Former Rep. Trey Gowdy said Sunday that it is “too damn late” for James Comey to admit he was wrong about FBI abuse of the FISA process, as the former FBI director did in an interview on Fox News earlier in the day.
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James Comey said Sunday that he was “wrong” about the FBI’s handling of surveillance warrants against Carter Page, who the former FBI director acknowledged was “treated unfairly” by having his name leaked to the press as a suspected Russian agent.
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Rep. Adam Schiff admitted Sunday that the FBI committed “serious abuses” of the foreign surveillance court process in order to spy on Carter Page, though the California Democrat stopped short of acknowledging he was wrong to defend the bureau and in his promotion of the infamous Steele dossier.
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The recent congressional testimony of Justice Department Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz suggests there are only two possible explanations for the botched Russia collusion probe: either the FBI team responsible for the investigation were incompetent or they were corrupt.
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James Comey’s investigation into the Trump campaign didn’t just taint candidate Donald Trump right before the 2016 election.
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Attorney General William Barr blasted the “completely irresponsible press” Tuesday as well as the FBI for their respective roles in pushing the debunked theory that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government in 2016.
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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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The former FBI lawyer who is reportedly under investigation for altering documents in the Russia probe took part in a 2017 interview with Trump adviser George Papadopoulos, and also wrote anti-Trump text messages that were revealed in a Justice Department report released last year.
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The Justice Department is investigating an FBI official for allegedly altering a document as part of the Trump-Russia probe, according to an explosive report.
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The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Dec. 11 to examine the findings from a Justice Department inspector general’s investigation into the FBI’s alleged abuse of the foreign intelligence surveillance court during the Trump investigation, the committee said on Monday.
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Americans outside the Beltway have been struggling for almost three years to figure out what’s been going on in Washington, what to call it and how to explain it.
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Attorney General William Barr said Monday that the federal prosecutor leading an investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe has made “great progress.”
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British intelligence told the FBI that dossier author Christopher Steele sometimes showed questionable judgment regarding investigative targets, according to a report that could preview some of the findings in a highly anticipated Justice Department watchdog report of FBI surveillance against the Trump campaign.
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The FBI’s top press officer during the Hillary Clinton and Trump-Russia investigations accepted tickets to a Washington Nationals game from a CNN correspondent and lied about it repeatedly during interviews with the Justice Department’s inspector general, according to a report obtained by The Daily News Foundation.
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In a book to be released Tuesday, a former FBI aide to James Comey describes the lead-up to a briefing where then-President-Elect Donald Trump was first told about allegations in the unverified Steele dossier.
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Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe said Sunday he expects Andrew McCabe, a former FBI deputy director who now works as a CNN analyst, to be indicted on charges of lying to the government.
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A leading House Democrat says special counsel Robert Mueller will give “very substantial evidence” that will make the case for impeaching U.S. President Donald Trump. “This is a president who has violated the law six ways from Sunday,” House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler told Fox television on the weekend. Legislators from Trump’s Republican Party, however, predict a highly anticipated hearing this week will amount to nothing more than a rehash of previously published information. Also speaking Sunday on Fox television, Congressman Doug Collins, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, accused Democrats of “going after things that we’ve already known.” Mueller is set to testify before two House committees Wednesday about his investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 presidential election and if Trump obstructed justice in trying to derail the probe. “We have to present, or let Mueller present, those facts to the American people…because the administration must be held accountable and no president can be above the law,” Nadler said. Mueller report conclusions The Mueller report concluded there was not enough evidence to determine that Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. But Mueller wrote he could not exonerate…
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by Chuck Ross House Republicans are reportedly seeking documents from former Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr related to her research into President Donald Trump’s family, including his wife and children. During a congressional interview Oct. 19, 2018, Ohr said while she worked for Fusion GPS, the firm behind the infamous Steele dossier, she compiled open-source research on the travels and business activities of Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Trump’s wife, Melania. “I was asked to research Trump’s family broadly in connection with any — any Russian connections,” Ohr told a Republican staffer during her interview. “Were you doing independent research based off of each family member?” the staffer asked. “I did some,” said Ohr, a Russia linguist. “As I recall, I did some research on all of them, but not into much depth.” Asked about her research into Trump Jr., Ohr said “I looked into some of his travels” in order to “see whether they were involved in dealings and transactions with people who had had suspicious pasts.” House Republicans are requesting Ohr’s investigative files, according to Fox News, citing two sources familiar with the matter. They want to know how the information on Trump’s family was used in the Fusion…
