America’s Vast Fascistic Media Ignore Dem Crimes and Misdemeanors!!

He who must not be named: How Hunter Biden became a conversation-stopper

BY JONATHAN TURLEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR at the Hill:

.

Hunter Biden: The mere mention of his name seemingly triggers the vapors among cable TV hosts and their guests.

When President Trump turned to the Bidens and Ukraine in a speech, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace cut off the coverage, declaring she had to protect the listeners: “We hate to do this, really, but the president isn’t telling the truth.” When Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) tried to answer a question about the Ukraine scandal by referencing the Bidens, “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd angrily told him not to “gaslight” the nation.

The Bidens, simply, are not what well-bred people discuss in polite company, apparently. Indeed, many journalists seem to be channeling not Edward R. Murrow, the fabled CBS newscaster, but Florence Hartley, the author of “The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness” in 1872. Hartley warned her readers to “avoid, at all times, mentioning subjects or incidents that can in any way disgust your hearers.”

For news shows on MSNBC, CNN and other cable networks, nothing is more disgusting than the mention of what Hunter Biden actually was doing in Ukraine.

For those brave enough to read on, I wish to dispense with one threshold issue: I was critical of claims over the last three years of “proven” crimes and impeachable offenses in the Russia investigation. However, the first day that Trump’s Ukraine call was disclosed, I stated that — if a quid pro quo were proved — the alleged self-dealing with military aid would be an impeachable offense. My point: Raising concerns over Hunter Biden does not mean you are excusing Trump’s actions.

What is most remarkable about the paucity of coverage of Hunter Biden’s dealings is the conclusory mantra that “this has all been investigated.” Many TV hosts prefer to focus on President Trump’s dubious claim that former Vice President Joe Biden forced the firing of Ukraine’s chief prosecutor to protect his son. I, too, fail to see compelling evidence to support Trump’s charge.

There is, however, that other problem of Hunter Biden landing a windfall contract with one of Ukraine’s most corrupt figures after his father took charge of potentially billions in U.S. loans and aid for Ukraine. That is what no one seems to want to discuss.

Indeed, the Biden campaign has been remarkably open in demanding that news organizations stop airing interviews or publishing articles about the allegations. Instead of calling it “fake news” (which is virtually copyrighted by Trump), the Biden campaign calls such coverage “conspiracy theories.”

Thus, the campaign wrote to various networks, demanding that they stop airing interviews on the scandal with figures such as Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. Kate Bedingfield, deputy manager of the Biden campaign, also denounced The New York Times for publishing an op-ed by author Peter Schweizer on the controversy. The campaign apparently expected the Times and the networks to fall in line and bar others from even expressing a view.

Most recently, the campaign fired off letters to Facebook, Twitter and Google, demanding that they take down Trump ads referencing the Hunter Biden contracts. This normally would be viewed as unbridled hubris and arrogance — except that many TV news hosts are doing precisely what the campaign has demanded.

When Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) raised the issue on CNN, host Erin Burnett cut him off: “There is no evidence of Joe Biden doing anything wrong, and this is something that has been looked into, and I think — I want to make a point here — I think what we need to talk about right now is what did the president right now do or not do.” Other CNN hosts have repeated the line of “no evidence of wrongdoing” like a virtual incantation.

Whether the energy company involved with Hunter Biden was fully investigated by Ukraine is hardly a measure of culpability. Ukraine is widely considered one of the more corrupt places on Earth, where paying the children and spouses of powerful people is routine. Indeed, it is quite common in this country, too — and I’ve criticized that practice for more than 30 years in Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

Yet Ukraine was a virtual gold rush for Washington’s elite. Paul Manafort made millions working for Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s corrupt former president. Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig and his law firm tapped into Yanukovych, too. Tony Podesta, Democratic powerbroker and brother of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman, were implicated in Ukraine dealings.

Hunter Biden’s quest for Ukrainian gold took him to one of Yanukovych’s most controversial and corrupt associates, Mykola Zlochevsky, who leveraged his post as minister of ecology and natural resources to build a fortune. Before fleeing Ukraine, Zlochevsky paid Hunter Biden and several other Americans to be directors of his energy company, Burisma Holdings. Hunter Biden had no experience in the field — but he did have a notable connection to the vice president, who publicly has bragged about making clear to the Ukrainians that he alone controlled U.S. aid to the country. A stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry also was asked to serve as a director but reportedly declined and warned Hunter Biden not to do it; Biden didn’t listen. He later told The New Yorker that “the decisions that I made were the right decisions for my family and for me.”

His decisions certainly were profitable, but they were not “right” as an ethical matter for himself or his father.

Joe Biden has insisted he never spoke with his son about his foreign dealings — an incredible but categorical statement. The then-vice president flew with his son on Air Force Two on an official trip to China but suggests they never discussed his son’s deal seeking $1.5 billion in investments with the state-backed Bank of China. During the trip, Hunter reportedly introduced his father to Chinese private equity executive Jonathan Li, who was part of that deal. Yet Biden insists he was never told of any business linkage or dealings.

If true, Biden was, at a minimum, willfully blind not to ask his son about potential conflicts or controversies. But it does not appear to be true, at least in part — because Hunter Biden has said he informed his father about the Ukraine deal.

All of this should be of some interest to the media, which has exhaustively — and rightfully — pursued foreign deals by the Trump family. And there is no reason why the media cannot pursue allegations against both the Trumps and the Bidens.

