Tag Archives: Carter Page

OUT FOR THE KILL

“The Donald” defeated a left wing progressive criminal in 2016; this lying “B” would be in jail now if it weren’t for the politicized FBI; a cover-up that makes Watergate look like a candy store heist. Any other person would be doing time and a lot of other things. But she is still mouthing off like nothing happened. Having the FBI, once a sacred institution, become an arm of a political party is pure unadulterated Treason. Trump won fair and square, they lost and now have suffer the consequences. However, this is not the case with a swarm of do nothing liberal progressive criminals. They will do anything, including murder, to stifle Trump and his agenda. Insiders loyal to Clinton crushed any evidence that would confirm here guilt. This was an independent agency of the U.S. government involved in a KGB scheme to protect one of their own. Remember the progressive agenda of Socialism is actually a true and tested autocratic dictatorship the likes of Marx, Lenin, Chavez and Castro.

The hearings go on and soon Kavanaugh will be sitting on the Supreme Court. This will be a milestone for the conservative movement. Since the court took a left turn with Earl Warren and continued on through Kennedy the social anarchists have basically gotten their way. Now, it is in our grasp to change the courts political philosophy. The ANTIFA crowd is out for the kill; they see their hedonistic political agenda taking a big time hit that will last for decades. They can’t get things done on the legislative side so they relied on the courts at every level to legislate from the bench.

Republicans let Obama’s two picks, Sotomayor and Kagan, slip right through – no protests from the conservatives. (from the Washington examinerDemocrats are upset about where the Supreme Court has been heading not because it isn’t doing its job, and not because it is overly partisan, but because they don’t like the fact that cases going there are increasingly being decided based on the Constitution and the law and not on motivated reasoning in search of liberals’ pet causes.

Any outside observer with a minimal intelligence knows full well that the FBI colluded with Hillary Campaign to bring down Trump from the get go. This inner coup started with the hiring of Fusion GPS.  SEE BELOW FOR PREVIOUS POSTS.

ANKLE BRACELETS WARRANTED

Finally, the truth has come out – how, when and why? We are not of the uninitiated, we are well informed, knowing full well a bald face lie from the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The guilty have been outed notwithstanding the Mueller investigation. By the way his investigation is a complete sham. He is a shill for Comey and company, protecting the guilty while harassing the innocent, therefore any indictments he brings or arrests he makes borders on collusion.

They have delved into areas that were never authorized, squeezed heads with far fetched codes, but they will never come clean on why they have failed to investigate the Russian colluding democrats under Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, the Podesta Group head honcho Tony Podesta, Fusion GPS, Wasserman-Schultz, Huma Abedin, etc.  For instances bringing a charge against Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI is a farce. His whole investigation is built on animosity against the Republicans and specifically Trump. But we must move on because the real criminals are escaping from the grasp of the law.

Back to Attorney General Sessions – yes he recused himself from the Russian investigation, not relevant to what has to come, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the power to arrest Hillary “jail the bird” Clinton, Wasserman-Schultz, Rice, Slick Willie, Anthony Weiner, Huma Abedin, Loretta Lynch, Koskinen, Strozk, McCabe, Tony Podesta and any other number of lying, cheating, thieving players in this scam of scams.

The question we have regarding Sessions; has somebody threatened to chemically alter his manhood?

COMEY CAUGHT HOLDING THE SMOKING GUN – THEN PAGE AND STRZOK COVER UP THE CRIME

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The original script read like this,  “grossly negligent” when referring to Hillary Clinton’s crimes. Those pivotal words have a distinct legal meaning, and are drawn directly from a federal statute, 18 U.S.C. 793(f), which makes it a felony to handle classified documents in a “grossly negligent” manner. But what happened?

Under questioning, Comey admitted to the Inspector General Michael Horowitz that he authored the May 2 statement and penned every word of it himself. But then he offered the implausible claim that “he did not recall that his original draft used the term ‘gross negligence,’ and did not recall discussions about that issue.”

