Sic Semper Tyrannis

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith gets probation after making a false statement in the FISA surveillance warrant process

By Robert Willmann

The pretense and bogus public face that an even-handed application of law exists in the federal legal system showed itself again today as former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith received 12 months probation and a $100 special assessment after pleading guilty to making a false statement during the process for the third renewal of a surveillance warrant on Carter Page, PhD.  The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows the most intrusive surveillance of a person and his or her communications, and can also include physical searches and the production of business records and other tangible things.  Clinesmith pleaded guilty on 19 August 2020, and court records and a transcript of the plea hearing were made available here on SST [1]. 

This is the only criminal case filed so far by Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was directed by Attorney General William Barr on 18 May 2019 to conduct a preliminary review, which turned into a criminal investigation, about matters related to the 2016 presidential campaign and governmental conduct.   Part of what Durham is to look into is the FBI's "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation, which was officially opened in 2016 and which allegedly was about the Trump campaign and the Russian government.  Clinesmith's criminal conduct happened as part of that FBI activity.  Barr made Durham a "special counsel" under Justice Department procedures on 1 December 2020 that would give Durham some degree of independence as the Biden administration moved in.

The written order of conviction and sentencing is not yet in the court clerk's file, with the only notation being on the clerk's docket sheet about the sentencing on 29 January 2021.  One other bit of activity occurred in the case, when Carter Page filed a request under the Crime Victims' Rights Act to be acknowledged as a crime victim under that law, since he was subject to surveillance based on unlawful applications for orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) [2].  He also filed a supplement to that request saying that with the current posture of the case, it would not be workable to establish a dollar amount of restitution he should receive [3].  He was the target of four consecutive surveillance warrants, an original one which was then renewed three times.  Each one was for 90 days, which means the surveillance of him went on for an entire year.  

Michael Flynn receives a presidential pardon

By Robert Willmann

According to the Twitter webpage of president Trump, he has issued a full pardon to Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.) today--

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1331706255212228608

Emmet Sullivan, the judge presiding over the case, continues to engage in disgraceful conduct unbecoming of any type of judge, including by intentionally delaying a decision on the motion of the Department of Justice to dismiss the prosecution with prejudice.  A dismissal with prejudice means the case cannot be re-filed.

Attorney Sidney Powell is working on the problem of voting fraud through electronic voting and counting machines, which is a very time-consuming and tedious task.  I have been thinking that Flynn would have to file two more original mandamus actions in the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  The first one would be for the court to force Sullivan to quickly issue a written decision on the motion to dismiss by a date and time certain.  Then, after Sullivan would almost certainly deny the motion to dismiss, even though current law requires it to be dismissed, Flynn would file an additional mandamus action for the court of appeals to order Sullivan to grant the motion and dismiss the case.

However, since Powell is preparing legal action about election fraud issues, and one of the other lawyers representing Flynn is working on election problems in Nevada, they would not have time to bring two mandamus actions in the D.C. Circuit before 20 January 2021.  The risk is too uncertain about the status of the Justice Department and what will happen in January when Congress meets regarding the election results from the Electoral College and an inauguration is to take place.  Although Flynn would ultimately succeed in getting his case dismissed -- if he was not facing a tight time frame -- the unpredictability of the situation makes a pardon a practical result.

 

Turns Out the FBI Has Been Hiding More Seth Rich Documents by Larry Johnson

While the law enforcement and intelligence community, along with the mainstream media, has been pushing the meme that there is no basis to believe that Seth Rich, as claimed by multiple independent sources, had contact with Julian Assange’s Wikileaks, the evidence suggests otherwise and it turns out the FBI has been covering up more relevant documents.

The first hint of the coverup came from David Hardy, an FBI Senior official, who affirmed in a 2017 affidavit that there were no responsive records. Hardy is the Section Chief of the Record/Information Dissemination Section (“RIDS”), Information Management Division (“IMD”), Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), in Winchester, Virginia. Here are the relevant portions of his first affidavit:

(19) CRS Search and Results. In response to Plaintiff’s request dated September 1, 2017, RIDS conducted an index search of the CRS for responsive main and reference file records employing the UNI application of ACS. The FBI searched the subject’s name, “Seth Conrad Rich,” in order to identify files responsive to Plaintiff’s request and subject to the FOIA. The FBI’s searches included a three-way phonetic breakdown5 of the subject’s name. These searches located no main or reference records responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA request.

(9) By letter executed on November 9, 2017, OIP advised Plaintiff it affirmed the FBI’s determination. OIP further advised Plaintiff that to the extent his request sought access to records that would either confirm or deny an individual’s placement on any government watch list, the FBI properly refused to confirm or deny the existence of any such records because their existence is protected from disclosure pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(E). . .