That, however, would counter the narrative that there’s “nothing wrong” with Hunter Biden’s dealings and that it’s all a “lie” that’s best to ignore. As Hartley explained in 1872, good manners dictate that you “never attempt to disparage an absent friend. It is the height of meanness.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/465520-he-who-must-not-be-named-how-hunter-biden-became-a-conversation-stopper

Dems’ Chronic Liar Schiff Sells Their Derangement

On Impeachment, Democrats Have Schiff For Brains

by Derek Hunter at townhall:

|

 

All the Democrats have to do is act sane, for a little while, to have a chance at holding the House and winning the Senate and White House. It’s not a tall order – don’t be a drooling fool arguing with a mailbox and you have an even shot at winning in 2020. For Democrats, even if that bar were so low it was buried, it wouldn’t be low enough for them to clear. As if they wanted to drive home the idea that impeachment is a tumor made of Trump Derangement Syndrome, they’ve chosen to make Congressman Adam Schiff the face of it all.

Schiff is the type of Congressman who would be marginalized to the point of irrelevancy if Democrats hadn’t metastasized into the media. His lies are constant, many of them are childish in nature. But mostly they’re obvious.

Every lie that perfectly fit the liberal narrative about President Trump, even if it didn’t originate with him, has passed through Schiff’s lips. No Democrat with a press credential questions his words anymore and he won’t go anywhere near where the few honest journalists who might. Even the awarding of four Pinocchios this week by the Washington Post has impacted his ability to lie.

The four Pinocchios, by the way, were for saying he and his staff had not spoken with the so-called whistleblower when they had, and he knew it. That is a blatant lie, not a misstatement, misremembering, or oversight: a lie. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was awarded four “for repeatedly hiding the truth” that he was on the call. That “hiding” consisted of not volunteering that fact to reporters asking about the whistleblower complaint which he’d not read at the time he was asked.

Pompeo wasn’t asked if he was on the call and he gets the same verdict as Schiff. It’s good to be a Democrat.

To illustrate just how good it is to be a Democrat, Schiff was even defended by one of the “reporters” he lied to on national television.

The Daily Beast is about as much of a journalistic outfit as MSNBC, which is why the Beast’s politics editor, Sam Stein, is also on the MSNBC payroll as a Morning Joe regular. Schiff lied directly to Stein about his office’s contact with the whistleblower, saying his office has not spoken with the registered Democrat. When the truth came out, likely leaked by Schiff’s office to the New York Times to get the best possible spin on it (and it really was a gentle story considering), Stein downplayed Schiff’s lie.

“Schiff did appear to lie,” Stein tweeted. Then he accused people being bothered by Schiff’s lie of being “a hack.” The next day he wrote a slobbering kiss of a story entitled, “Trump’s plan to save his presidency: take a hatchet to Adam Schiff.” In it, Stein quotes Schiff as saying “I regret I wasn’t much more clear.” He was crystal clear, there is the truth and he knowingly said the opposite of it. Stein the referred to this lie as “nuance.”

Again, it’s good to be a Democrat.

Schiff didn’t even have to ask. Every liberal outlet snapped to his defense. Going on the word of an admitted liar, NBC declared there was zero evidence Schiff or his staff had any hand in drafting the complaint and reaching out exclusively to one of the most partisan Democrats in the Russian witch hunt was “routine.” Were journalists honest people themselves they’d be embarrassed.

Now we have reports of a possible second whistleblower considering filing their own complaint about the same non-event call. The reason they’re considering this is to obtain the legal protections that come with whistleblower status. This person is allegedly closer to the call, which means they’re one of the people who illegally leaked it to the original whistleblower. That would be an illegal leak of classified material, which makes this an attempt by this second person to protect themselves from the consequences of breaking the law to start this hoax in the first place. It also stinks of Adam Schiff-advised strategy. Can’t wait for the New York Times story on that in a couple of weeks; wonder how they’ll spin this one.

 

From his constant declarations of “proof of collusion” to his denials of any knowledge of the whistleblower before Congress was notified, Adam Schiff has a history of not only of lying, but of being caught doing so. Yet he has been chosen by Nancy Pelosi to be the face of impeachment: a dishonest man chosen to make a dishonest case to the American people. It’s like OJ Simpson being asked to give the keynote address at a marriage counseling seminar.

It’s a testament to just how weak the case is that they’ve chosen someone with a shameless willingness to tell the public that up is down, that wet is dry, to be the mastermind of impeachment. That Adam Schiff is the one coordinating this attempted coup shows just how crazy Democrats are; that they lost that argument with the mailbox. That ultimately, the Democratic Party has Schiff for brains.

Derek is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses.

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2019/10/06/on-impeachment-democrats-have-schiff-for-brains-n2554236

What Are The Fascists at HotAir Selling?

THEY ASK…”Will Trump Ever Leave The White House?”

by Thomas Edsall at  HotAir:

Before you decide that this is paranoia, let me point out that Leege is an eminently reasonable scholar, a former chair of the board of overseers of the American National Election Studies and one of the founders of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. He has been a valued source of mine for years.

“The country is armed to the hilt,” Leege wrote:

“As president, Trump has resisted any effort to curb citizen access to guns and ammo. He puts on a modest show of concern when a particularly bad gun massacre occurs but, in the end, he sees armed citizens as a significant personal asset.”

Leege went on to speculate about what might happen in the worst of circumstances:

“I think the legal profession, finance, and corporate business would resist Trump’s efforts toward a coup. They need stability to make profits. Perhaps the biggest question concerns the military. Coups are usually backstopped by colonels, not generals. Thus, major barracks could provide him with support. Probably his best strategy to keep all levels of the military loyal to him rather than to the Constitution would be to embroil us in a major war.”

Will Trump ever leave the White House?