Metadata shows that on June 6, the FBI’s lead investigator on the case, Peter Strzok, sat down at his office computer to cleanse his boss’s statement of the vexing term, “gross negligence.”  With the help of his paramour and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, the words “extremely careless” were substituted to make Clinton appear less criminally culpable. Page told the IG that “to use a term that actually has a legal definition would be confusing.”

Strozk and Page also expunged from Comey’s statement his reference to another statute that Clinton had plainly violated. She should have been charged under the statute’s “intent” provisions.  With Comey’s consent and encouragement, the pair sanitized his findings of fact and contorted his conclusions of law. Clinton, who had not even been interviewed by the FBI yet, was free and clear. The investigation was a sham.

Comey may not have remembered writing the words that should have indicted Clinton, but he had complete recall of his inability to read the law. He told the IG he thought “Congress intended for there to be some level of willfulness present even to prove a ‘gross negligence’ violation.” If Comey had ever read the legislative history, he would have known that in 1948, Congress amended the original Espionage Act of 1917 to add a “gross negligence” provision that did not require intent or willfulness.

Just as Comey, Strzok, Page and company conspired to clear Hillary Clinton, they likewise concocted their “insurance policy,” a scam investigation of then-candidate Donald Trump. The FBI had no legal basis to initiate its investigation into Trump and his campaign. Facts were invented or exaggerated. Laws were perverted or ignored.  The law enforcers became the law breakers.  Comey’s scheme to leak pilfered presidential memos in order to trigger the appointment of his friend, Robert Mueller, as special counsel was a devious maneuver by an unscrupulous man. Comey’s insinuation that the president obstructed justice was another canard designed to inflame the liberal media.  Sure enough, they became his witting accessories.

Compare all of this – that there was never any credible evidence that Trump or his campaign collaborated with Russia to win the presidency – with the fact that there was ample evidence that Clinton had broken the law.

This is the story of “The Russia Hoax.”

HARRY REID – A CRIMINAL BY NO OTHER NAME – A VAIN ATTEMPT TO TAKE DOWN THE FREELY ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

To protect Hillary “lock her up” Clinton in the run for the White House FAKE information given to pugnacious Senator, “Harry Black Eye” Reid was the meal ticket utilized to sabotage the Trump run for the Presidency of the United States.  JOHN BRENNAN! Yes Brennan, under the head of the CIA under Obama told Reid not to release it, but did he?

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) sends a letter to then-FBI Director Comey voicing concern over Russian interference in the election and asking Comey to open an FBI investigation.

 – The Washington Times – Saturday, May 12, 2018

Then-Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid released a letter in the heat of the 2016 election alleging Trump-Russia collusion even though the CIA director at the time urged him not to, according to a person familiar with their conversation.

Mr. Reid’s Aug. 27 letter to the FBI appears to mark the first time a Democrat officially accused President’ Trump’s campaign of colluding with the Russian government to hack his party’s computers.

The letter has come to represent for conservatives the “deep state” — Obama loyalists leaking unproven allegations to the press against Mr. Trump and his people to ruin the campaign, the transition and the White House.

“The evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign continues to mount,” Mr. Reid wrote to FBI Director James B. Comey.

Mr. Reid wrote and leaked his letter after receiving a secret telephone briefing from then-CIA Director John Brennan.

The retired senator has portrayed the letter as having the blessing of Mr. Brennan, a fierce Trump critic who suggests the president is beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin for fear of blackmail.

But now the Brennan side rebuts Mr. Reid’s contention that the then-CIA director was actively trying to leak damaging anti-Trump information during the election.

Nick Shapiro, former deputy chief of staff for Mr. Brennan as CIA director, told The Washington Times that his ex-boss considered the information sensitive. He expressly urged Mr. Reid to confine the information to private discussions with Mr. Comey.

That August, Mr. Brennan was briefing the so called “gang of eight” congressional leaders on Russian computer hacking and on suspicious that Trump people were involved.

