James Comey claimed in an op-ed Thursday that he does not care one way or the other whether special counsel Robert Mueller finds evidence that President Donald Trump conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election or obstructed the FBI’s collusion probe.

But the claim, which Comey made in The New York Times, is at odds with the former FBI director’s testimony about his actions shortly after being fired by Trump in May 2017.

Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he leaked memos he wrote after conversations with Trump in order to force the appointment of a special counsel.

"I asked a friend of mine to share the content of a memo with the reporter, I didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel," Comey testified June 8, 2017.

Comey instructed his friend, Daniel Richman, to give the [New York] Times a memo he wrote about a conversation he had with Trump on February 14, 2017. Comey claimed Trump asked him to shut down an investigation of former national security advisor Michael Flynn.

Comey's ploy worked, as Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel May 17, 2017.

POLITICAL PRESSURE

Starting in July 2017, Trump repeatedly attacked McCabe in Twitter comments, suggesting that Sessions should dismiss McCabe, accusing him of conflicts because of his wife's campaign for state office, and taunting him about "racing the clock" until his retirement.[36][37] In January 2018 it was reported that Attorney General Sessions had been pressuring FBI Director Wray to fire McCabe. However, Wray refused and reportedly threatened to resign if McCabe was removed.[38][39]

The Nunes memo, which alleges improper activities in seeking a warrant to surveil former Trump associate Carter Page, asserts that McCabe "testified before the [House Intelligence] Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier," a document many Trump supporters insist is completely false. However, McCabe's testimony was in classified session and no public transcript is available to confirm the Nunes memo assertion; disclosing contents of the classified testimony would be unlawful. Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the Nunes memo "seriously mischaracterizes the testimony of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe."[40] The Nunes memo also asserts that a text message from Peter Strzok discusses "a meeting with Deputy Director McCabe to discuss an "insurance" policy against President Trump's election." However, The Wall Street Journal reported on December 18, 2017, that Strzok associates said the "insurance policy" meant the FBI continuing its investigation into possible collusion between Trump and Russians, in case Trump won the election.

By John Solomon



Rudy Giuliani has an unmistakable New Year’s message for special counsel Robert Mueller: It is time for the chief investigator in the Russia case to be investigated in 2019.
In wide-ranging interviews with Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton and me on Wednesday and Thursday, President Trump’s defense lawyer pointedly accused Mueller’s office of destroying evidence by allowing text messages from now-fired FBI official Peter Strzok and his FBI lover, Lisa Page, to be erased in the Russia probe.

“Mueller should be investigated for destruction of evidence for allowing those text messages from Strzok to be erased, messages that would show the state of mind and tactics of his lead anti-Trump FBI agent at the start of his probe,” Giuliani said.
The Justice Department inspector general (IG) reported this month that it found large gaps in the preservation of official government text messages between Strzok and Page, the two top FBI agents who helped to start the Russia probe in 2016, who were having an affair at the time, and who expressed disdain for Trump.

The report said a technical glitch was to blame for the FBI’s failure to save those text messages, but the IG was able to recover more than 19,000 from the early part of the Russia probe before Mueller was named special prosecutor.
However, the IG said it was unable to recover messages from the time Strzok and Page worked for Mueller’s office in spring and summer 2017 because the memories of both FBI officials’ government phones were wiped clean by technicians.

That erasure occurred after Strzok and Page left Mueller’s team over revelations they exchanged anti-Trump text messages, including one string in which they talked about stopping Trump from becoming president.
“That should be investigated, damn it, that should be investigated fully. You want a special counsel, get one for that,” Giuliani said.

When pressed about whether he thought the erasure was intentional and not just a mistake, Giuliani alluded to the infamous erasure of a Watergate tape by President Nixon’s loyal secretary a half-century earlier.
“It’s actually worse than Rose Mary Woods,” he explained. “She erased less than 19 minutes of conversation, but the FBI got rid of more than 19,000 messages," and the messages from the time Strzok and Page worked for Mueller are lost forever.

Giuliani said the Russia probe investigators also should be investigated for using the Christopher Steele dossier, which he called a “piece of garbage,” to justify a search warrant on a Trump adviser without telling the court it was paid for by 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party.
“Do I think that is improper? Yeah, that borders on — that sounds to me a lot more like a false statement than some of the ones they charged,” he said, referring to Mueller’s team.

The former New York City mayor and Republican presidential candidate, who joined Trump’s defense team in 2018, sharply criticized Mueller’s team for allowing what he said were false statements by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen at Cohen’s sentencing a few weeks ago.
“He just lied the other day. He told the judge, ‘I was fiercely loyal to Donald Trump.’ No, he wasn’t. He taped him surreptitiously while he was fiercely loyal. He hid it. And he disclosed it.”