Do the bankers at HotAir make more $$$$ reaching out for Dem’s fascist readers to gather and growl  in their leftist wigwams?   Or are they merely RINOS?  ghr

Fascistic Dem Whistleblower Turns Out to be Fascist Evil Adam Schiff of California?

The Whistleblower Executive

at HotAir…..from the Wall Street Journal:

According to the Justice Department’s analysis of the whistleblower’s complaint, there was no “crime or fraud.” But Mr. Schiff treats the whistleblower’s complaint as enough to override any claim of a President’s right to have confidential communications with foreign leaders.

The implication is that any time anyone in the bureaucracy issues a complaint against a President, Congress has the power to demand it be delivered and made public. That is already happening with the stories about Mr. Morrison. This means that no foreign leader can have the expectation that anything he tells Mr. Trump, or the next President, will be confidential.

The first leak of a Trump phone call came in his first days in office after he spoke with previous Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Then his call to Mexico’s President was leaked. The White House then decided to protect the secrecy of those calls by putting them onto a separate system, which seems justified given the leaks. Yet now this too is said to be part of the coverup.

Once again we see the irony that in the rush to impeach Mr. Trump for his real or imagined violations of political norms, his opponents have no problem violating norms themselves.

 

The whistleblower executive

But, What Was Obama’s Communist John Brennan Doing As Head of the CIA?

Trump Screwed Up the Democrat Plan by Releasing the Transcript

Sep 30, 2019,  by Rush Limbaugh

RUSH: Here’s a little theory I have. You know, they’re running the same playbook with just different people. This whistleblower complaint may as well be the Steele dossier, its version of the Steele dossier, lies, made up, bunch of anonymous sources, we don’t know who it is. And just like the Steele dossier, it was put together by opponents of Donald Trump and being made to look like it’s legitimate intelligence.

Everything about it, it’s right out of the Christine Blasey Ford playbook as well. She has this letter. She sends this letter to her member of Congress, who then gives it to Dianne Feinstein, and they supposedly hold it, they’re really worried, they don’t want embarrass Blasey Ford by going public with this, it’s so humiliating for a woman to have been abused and so forth.

But then it looked like Kavanaugh was gonna sail through, so they had to release the letter, and they embarrass Blasey Ford and they had to bring Blasey Ford up to testify. She didn’t want to do it, but they made her do it. She didn’t like flying, they put her on a private jet. You know the drill on this.

This is the same thing. This whistleblower is Christopher Steele. We don’t know who it is. He doesn’t have firsthand knowledge of anything by his own admission. We don’t know who it was that fed him whatever it is he knows. Now Democrats are going crazy like, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. We’ve got treason here, oh, my God.”

Trump blows it sky-high by releasing the transcript of the call and thereby blows the whistleblower out of the water. The moment Trump released that transcript, we knew more than the whistleblower knew. It effectively took the whistleblower out of the game.

They have to, however, keep the illusion going so they have this scam running about when the whistleblower’s gonna testify and the whistleblower’s afraid that he’s gonna get killed and the whistleblower is under federal protection, none of which happens to be true, but the news networks are not denying it. They’re not fixing their mistake because there is no mistake, it’s all part of the illusion.

Trump was not supposed to release that transcript, in their thinking. He screwed the timeline that they had planned by releasing the transcript of the call and the complaint. See, the plan, what they thought Trump would do, because they still don’t understand Trump. They still look at Trump as they look at every other president. They look at Trump, they haven’t taken the time to examine why he got elected, why his voters like him, who he is. They’ve created this caricature of the guy that’s nowhere near truthful and real and they go with that.

They thought Trump would protect the presidency. They thought Trump would be thinking of future presidents and that he would not give away that transcript, he would not reveal for the other branches, he wouldn’t give the legislative branch any of what he was doing. He would protect his executive branch power. This is what the Democrats thought any president would do. So they make this allegation, got a whistleblower. What Trump was supposed to do in their original timeline, Trump was supposed to not release the transcript.

That’s what they thought he would do. They thought he would close it down, not reveal it. They thought when that happened, he would make himself look guilty. Then he would appear to be stonewalling. And then they could say he’s already engaged in a cover-up. Remember, the cover-up is always worse than the crime. That’s what we learned from Nixon. They were attempting, in other words, to engender a cover-up and stonewall.

The whistleblower is a phony! Whatever the whistleblower claims to have been told is phony! We know what Trump talked about. It’s in the transcript, which has been released. Trump blew them up, folks. Today, instead of debating the whistleblower and is he gonna testify and is he afraid for being murdered, we were supposed to be talking about Trump stonewalling and covering up because he would have known he had been had.

All of late last week and this weekend and into today, the Democrats’ original plan was to be all over the media accusing Trump of stonewalling and covering up by not revealing or releasing the transcript of the call, thereby the Democrats could say whatever the whistleblower said was in it. The whistleblower could allege anything.

As long as Trump didn’t release the transcript, the whistleblower’s account would be all anybody had. The whistleblower makes it look bad, and then Trump doesn’t release and that looks like a cover-up and it looks like a stonewall and the Democrats think, we got him!

Trump releases the transcript. There’s nothing in it. Pencil Neck has to go lie about it from his committee chairmanship chair during an official committee hearing! He lied about what Trump said. Which to me proves what their original plan was, to lie and make up what was in that phone call without ever any evidence to contradict them because Trump wouldn’t release it.

And then this valiant whistleblower, oh, yeah, the very brave, valiant whistleblower, at great personal risk, would agree to valiantly come forward and testify, maybe by remote video hookup in shadow behind a bulletproof cage. Make sure that agents of Donald Trump and the NRA didn’t blow him up with an RPG during the middle of his testimony.