Mr. Shapiro, now a Brennan adviser, provided this version of the Brennan-Reid phone call:

“Brennan used the same exact notes to brief Reid as he used with the other members of the Gang of Eight. In fact, most of the conversation was spent with Senator Reid telling Brennan what he had heard about Russians and the Trump campaign. Senator Reid informed Brennan that he was in the process of drafting a letter to Comey about his concerns. When Senator Reid asked Brennan whether he could reference this information in the letter to Comey, Brennan said ‘no,’ as the intelligence was being tightly controlled and he was worried that the letter would get out into the public. Brennan told him that Comey had been fully briefed on the intelligence and if he wanted to, it would be better to talk to him about it in a secure manner when he returned to D.C. instead of putting it in a letter.”

Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, wrote the letter anyway. And it was leaked to The New York Times and then migrated throughout the mainstream media.

It contained references to a Trump aide traveling to Moscow and allegedly meeting with two sanctioned Kremlin figures — an allegation contained in the Democratic Party-financed dossier written by ex-British spy Christopher Steele. The unnamed person is Carter Page, who has denied under oath he ever met the two people named by Mr. Steele.

The dossier at that point had not been published. The FBI possessed copies and had opened a counter-intelligence investigation into Russia meddling the previous month.

Mr. Reid’s version of his phone call from Mr. Brennan is contained in the best-selling book, “Russian Roulette,” which embraces the Trump-Russia conspiracy and promotes the Steele dossier.

The book says:

“Reid also had the impression that Brennan had an ulterior motive,” the authors said. “He concluded the CIA chief believed the public needed to know about the Russian operation, including the information about the possible links to the Trump campaign. When Reid later was asked if Brennan directly or indirectly had enlisted him to push information held by the intelligence community into the public realm, he told an interviewer, ‘Why do you think he called me?’ “

Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Brennan’s adviser, said that specific book excerpt is inaccurate. He also told The Times that rather than trying to sell Trump-Russia collusion during the campaign, the Obama White House and Mr. Brennan stayed silent.

The Washington Times submitted questions to Mr. Reid’s associates at a public policy institute in Nevada where he serves as co-chairman. The queries went unanswered.

Mr. Reid did not stop his drumbeat on Trump-Russia. After Mr. Steele leaked his dossier narrative to selected reporters in Washington, Yahoo News, whose Michael Isikoff co-authored “Russian Roulette,” wrote a story.

But The New York Times dampened the narrative with an Oct. 31 story headlined, “Investigating Donald Trump, FBISees No Clear Link to Russia.”

Mr. Reid was furious

Adam Jentleson, his deputy chief of staff, tweeted, “I’ll say it: NYT interviewed Reid for this story. He said things contrary to the story. NYT discarded the interview.”

“Maybe some want to know why the NYT seemed to cover for Comey’s FBI? Maybe even some at the NYT? Maybe not? I’m just asking questions,” Jentleson said. The New York Times would go on to become one of journalism’s chief proponents of Trump-Russia collusion.

The Washington Times has examined Mr. Steele’s series of collusion charges and found that none has been confirmed independently and publicly at this point. Special counsel Robert Mueller continues to investigate.

However, the FBI’s investigation remained a secret during the campaign. Despite public pressure, including public letters from then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on August 29 and October 30, 2016, the latter claiming that the FBI was concealing “explosive information about close ties and coordination between Trump and his top advisers, and the Russian government,” the FBI did not disclose its investigation until after the election. In fact, on October 31, 2016, The New York Times reported that FBI officials had not found evidence demonstrating links between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
David Kris is a founder of Culper Partners LLC. He previously served as assistant attorney general for national security, associate deputy attorney general, trial attorney at the Department of Justice, general counsel at Intellectual Ventures, and deputy general counsel and chief ethics and compliance officer at Time Warner. He is the author or co-author of several works on national security, including the treatise National Security Investigations and Prosecutions, and has taught at Georgetown University and the University of Washington.

The Carter Page FISAs are out via the Freedom of Information Act. Here are a few observations, relatively brief but still just a bit too long for Twitter.

First, a huge amount of information is redacted in these FISA applications, but they still represent a monumental disclosure to the public. The government considers FISA applications to be very sensitive—and their disclosure, even heavily redacted, may have long-term, programmatic consequences long after we’re finished with President Trump. The government seems to have accepted that FOIA applies to FISA. Without taking a position on the issue it made me recall this Lawfare post that argues to the contrary.