The Mueller prosecutors’ failure to stand up during the sentencing and correct Cohen’s statement “is unethical in and of itself. Making a false statement to a court, even a lawyer, you have to correct it,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani said he is disturbed that the one Cohen tape that has surfaced — in which Cohen and Trump discussed making payments to two women accusers during the 2016 campaign — inexplicably cuts off midway through the conversation.

Giuliani said he believes the missing sections of the conversation include “exculpatory” statements that would prove the president was innocent.
Giuliani expressed hope that the Mueller investigation would end soon, now that Trump has submitted written answers to prosecutors’ questions. He remains confident there is no evidence the president colluded with Russia to hijack the 2016 presidential election.

Giuliani said that, if prosecutors requested additional written answers from Trump, his advice would be for the president not to provide more information to Mueller: “They have everything they need unless they just want to set a perjury trap.”
He said Mueller’s current focus on whether Trump friends such as Roger Stone were communicating with WikiLeaks outside the campaign about hacked Hillary Clinton emails shows just how far astray the probe had gone.

“We’re now four degrees of separation from the original mandate of the investigation, which was collusion which did not occur,” he noted.
When asked whether Mueller should be the last special prosecutor ever appointed by the Justice Department, Giuliani hedged: “I never like to say never, but I must say I have great pause after seeing the abuses in this investigation.”

The FBI, he added, still needs to rehabilitate itself from the damage done by missteps in the Russia probe. Giuliani said he believed that “99 percent of the FBI agents” were doing a great job but that a small group of “FBI politicians” had improperly hijacked the Russia probe during fired Director James Comey’s tenure.
Giuliani said he is uncertain if President Trump’s pick to head the FBI, Director Christopher Wray, could help right the wrongs from the Russia probe. “I’m uncertain because I haven’t heard anything from him. ... The first way you fix problems is by acknowledging them.”

As for Mueller, Giuliani made clear he intends to fight back on every remaining move the special prosecutor makes. The Trump defense team already has drafted a robust document to counter any information Mueller sends to the Justice Department in his final report.
And there’s nothing the defense team is leaving without rebuttal, apparently.

For example, Giuliani said it is ironic that, after investigating Trump for possible obstruction because Trump once suggested the FBI consider going easy on former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Mueller himself asked a federal judge to go easy on Flynn by awarding no prison time.
“Maybe Mueller needs to investigate himself for obstruction on Flynn like he did my client,” the former mayor said wryly.

He was joking on that one. But don't expect any laughs on the disappearance of the Strzok text messages or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses. On those issues, "America’s mayor" is all business.

__________________________________________

John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He is The Hill’s executive vice president for video.

Lisa Page, the FBI official accused of harboring an anti-Trump bias, sent a text message in September 2016 saying that then-President Obama wanted "to know everything" about the FBI's probe into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

The text message exchange with Peter Strzok, another FBI official with whom she was having an affair, contains a message from Page about preparing talking points for then-FBI Director James Comey to give to Obama.

The exchange, in which Strzok wrote that Obama "wants to know everything we’re doing," was included in a report released Tuesday by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Republican staff on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Fox News first reported on the exchange on Wednesday.

That report states that the text message exchange raises questions about Obama's personal involvement in the investigation into Clinton's email use. Republican lawmakers have raised concerns about the Obama administration's handling of that probe.

"Although sometimes cryptic and disjointed due to their nature, these text messages raise several questions about the FBI and its investigation of classified information on Secretary Clinton’s private email server," the report says.

What exactly Obama wanted to know about the investigation — if anything — is unclear.

President Trump quickly seized on the report.
“NEW FBI TEXTS ARE BOMBSHELLS!” he tweeted.

Page and Strzok have come under fire in recent months after the discovery of text messages between the two that showed them criticizing President Trump and Republicans, more broadly.

Republicans have pointed to the text messages as evidence of bias among federal law enforcement officials.

Both Page and Strzok briefly worked on special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, though Page's detail on the team ended before the messages were discovered. Strzok was removed from the investigation after the Justice Department became aware of the texts.

The report by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Republicans came days after Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released a controversial memo accusing the FBI and Justice Department of misusing their authority to obtain a secret surveillance order against Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.

That memo has been the subject of controversy, with Democrats arguing that it omits key facts that are necessary to put the information in the proper context.

The Intelligence panel voted on Monday to release a Democratic memo rebutting the Republican document. Trump must now decide whether to OK the Democratic rebuttal for release.

Do you think it’s in the national interest for folks like Flynn to hide and even lie repeatedly about their foreign interests and lobbying efforts?

"Fox News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace said Friday he was surprised to see people "rallying" behind ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn, arguing the former Trump administration official should not have lied to the FBI.

Wallace, who was speaking on Fox News, said Flynn erred in speaking to the FBI voluntarily shortly after President Trump was elected.