But I think the Trumpster, whether he does this by instinct or grand strategical design, I don’t know, but he was a bit too nimble for ’em. He never sticks to their script! And this is what they never learn! He never sticks to their script, like other Republicans, you can bank on Republicans sticking to the script that Democrats write for them. Because the Democrats write those scripts with decades of history and knowledge and understanding of how Republicans are gonna act, i.e., afraid, i.e., protective, i.e., guilty.

But that’s not how Donald Trump comports himself. This is kind of like if Nixon had released the tapes on day one, what would they have had? They would have had a lot less than they had with trying to make it up and that 15 minutes of silence or whatever it was. Because those tapes showed that much of what has been alleged about Watergate hadn’t actually happened. But the Democrats back then were able to manufacture another illusion: Nixon hiding it in the tapes, not releasing them, gave them all the leeway they needed to tell anybody in the world what was on those tapes and what might be.

So Trump releasing the transcript of the call takes the whistleblower out. So now here’s John Brennan begging for more whistleblowers! If you have any direct or indirect knowledge of Donald Trump being a scumbag, you can come forward. We want you to, says John Brennan, Obama’s director of the CIA.

Last Friday on this very program I told you that this plan of theirs was not going over the way they had planned. And many of you doubted me simply because it’s in such direct contravention to what you see in the media every day. The media makes it look like Trump’s gone. Just a matter of the clock and the calendar playing out, Trump’s gone, Democrats have done it, he’s finished.

And then here you hear me saying that things are falling apart on them. You think, “Is Rush just trying to keep us in a good frame of mind?” No, I’m not. I’m telling you what I really think. You can’t tell me the whistleblower — really? The whistleblower, they’re trying to keep the whistleblower alive today as somebody — I mean, his issue, his knowledge and so forth. Trump has blown that out of the water releasing the transcript. Remember John Kasich on CNN Friday — he’s a big Never Trumper, doesn’t like Trump at all, would love for Trump to be thrown out of office — he’s on with CNN. He said, “You know, you can’t impeach a guy over a phone call.”

The CNN infobabe got really mad. It was Alisyn Camerota (paraphrasing), “What do you mean, can’t impeach him over a phone call? Look what was on the phone call.” Kasich had to tell ’em there’s nothing in the phone call that’s impeachable, and he then said there’s nothing impeachable in the Mueller report. I wonder if he’ll be back? You know, Phil Mudd’s still not back on CNN.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The House vote on impeachment is not gonna be until December, and the reason is they need that much time to lie each and every day, to gin up public support for it, folks. That’s exactly why they’re waiting and that means the whole of next year will be impeachment, not issues related to the American people, so just get ready.

This massive lie, series of lies, this illusion is gonna continue every day as they try to gin up public support for impeaching Trump. That’s why they’ve pushed this vote back to December. To them, getting rid of him even before the election, that’s what they want to do to prove their power, to prove to themselves they can do it, plus they also know that they can’t beat Trump in 2020. I think that’s part of their calculus.

I mean, Al Green, Democrat from wherever, in the House of Representatives, said last week during this bogus committee hearing that “if we don’t impeach Trump, he’s gonna be reelected in 2020.” Stop and process that. How can a guy so undeserving of finishing his term be reelected if the Democrats don’t get rid of him? So, folks, you’re gonna have to steel yourselves for this, because the things I’m describing are not going to let up.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: No sooner did I say it than it came out of the Oval Office — and I don’t have time to play it for you. I said on the radio that Trump blowing up the Democrat scheme, blew it up by releasing the transcript of his call with the Ukraine president. The president today said, “I released the transcript. It was so good, Schiff had to make something up.” I’ll keep the sound bite for tomorrow, ’cause it proves cutting edge of societal evolution.

 

Trump Screwed Up the Democrat Plan by Releasing the Transcript

Exposing the True Corruption at Comey’s FBI Begins

State Department’s Red flag on Steele went to a Senior FBI man Well before FISA Warrant

BY JOHN SOLOMON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR —at The Hill:

In all Washington investigations, the essential questions become who knew it and when did they know it.

In the case of FBI informant Christopher Steele and the credibility of his now-disproven Russia collusion allegations against Donald Trump, we have some important clarity: Government officials confirm that an October 2016 email revealing that Steele met with State Department officials — a breach of protocol for an informant if it was unauthorized — was sent to an FBI counterintelligence supervisor.

Multiple sources confirm to me that the recipient of the State Department email was Special Agent Stephen Laycock, then the FBI’s section chief for Eurasian counterintelligence and now one of the bureau’s top executives as the assistant director for intelligenceunder Director Christopher Wray.

The email to Laycock from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec arrived eight days before the FBI swore to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that it had no derogatory information on Steele and used his anti-Trump dossier to secure a secret surveillance warrant to investigate Trump’s possible ties to Moscow.

Officials tell me that Laycock immediately forwarded the information he received about Steele on Oct. 13, 2016, to the FBI team leading the Trump-Russia investigation, headed by then-fellow Special Agent Peter Strzok.

Laycock was the normal point of contact for Kavalec on Eurasian counterintelligence matters, and he simply acted as a conduit to get the information to his colleagues supervising the Russia probe, the officials added.

The officials declined to say what the FBI did with the information about Steele after it reached Strzok’s team, or what the email specifically revealed. A publicly disclosed version of the email has been heavily redacted in the name of national security.

While much remains to be answered, the email exchange means FBI supervisors knew Steele had contact with State and had reason to inquire what he was saying before they sought the warrant. If they had inquired, agents would have learned Steele had admitted to Kavalec he had been leaking to the news media, had a political deadline of Election Day to get his information public and had provided demonstrably false intelligence in one case, as I reported last week.