Second, for those who don’t remember, the controversy about these FISA applications first arose in February when House intelligence committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes released a memo claiming that the FBI misled the FISA Court about Christopher Steele, the former British secret agent who compiled the “dossier” on Trump-Russia ties and who was a source of information in the FISA applications on Page. The main complaint in the Nunes memo was that FBI whitewashed Steele—that the FISA applications did not “disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials.”

In response to the Nunes memo, the Democrats on the committee released their own memo. That memo quoted from parts of the FISA applications, including a footnote in which the FBI explained that Steele was hired to “conduct research regarding Candidate #1,” Donald Trump, and Trump’s “ties to Russia,” and that the man who hired him was “likely looking for information that could be used to discredit [Trump’s] campaign.”

Based on this back and forth between the HPSCI partisans, I wrote on Lawfare at the time that the FBI’s disclosures on Steele “amply satisfie[d] the requirements” for FISA applications, and that the central irony of the Nunes memo was that it “tried to deceive the American people in precisely the same way that it falsely accused the FBI of deceiving the FISA Court.” The Nunes memo accused the FBI of dishonesty in failing to disclose information about Steele, but in fact the Nunes memo itself was dishonest in failing to disclose what the FBI disclosed. I said then, and I still believe, that the “Nunes memo was dishonest. And if it is allowed to stand, we risk significant collateral damage to essential elements of our democracy.”

Now we have some additional information in the form of the redacted FISA applications themselves, and the Nunes memo looks even worse. In my earlier post, I observed that the FBI’s disclosures about Steele were contained in a footnote, but argued that this did not detract from their sufficiency: “As someone who has read and approved many FISA applications and dealt extensively with the FISA Court, I will anticipate and reject a claim that the disclosure was somehow insufficient because it appeared in a footnote; in my experience, the court reads the footnotes.” Now we can see that the footnote disclosing Steele’s possible bias takes up more than a full page in the applications, so there is literally no way the FISA Court could have missed it. The FBI gave the court enough information to evaluate Steele’s credibility.

There’s also more detail on the previous disclosure from the House intelligence committee Democrats’ memo on how Steele went to the press with the “dossier” when FBI Director James Comey sent his October 2016 letter to Congress disclosing the possible newfound importance of the Weiner laptop in the Clinton investigation. According to the FISA applications, Steele complained that Comey’s action could influence the election. But when Steele went to the press, it caused FBI to close him out as an informant—facts which are disclosed and cross-referenced in the footnote in bold text.

While I am sure people will try, my initial impression is that with all the redactions it is going to be very tough to figure out the full scope of information supporting the Court’s repeated finding of probable cause to believe that Carter Page was an agent of Russia. There is a mention of two Russians, one of whom pleaded guilty to being an unregistered agent of a foreign government and was sentenced to 30 months, but even that is disconnected from the redacted discussion that precedes it. Substantively, the government seems to have hewed as closely to the prior disclosures as it could in applying FOIA.

But it is worth noting that—and as the Democrats previously pointed out—the judges who signed off on these four FISA applications were all appointed by Republican presidents, including one George H.W. Bush appointee (Anne Conway), two George W. Bush appointees (Rosemary Collyer and Michael Mosman) and one Reagan appointee (Raymond Dearie). I know some of those judges, and they certainly are not the types to let partisan politics affect their legal judgments.

This illusion to the Republican appointed judges is in fact not telling the whole story because,  the FISA applications did not “disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials.”

HARRY REID – A CRIMINAL BY NO OTHER NAME – A VAIN ATTEMPT TO TAKE DOWN THE FREELY ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

To protect Hillary “lock her up” Clinton in the run for the White House FAKE information given to pugnacious Senator, “Harry Black Eye” Reid was the meal ticket utilized to sabotage the Trump run for the Presidency of the United States.  JOHN BRENNAN! Yes Brennan, under the head of the CIA under Obama told Reid not to release it, but did he?

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) sends a letter to then-FBI Director Comey voicing concern over Russian interference in the election and asking Comey to open an FBI investigation.

 – The Washington Times – Saturday, May 12, 2018

Then-Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid released a letter in the heat of the 2016 election alleging Trump-Russia collusion even though the CIA director at the time urged him not to, according to a person familiar with their conversation.