David Hardy either was lying or dangerously incompetent. The FBI did have documents–emails to be specific. The FBI’s habit of stonewalling or denying that it has documents, in this case documents related to Seth Rich, is not unique to this case. Just ask Carter Page or General Michael Flynn.

Discredited Intel “Professionals” Push Lie About Russian Interference by Larry C Johnson

A letter published today (Monday, October 19, 2020) with the signatures of 50 "former intelligence" officials is a self-inflicted wound of comedy and absurdity wrapped in the specious claim of special expertise. Thank God none of these clowns still hold a position anywhere in the national security bureaucracy. Their inability to grasp basic facts and engage in simple reasoning perhaps explains why the Obama team abandoned American military and intelligence officials at Benghazi in September 2012 and why they considered ISIS as "a junior varsity" team.

Basically, this group of mediocrities are sure that the Hunter Biden emails are part of some nasty Rooskie plot:

. . . we write to say that the arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.

There is only one teeny, tiny problem. They have no facts to back up their deluded judgment, supposedly based on years of experience. Just goes to show that experience without real intelligence is no substitute for competence.

Let us start with the facts that are documented:

A Bidengate summary from the Daily Mail

"Documents appear to show Hunter Biden's signature on $85 receipt for repair of laptops left at Delaware store at center of email scandal - while other paperwork reveals FBI's contact with owner

• A receipt from The Mac Shop in Wilmington, Delaware appears to show Hunter Biden's signature for work on three laptops for $85
• It has not been verified yet if that signature is actually Biden's 
• FBI paperwork also shows that shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac received a subpoena to testify before the US District Court in Delaware in December 2019
• Last week the New York Post published a report saying e-mails obtained from the laptop show Joe Biden allegedly was in on his son Hunter's business deals
• House Intel chair Adam Schiff said the 'smear' on Biden 'comes from the Kremlin' 
• DNI John Ratcliffe said the laptop is not a Russian disinformation campaign 
• Biden's campaign says the Democratic nominee engaged in no wrongdoing "

-------------

Well, pilgrims, he sure looks comfy in the tub.  I still wonder who took the pictures.  Was it the gal in California who later sued him over paternity of her child/fetus, whatever. 

Did he take the pictures himself?  Interestingly, the Bidens have not denied the implicit charge of corruption, bribery, etc., etc. that is the mass of incriminating e-mail traffic on the hard drive.  And then, there are the disgusting sex videos.  Does anyone think that these were faked?

SWMBO says that the Bidens have set a new standard for depraved and addled stupidity.  As usual, she is right.  pl

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8857893/Documents-Hunter-Bidens-signature-Delaware-computer-repair-shop-receipt.html

Yes, The Hunter Biden Emails Are Authentic by Larry C Johnson

This is the story of an American patriot, an honorable man, John Paul Mac Isaac, who tried to do the right thing and is now being unfairly and maliciously slandered as an agent of foreign intelligence, specifically Russia. He is not an agent or spy for anyone. He is his own man. How do I know? I have known his dad for more than 20 years. I've known John Paul's dad as "Mac." Mac is a decorated Vietnam Veteran, who flew gunships in Vietnam. And he continued his military service with an impeccable record until he retired as an Air Force Colonel. The crews of those gunships have an annual reunion and Mac usually takes John Paul along, who volunteers his computer and video skills to record and compile the stories of those brave men who served their country in a difficult war.

This story is very simple--Hunter Biden dropped off three computers with liquid damage at a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware on April 12, 2019. The owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, examined the three and determined that one was beyond recovery, one was okay and the data on the hard drive of the third could be recovered. Hunter signed the service ticket and John Paul Mac Isaac repaired the hard drive and down loaded the data. During this process he saw some disturbing images and a number of emails that concerned Ukraine, Burisma, China and other issues. With the work completed, Mr. Mac Isaac prepared an invoice, sent it to Hunter Biden and notified him that the computer was ready to be retrieved. Hunter did not respond. In the ensuing four months (May, June, July and August), Mr. Mac Isaac made repeated efforts to contact Hunter Biden. Biden never answered and never responded. More importantly, Biden stiffed John Paul Mac Issac--i.e., he did not pay the bill.

When the manufactured Ukraine crisis surfaced in August 2019, John Paul realized he was sitting on radioactive material that might be relevant to the investigation. After conferring with his father, Mac and John Paul decided that Mac would take the information to the FBI office in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mac walked into the Albuquerque FBI office and spoke with an agent who refused to give his name. Mac explained the material he had, but was rebuffed by the FBI. He was told basically, get lost. This was mid-September 2019.

