Tag: Russia probe

Report: DOJ Demanded Data on House GOP Intel Staffers During Russia Probe

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During the failed investigation into so-called collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russian government, the Department of Justice (DOJ) used grand jury subpoenas to secretly obtain communications between staffers working for Republican members of the House of Representatives.

The New York Post reports that the first such demands came in November of 2017, when the DOJ ordered search engine giant Google to hand over information on two senior staffers for the House Intelligence Committee, which at the time was led by Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). The material was ultimately delivered to the DOJ by Google on December 5th.

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Senior FBI Official Took Free Gifts from Media While Trump-Russia Probe Was Underway, Watchdog Says

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FBI logo outside of building

The Office of Inspector General for the Department of Justice released the findings Tuesday of an investigation that found a former senior FBI official violated agency policy by having numerous unauthorized contacts with the media.

The investigation found that the official, who has not been named and has since retired from the agency, “had numerous contacts with members of the media between January and November 2016 in violation of FBI policy,” as well as accepted unauthorized gifts from media members, according to the report.

The senior official had unofficial contact with media officials during the opening months of the Trump-Russia investigation. That investigation by the FBI started in the months leading up to and after the Nov. 2016 presidential election. However, the report does not mention that this official was part of the investigation.

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

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“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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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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New Evidence Implicates FBI Higher-Ups in Dishonesty of Anti-Trump Lawyer

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For the past year, defenders of the FBI have consistently downplayed the significance of an FBI staff lawyer falsifying evidence in the government’s investigation into Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia. They argue Kevin Clinesmith’s crime of altering a CIA document to obscure the fact that former Trump campaign aide Carter Page worked for U.S., not Russian, intelligence was a rare lapse in judgment by an overworked bureaucrat. It was not, his apologists say, part of any broader conspiracy to conceal exculpatory information from surveillance court judges, who never learned of Page’s history with the CIA before approving FBI warrants to wiretap him as a suspected Russian agent.

But such explanations are challenged by new revelations from court papers filed in the case, which some civil libertarians call the most egregious violation and abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) since it was enacted more than 40 years ago.

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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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Intel Chief Urges John Durham to Release Interim Report in Order to Protect Investigation

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John Ratcliffe, the Director of National Intelligence, urged U.S. Attorney John Durham on Sunday to release an interim report on his investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, saying that the American public should have record of the investigation in case the Biden administration shuts it down.

“I think the American people should know what’s happening in a two-year investigation into this and I hope that that report will be forthcoming,” Ratcliffe said in an interview on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

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By Two-to-One Margin Voters Believe FBI Should be Prosecuted for Its Role in Russia Probe

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A near-majority of voters say FBI agents and leaders should be prosecuted for their role in the Russian collusion conspiracy theory, according to a new Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen.

Among the voters, 46 percent said FBI officials should be criminally charged over the scandal, while only half that number — 23 percent — said they shouldn’t.

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Durham Using Grand Jury to Investigate Debunked Trump-Russia Allegation, Reports Say

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The U.S. attorney investigating the origins of the Trump-Russia probe is seeking grand jury testimony from a group of computer scientists behind a since-debunked allegation that Donald Trump’s real estate company had covert computer contacts with a Russian bank, according to a report.

The New Yorker reports that John Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, has contacted the scientists in recent weeks seeking their testimony.

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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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Ratcliffe Says He Is Coordinating with John Durham, Plans to Declassify More Trump-Russia Documents

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John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, has been coordinating with U.S. Attorney John Durham and plans to soon declassify more documents related to the Trump-Russia probe, he said Sunday.

“The question now is did the FBI have a proper predicate to begin a counterintelligence investigation at all, and that’s the issue that John Durham is looking at, and also the issue that I’m continuing to look at,” Ratcliffe said in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

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CIA Conduct During Russia Assessment May Be Next Boomerang in Probe of Investigators

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By his own admission, ex-CIA Director John Brennan chafed at being questioned earlier this month by federal prosecutor John Durham about the Obama administration’s intelligence assessment that Russia’s meddling in 2016 election was designed to help Donald Trump.

Brennan “questioned why the analytic tradecraft and the findings of the ICA are being scrutinized by the Department of Justice, especially since they have been validated by the Mueller Report and the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Review,” a statement issued by his spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

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

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FBI Dir. Christopher Wray

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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Lindsey Graham: Memo Shows FBI Lied to Senate About Dossier Source

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Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday released an FBI memo from 2018 that he says shows investigators lied to the Senate about statements that the primary source for the Steele dossier told the FBI regarding the salacious document.

“This document clearly shows that the FBI was continuing to mislead regarding the reliability of the Steele dossier,” Graham said in a statement announcing the release of an eight-page briefing document that the FBI provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee in February 2018.

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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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Senator Lindsey Graham Teases: The FBI ‘Lied Their Ass Off’ to Congress About the Steele Dossier

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Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday teased the release of evidence showing that the FBI “lied their ass off” to Congress regarding the reliability of the Steele dossier, which the bureau used as part of its investigation of the Trump campaign.