Current and former FBI officials told me it would be a red flag for an FBI informant on a sensitive counterintelligence case such as Russia to go talking about his evidence with another federal agency without authorization.

Kevin Brock, the former FBI assistant director for intelligence, said the State Department’s email in October 2016 ordinarily should have triggered the FBI to reevaluate Steele as a source.

“This is quite important,” Brock said. “Under normal circumstances, when you get information about the conduct of your source that gives rise to questions about their reliability or truthfulness, you usually go back and reevaluate their dependability and credibility.

“It doesn’t always mean immediate discontinuation of the source. But there are policy requirements that you exercise some form of prudence, and conduct further vetting to determine whether this source can be utilized going forward. This is particularly true if the source’s information is being used in an affidavit or some other legal process.”

FBI confidential sources such as Steele sign a confidentiality agreement and undergo a training session on the do’s and don’ts of informing, an event known in intelligence parlance as an “admonishment.” FBI records show Steele underwent “admonishment” training and signed an acknowledgement on Feb. 2, 2016.

The FBI fired Steele as an informant on Nov. 1, 2016, claiming he was caught leaking to the news media. But by that time Steele’s intelligence already had been used as the main evidence to secure a Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against the Trump campaign on Oct. 21, 2016.

The public version of Kavalec’s email blacked out Laycock’s name as the recipient and listed an attachment file when it was delivered last month to the conservative group Citizens United under an open records request. The blacked-out version contained only a single visible sentence, in which Kavalec wrote the FBI supervisor: “You may already have this information but wanted to pass it on just in case.”

Officials familiar with Kavalec’s email would only describe the contents as having to do with something Steele told the State Department during an Oct. 11, 2016, visit. They said the attachment was not a copy of Steele’s now-infamous dossier or a complete set of Kavalec’s typed notes from her conversation with the informant. Rather, they say, it was information Steele shared with Kavalec that she felt needed to be transmitted to the bureau.

The officials also declined to address another mystery that has caught congressional investigators’ attention: Kavalec had two exchanges with FBI officials about Steele approximately two weeks before her meeting. The email contacts on Sept. 29-30, 2016, have been redacted, except for a single phrase “Thank you Kathy.” Congressional investigators want to know if the earlier exchange resulted in Kavalec learning in advance of Steele’s work for the FBI, or was a further tipoff to the FBI of Steele’s intention to visit State, a department where he had offered pro bono information in the past.

An FBI spokeswoman declined comment. Laycock did not respond to phone and email requests for comment. State officials declined to discuss the documents.

Republican House and Senate investigators who spent two years reviewing the Russia case say they were not provided the details of Kavalec’s contact with Steele or told about the existence of her handwritten and typed notes.

Lawmakers believe the new memos provide additional evidence Steele was unsuitable to be an informant before his dossier was used to justify a FISA warrant.

Their concern is heightened by the fact that Steele was working simultaneously as an FBI informant and as a paid researcher for Fusion GPS, the firm hired by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to find Russia dirt on Trump in hopes of defeating him in the election.

Congressional Republicans have said publicly for months that the FBI failed to adequately inform FISA judges that Steele was working for Trump’s rival and had a bias against the GOP nominee, or that his dossier was unverified and contained demonstrably false information.

Defenders of the FBI have countered that there isn’t evidence to prove the bureau knew Steele was leaking to the media or was hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC until after the FISA warrant was filed.

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 serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports.

 

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/443710-state-departments-red-flag-on-steele-went-to-a-senior-fbi-man-well-before

Will the Devious Crimes by the Fascist Obama White House Finally be Exposed to the American Public?

The walls are closing in on Obama

by Thomas Lifson  at American Thinker:

The truth of violations of law by the Obama White House, long buried, is being excavated by two private groups.

Judicial Watch has obtained testimony from a top FBI official that Hillary Clinton’s home-brew server emails were found in the White House.  This means that Barack Obama’s illegal handling of classified information contained in those emails is closer to being exposed.  This implicates him in the same felonies committed by Hillary Clinton that James Comey falsely claimed “no reasonable prosecutor” would pursue.

Judicial Watch announces:

Judicial Watch announced today that a senior FBI official admitted, in writing and under oath, that the agency found Clinton email records in the Obama White House, specifically, the Executive Office of the President. The FBI also admitted nearly 49,000 Clinton server emails were reviewed as result of a search warrant for her material on the laptop of Anthony Weiner.

E.W. (Bill) Priestap, assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, made the disclosure to Judicial Watch as part of court-ordered discovery into the Clinton email issue.

U.S District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides, as well as Priestap, to be deposed or answer writer questions under oath. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”

Priestap was asked by Judicial Watch to identify representatives of Hillary Clinton, her former staff, and government agencies from which “email repositories were obtained.” Priestap responded with the following non-exhaustive list:

• Bryan Pagliano
• Cheryl Mills
• Executive Office of the President [Emphasis added]
• Heather Samuelson
• Jacob Sullivan
• Justin Cooper
• United States Department of State
• United States Secret Service
• Williams & Connolly LLP

Priestap also testifies that 48,982 emails were reviewed as a result of a warrant for Clinton email account information from the laptop of Anthony Weiner, who had been married to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

A complete copy of Priestap’s interrogatory responses is available here. Priestap, is serving as assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division and helped oversee both the Clinton email and the 2016 presidential campaign investigations. Priestap testified in a separate lawsuit that Clinton was the subject of a grand jury investigation related to her BlackBerry email accounts.