"Did the FBI play hardball? Yeah. Guess what? The FBI plays hardball. And guess what? If you are talking to the FBI — and a lot of lawyers would say don’t talk to them unless you have to — don’t lie," he said.


Wallace's comments came a day after Trump told reporters Thursday that Flynn has been “essentially exonerated” by new documents unsealed in the criminal case against the former aide.

“He's in the process of being exonerated. If you look at those notes from yesterday, that was total exoneration,” Trump said. “These were dirty, filthy cops at the top of the FBI.”

Wallace said he was also surprised that Trump suggested Flynn might return to the administration.

"I was kind of surprised that the president said yesterday, 'Well, maybe I’ll bring him back to the White House.' It was the president, before any legal case was brought, who fired Flynn because Flynn had lied about his conversation with the Russian ambassador to the vice president, Mike Pence," Wallace said.

...

Chris Wallace: Don’t lie if you’re talking to the FBI



It’s not even up for debate that Flynn lied. Trump had even fired him for lying.

“I think Gen. Michael Flynn is a patriotic American who served with great distinction in the armed forces,” Pence told reporters. “I’m deeply troubled by the revelations of what appears to have been investigative abuse by officials in the Justice Department and we are going to continue to look into that very carefully.”

Asked if Flynn was appropriately fired, Pence didn’t answer directly but said: “I know what Gen. Flynn told me and I’m more inclined to believe it was unintentional than ever before.”

And I don’t see Wallace as being left of center. I remember him covering the 2012 conventions and at the end he gushed about Romney while with Obama he talked about there being so many questions. While I see him right of center he does ask tough questions of whoever he’s interviewing. Lying to the FBI doesn’t become okay because a republican did it.

The top Republican on the House Oversight Committee demanded answers from FBI Director Christopher Wray about the bureau’s handling of its case against retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as part of the Russia investigation.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a staunch defender of President Trump, sent a letter Monday with Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the top Republican on the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, to [FBI director] Wray, who took over the bureau after James Comey was fired in 2017.
“We write to request that you immediately review the actions of the FBI in targeting LTG Flynn,” the congressmen said. “The American people continue to learn troubling details about the politicization and misconduct at the highest levels of the FBI during the Obama-Biden Administration."

FBI records released Thursday have been touted by Flynn's lawyer, Sidney Powell, as exculpatory evidence heretofore concealed from the defense team. They suggest that now-fired FBI agent Peter Strzok and others in the FBI’s leadership stopped the bureau from closing its investigation into Flynn in early January 2017 after investigators had uncovered “no derogatory information” on him [i.e., no facts to support the allegations against Flynn to warrant further FBI investigation]. Emails from later that month show Strzok, along with then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page and several others, sought out ways to continue investigating Flynn [i.e., ways to prolong the investigation, as a political weapon against the Trump presidential administration].

Jordan and Johnson said what they found “even more concerning” was that “we continue to learn these new details from litigation and investigations — not from you. It is well past time that you show the leadership necessary to bring the FBI past the abuses of the Obama-Biden era.”
The congressmen claimed new revelations about the FBI’s interactions with Flynn “make it clear that the FBI’s wrongdoing is worse than previously known” and “suggest a pattern of misconduct and politicization at the highest levels of the Obama-Biden-era FBI.”

Flynn, 61, is fighting to dismiss the government's case against him. He pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to investigators about his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak about sanctions on Russia and a United Nations resolution on Israel. Flynn's contacts with Kislyak were swept up in U.S. surveillance reports, after which Strzok and another agent, believed to be Joseph Pientka, grilled him on the contents of the conversation on Jan. 24, 2017.

The congressman argued newly revealed documents show “the FBI had apparently sought to set a perjury trap for LTG Flynn during an interview on January 24, 2017.”

Flynn told the court earlier this year that he was “innocent of this crime” of lying to federal agents. He filed to withdraw his guilty plea after the Justice Department asked the judge to sentence him to up to six months in prison — though afterward, the department said probation would also be appropriate. [Flynn's attorney, Sidney] Powell is pressing for the dismissal of his case by arguing that the FBI unfairly treated Flynn.
“The FBI’s mission is to do justice dispassionately. But these documents suggest that the FBI ignored protocol to confront LTG Flynn about a potential violation of an obscure and rarely charged offense, with the real goal of forcing LTG Flynn’s resignation or prosecution,” Jordan and Johnson said.

Comey admitted he took advantage of the chaos in the early days of Trump's administration when he sent agent Strzok and another FBI agent to talk to Flynn. Records released Wednesday included handwritten notes from former FBI Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap on the day the FBI interviewed Flynn:
“I agreed yesterday that we shouldn’t show Flynn [REDACTED] if he didn’t admit,” but, “I thought about it last night and I believe we should rethink this,” Priestap wrote. “What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”

The congressmen asked Wray to make Priestap and Pientka available for interviews and pressed the bureau chief to hand over all documents and communications related to “Crossfire Razor” — the code name for the Flynn investigation. They also asked for all records relating to Flynn’s discussions with Russia’s envoy.