Mr. Reid’s Aug. 27 letter to the FBI appears to mark the first time a Democrat officially accused President’ Trump’s campaign of colluding with the Russian government to hack his party’s computers.

The letter has come to represent for conservatives the “deep state” — Obama loyalists leaking unproven allegations to the press against Mr. Trump and his people to ruin the campaign, the transition and the White House.

“The evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign continues to mount,” Mr. Reid wrote to FBI Director James B. Comey.

Mr. Reid wrote and leaked his letter after receiving a secret telephone briefing from then-CIA Director John Brennan.

The retired senator has portrayed the letter as having the blessing of Mr. Brennan, a fierce Trump critic who suggests the president is beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin for fear of blackmail.

But now the Brennan side rebuts Mr. Reid’s contention that the then-CIA director was actively trying to leak damaging anti-Trump information during the election.

Nick Shapiro, former deputy chief of staff for Mr. Brennan as CIA director, told The Washington Times that his ex-boss considered the information sensitive. He expressly urged Mr. Reid to confine the information to private discussions with Mr. Comey.

That August, Mr. Brennan was briefing the so called “gang of eight” congressional leaders on Russian computer hacking and on suspicious that Trump people were involved.

Mr. Shapiro, now a Brennan adviser, provided this version of the Brennan-Reid phone call:

“Brennan used the same exact notes to brief Reid as he used with the other members of the Gang of Eight. In fact, most of the conversation was spent with Senator Reid telling Brennan what he had heard about Russians and the Trump campaign. Senator Reid informed Brennan that he was in the process of drafting a letter to Comey about his concerns. When Senator Reid asked Brennan whether he could reference this information in the letter to Comey, Brennan said ‘no,’ as the intelligence was being tightly controlled and he was worried that the letter would get out into the public. Brennan told him that Comey had been fully briefed on the intelligence and if he wanted to, it would be better to talk to him about it in a secure manner when he returned to D.C. instead of putting it in a letter.”

Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, wrote the letter anyway. And it was leaked to The New York Times and then migrated throughout the mainstream media.

It contained references to a Trump aide traveling to Moscow and allegedly meeting with two sanctioned Kremlin figures — an allegation contained in the Democratic Party-financed dossier written by ex-British spy Christopher Steele. The unnamed person is Carter Page, who has denied under oath he ever met the two people named by Mr. Steele.

The dossier at that point had not been published. The FBI possessed copies and had opened a counter-intelligence investigation into Russia meddling the previous month.

Mr. Reid’s version of his phone call from Mr. Brennan is contained in the best-selling book, “Russian Roulette,” which embraces the Trump-Russia conspiracy and promotes the Steele dossier.

The book says:

“Reid also had the impression that Brennan had an ulterior motive,” the authors said. “He concluded the CIA chief believed the public needed to know about the Russian operation, including the information about the possible links to the Trump campaign. When Reid later was asked if Brennan directly or indirectly had enlisted him to push information held by the intelligence community into the public realm, he told an interviewer, ‘Why do you think he called me?’

Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Brennan’s adviser, said that specific book excerpt is inaccurate. He also told The Times that rather than trying to sell Trump-Russia collusion during the campaign, the Obama White House and Mr. Brennan stayed silent.

The Washington Times submitted questions to Mr. Reid’s associates at a public policy institute in Nevada where he serves as co-chairman. The queries went unanswered.

Mr. Reid did not stop his drumbeat on Trump-Russia. After Mr. Steele leaked his dossier narrative to selected reporters in Washington, Yahoo News, whose Michael Isikoff co-authored “Russian Roulette,” wrote a story.

But The New York Times dampened the narrative with an Oct. 31 story headlined, “Investigating Donald Trump, FBISees No Clear Link to Russia.”

Mr. Reid was furious

Adam Jentleson, his deputy chief of staff, tweeted, “I’ll say it: NYT interviewed Reid for this story. He said things contrary to the story. NYT discarded the interview.”