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by Masood Farivar Special counsel Robert Mueller says charging President Donald Trump with a crime was not an option his office could consider under Justice Department guidelines, as he made his first public statement about his 22-month-long investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Mueller concluded his investigation into Russian election meddling in late March, saying he found no evidence of collusion between the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump and Moscow. On the question of whether Trump obstructed the investigation, however, Mueller wrote in his 448-page report that while he could not make a charging recommendation, he could not exonerate the president either. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Mueller said “If we had confidence that president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” Attorney General William Barr had told members of Congress that after reviewing Mueller’s report along with other senior Justice Department officials he determined that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of Justice. Barr said he made the determination irrespective of a long standing Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted. However, Mueller in his report cited 11 instances of possible obstruction of justice…
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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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by Chuck Ross Special counsel Robert Mueller’s negotiations with House Democrats over his public testimony have reportedly hit a roadblock. CNN reports that Mueller is reluctant to testify publicly about the Russia investigation for fear of being seen as too political. The Washington Post is reporting that Mueller and Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have been unable to agree how much of the testimony would be done in public. According to The Post, Mueller wants to testify privately about topics that aren’t laid out in the lightly redacted special counsel’s report. Democrats hope to get Mueller to say whether President Donald Trump would face charges of obstruction of justice if he were not president. They also want Mueller to discuss his interactions with Attorney General William Barr regarding the investigation, as well as the release of the report. The report was less definitive on the issue of whether Trump attempted to obstruct the Russia probe. The report laid out 10 separate incidents that were investigated for possible obstruction, including Trump’s firing on May 9, 2017 of James Comey as FBI director. Mueller declined to make a decision on whether to recommend obstruction charges. That left the decision up…
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by Chuck Ross Former Republican South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy said he is aware of potentially game-changing evidence in the FBI’s Russia probe regarding George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser. During an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Gowdy indicated he has seen FBI transcripts related to Papadopoulos that contain potentially exculpatory information on the question of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government. “If the bureau’s going to send in an informant in, the informant’s going to be wired, and if the bureau is monitoring telephone calls, there’s going to be a transcript of that,” Gowdy told host Maria Bartiromo. Gowdy continued: “Some of us have been fortunate enough to know whether or not those transcripts exist. But they haven’t been made public, and I think one in particular is going — it has the potential to actually persuade people. Very little in this Russia probe I’m afraid is going to persuade people who hate Trump or love Trump. But there is some information in these transcripts that has the potential to be a game-changer if it’s ever made public.” The FBI officially opened its counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign July 31, 2016,…
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by Evie Fordham President Donald Trump criticized Republican Michigan Rep. Justin Amash on Twitter after the congressman said Saturday that Trump “engaged in impeachable conduct” related to the Mueller investigation. “Never a fan of Justin Amash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy,” Trump wrote Sunday. Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy. If he actually read the biased Mueller Report, “composed” by 18 Angry Dems who hated Trump,…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 19, 2019 “If he actually read the biased Mueller Report, ‘composed’ by 18 Angry [Democrats] who hated Trump, he would see that it was nevertheless strong on NO COLLUSION and, ultimately, NO OBSTRUCTION… Anyway, how do you Obstruct when there is no crime and, in fact, the crimes were committed by the other side? Justin is a loser who sadly plays right into our opponents hands!” he continued. Amash took his stand on impeachment Saturday in a tweet after reading special counsel Robert Mueller’s report…
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by Tom Tancredo The Democrats are right that our country is facing a “constitutional crisis,” but only because they manufactured it themselves. And Democrats never let a crisis go to waste. Ever since the release of the redacted Mueller report that exonerated President Trump, the Democrats have been demanding that Attorney General William Barr release the full, unredacted document to Congress, along with all “underlying materials.” Barr refused to give in, arguing that federal laws and regulations preclude releasing certain information, enraging Nadler and the other Democrats on the committee, who voted to hold him in contempt of Congress. “We’ve talked for a long time about approaching a constitutional crisis,” Nadler remarked. “We are now in it.” Nancy Pelosi echoed Nadler’s remarks, but while she adamantly insisted that the country is in the midst of a constitutional crisis, she also made it clear that she’s in no rush to do anything about it, preferring to wait until she’s confident that her Democrats will be able to take down Barr. Let’s be perfectly clear, though — Barr has done absolutely nothing wrong, and certainly nothing to precipitate a “constitutional crisis.” The only constitutional crisis we’re facing is the one that the Democrats created by demanding that…