Jordan and Johnson gave Wray two weeks to disclose when he “personally first learned of the FBI’s misconduct with respect to LTG Flynn” and to “explain why the Committee and the American public are learning of the FBI’s misconduct with respect to LTG Flynn from court filings rather than from you.”
They asked Wray to say whether he or any other FBI leader “prevented or delayed the disclosure of additional exculpatory information to LTG Flynn and his legal team.”

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report released late last year criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the surveillance warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page in 2016 and 2017, and for the bureau's reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s unverified dossier. Declassified footnotes show the FBI was aware that Russian disinformation may have compromised the dossier.

Wray testified in February there had been at least some illegal surveillance and said he was working to “claw back” that information. Wray said every member of the FBI mentioned in Horowitz’s report had been referred for a disciplinary review, and "the failures highlighted in that report are unacceptable — period."

In a filing earlier this year, [Flynn attorney Sidney Powell] pointed to a section of Horowitz’s report, which showed the intelligence briefing Pientka gave to then-candidate Trump’s team in August 2016 was a “pretext” to gather evidence to help in the counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s campaign.

Powell told Breitbart this weekend, “the government has advised that we will be getting more documents, including more text messages between FBI people." Referring to FBI leadership's actions, she said, "I am pretty sure there are at least offenses such as obstruction of justice," as well as false statements and perjury before Congress.

On Monday, Robert Kelner and Stephen Anthony, Flynn’s former defense lawyers at Covington and Burling LLP, told the court they “identified 32 additional pages of handwritten notes” that should have been turned over to Flynn’s new team last summer.

U.S. Attorney John Durham, picked by Attorney General William Barr to review the Russia investigation, is reportedly scrutinizing the Flynn case.

[ Rep Jordan's full letter displayed. ]

The list revealed that then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power made unmasking requests seven times between Nov. 30, 2016 and Jan. 11, 2017. The list revealed that Clapper made three requests from Dec. 2, 2016 through Jan. 7, 2017; and that Brennan made two requests, one on Dec. 14 and one on Dec. 15, 2016. Comey also made a request on Dec. 15, 2016. On Jan. 5, 2017, McDonough made one request, and on Jan. 12, 2017, Biden made one request.

The day McDonough requested the information is the same day as an Oval Office meeting that has drawn scrutiny in the wake of the Flynn developments. The meeting included Obama, Biden, Clapper, Brennan, Comey, then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

That meeting was the first time Yates learned about Flynn's calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to notes from her special counsel interview which were released last week. Yates, in her interview, indicated Obama was aware of Flynn’s intercepted December 2016 phone calls with Kislyak during the presidential transition period.

After the briefing, Obama asked Yates and Comey to "stay behind," and said he had "learned of the information about Flynn" and his conversation with Russia's ambassador about sanctions. Obama "specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information.”

That Oval Office meeting aligns with an email that Rice — on Jan. 20, 2017, the day President Trump was sworn into office — sent herself documenting Obama’s guidance, evidently in the same meeting, about how law enforcement should investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race.

“President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book,’” Rice emailed to herself. “The president stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.”

The email also appeared to reflect Obama’s guidance on sharing sensitive information with both the Russians and the incoming Trump administration.

Rice wrote that Obama said, “he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.”

Meanwhile, the unmasking documents come just a day after Biden initially told ABC News’ “Good Morning America” that he knew “nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn,” and called the topic a “diversion” from the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump admin struggles to explain what’s criminal about Obamagate

For all the partisan conservative yelling there isn’t an actual crime, y’know like obstruction of justice or lying to the FBI.


When Biden gets elected Trump’s fat ass is toast.

I think it’s pretty clear who has the blinders welded on tight WB. When is lying to the FBI okay in your book?

This for me shows how lost you guys are. Flynn lied and it was about foreign contacts. These were lies told purposely and not in anyway were these lies told for the country. Patriotism isn’t loyalty to your party but to your country. Something so basic but for you it’s all about party.

By Jim Hayek
May 3, 2020



Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey should face the death penalty if found guilty for weaponizing FBI against Donald Trump and his campaign in 2016, according to ex-CIA agent and Democrat Bryan Dean Wright.

“My preference, I’d love to see the death penalty,” Wright said on Fox & Friends Friday. “And boy oh boy, I’ll tell you, if I could flip the switch myself, I’d do it.”


“Because these men are traitors. They absolutely assaulted not just the Trump administration, but your vote, my vote, and anybody who went to the ballot box in 2016 irrespective of who we voted for.”

