presidential candidate Donald Trump at the expense of the president’s 2016 opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the report notes. The group’s reach was expansive and required a mixture of trolling and…
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by Peter Hasson Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation directly contradicts an explosive BuzzFeed story that claimed Mueller had evidence President Donald Trump directed Michael Cohen, his former attorney, to lie to Congress about a potential Moscow real estate deal. The Jan. 18 BuzzFeed story claimed that Cohen “told the special counsel that after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie — by claiming that negotiations ended months earlier than they actually did — in order to obscure Trump’s involvement.” The story claimed that Mueller’s office “learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.” BuzzFeed touted its story as “the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia.” But Mueller’s report states that “Cohen said that he and the President did not explicitly discuss whether Cohen’s testimony about the Trump Tower Moscow project would be or was false, and the President did not direct him to provide false testimony. Cohen…
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by Luke Rosiak Special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation did not find potential “obstruction of justice” by President Donald Trump beyond incidents that were already largely known. “As the special counsel’s report acknowledges, there is substantial evidence to show that the president was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,” Attorney General William Barr said Thursday morning. “Federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct. … There was relentless speculation in the news media about the president’s personal culpability. Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was in fact no collusion.” “Apart from whether the acts were obstructive, this evidence of non-corrupt motives weighs heavily against any allegation that the president had a corrupt intent to obstruct the investigation,” he added. Mueller described acts of potential obstruction of justice without reaching any legal conclusions. Barr “concluded that the evidence developed during the special counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction-of-justice offense,” he said at a press conference. They included, according to the special counsel’s roughly 400-page report: Trump “publicly expressed skepticism that Russia was responsible…
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by Chuck Ross After nearly two years of investigation, a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report is set to be released on Thursday morning. The report, which clocks in at nearly 400 pages, will contain Mueller’s findings about Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. It will also detail the investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign conspired with Russians, and whether President Trump himself attempted to obstruct the FBI’s probe by firing James Comey as FBI director. Attorney General William Barr has already revealed that Mueller & Co. were unable to establish that Trump associates conspired with Russia. But the report will likely shed light on how the investigation unfolded, and what other information was uncovered about any Russian attempts to infiltrate the campaign. Here is a guide for the report’s release. Where will it be released? The Justice Department has said the report will be sent to Congress and made public. It will likely be posted online, and can also be found at DailyCaller.com. What will be in the report? A lot. The report is the product of a 22-month investigation that relied on 2,800 subpoenas, 500 witness interviews, 19 prosecutors, 50 FBI agents…
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by George Ralsey Democrats and their allies in the Leftwing media went nuts after Attorney General William Barr testified that the government did indeed spy on the Trump campaign. “I think spying did occur,” Barr said during an explosive hearing before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. “The question is whether it was adequately predicated. …Spying on a political campaign is a big deal.” Barr later clarified in the hearing: “I am not saying that improper surveillance occurred; I’m saying that I am concerned about it and looking into it, that’s all,” reported Gregg Re and Brooke Singman of Fox News. These reactions, cited by James S. Robbins in an opinion column for USA Today, are exemplary of the Democrats’ panicked effort to quash any investigation by the Attorney General: Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, took immediate issue with Barr’s word choice, saying “the word ‘spying’ could cause everybody in the cable news ecosystem to freak out.” NBC News’ Chuck Todd said this was a “conspiracy theory” for which there was “zero factual basis.” Furious Democrats on Capitol Hill denounced Barr for even raising the issue. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, (D-NY), tweeted that Barr should “retract his statement immediately…
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by Chuck Ross Roger Stone is calling on a federal judge to dismiss charges against him stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, while also demanding an unredacted copy of the final report. Stone’s lawyers made the demands in a flurry of court motions filed on Friday, days ahead of the expected release of a redacted copy of Mueller’s report. “Only by reviewing the full, unredacted Mueller Report can Roger Stone be assured of his rights to due process, to compulsory process, to know the exculpatory evidence, to determine whether or not he is being selectively prosecuted,” Stone’s lawyers said. “The Special Counsel Report may be of political interest to many. It may be of commercial interest to others. It may be of public interest to some. But for Roger Stone, the Special Counsel’s Report is a matter of protecting his liberty.” Stone, a longtime confidant of President Trump’s, was indicted on Jan. 24 on seven counts, all related to the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe. Stone is accused of making false statements about communications with associates and the Trump campaign regarding WikiLeaks. He is also accused of obstructing the committee’s investigation and of witness tampering. Stone’s indictment…