“Maybe some want to know why the NYT seemed to cover for Comey’s FBI? Maybe even some at the NYT? Maybe not? I’m just asking questions,” Jentleson said. The New York Times would go on to become one of journalism’s chief proponents of Trump-Russia collusion.

The Washington Times has examined Mr. Steele’s series of collusion charges and found that none has been confirmed independently and publicly at this point. Special counsel Robert Mueller continues to investigate.

However, the FBI’s investigation remained a secret during the campaign. Despite public pressure, including public letters from then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on August 29 and October 30, 2016, the latter claiming that the FBI was concealing “explosive information about close ties and coordination between Trump and his top advisers, and the Russian government,” the FBI did not disclose its investigation until after the election. In fact, on October 31, 2016, The New York Times reported that FBI officials had not found evidence demonstrating links between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
David Kris is a founder of Culper Partners LLC. He previously served as assistant attorney general for national security, associate deputy attorney general, trial attorney at the Department of Justice, general counsel at Intellectual Ventures, and deputy general counsel and chief ethics and compliance officer at Time Warner. He is the author or co-author of several works on national security, including the treatise National Security Investigations and Prosecutions, and has taught at Georgetown University and the University of Washington.

The Carter Page FISAs are out via the Freedom of Information Act. Here are a few observations, relatively brief but still just a bit too long for Twitter.

First, a huge amount of information is redacted in these FISA applications, but they still represent a monumental disclosure to the public. The government considers FISA applications to be very sensitive—and their disclosure, even heavily redacted, may have long-term, programmatic consequences long after we’re finished with President Trump. The government seems to have accepted that FOIA applies to FISA. Without taking a position on the issue it made me recall this Lawfare post that argues to the contrary.

Second, for those who don’t remember, the controversy about these FISA applications first arose in February when House intelligence committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes released a memo claiming that the FBI misled the FISA Court about Christopher Steele, the former British secret agent who compiled the “dossier” on Trump-Russia ties and who was a source of information in the FISA applications on Page. The main complaint in the Nunes memo was that FBI whitewashed Steele—that the FISA applications did not “disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials.”

In response to the Nunes memo, the Democrats on the committee released their own memo. That memo quoted from parts of the FISA applications, including a footnote in which the FBI explained that Steele was hired to “conduct research regarding Candidate #1,” Donald Trump, and Trump’s “ties to Russia,” and that the man who hired him was “likely looking for information that could be used to discredit [Trump’s] campaign.”

Based on this back and forth between the HPSCI partisans, I wrote on Lawfare at the time that the FBI’s disclosures on Steele “amply satisfie[d] the requirements” for FISA applications, and that the central irony of the Nunes memo was that it “tried to deceive the American people in precisely the same way that it falsely accused the FBI of deceiving the FISA Court.” The Nunes memo accused the FBI of dishonesty in failing to disclose information about Steele, but in fact the Nunes memo itself was dishonest in failing to disclose what the FBI disclosed. I said then, and I still believe, that the “Nunes memo was dishonest. And if it is allowed to stand, we risk significant collateral damage to essential elements of our democracy.”

Now we have some additional information in the form of the redacted FISA applications themselves, and the Nunes memo looks even worse. In my earlier post, I observed that the FBI’s disclosures about Steele were contained in a footnote, but argued that this did not detract from their sufficiency: “As someone who has read and approved many FISA applications and dealt extensively with the FISA Court, I will anticipate and reject a claim that the disclosure was somehow insufficient because it appeared in a footnote; in my experience, the court reads the footnotes.” Now we can see that the footnote disclosing Steele’s possible bias takes up more than a full page in the applications, so there is literally no way the FISA Court could have missed it. The FBI gave the court enough information to evaluate Steele’s credibility.

There’s also more detail on the previous disclosure from the House intelligence committee Democrats’ memo on how Steele went to the press with the “dossier” when FBI Director James Comey sent his October 2016 letter to Congress disclosing the possible newfound importance of the Weiner laptop in the Clinton investigation. According to the FISA applications, Steele complained that Comey’s action could influence the election. But when Steele went to the press, it caused FBI to close him out as an informant—facts which are disclosed and cross-referenced in the footnote in bold text.