“They decided that they were going to choose the nation’s political winners and losers,” Wright added.

Wright’s remarks come after the government released documents last week from General Michael Flynn’s investigation showing the FBI deliberately tried to set up and frame Flynn in order to get him fired or prosecuted.

Among the most damning evidence was a hand-written FBI note describing how they were going to entrap Flynn.

“What’s our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” reads the note, written by the FBI’s then-director of counterintelligence.

“If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ & have them decide. Or, if he initially lies, then we present him [redacted] & he admits it, document for DOJ, & let them decide how to address it.”

Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell claimed the “stunning” evidence proves that Flynn was framed by “corrupt agents at the top of the FBI.”

“The government produced to Mr. Flynn stunning Brady evidence that proves Mr. Flynn’s allegations of having been deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI,” Powell wrote on Friday.

“The government deliberately suppressed this evidence from the inception of this prosecution — knowing there was no crime by Mr. Flynn,” she wrote.

Attorney General William Barr has indicated that he believes the FBI’s “Russia collusion” investigation into Trump and his campaign is “one of the greatest travesties in American history” because it was launched “without any basis” by Trump’s political opponents to “sabotage” his presidency.

“I think the president has every right to be frustrated, because I think what happened to him was one of the greatest travesties in American history,” Barr told Fox News host Laura Ingraham last month.

“Without any basis they started this investigation of his campaign, and even more concerning, actually is what happened after the campaign, a whole pattern of events while he was president,” Barr added. “So I — to sabotage the presidency, and I think that – or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.”

by James A. Gagliano
May 04, 2020



The time has come to cease affording the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team generous benefit of the doubt. A steady stream of unflattering revelations, beginning with a report by the Justice Department's inspector general into egregious FISA abuses last December, has relentlessly pounded the reputation of my former agency. Now, further irrefutable proof emerges that a small cabal of FBI headquarters decision-makers was hellbent on undoing a presidency.

I know it sounds strange to hear me make such an accusation. I’m the guy who long attempted to thread the needle, accounting for honest human frailties, trusting that mistakes should not always be chalked up to malice or sinister intent. Cautious skepticism was a default mindset that served me well across a quarter century as an FBI investigator. That condition failed me here because one thing is clear.

Michael Flynn got railroaded.

Careful examination of fresh facts related to Flynn pleading guilty to Title 18 U.S. Code § 1001 (essentially, lying to a federal agent) provides an eye-popping and clear-cut case of investigative inconsistencies and partisan political bias. At the request of defense attorney Sidney Powell, who is seeking to have the retired lieutenant general’s plea withdrawn, additional evidence related to the Flynn case has recently been released by the prosecution. According to Flynn’s defense team, some uncovered FBI notes illustrate a concerted effort by former FBI Director James Comey's team to set Flynn up.

The notes in question are handwritten and appear to outline the Crossfire Hurricane team’s objectives for the planned interview with Flynn at the White House, just days after the inauguration of President Trump. They are clearly initialed by then-FBI Assistant Director for the Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap. I know Bill from our overlapping assignments in the FBI’s New York office. He is an experienced, honorable, and well-respected lawman.

But one passage fairly leaped off the page at me:

“What's our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired? If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ & have them decide. Or, if he initially lies, then we present him [redacted] & he admits it, document for DOJ, & let them decide how to address it.”

It almost appears as if Priestap is attempting to memorialize his own opposition to the Flynn ambush. As in, who would ever chronicle that type of stratagem knowing it might one day be considered Brady material or be subject to a Freedom of Information Act request? It defies credulity. But in Priestap’s defense, he was full-on sailing against the wind.

Then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe essentially called the shots in Crossfire Hurricane. The FBI is charged with enforcing federal law. Nowhere in our identified mission and priorities exists a goal to set a perjury trap or, absent evidence of a prosecutable crime, get someone fired. Why even consider this an objective?

To borrow a line from comedian Jeff Foxworthy: If this doesn’t bother you, you might be a party-over-country partisan.

Since the FBI was already in possession of the transcript of Flynn’s telephone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, what exactly was to be gained by the interview? Nothing except the potential to jam him up and get him removed as national security adviser. It was never going to charge him for violations of the Logan Act or the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Even Robert Mueller’s team could have done so. It passed. These laws are seldom, if ever, enforced. Just ask the lobbyists on K Street.

Even Comey once believed Flynn not to have misrepresented facts to the FBI. The fired former director, who enjoys a cozy relationship with the Washington Post, was awarded “Two Pinocchios” by the paper’s fact-checker after a denial in an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier, who asked him if he had ever “[told] lawmakers that FBI agents didn’t believe former national security adviser Michael Flynn was lying intentionally to investigators?”