Two months passed and then, out of the blue, the FBI contacted John Paul Mac Isaac. Two FBI agents from the Wilmington FBI office--Joshua Williams and Mike Dzielak--came to John Paul's business. He offered immediately to give them the hard drive, no strings attached. Agents Williams and Dzielak declined to take the device.

Jim Comey Ignored State Department Whistleblower on HIllary’s Crimes With Classified Material by Larry C Johnson

One year before Jim Comey was immersed in his plot to overthrow Donald Trump, the duly elected President of the United States, a brave Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State came forward with firsthand information of Hillary Clinton’s rampant abuse of Classified material. The man, a senior State Department diplomat who had served as the acting Ambassador (Chargé d’Affaires) in the Asia Pacific region under President Clinton, also was a veteran of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

The letter from this whistleblower is stunning and I am going to present it in total. It is dated 10 January 2016. You can read it for yourself here starting at page 121. I became aware of this letter thanks to the assiduous research and writings of Charles Ortel (he wrote about this recently at the American Thinker).

The letter explains in great detail how Hillary and her cabal of sychophants used an unclassified system to disseminate Top Secret and Secret intelligence. But the Senior Diplomat did not stop there. He explained carefully and specifically who the FBI needed to interview and the questions they needed to ask. You do not need to take my word for it. You can read the letter for yourself.

Today is the filing deadline for papers on the request to dismiss the Michael Flynn case

By Robert Willmann

After the court hearing last week Tuesday, 29 September 2020, on the request by the Department of Justice to dismiss the criminal case against Michael Flynn, Judge Emmet Sullivan issued an order--

"09/29/2020 Minute Order as to Michael T. Flynn. In view of the discussion at today's motion hearing, the government, Mr. Flynn, and the Court-appointed amicus curiae shall file any additional motions or supplemental materials regarding [docket number] 198 the government's motion to dismiss the criminal information against Mr. Flynn by no later than October 7, 2020. Signed by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on 9/29/2020. (lcegs3) (Entered: 09/29/2020)".

What is interesting is that Sullivan has invited both "additional motions" and "supplemental materials" from Flynn, the Justice Department (DOJ), and the judge's "friend of the court", John Gleeson.  The term "supplemental materials" implies that more documentary evidence may be filed with the court clerk, and does not seem to be limited to written arguments.  However, Gleeson is not representing a party in the case, and is an "amicus curiae" for the limited purpose of arguing against the DOJ's motion to dismiss.  He is not authorized to introduce additional evidence into the proceeding about dismissal.

Flynn's lawyers might file a formal motion to recuse or disqualify Judge Sullivan from presiding over the case, which could be seen as an additional motion related to the request to dismiss the case.

Adding to the situation is a statement made by president Donald Trump yesterday evening on the Internet Twitter website [1]--

"I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!"

Whether Trump's tantalizingly broad "authorization" for declassification will result in anything being declassified as an initial matter, and then with no redactions, and then publicly released remains to be seen.  

The DOJ can do its own release of documents relevant to Flynn by filing them in his case, disclosing material to him, or both. 

[1]  https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1313640512025513984

 

Comey's defense is that he was Incompetent AND Negligent

"Former FBI Director James Comey makes a long-awaited appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday to answer questions regarding the FBI’s actions in the early stages of the Russia investigation.

The committee, under Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has long scrutinized the FBI's decisionmaking in the early days of the probe, including inaccuracies in court filings used to obtain warrants to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the FBI’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier, which had been debunked by Steele’s own sub-source during an FBI interview.

Comey, for his part, has claimed his bureau "did not intentionally commit wrongdoing" but did admit "real sloppiness" from some FBI employees."  Foxnews

-----------

I sacrificed for you all and watched two hours of this hearing this morning while still suffering from the effects of too much drink needed last night to get me through the awfulness of the debate.  It was like two little boys screaming at each other in the school yard.  "My daddy can beat up your daddy!"  etc.  SWMBO thinks Trump may have lost the election last night because women will react very badly to Trump acting out what they try to train their children not to do.  I dunno.

But at 1000 I dutifully tuned my "record player" (joe reference) to CSPAN-3.  Comey claims that he knew little of "Crossfire Hurricane," the FBI run clandestine campaign against Trump and all his vassals and works.  This, in spite of his having been Director of the FBI while it was carried out.  "I knew nussing, nussing" was his basic response to just about every question.  Graham, the chairman of the judiciary committee got lathered up about that and laughed at the idea, laughed openly.  He and Comey used to be pals.  When Graham was not busy with John McCain, he may have been fascinated by Comey's Brobdignagian physique.  pl

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/live-updates-james-comey-testifies-russia-investigation-fbi

I Told You Long Ago, Hillary's Team Helped Fabricate the Trump Russia Collusion Lie by Larry C Johnson

I hope you are sitting down and prepared to go into shock. Breaking news--"“In late July 2016, US intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against US Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the DNC." If you are not a regular reader of SST, yes, you will be shocked. But for you old timers, you already knew this.