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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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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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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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by Victor Davis Hanson In a recent op-ed, fired FBI Director James Comey was back again preaching to the nation about the dangers of Donald Trump and his capacity to corrupt any top-ranking federal official of lower character than Comey’s own. Comey seems to have become utterly unhinged by Donald Trump, especially when the president, in his thick Queens accent, scoffs in the vernacular—quite accurately, given the transgressions of the FBI hierarchy—about “crooked cops.” What an affront to Comey’s complexity, his subtlety, his sophistication, his feigned Hamlet-like self-doubt—at least as now expressed in his latest incarnation as Twitter’s Kahlil Gibran. One can say a number of things about the timing of Comey’s latest sermon and his characteristic projection of his own sins on to others. First, Comey’s unprofessionalism was home-grown and certainly did not need any help from President Trump. His schizophrenic behavior both as a prosecutor and investigator in the Hillary Clinton email matter was marked by exempting Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin from indictment, despite their lying to his own federal officials about their knowledge of a private Clinton email server. Comey wrote his summation of the Clinton email investigation before he had even interviewed the former…
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by Paul J. Larkin Jr. Disappointed with, frustrated by, and angry at special counsel Robert Mueller’s unhelpful conclusion that President Donald Trump was not in cahoots with the Russians during the 2016 campaign, Democrats are desperately searching for something, anything, that they can use to impeach the Mueller report by impugning the integrity of Attorney General William Barr. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went so far Thursday as to accuse Barr of committing perjury when he answered a question by Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., of the House Appropriations Committee on April 9. She is flat wrong. Crist started by asking Barr several questions about the statement in his March 24 letter that the special counsel’s report does not “exonerate” Trump. After the attorney general answered those inquiries, the following exchange occurred: The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >> Crist: Reports have emerged recently, General [Barr], that members of the special counsel’s team are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your March 24 letter, that it does not adequately or accurately necessarily portray the report’s findings. Do you know what they’re referencing with that?…
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by Chuck Ross Special counsel Robert Mueller has set a “tentative” date of May 15 to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, Democratic Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline told “Fox News Sunday.” Democrats have ramped up calls for Mueller to testify to Congress in the wake of Attorney General William Barr’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 1 about his interactions with the special counsel’s office regarding the release of the Russia report. Mueller, a former FBI director, was unable to establish that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election. He declined to make a decision on whether President Donald Trump should be charged with obstructing the investigation. That left the decision up to Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who decided against pursuing an obstruction case. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, offered Mueller a chance Thursday to testify before that panel if he feels the need to correct any statements made by Barr. Mueller sent Barr a letter on March 27 raising concerns about a four-page memo that Barr sent Congress summarizing the main conclusions of the special counsel’s probe. Mueller claimed that Barr’s letter lacked “context” and had…
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by Chuck Ross Attorney General William Barr may cancel his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday over disagreements with Democrats over the proposed format for the highly anticipated hearing. According to CNN, Democrats, led by New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, proposed allowing committee staffers to ask Barr questions during a second round of questioning at Thursday’s hearing. Nadler also wants to be able to question Barr in a closed session about the redacted parts of the Mueller report. But Barr reportedly opposes that format, saying that he should only face questioning from members of Congress in a public congressional hearing. Staffers typically do not ask questions of witnesses during public hearings. Barr is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Both hearings are expected to focus on the special counsel’s Russia report. The standoff will escalate tensions between Nadler and Barr. The Democrat has been heavily critical of Barr’s handling of the rollout of the special counsel’s report, which said that investigators found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government. Nadler threatened to subpoena Barr if he skips the hearing. “The witness is not going to tell the committee how to conduct its…
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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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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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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 Chuck Ross Attorney General William Barr plans to release a redacted version of the special counsel’s Russia report on Thursday morning, a Justice Department official told reporters. The report is expected to contain redactions for classified information as well as information provided to a grand jury that special counsel Robert Mueller used in his 22-month investigation. The Justice Department is planning to release the 400-page report to both Congress and the public. White House lawyers have reportedly been briefed on the Mueller report, but are not expected to invoke executive privilege to block other information from being released. Barr sent Congress a letter on March 24 summarizing Mueller’s main conclusions. In the letter, Barr said that Mueller did not establish that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 presidential campaign. Mueller was less decisive on the question of obstruction of justice. Barr said that while Mueller’s team did not recommend charges for obstruction, they also did not exonerate Trump on that question. Barr said that after consulting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Justice Department lawyers, he decided not to pursue an obstruction case. One of his arguments was that since nobody was being charged…