Which leads us back to the ubiquitous Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. After McCabe circumvented established channels, forgoing calls to DOJ or the newly emplaced White House counsel or chief of staff, Flynn became a ripe target. After assuring the new national security adviser that he didn’t need an attorney present, McCabe dispatched two agents to the White House.

During a conversation with MSNBC's Nicole Wallace in 2019, Comey smugly recounted this episode of personally sending Strzok and an FBI supervisory special agent, Joe Pientka, to meet with Flynn. According to Comey, this tactic was “something ... I probably wouldn't have done or gotten away with in a more organized investigation — a more organized administration."

So Strzok (famously fired for his partisan text exchanges with Page), along with the FBI official who overruled case personnel and ordered that the Flynn case remain open after recommendations that it be closed for lack of any evidence, had his opportunity.

What happened next infuriates me.

The Flynn FD-302 interview notes appear to have been manipulated by Strzok and Page. Pientka was apparently the note taker. Consistent with FBI protocols, Strzok, as a party to the interview, can certainly discuss recollections with Pientka prior to the final document being approved by both. But somehow, Page, the DOJ attorney who was not present at the interview and was not an FBI agent, was involved in the edits.

Strzok advises Page, in a newly released batch of text exchanges between the two, that he was “trying to not completely rewrite” the FD-302, “so as to save [redacted] voice.” The redacted name is most likely Pientka. Strzok wants the document to appear to be voiced by the other agent. But only after he and Page can craft the words to make Flynn appear guilty of lying to the FBI.

As retired FBI agent Thomas Baker points out in the Wall Street Journal:

“Worse still, the FD-302 that was eventually provided to the court wasn’t that of the agents’ interview of Mr. Flynn. It was instead an FD-302 of an interview of Mr. Strzok, conducted months later, about his recollections of the original interview. Truly bizarre.”
The uncomfortable truth is that the cases focusing on Trump (Crossfire Hurricane) and Hillary Clinton (Midyear Exam) were handled inconsistently. The Clinton investigation (which Obama-era Attorney General Loretta Lynch famously suggested be referred to as a "matter," not an investigation) was not handled aggressively or in keeping with the standards of the apolitical ethos of the FBI.

As former Rep. Trey Gowdy sarcastically described the stark differences between the hyperaggressive tactics employed against Flynn and the ludicrous preconditions that the FBI generously conceded to in order to interview Clinton in 2016:

“She had a medium-sized law firm in the room with her. They gave the questions to her lawyer before they interviewed her, and they most assuredly told her there’s a consequence for lying. None of which they did for Michael Flynn.”
So again, I ask: Why did the same crew of FBI investigators handle these two consequential investigations of political candidates in very different fashions if not for the rather obvious injection of political bias in decision-making?

Many have batted down that suggestion, arguing that Michael Horowitz’s report cleared the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team of partisanship. That is patently false.

Here’s Horowitz in exchange with Sen. Josh Hawley on Dec. 18, 2019:

Hawley: “Was it your conclusion that political bias did not affect any part of the Page investigation, any part of Crossfire Hurricane?”

Horowitz: “We did not reach that conclusion.”

Hawley: “Because I could have sworn — in fact, I know for a fact that I’ve heard that today from this committee. That’s not your conclusion?”

Horowitz: “We have been very careful in the connection with the FISAs for the reasons you mentioned to not reach that conclusion in part, as we’ve talked about earlier, [because of] the alteration of the email, the text messages associated with the individual who did that, and our inability to explain or understand, to get good explanations so that we could understand why this all happened.”
Horowitz was referring to DOJ attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who materially altered an email to misrepresent information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. You will also recall the text message whereby he defiantly exhorted, “Viva la Resistance.” Not much political bias to speak of there, right?

The final nail in the coffin of those who pretend political bias did not influence the FBI’s decisions in 2016 and 2017 is a text exchange between Strzok and Page on Feb. 25, 2016, discussing how to approach the Clinton interview:

Page: “One more thing: She might be our next president. The last thing you need us going in there loaded for bear. You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more DOJ than FBI?”

Strzok: “I called Bill and relayed what we discussed. He agrees.”
Compare that to Priestap's quote: “What’s our goal? Truth/Admission or get him to lie, so we can get him fired?”

The contrast is stunning. No plausible explanation exists here other than rank partisan, political bias.

I’ll say it again: Michael Flynn got railroaded.

________________________________________

James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) worked in the FBI for 25 years. He is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John's University. Gagliano is a member of the board of directors of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.

Flynn knowingly and repeatedly lied to the FBI. And here he’s lying again when he claims he wasn’t suggesting a coup when there is video of him doing exactly that…
Flynn a liar

This is not an honorable person or a truthful one.

by GEORGE NEUMAYR


The media has told us for years that Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence agent turned opposition researcher for Hillary Clinton, possessed impeccable credentials and unique powers of research and insight. Reporters spoke about the “Steele Dossier” in hushed and reverential tones. But now it is a source of enormous embarrassment to the media, FBI, and anyone else who took it seriously. As the Wall Street Journal reported this week, Steele’s supposedly damning file on Trump–Russia collusion turns out to be nothing more than outlandish gossip traded among Hillary’s supporters.