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by Paul Ingrassia Former Obama White House counsel, Greg Craig, was indicted Thursday on two charges of lying to federal investigators about consulting work his former firm did on behalf of Russia-backed ex-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. Craig was accused of lying to the Department of Justice for allegedly making false statements and concealing “material facts,” which were revealed in a settlement announced Thursday. Craig’s former firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, was hit with a $4.6 billion fine for working with Paul Manafort in 2012 on behalf of Ukraine. The federal investigation began as an offshoot of the Mueller probe that was later handed off to Manhattan federal prosecutors. It was transferred to D.C. prosecutors in March, who leveled Thursday’s charge on Craig. Craig’s indictment stands as a violation of the DOJ’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) unit, the agency in charge of enforcing foreign lobbying laws. Craig is the first Democrat to be indicted in connection to the Mueller investigation. This prosecution comes amid reports that the DOJ, facing pressure by the Trump administration and top Republican lawmakers, is now considering investigating Obama-era abuses. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, signaled…
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by Chuck Ross Outgoing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Thursday defended Attorney General William Barr against allegations that he is misleading Congress and the public about the special counsel’s Russia report. “He’s being as forthcoming as he can, and so this notion that he’s trying to mislead people, I think is just completely bizarre,” Rosenstein said in a rare interview with The Wall Street Journal. Democrats have accused Barr of releasing misleading information about special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings from his 22-month investigation, which focused on possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, as well as whether President Trump tried to obstruct the probe. Barr sent a letter to Congress on March 24 saying that Mueller was unable to establish that collusion occurred. On the obstruction matter, Barr said that Mueller declined to make a decision one way or the other on whether to recommend a case against Trump. Barr said that he conferred with Rosenstein and Justice Department lawyers and decided against pursuing a case. Barr said that since there was no allegation of conspiracy, Trump had no underlying crime to conceal by obstruction. Democrats heightened their criticism last week after The New York Times reported…
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by Robert Romano We’re already a few months into the Democratic nominating contest for president in 2020, early polls are coming in, and it appears that former Vice President Joe Biden is the presumptive frontrunner for the nomination to take on President Donald Trump in the general election. The latest Morning Consult poll conducted April 1 to April 7 has Biden with 32 percent of Democrats saying he’s their choice, 23 percent picking Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), 9 percent choosing Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and 8 percent opting for Robert “Beto” O’Rourke (D-Texas). The results are confirmed by the latest The Hill/Harris X poll conducted April 5 to April 6 showing Biden at 36 percent and Sanders at 19 percent, the March 25 to March 26 Harvard-Harris poll showing Biden at 26 percent and Sanders at 18 percent and the March 17 to March 20 Fox News poll with Biden at 31 percent and Sanders at 23 percent. The March 25 Emerson poll shows Biden and Sanders neck-in-neck in Iowa, 25 percent to 24 percent, respectively, while the Feb. 28 UNH poll shows Sanders with an early advantage over Biden in New Hampshire, 26 percent to 22 percent. And…
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by Chuck Ross Attorney General William Barr told Congress Tuesday that the process of reviewing the Mueller report is going along “very well” and that he plans to release the document “within a week.” In testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, Barr also dealt a blow to a Democratic talking point regarding a letter he sent to Congress on March 24 laying out special counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusions. Barr told lawmakers that the Justice Department offered Mueller’s team an opportunity to review his letter to Congress but that the special counsel “declined” the offer. “The letter of the 24th, Mr. Mueller’s team did not play a role in drafting that document, although we offered him the opportunity to review it before we sent it out and he declined that,” Barr said. In that letter, Barr said that Mueller did not find evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government. “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” Barr’s letter read. He also said that Mueller was unable to make a case that President Donald Trump obstructed justice, but that the special counsel…