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by Roger Kimball Last month, Chris Buskirk wrote a column for the Spectator USA describing Representative Devin Nunes as “a hero of the Republic.” It was well-deserved praise. Nunes, a Republican Congressman from a rural district in California was, until January, chairman of the House Permanent Special Committee on Intelligence (he is now the ranking member). Nunes has worked tirelessly for more than two years to expose what our masters in deep-state Washington would bury from the glare of public scrutiny: the evidence that the entire Trump-Russian collusion narrative was a partisan effort, first, to undermine the Trump presidential campaign and, when that failed, to cover up the effort while still working assiduously to destroy the Trump presidency. As Buskirk points out, without Nunes’s terrier-like efforts—conducted, it has to be pointed out, against the background of scurrilous and unremitting calumnies from the Democrats and their bought-and-paid-for megaphones in the media—the public would likely be totally in the dark about what really happened over the course of 2016 as the Obama Administration and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign endeavored to “dirty up” Trump and his colleagues, calmly at first, and then with growing hysteria as Trump, against all the odds, emerged as a serious…
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by Chuck Ross North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows said Sunday that he expects the Justice Department’s inspector general to issue criminal referrals as part of an investigation into the FBI’s possible abuse of the surveillance courts during the Trump-Russia probe. “We’re fully anticipating that the [inspector general’s] report will come out as Attorney General Barr said in the next four to six weeks, and I think it’s highly likely that we’ll see criminal referrals coming from them that will correspond with what Chairman [Devin] Nunes has already put forth,” Meadows said in an interview on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” Attorney General William Barr told Congress on Tuesday that he expects Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, to issue a report in late May or June. On March 28, 2018, Horowitz opened an investigation into whether the FBI and Justice Department complied with legal requirements to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Meadows, a close ally of President Trump’s, said that he and Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan met earlier this week with Horowitz. Both have expressed confidence in Horowitz’s work, and have heightened expectations that the investigation will be favorable to Republicans. Meadows…
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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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by Henry Rogers Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Democrats in Congress will “never” succeed in obtaining President Donald Trump’s tax returns. Mulvaney mentioned in an interview with “Fox News Sunday” how Democrats are demanding the IRS to hand over Trump’s tax returns. “Democrats are demanding that the IRS turn over the documents. That is not going to happen, and they know it. This is a political stunt,” Mulvaney said. House Democrats said in early March they will be demanding Trump to release his tax returns, ramping up their investigations into the president. “We’re almost ready to go,” Democratic New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell told Politico in March when asked about Trump’s tax returns. Democrats have been pushing for the release of Trump’s tax returns since he announced his candidacy for president. This all comes as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, requested a number of documents from the White House and is sending letters seeking information from people and organizations close to Trump. – – – Henry Rogers is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation. Follow Henry Rodgers On Twitter. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation…
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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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The majority Democrats on a House of Representatives committee are moving this week to subpoena the full report from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and five former White House officials. The House Judiciary Committee had called for full disclosure by Tuesday of the nearly 400-page report and its underlying evidence. Attorney General William Barr said last week that he would release the report by mid-April, “if not sooner,” after confidential material had been redacted. With its Tuesday deadline unlikely to be met, the House panel plans to vote to authorize the subpoenas on Wednesday, allowing the committee’s chairman, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, to actually issue them as he sees fit. The House committee also plans to subpoena some of President Donald Trump’s closest one-time advisers — White House strategist Steve Bannon, communications director Hope Hicks, his first chief of staff Reince Priebus, White House counsel Donald McGahn and McGahn’s chief of staff, Ann Donaldson. The five officials were likely key witnesses during Mueller’s investigation of whether Trump obstructed justice by trying to thwart the prosecutor’s 22-month probe. A week ago, Barr released a four-page summary of the Mueller report, telling top lawmakers…
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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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by Chuck Ross Jake Tapper said Sunday that CNN has not gotten “anything” wrong during the course of reporting on Russiagate, even though his network has bungled numerous stories over the past two years. “I’m not sure what you’re saying the media got wrong. The media reported the investigation was going on. Other than the people in the media on the left, not on this network, I don’t know anybody that got anything wrong,” Tapper said during an exchange with acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. “We didn’t say there was a conspiracy. We said Mueller was investigating a conspiracy.” “That’s fine, if that’s your recollection of history, that’s great,” Mulvaney responded to Tapper’s defense. “Face it, the media got this wrong. It’s okay. People get stuff wrong all the time, just not at this level.” “We need to figure out what went wrong with the Mueller report, why — in all fairness to your network — why the media got it so wrong for so long,” said Mulvaney. .@MickMulvaneyOMB tells @jaketapper that ethics are not the issue when it comes to the Russia probe on #CNNSotu https://t.co/geGGK4lD1N — State of the Union (@CNNSotu) March 31, 2019…