“This astonishing confirmation, made under oath by the FBI, shows that the Obama FBI had to go to President Obama’s White House office to find emails that Hillary Clinton tried to destroy or hide from the American people.” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “No wonder Hillary Clinton has thus far skated – Barack Obama is implicated in her email scheme.”

Priestap was ordered to answer the written questions by United States District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth when he ruled in January that Judicial Watch’s discovery could begin in Hillary Clinton’s email scandal. This action came in Judicial Watch’s July 2014 FOIA lawsuit for:

Copies of any updates and/or talking points given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency concerning, regarding, or related to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Any and all records or communications concerning, regarding, or relating to talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency.

Judicial Watch’s discovery seeks answers to:

– Whether Clinton intentionally attempted to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by using a non-government email system;

– whether the State Department’s efforts to settle this case beginning in late 2014 amounted to bad faith; and

– whether the State Department adequately searched for records responsive to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request.

Judicial Watch continues its invaluable to service to the Republic (donate here — please, J.W. gets more bang for the buck than other political organizations relying on donations) by pursuing Freedom of Information Act lawsuits where it matters.

A second scandal threat for the Obama administration is also slowly being excavated.  Proof is piling up that White House operatives exploited the NSA’s surveillance of all electronic communications in the United States to monitor political opponents.  This very long and detailed post by Sundance of Conservative Tree House defies any possibility of concise summary.  But by putting together information from the Mueller Report with a ruling by FISA Court Judge Rosemary Collyer, Sundance teases out the clear implications.  This requires time and focus to follow but is rewarded by a deeper understanding of how the Obama administration actually did spy on its opponents, not just on the Trump campaign.

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/the_walls_are_closing_in_on_obama.html

Twit ANTI-AMERICAN McCabe, LEAD TRAITOR AT THE OBAMA FBI HOUSE!?!

“THE THREAT?”

Every Day Is a New Low in Trump’s White House

The president steps over bright ethical and moral lines wherever he encounters them. Everyone in America saw it when he fired my boss. But I saw it firsthand time and time again.

by ANDREW G. MCCABE at the Atlantic

 

Editor’s Note: Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, was named acting director of the bureau after President Donald Trump fired his boss, Director James Comey, on May 9, 2017. McCabe would himself be fired less than a year later. In an exclusive adaptation from his book, The Threat, to be published next week by St. Martin’s Press, McCabe describes his encounters with President Trump and the steps taken to protect the FBI’s investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 elections—and into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russian actors.

On Wednesday, May 10, 2017, my first full day on the job as acting director of the FBI, I sat down with senior staff involved in the Russia case—the investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. As the meeting began, my secretary relayed a message that the White House was calling. The president himself was on the line. I had spoken with him the night before, in the Oval Office, when he told me he had fired James Comey.

A call like this was highly unusual. Presidents do not, typically, call FBI directors. There should be no direct contact between the president and the director, except for national-security purposes. The reason is simple. Investigations and prosecutions need to be pursued without a hint of suspicion that someone who wields power has put a thumb on the scale.The Russia team was in my office. I took the call on an unclassified line. That was another strange thing—the president was calling on a phone that was not secure. The voice on the other end said, It’s Don Trump calling. I said, Hello, Mr. President, how are you? Apart from my surprise that he was calling at all, I was surprised that he referred to himself as “Don.”The president said, I’m good. You know—boy, it’s incredible, it’s such a great thing, people are really happy about the fact that the director’s gone, and it’s just remarkable what people are saying. Have you seen that? Are you seeing that, too?

He went on: I received hundreds of messages from FBI people—how happy they are that I fired him. There are people saying things on the media, have you seen that? What’s it like there in the building.This is what it was like: You could go to any floor and you would see small groups gathering in hallways, some people even crying. The overwhelming majority liked and admired Director Comey—his personal style, the integrity of his conduct. Now we were laboring under the same dank, gray shadow that had been creeping over Washington during the few months Donald Trump had been in office.

I didn’t feel like I could say any of that to the president on the phone. I’m not sure I would have wanted to say it to him in person, either—or that he would have cared. I told him that people here were very surprised, but that we were trying to get back to work.

The president said he thought most people in the FBI voted for him—he thought 80 percent. He asked me again, as he had in his office, if I knew that Comey had told him three times that he was not under investigation. Then he got to the reason for his call. He said, I really want to come over there. I want to come to the FBI. I want to show all my FBI people how much I love them, so I think maybe it would be good for me to come over and speak to everybody, like tomorrow or the next day.

That sounded to me like one of the worst possible things that could happen. He was the boss, and had every right to come, but I hoped the idea would dissipate on its own. He said, Why don’t you come down here and talk to me about that later?

After we agreed on a time to meet, the president began to talk about how upset he was that Comey had flown home on his government plane from Los Angeles—Comey had been giving a speech there when he learned he was fired. The president wanted to know how that had happened.

I told him that bureau lawyers had assured me there was no legal issue with Comey coming home on the plane. I decided that he should do so. The existing threat assessment indicated he was still at risk, so he needed a protection detail. Since the members of the protection detail would all be coming home, it made sense to bring everybody back on the same plane they had used to fly out there. It was coming back anyway. The president flew off the handle: That’s not right! I don’t approve of that! That’s wrong! He reiterated his point five or seven times.

I said, I’m sorry that you disagree, sir. But it was my decision, and that’s how I decided. The president said, I want you to look into that! I thought to myself: What am I going to look into? I just told you I made that decision.

The ranting against Comey spiraled. I waited until he had talked himself out.