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by Chuck Ross The special counsel’s office fed “speculation and innuendo” about possible collusion with Russia by withholding key details from emails cited in a court filing in the case of former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos, a top Republican senator alleged in a newly released letter. “The public deserves to have the full context for the information the Special Counsel chooses to release. The glaring lack of it feeds speculation and innuendo that distorts the facts,” Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley wrote to special counsel Robert Mueller on Oct. 16, 2017. Grassley, who then chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, was responding to a “statement of offense” released in the case against Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign adviser who entered a plea deal in the special counsel’s probe on Oct. 5, 2017. Prosecutors quoted from several emails in a way that suggested top Trump campaign officials were eager to meet with Russians. But Grassley asserted that the full emails showed that campaign officials rebuffed the idea of meeting with Russians. The Iowa Republican took Mueller’s team to task for failing to correct news reports that cited the Papadopoulos court filings as evidence of possible collusion with Russia. “It should be the goal…
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With House Democrats ramping up their wide-ranging investigations of President Donald Trump, Congress and the administration are bracing for what is shaping up to be a long, hard fight over access to documents and witnesses that could go on for the remainder of Trump’s first term in office. On Wednesday the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to authorize subpoenas to obtain the full report on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election from special counsel Robert Mueller, as well as the testimonies of five former White House officials interviewed by the special counsel While Trump has left it to Attorney General William Barr to decide whether to release the complete report, the president is expected to assert what is known as executive privilege over some portions of records other congressional committees are seeking as part of their investigation of the administration. That has set the stage for a showdown between Democrats in Congress and the White House, raising the specter that the issue may ultimately end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. But if the past is any indication, the coming battle is likely to be fought — and eventually settled — through political give and…
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by Nick Givas Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio explained why certain sections of the Mueller report must be redacted and said Congress has a duty to protect classified material. “You’ve got the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, saying ‘Go ahead and make public classified information,’ and then you have the chairman of the Judiciary Committee saying ‘Go ahead and make public grand jury material.’ Now that’s scary,” Jordan said on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday. “This is where they’re at because the Mueller report was not the bombshell that they had hoped it would be. But when you have the head of the Intelligence Committee, the head of the Judiciary Committee saying, ‘Make public material that’s not supposed to get public,’ that’s not consistent with the law — that’s just wrong, just plain wrong.” Jordan said keeping certain information classified will protect innocent people who’ve been caught up in the investigation, and it should be considered common practice. “You don’t make that information public. That’s just consistent with who we are as a country. Total standard operating [procedure]. So Bill Barr said he will err on the side of transparency. He wants to release as much as…
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by Tony Shaffer The Mueller Report marks the third time that an investigation has cleared the Trump campaign of allegations that it “colluded” with the Russian government. They had their three swings…and they have struck out. The Special Counsel investigation received by far the most media attention, but it’s just the culmination of one in a series of progressively more farcical and politically motivated investigations, all of which have failed to achieve their true goal: overturning the result of the 2016 presidential election. The origins of which were developed using political weaponization of process, procedures and tools of a very powerful national security infrastructure. First, the FBI conducted its own regular investigation into supposed Russian collusion. Even Peter Strzok — the FBI agent so hell-bent on taking down Trump that he talked of the investigation as an “insurance policy” — admitted he was hesitant to join Mueller’s team because he felt there was “no big there there” based on his role in the FBI’s collusion probe. Lisa Page, the former FBI attorney who was once Strzok’s mistress and temporarily worked with him on the Mueller probe, also told Congress it was possible this investigation found “literally nothing” linking Donald…
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U.S. Attorney General William Barr said on Friday the Justice Department is preparing a redacted version of the special counsel’s nearly 400-page confidential report on the Russia investigation and will be in a position to release it by mid-April, if not sooner. In a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary committees, Barr wrote that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is assisting the Justice Department in scrubbing the report of secret grand jury material and other confidential information. “Our progress is such that I anticipate we will be in a position to release the report by mid-April, if not sooner,” Barr wrote in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. But Barr said he does not plan to share the report with the White House to get President Donald Trump’s greenlight, noting that Trump has left it up to him to release it in whatever form he deems appropriate. “Although the president would have the right to assert privilege over certain parts of the report, he has stated publicly that he intends to defer to me and, accordingly, there are no…
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