“I will tell you next week what I found,” the South Carolina Republican said in an interview on “Fox Sunday Futures” with Maria Bartiromo.

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Appeals Court Orders Dismissal of Michael Flynn Prosecution

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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

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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

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

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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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Commentary: John Brennan and the Plot to Subvert an American Election

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Let’s talk about John Brennan a bit. You remember John Brennan. He was Barack Obama’s director of the CIA. Once upon a time, he was an enthusiast for Gus Hall, the Communist candidate for president, for whom he voted in 1976. I can’t think of any better background for the head of the country’s premier intelligence service under Obama. In 2014, having put childish things behind him as St. Paul advised, Brennan spied on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He denied it indignantly. “Nothing could be further from the truth. We wouldn’t do that. That’s just beyond the scope of reason in terms of what we’d do.”

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John Brennan Says He Is Willing To Meet With Prosecutor Investigating Origins Of Russia Probe

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Former CIA Director John Brennan said Friday that he has yet to be interviewed by the federal prosecutor investigating the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, but that he is willing to do so and has “nothing to hide.”

“I feel very good that my tenure at CIA and my time at the White House during the Obama administration was not — that was not engaged in any type of wrongdoing or activities that caused me to worry about what this investigation may uncover,” Brennan said in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.

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Report: DNI Grenell Wants to Unmask the Obama Officials Who Unmasked Michael Flynn

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Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, visited the Justice Department last week seeking to declassify documents related to Obama administration officials’ unmasking of Michael Flynn in transcripts of phone calls he had with Russia’s ambassador, ABC News is reporting.

Grenell is asking the Justice Department to declassify a list of names of officials involved in the unmasking process, a senior intelligence official told ABC.

Unmasking refers to a process where top U.S. government officials can request information on American citizens picked up during electronic surveillance of foreigners. Flynn was unveiled as taking part in a Dec. 29, 2016 phone with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador.

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

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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

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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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Commentary: A Deep Dive into the Monstrous Lie Behind CrowdStrike and the ‘Russian Hack’

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Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 presidential election was predicated largely on the claim Russian intelligence had hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers ahead of the November election. Russia’s guilt is such an article of faith among our political class that a Republican-controlled Congress imposed sanctions on Russia and President Trump signed on, substantially worsening relations with an important and potentially dangerous nation. 

Since those sanctions were imposed, Mueller’s team confirmed the Russian espionage they were meant to punish. Since its publication last year, the Washington establishment has treated the Mueller report almost as a sacred document.

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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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Details Obtained in Roger Stone Juror Tomeka Hart’s Jury Questionnaire Appear to Contradict Public Statements She Made on Twitter

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Tomeka Hart

The lead juror at Roger Stone’s trial said in a written questionnaire for prospective jurors that she was “not sure” whether she posted online about the Russia investigation or Stone, and that she “may have shared an article” on social media on the topics, according to a portion of the document reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

But Tomeka Hart’s Twitter feed shows that she indeed posted multiple times about the Russia probe and at least once about Stone, who was sentenced on Thursday to 40 months in prison in a case that stemmed from the special counsel’s investigation.

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

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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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Roger Stone Files Motion To Disqualify Judge Amy Berman Jackson Handling His Case

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Roger Stone’s attorneys filed a motion Friday to disqualify Judge Amy Berman Jackson from future proceedings in his case because she said during his sentencing hearing Thursday that the Trump confidante’s jury served with “integrity.”

Jackson, who sentenced Stone to 40 months in prison, will soon decide whether to grant Stone’s request for a retrial. The GOP operative alleges that jury foreperson Tomeka Hart was biased against him and submitted false statements during the jury selection process about her opinions regarding President Donald Trump.

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ACQUITTED: The Senate Votes to Acquit President on Both Articles 52-48 and 53-47

Christina Botteri

In an historic vote Wednesday, the U.S. Senate voted to acquit President Trump on both Articles of Impeachment.

Falling far short of the necessary two-thirds majority needed to expel a sitting president, Trump was acquitted 52-48 on the House of Representatives’ Article One charge of  “abuse of power.” The President was acquitted on the Article Two charge of “Obstruction of Congress” by a vote of 53-47.

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Trump Impeachment Trial: Forceful Closing Arguments for Conviction and Acquittal

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House Democrats prosecuting the impeachment case against President Donald Trump and his defense team offered forceful closing arguments Monday at his Senate trial, even as his acquittal remains all but certain.

Congressman Adam Schiff, the lead House manager prosecuting Trump on two articles of impeachment, passionately implored the 100 members of the Senate acting as jurors, “We have proven Donald Trump guilty. Now, do impartial justice and convict him.”

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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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Commentary: James Comey Would Spy on the Trump Campaign All Over Again

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Another key takeaway from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’ report on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses by the Justice Department, FBI and intelligence agencies against President Donald Trump and his campaign in 2016 is that no attempt was made to corroborate allegations by former British spy Christopher Steele by interviewing his sources until after the allegations were published by Buzzfeed on Jan. 10, 2017 and subsequently discredited.

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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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