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by Julie Kelly In his 2018 book, The Restless Wave, the late Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) wondered aloud why he was sought out and given the infamous Steele dossier shortly after the 2016 presidential election. After suggesting that anyone who questioned his role in handling the political document was indulging in “conspiracy theories,” McCain offered his explanation: “The answer is too obvious for the paranoid to credit. I am known internationally to be a persistent critic of Vladimir Putin’s regime and I have been a long while.” It is true that McCain was an outspoken critic of Putin. But the big problem with McCain’s defense is that by the time he wrote those words—presumably the end of 2017, since the book was published in late May 2018—it already was public knowledge that the dossier had been authored and distributed by political pimps funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. When McCain was writing his book, many of the culprits were in serious legal jeopardy. Christopher Steele, the dossier’s author, was being sued for defamation and was under congressional scrutiny in 2017. (McCain had sent his close associate, David Kramer, to meet Steele in London shortly after the 2016 election to…
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Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found no evidence President Donald Trump, his campaign or associates conspired or coordinated with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, according to a summary released Sunday by Attorney General William Barr. “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” Mueller wrote, according to Barr. Barr handed over to Congress his main conclusions and summary of the long-awaited Muller report. Mueller spent 22 months looking into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians and if the president obstructed justice by trying to stop the investigation. Barr and his aides spent hours Saturday poring over the report Mueller handed them late Friday. Key lawmakers, opposition Democrats and some of Trump’s Republican allies, have all called for release of the full report, but it is not clear whether Barr will do so. Trump said last week he did not object to the full release to the public but also has said it is up to Barr, whom he appointed as the country’s top law enforcement official, to decide how much of it is disclosed. White House aides say Trump has not been briefed on the outcome…
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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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Top Democratic lawmakers vowed Sunday to step up their investigations of U.S. President Donald Trump and his connections to Russia during the 2016 presidential election. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler told ABC News that on Monday his panel would be issuing requests for documents to 60 people, “to begin the investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power.” He said the requests would be sent to officials at the White House and Justice Department, along with Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, the president’s global business empire. Nadler said he believes the president has obstructed justice during his two years in office. He said that Trump’s former long-time personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in his lengthy public testimony to Congress last week, “directly implicated the president in – in various crimes, both while seeking the office of president and while in the White House.” “We don’t have the facts yet,” Nadler said. “But we’re going to initiate proper investigations.” Cohen, who called Trump “a racist, a con man, a cheat,” showed a House panel two $35,000 checks – one…
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by Chuck Ross House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Sunday that House Democrats will issue subpoenas and go to court, if necessary, to obtain special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation. “We will obviously subpoena the report. We will bring Bob Mueller in to testify before Congress. We will take it to court if necessary,” Schiff said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” Mueller is expected to submit a final report to the Department of Justice within weeks. From there, the Justice Department is required to provide a summary of the findings to Congress, which could then choose to make unclassified portions of the report public. Rep. Adam Schiff tells me he is “absolutely” prepared to sue Trump administration if Mueller report is not made public: “We will obviously subpoena the report. We will bring Bob Mueller in to testify before Congress. We will take it to court if necessary” https://t.co/lSX5poLKT9 pic.twitter.com/kKtMjf1Wo3 — GeorgeStephanopoulos (@GStephanopoulos) February 24, 2019 But Democrats have said they are concerned Attorney General William Barr will withhold key portions of the report. Barr, who was confirmed to office Feb. 14, has said he plans to provide as much transparency as possible, though he has stopped short…
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by Thaddeus G. McCotter As we bemusedly observe U.S. Representative Adam “Pathfinder” Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, continue to twist in his idiot wind—he now claims Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s general-warrant counterintelligence investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in the 2016 campaign may not prove adequate—we should recall that in the earlier, heady days of the Russiagate weaponized lie, there was this suitably dismissive bit of snark charitably comparing Schiff’s quest for proof of this conspiracy theory with cryptozoologists hunting for the chimeric chupacabra. In a perspicacious passage, reference was made to Werner Herzog’s “Incident at Loch Ness” where, desperately hoping the creature proves real, a character denounces the skeptics: “Show me one piece of evidence that proves this thing does not exist. They’re saying, ‘show us the evidence.’ I’m saying, ‘Show us the non-evidence.’” Stumbling ahead to 2019, enter stage Left, Mr. Ken Dilanian, NBC’s national security reporter, for proof life imitates snark. Promoting his February 12 article, he repeatedly tweeted out the story’s headline: “Exclusive: Senate has found no direct proof of conspiracy between Trump campaign, Russia . . . .” Note the cute use of “direct proof,” which preserves collusion conspiracy theorists’ hope…
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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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