Toward the end of the conversation, the president brought up the subject of my wife. Jill had run unsuccessfully for the Virginia state Senate back in 2015, and the president had said false and malicious things about her during his campaign in order to tarnish the FBI. He said, How is your wife? I said, She’s fine. He said, When she lost her election, that must have been very tough to lose. How did she handle losing? Is it tough to lose?

I replied, I guess it’s tough to lose anything. But she’s rededicated herself to her career and her job and taking care of kids in the emergency room. That’s what she does.

He replied in a tone that sounded like a sneer. He said, “Yeah, that must’ve been really tough. To lose. To be a loser.”

I wrote a memo about this conversation that very day. I wrote memos about my interactions with President Trump for the same reason that Comey did: to have a contemporaneous record of conversations with a person who cannot be trusted.

People do not appreciate how far we have fallen from normal standards of presidential accountability. Today we have a president who is willing not only to comment prejudicially on criminal prosecutions but to comment on ones that potentially affect him. He does both of these things almost daily. He is not just sounding a dog whistle. He is lobbying for a result. The president has stepped over bright ethical and moral lines wherever he has encountered them. Every day brings a new low, with the president exposing himself as a deliberate liar who will say whatever he pleases to get whatever he wants. If he were “on the box” at Quantico, he would break the machine.

---

After Comey’s firing, the core of my concern had to do with what might happen to the Russia case if I were to be removed. I convened a series of meetings about that investigation—including the one interrupted by the call from the president—in which I directed an overall review of every aspect. Was the work on solid ground? Were there individuals on whom we should consider opening new cases? I wanted to protect the Russia investigation in such a way that whoever came after me could not just make it go away.

As requested, I went back to the White House that afternoon. The scene was almost identical to the one I had walked into the previous night. Trump was behind the Resolute desk. He lifted one arm and jutted it out, fingers splayed, directing me to take a seat in one of the little wooden chairs in front of him. Reince Priebus, then the chief of staff, and Don McGahn, then the White House counsel, were in the other chairs.

The president launched back into his speech about what a great decision it was to fire Jim Comey, how wonderful it was that the director was gone, because so many people did not like Comey, even hated him—the president actually used the word hate.

Eventually he changed the subject. He said that he wanted to come to FBI headquarters to see people and excite them and show them how much he loves the FBI. He pressed me to answer whether I thought it was a good idea. I said it was always a good idea to visit. I was trying to take some of the immediacy out of his proposal—to communicate that the door was always open, so that he wouldn’t feel he had to crash through it right away. I knew what a disaster it could turn out to be if he came to the Hoover Building in the near future. He pressed further, asking specifically, Do you think it would be a good idea for me to come down now? I said, Sure.

He looked at Don McGahn. The president said, Don, what do you think? Do you think I should go down to the FBI and speak to the people?

McGahn was sitting in one of the wooden chairs to my right. Making eye contact with Trump, he said, in a very pat and very prepared way, If the acting director of the FBI is telling you he thinks it is a good idea for you to come visit the FBI, then you should do it.

Then McGahn turned and looked at me. And Trump looked at me and asked, Is that what you’re telling me? Do you think it is a good idea?

It was a bizarre performance. I said it would be fine. I had no real choice. This was not worth the ultimate sacrifice.

In this moment, I felt the way I’d felt in 1998, in a case involving the Russian Mafia, when I sent a man I’ll call Big Felix in to meet with a Mafia boss named Dimitri Gufield. The same kind of thing was happening here, in the Oval Office. Dimitri had wanted Felix to endorse his protection scheme. This is a dangerous business, and it’s a bad neighborhood, and you know, if you want, I can protect you from that. If you want my protection. I can protect you. Do you want my protection? The president and his men were trying to work me the way a criminal brigade would operate.

For whatever reason, the visit to the FBI never happened.

---

One of the regularly scheduled meetings with the attorney general, deputy attorney general, and some of their staff came two days later, on Friday, May 12. After the meeting, I asked the deputy, Rod Rosenstein, if he could stay behind. In part I wanted to talk with him about ground rules governing the separate investigations of the Russia case by the FBI and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Rosenstein had oversight because the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had had to recuse himself owing to his own interactions with Russians during the campaign. But my main message was this: I need you to protect the process.

After speaking to these points, Rod shifted his gaze. His eyes were focused on a point in space a few yards beyond and behind, toward the door. He started talking about the firing of Jim Comey. He was obviously upset. He said he was shocked that the White House was making it look as if Jim’s firing had been his idea. He was grasping for a way to describe the nature of his situation. One remark stands out. He said, There’s no one that I can talk to about this. There’s no one here that I can trust.

He asked for my thoughts about whether we needed a special counsel to oversee the Russia case. I said I thought it would help the investigation’s credibility. Later that day, I went to see Rosenstein again. This is the gist of what I said: I feel strongly that the investigation would be best served by having a special counsel. I’ve been thinking about the Clinton email case and how we got twisted in knots over how to announce a result that did not include bringing charges against anyone. Had we appointed a special counsel in the Clinton case, we might not be in the present situation. Unless or until you make the decision to appoint a special counsel, the FBI will be subjected to withering criticism that could destroy the credibility of both the Justice Department and the FBI.

Rosenstein was very engaged. He was not yet convinced. I brought the matter up with him again after the weekend. On Wednesday, we would be briefing the Hill. As I saw it, by informing Congress of the bureau’s actions, we would be drawing an indelible line around the cases we had opened—the four cases known publicly and any others that may have gone forward. The four known publicly were those of Carter Page, a foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign and a man with many Russian ties; George Papadopoulos, another foreign-policy adviser, who had told a foreign diplomat that the Russians had offered to help Trump’s campaign by providing information on Hillary Clinton; Michael Flynn, for a brief period the president’s national security adviser, who had pursued multiple high-level contacts with the Russian government; and Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, who had shady business dealings with Ukrainians and Russians.