In retrospect, it is clear why the media went berserk over Buzzfeed’s publication of the dossier. Before that moment, reporters could make ominous references to Steele’s alleged findings. But the moment they were published, the shoddiness of them became evident for all to see and reporters could no longer use Steele’s dossier as a weapon against Trump.

The Steele dossier deserves a special place in the annals of farcical political scams. Were Hollywood not so biased to the Left, it would probably turn the story into a dark goofball comedy. As the Wall Street Journal notes, “many of the dossier’s key details originated with a few people gossiping after they had been brought together over a minor corporate publicity contract.” Remember those Kremlin insiders Steele ostensibly quoted? They were just Democrats who wanted to see Trump lose.

Steele didn’t even bother to cobble these lies together himself. He found a “researcher” in Washington, D.C., Igor Danchenko, to collect them for him. Danchenko has already admitted that some of his alleged information came from “conversation that he had with friends over beers” in Washington. According to the Wall Street Journal, the most salacious story in the dossier — that the Russians had “kompromat” on Trump about him hiring prostitutes to urinate on a hotel bed Barack Obama once slept on — appears to come from Charles Dolan, a Democratic public relations executive in Washington.

Whatever account Dolan gave Danchenko has completely fallen apart. “Mr. Danchenko told the FBI he had gotten the prostitute story from a friend,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “He said that he heard it told in jest and that he described it to Mr. Steele as rumor and speculation.” In 2016, Dolan went on a hotel tour of the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow, where he supposedly picked up the story, but even one of his colleagues who accompanied him on the tour told the FBI that the hotel staff never said anything about Trump and prostitutes. So the “rumor and speculation” didn’t even come from anybody in Russia.

The hackishness of Steele cannot be overstated. He not only cast Democratic gossips as Kremlin insiders but also occasionally quoted them as Trump insiders. In his section on Paul Manafort, Steele describes Charles Dolan as an “American political figure associated with Trump” who revealed that several “senior players close to Trump had wanted Manafort out, primarily to loosen his control on strategy and policy formulation.” Dolan has told the FBI that this great scoop came from “public news sources,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Where are the apologies from the media and the FBI for treating all of this nonsense so gravely? In their most solemn style, anchormen repeatedly cited the specter of Russia’s compromising information on Trump. Endless panel discussions ensued on the subject. It was all just an echo chamber of Democratic lies.

It is staggering that Steele’s pitiful collection of smears — which consisted largely of Democrats just quoting each other — could upend the American political system, and do so with the full cooperation of the FBI. James Comey comes off in all of this not only as a sanctimonious fraud but also an astonishing imbecile. His slavish regard for Steele, his oh-so-momentous meeting with Trump over Russia’s “kompromat,” and his use of Steele’s dossier to secure FISA warrants — this is all beyond the most perverse parody.

Richard Nixon used to joke that the CIA is just a bunch of guys sitting around reading newspapers. What would he have said about Comey’s FBI? It didn’t even do the most rudimentary vetting of Democratic gossip. Its fact-checking prowess is on par with CNN’s.

Out of bar gossip among Trump haters came an investigation that hobbled his campaign and derailed his presidency. Even Trump’s most hyperbolic tweets about this harassment now look understated. And should he run again in 2024, the media will resume its hair-on-fire hysterics about him. Most of the figures in the Russia farce still appear on TV or the lecture circuit as “trusted” experts on threats to America. They have paid no price for their grotesque interference in our democracy.

The Russians are “laughing their asses off in Moscow,” Trump once tweeted about the havoc the Steele Dossier caused. No doubt the Russians are still laughing. The more the dossier is dissected, the more of a sick joke it all seems. Putin’s interference in American affairs has always been designed to make America look like a dysfunctional paper tiger. But he needn’t bother. As the Steele Dossier episode illustrates, America’s ruling class is perfectly capable of displaying that on its own.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the third senior ranking House Republican, ripped special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday for being a “compromised” member of President Joe Biden’s politicized Department of Justice (DOJ).
Appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland on November 18, Smith is overseeing investigations into former President Donald Trump concerning documents he took to Mar-a-Lago post-presidency. Smith’s appointment occurred just three days after Trump announced a 2024 presidential bid. The appointment was purportedly made to remove any conflict of interest between Biden and his potential 2024 political opponent.