While I am sure people will try, my initial impression is that with all the redactions it is going to be very tough to figure out the full scope of information supporting the Court’s repeated finding of probable cause to believe that Carter Page was an agent of Russia. There is a mention of two Russians, one of whom pleaded guilty to being an unregistered agent of a foreign government and was sentenced to 30 months, but even that is disconnected from the redacted discussion that precedes it. Substantively, the government seems to have hewed as closely to the prior disclosures as it could in applying FOIA.

But it is worth noting that—and as the Democrats previously pointed out—the judges who signed off on these four FISA applications were all appointed by Republican presidents, including one George H.W. Bush appointee (Anne Conway), two George W. Bush appointees (Rosemary Collyer and Michael Mosman) and one Reagan appointee (Raymond Dearie). I know some of those judges, and they certainly are not the types to let partisan politics affect their legal judgments.

This illusion to the Republican appointed judges is in fact not telling the whole story because,  the FISA applications did not “disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials.”

UPDATE: MOLE FERRETED OUT – SPY BE TOLD – THE PLOT TO BRING DOWN OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

The (click)MOLE has been identified. (click)Stefan Halper, a University of Cambridge professor, has been identified as an FBI plant in the Trump campaign, according to multiple news outlets.  (The Institute of World Politics) President Trump tweeted Friday that confirmation of an FBI plant in his campaign would become the nation’s “all time biggest political scandal.”Voa chinese Stefan Halper 8Apr10.jpg

“Reports are there was indeed at least one FBI representative implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign for president,” Trump wrote. “It took place very early on, and long before the phony Russia Hoax became a “hot” Fake News story. If true – all time biggest political scandal!”

The Washington Post said it received warnings from U.S. officials that revealing Halper’s identity posed a security risk.

Meanwhile, reports vary on when the FBI tapped Halper to snoop on the Trump campaign.

The New York Times reported in December that during “a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016,” Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had disclosed to an Australian diplomat the Russians had dirt on the Clinton campaign. The Australians then tipped off the FBI, prompting the agency to launch “Crossfire Hurricane” on July 31, 2016.

(CLICK HERE)As reported earlier, the Obama White House placed a spy inside the Trump Campaign several months before the election, So far the PLANT has not been named, but known to the very individuals whose intent was to destroy Donald Trump and elect “Lock Her Up” Clinton.

This type of clandestine behavior is reminiscent of Communist countries. A Kafka novel would be the place for such a plot which is described as Kafkaesque. Franz Kafka was a writer famous for stories of bewildered individuals betrayed by an irrational and pointless society. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists faced by bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible social-bureaucratic powers, and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. The term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to describe situations like those in his writing.Black-and-white photograph of Kafka as a young man with dark hair in a formal suit

Former Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz said Saturday that reports of an FBI informant who was placed inside the 2016 Trump campaign is “spying by the very definition.”

A New York Times report stated that the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia began in the summer of 2016 and was code-named Crossfire Hurricane.

The report also stated that “at least one government informant met several times” with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos

TIME TO BRING THE HAMMER DOWN

James Comey and his memoir are tripping the media light fantastic, though what’s defined that trip so far is its lack of news. Mr. Comey explains the many and varied ways that he does not like President Trump. Mr. Comey explains the many and varied ways that he does like himself. Tell us something we don’t know.

People forget that directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation — by necessity — are among Washington’s most skilled operators, experts in appearing to answer questions even as they provide pablum. Yet the publicity tour rolls on, which means that upcoming interviewers still have an opportunity to do the country — and our profession — a favor. Here are a few basic questions Mr. Comey should be expected to answer:

You admit the Christopher Steele dossier was still “unverified” when the FBI used it as the basis of a surveillance warrant against Carter Page. Please explain. Also explain the decision to withhold from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the dossier was financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

You refer to Mr. Steele as a “credible” source. Does the FBI routinely view as “credible” sources who work for political operatives? Did the FBI do any due diligence on his employer, Fusion GPS? Were you aware it is an opposition-research firm? If not, why not?

Keep reading Kimberley Strassel’s column in the Wall Street Journal.

"Where Revolution is the Solution" Taking back the Empire