By Robert Willmann
For your information, here are relevant court documents and a transcript of the plea hearing in the Kevin Clinesmith criminal case. The former in-house lawyer at the FBI altered a communication from the CIA to make its meaning false, and it was then used for an application to get a surveillance warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act turns the target into what is essentially a "walking wiretap".
This is the first criminal case brought publicly by John Durham, the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut and a Special Attorney to the Attorney General to investigate the issue of surveillance of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and related matters.
The agreed charging document against Clinesmith--
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/clinesmith_charging_doc.pdf
The plea agreement--
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/clinesmith_plea_agreement.pdf
The statement of the offense--
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/clinesmith_statement_offense.pdf
Transcript of the plea hearing on 19 August 2020--
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/clinesmith_transcript_8-19-2020.pdf
His sentencing hearing is set for 10 December 2020. Sometimes when a defendant is going to testify at the trial of another person, the sentencing hearing will be postponed until after the defendant testifies. There is not enough time between now and 10 December for Durham to charge another person with a crime and have a trial at which Clinesmith would testify. Either Clinesmith is not going to testify against anyone, or they trust that he will do so truthfully and completely after he is sentenced.
The judge in Clinesmith's case is James Boasberg, who is also at this time the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. He has been on the FISC since 19 May 2014 and was made the presiding judge on 1 January 2020, replacing Rosemary Collyer [1]. In the transcript on pages 4-5, Boasberg says he will recuse himself if either the government or Clinesmith want him to, but they both said they did not want him to.
After all the fraud on the FISC and false statements made to it, there is no indication that Judge Boasberg has tried to initiate a contempt of court proceeding against any person in the Department of Justice, the FBI, CIA, NSA, or anyone else for the misconduct done to the court going back several years.
[1] https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/current-membership
".....there is no indication that Judge Boasberg has tried to initiate a contempt of court proceeding against any person in the Department of Justice, the FBI, CIA, NSA, or anyone else for the misconduct done to the court going back several years."
Of course not.
Judges are among the biggest swamp creatures.
Most of them come from politically connected law firms and are firmly committed to preservation of the swamp/ruling class.
Posted by: TV | 08 September 2020 at 05:53 PM
The date is tactically after the election.
Being an old cynic it seems to me that the sentence Clinesmith gets may well be dependent on who has won.
Posted by: JohninMK | 08 September 2020 at 06:53 PM
What hasn't sunk in yet thanks to the media hyenas obstructing the public's understanding is:
FBI counterintelligence investigations are to prevent terrorist attacks against this country's people and our infrastructure and all that this implies, including of course military assets.
In other words, Carter Page was deemed to be assisting foreign agents [as was Flynn], whether of allies or enemies of USA -- deemed to be assisting them in their effort to -- in words of FBI: "including those involving weapons of mass destruction and attacks on critical infrastructures."
https://www.fbi.gov/about/faqs/what-is-the-fbis-foreign-counterintelligence-responsibility
The Evil of targeting a CIA asset, Carter Page, deeming him to be directly participating in activities with foreign agents involving weapons of mass destruction and attacks on critical infrastructures to our country -- this cannot be just whistled away.
This Evil has not been stressed at all, or worse, media hyenas and the forces perpetuating the evil against Page continue.
By FBI DOJ CIA and congressmen and congresswomen -- some of them, past and present.
Perhaps from the perspective of these who continue to bad mouth and/or minimize the evil done to Page, perhaps from their perspective, law enforcement went "easy" on him compared to Lt. Gen. Flynn.
And, thus, Page should be grateful he was never charged with crimes.
Had Page been offered and accepted a job in Trump administration, who is to say he would not have been arrested and also made "an example of" -- and to endure humiliation by Mueller and Weissmann and the Judge Emmett Nurse Ratched Sullivans of our broken judiciary and law enforcement systems?
Clinesmith was not acting alone.
-30-
Posted by: Jim | 08 September 2020 at 10:16 PM
We do now know that, as I have said since it first became public knowledge, that the Durham "investigation" is "sound and fury, signifying nothing" and will hold no one of real consequence to account.
Posted by: Bill H | 09 September 2020 at 09:56 AM