“Based on recent developments, including the former President’s announcement that he is a candidate for President in the next election, and the sitting President’s stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel,” Garland said in his announcement of the special counsel.
While Biden’s DOJ launched a special counsel to investigate Trump, Stefanik pointed out no special counsel has been appointed by the DOJ to continue the ongoing probe into Hunter Biden. A special counsel would put a degree of separation between Joe and Hunter Biden, members of the “Biden Crime Family.”

“The facts are clear: Jack Smith is compromised,” Stefanik told Breitbart News. “Joe Biden’s weaponized DOJ has launched an illegitimate special counsel to investigate his number one political opponent.”
“Where is the investigation into his criminal son Hunter Biden’s corrupt business dealings with Joe Biden?” she asked. “House Republicans will hold the Biden Crime Family accountable.”

Stefanik added the DOJ will be investigated by the new GOP House majority for its “corrupt” politicization of justice. “Our House Republican majority will investigate Joe Biden’s corrupt Department of Justice and make sure our government is once again accountable to the American people,” she told Breitbart News.
Garland’s appointment of Smith has been criticized by Republicans as partisan. Most recently, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has stated Smith is a partisan actor whose record includes being involved in the IRS’s targeting of conservatives. Smith also led the prosecution and conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R), which was later reversed 9-0 by the Supreme Court.

A close family connection of Smith’s is also worrisome. His wife, Katy Chevigny, was a 2020 Biden donor who produced a Michelle Obama documentary called, “Becoming.”

Despite the appearance of partisan preferences, Garland heralded Smith as a non-partisan prosecutor who “underscores the Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters.”

“Mr. Smith is the right choice to complete these matters in an even-handed and urgent manner,” Garland claimed.

Meanwhile, the investigation into Hunter Biden remains uncompleted and without a special counsel. The DOJ has reportedly delayed its “final decision” on whether Hunter will be charged for alleged tax and gun-related violations because his drug abuse could be an excuse the defense could successfully use to defend the president’s son against potential charges.

House Republicans have vowed to probe the “Biden Crime Family” with an emphasis on Joe Biden’s participation in the family’s business dealings.

“This is an investigation of Joe Biden, the president of the United States, and why he lied to the American people about his knowledge and participation in his family’s international business dealing schemes,” announced Rep. James Comer (R-TN) the top Republican on the Oversight Committee. “National security interests require to conduct an investigation and we will pursue all avenues – avenues that have long been ignored.”

In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism.

Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
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Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.

If you'd invested with Madoff, then you'd still be thinking you'd get a return on your investment to this very day, sucker.

Nya nya nya, fuck you, fuck your mother, asshat, doofus, etc., etc.

Breitbart... ::eye roll::

Any news sources that don't align with Politico, Washington Post, News York Times, CNN and other liberal media is EEEEVIIIILLL and have to be discredited.

Durham Probe ends by bringing down all the deep state evil acto...oh, it failed to secure anything but the minor conviction of a corner cutting bureaucrat? Tax dollars well spent anyway!

Newly unsealed court filings show how the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and an associate shared with the FBI and a host of media outlets the unverified dossier that alleged the Russians had compromising information on now-President Trump.

McCain had denied being the source for BuzzFeed after it published the dossier, which was funded by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, but had acknowledged giving it to the FBI.

In a newly unsealed declaration from September, former senior counterintelligence FBI agent Bill Priestap confirmed that the FBI received a copy of the first 33 pages of the dossier in December 2016 from McCain.

In another filing, David Kramer -- a former State Department official and McCain associate -- said in a Dec. 13, 2017, deposition that the dossier was given to him by author and former British spy Christopher Steele, which he then provided to multiple journalists at outlets including CNN, BuzzFeed and The Washington Post. The details were first reported by The Daily Caller.

The report was also shared with State Department official Victoria Nuland, Obama National Security Council official Celeste Wallander and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.

The filings were unsealed as part of a libel case against BuzzFeed by a Russian businessman.

In his deposition, Kramer said that McCain gave a copy of the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey on Dec. 9. Kramer told investigators that it was the sense from Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson that “having Senator McCain provide it to the FBI would give it a little more oomph than it had had up until that point.”

“I think they felt a senior Republican was better to be the recipient of this rather than a Democrat because if it were a Democrat, I think that the view was that it would have been dismissed as a political attack,” he said.

Kramer also described how BuzzFeed News reporter Ken Bensinger came to get hold of the dossier, before the outlet became the first to publish it in its entirety.

He said that he showed Bensinger the dossier in December at the McCain Institute, but did not allow him to take pictures of it. But Kramer said he left Bensinger alone to read the memos and, in that time, Bensinger took photos of the dossier.

Kramer said he panicked when he saw that BuzzFeed News had published the document in its entirety online on Jan. 10, and immediately sought to have it taken down.

It’s not a uni-party WB, we all belong to the same country with the same constitution that our elected officials take an oath to. I know you see things differently after Jan 6. That’s sad but no longer shocking.