On the afternoon of May 17, Rosenstein and I sat at the end of a long conference table in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol. We were there to brief the so-called Gang of Eight—the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate and the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Rosenstein had, I knew, made a decision to appoint a special counsel in the Russia case. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senator from New York, was to our right. Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky and the Senate majority leader, was to our left. The mood in the room was sober.

After reminding the committee of how the investigation began, I told them of additional steps we had taken. Then Rod took over and announced that he had appointed a special counsel to pursue the Russia investigation, and that the special counsel was Robert Mueller. The Gang of Eight had questions. What was the scope of the inquiry? Who would oversee the special counsel? How could the special counsel get fired? Rod answered every question. Then it was over.

When I came out of the Capitol, it felt like crossing a finish line. If I got nothing else done as acting director, I had done the one thing I needed to do.

---

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/02/andrew-mccabe-fbi-book-excerpt-the-threat/582748/

LONG TIME OBAMA MAN, COMMUNIST, JOHN BRENNAN CIA WAS A CHRONIC LIAR IN AND OUT OF OFFICE

BRENNAN BRAYS AGAIN

by Scott Johnson at PowerLine:

Obama administration CIA Director John Brennan lied notoriously and repeatedly to Congress, yet he remains at large. He is not under indictment. The FBI has not sent a heavily armed battalion to raid his home and take him into custody in front of his friends at CNN.

Is there any dispute about Brennan’s lies? I don’t think so. Looking around for a summary of Brennan’s lies, I find Victor Davis Hanson’s useful compilation in the June 2018 NR post “A reply to Ronald Radosh’s smear.” The compilation purports only to be illustrative, not exhaustive.

Brennan could certainly have been included in Rep. Devin Nunes’s list of those who should be charged with lying to Congress along with Roger Stone if lying to Congress is now to be treated as a serious offense (see “They need to start with themselves”). Brennan seems to have reacted with the consciousness of guilt in his wild response to President Trump’s query “what about the lying done by Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Lisa Page & lover, Baker and soooo many others?”

Forget the whataboutism. It’s a good question. It makes us pause to ask yet again what is happening here. Twitchy collects some good responses on Twitter in “Mr. Projection!”

Brennan’s braying represents a classic case of non-denial denial. What a lying partisan hack Obama put in charge of the CIA. And let me add, incidentally, that Brennan’s hackery probably does not even constitute his worst quality.

John O. Brennan

✔@JohnBrennan

Your cabal of unprincipled, unethical, dishonest, and sycophantic cronies is being methodically brought to justice. We all know where this trail leads. If your utter incompetence is not enough to run you out of office, your increasingly obvious political corruption surely will.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

If Roger Stone was indicted for lying to Congress, what about the lying done by Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Lisa Page & lover, Baker and soooo many others? What about Hillary to FBI and her 33,000 deleted Emails? What about Lisa & Peter’s deleted texts & Wiener’s laptop? Much more!

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/brennan-brays-again.php

Will GOP EVER Expose Crooked Hillary’s Russian Plot and Obama’s FBI & DOJ Crimes?

House Republicans Ask Trump to Declassify ‘Damning’ Obama DOJ Emails

by Debra Heine  at  pjmedia:

 

A long classified email chain from October 2016 reveals that a large group of Obama Justice Department officials — including James Comey — was aware that there was highly misleading information in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign, John Solomon of The Hill reported Wednesday.

According to Solomon’s sources, the documents “may provide the most damning evidence to date” of potential FISA abuses.

The emails show that some in the intelligence community — possibly the NSA — had problems with the quality of the intelligence in the Steele dossier, which was used to obtain the surveillance warrant.

The emails also reveal that the officials knew that British spy Christopher Steele had talked to Yahoo News about his findings, as some on the email chain had expressed concerns about that.

Steele was hired by opposition research firm Fusion GPS (funded by Hillary Clinton and the DNC) to put together a (now discredited) dossier on candidate Donald Trump.

In January 2018, Senator Charles Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, referred Steele to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation after he and Senator Lindsey Graham identified potential false statements Steele had made to the FBI.

According to the senators, the evidence suggested that either “Steele lied to the FBI about his contacts with the media (a violation of 18 USC 1001) — or the FBI misrepresented Steele’s statements.”

To secure the FISA warrant, the FBI used the Yahoo News story (based on Steele’s sketchy dossier) as independent corroboration for the dossier. It was a classic case of circular intelligence reporting, a fraudulent method of “confirming intelligence.”

“If the FBI knew of his media contacts and the concerns about the reliability of his dossier before seeking the warrant, it would constitute a serious breach of FISA regulations and the trust that the FISA court places in the FBI,” said Solomon.

“That’s because the FBI has an obligation to certify to the court before it approves FISA warrants that its evidence is verified, and to alert the judges to any flaws in its evidence or information that suggest the target might be innocent,” he explained.

The FBI fired Steele on Nov. 1, 2016, because of his unauthorized contacts with the news media, but only after they’d used his dirty dossier to secure the warrant.

… the FBI withheld from the American public and Congress, until months later, that Steele had been paid to find his dirt on Trump by a firm doing political opposition research for the Democratic Party and for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and that Steele himself harbored hatred for Trump.

Right before Thanksgiving, House Republicans quietly added the damning email chain to the list of documents they’d like President Trump to declassify. According to The Hill, the DOJ kept the information from the majority of members of Congress for more than two years.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/house-republicans-ask-trump-to-declassify-damning-obama-doj-emails/