Yes. I am taking another well earned victory lap. I was the first to write about this. You can find my piece here (published on 6 May 2019). Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe gave Senator Lindsey Graham a letter today detailing recently declassified intelligence outlining the Clinton Campaign's effort to manufacture a collusion narrative featuring Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Here's the letter:

Ratcliffe's letter, which is based on information obtained by the CIA, states that Hillary decided on 26 July 2016 to launch the Russia/Trump strategem. But the CIA was mistaken. The Clinton effort started in 2015--December 2015 to be precise.

Michael Flynn update with additional court documents

By Robert Willmann

The hearing in federal district court in Washington D.C. on the government's request to dismiss the criminal case against Michael Flynn is underway.  In a comment last night, Jim noted that more documents had been filed with the court clerk yesterday. 

Flynn filed a fourth supplement in support of agreed dismissal.  Attached were five pages of notes, heavily redacted.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) files copies of its cover letters for disclosures made to Flynn's attorneys.  The letter for these notes said they were of "three ODAG attorneys, numbered 23559-23562".  ODAG may mean the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, who is the number two person at the DOJ.  The numbers refer to those stamped at the bottom of each page which is done to keep track of documents that are provided to another party, often when disclosed during a lawsuit or other formal proceeding.  The number stamps on these notes include DOJSCO, which probably means the special counsel's office of the Robert Mueller group.  The pages of notes actually start with number 23558, and so the DOJ may have made an error about the number range in its cover letter.  Fred found a link to that filing--

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592.251.0_1.pdf

Another DOJ cover letter released two documents about national security letters (NSL).  One is an e-mail from Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI attorney who pled guilty to altering a communication from the CIA in connection with an application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a surveillance warrant.  The warrant was said to be directed at Carter Page [1].  The e-mail is completely blacked out, except for his name, the date, "crossfire hurricane", "no further NSLs are authorized for Razor", and boilerplate at the bottom.  The second document is a summary of NSLs issued in the Crossfire Razor investigation, which targeted Gen. Michael Flynn.  These documents were filed by Flynn as a fifth supplement in support of agreed dismissal--

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelflynn_clinesmith_nsl_email.pdf

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelflynn_summary_nsl_razor.pdf

Now we come to the letter filed by the attorney for former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who, along with his paramour, former FBI attorney Lisa Page, were up to their eyeballs in this squalid manipulation.

Reading the appellate en banc opinion as Judge Sullivan readies a hearing in the Michael Flynn case

By Robert Willmann

The 10 judges on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals eligible to rehear a three-judge panel's decision in favor of Michael Flynn's petition for a writ of mandamus cancelled the panel's prior ruling with an 8-2 vote.   Flynn's attorneys have decided they will not ask the U.S. Supreme Court whether it will agree to hear that mandamus action.  In the trial court, Judge Emmet Sullivan has set a hearing for oral argument on the request by the Department of Justice to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn.  The hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, 29 September 2020, at 11:00 a.m. eastern time. 

All of the judges eligible on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to participate in a rehearing of the mandamus action did so as a group called "en banc".  Eight judges decided to deny all the relief requested by Flynn, with seven of them agreeing on a majority opinion, plus one who filed a concurring opinion.  Two judges wrote dissenting opinions.  The primary author of the majority opinion was not revealed, as the generic term "per curiam" was used.  The decision and opinions were handed down on 31 August 2020, and were made available here on SST that day [1].

Reading past the language on the surface of the en banc majority opinion makes it clear as to what was going on.  The opinion is carefully designed to minimize the chances that the supreme court would decide to hear the mandamus case at this stage of the proceedings.  Neither the law applicable to a federal government's motion to dismiss under Rule of Criminal Procedure 48(a), nor the facts of Flynn's case in the trial court, were discussed at all.  Not one time.  Nothing.  Only a passing reference was made to harms to Flynn and the Department of Justice (DOJ) if a mandamus order was not issued, but those harms were waved away as either being speculative or no big deal.  A real issue exists about whether Judge Sullivan was disqualified or should be recused from presiding over the case.  However, the supreme court would probably not think that the issue by itself would justify getting involved in the case.  The 8-judge majority smiled and said that the mandamus action was premature, since Sullivan had not yet ruled on the motion to dismiss.  That is a position that has a certain logic to it, if what has occurred in the trial court is ignored.  They also minimized and blew by the evidence of Sullivan's partiality and bias, and refused to remove him as the judge presiding.  And they allowed John Gleeson to continue as an outside lawyer and "friend of the court", to argue against dismissing the case.

You can now see why Sidney Powell, and the other two lawyers representing Flynn, decided not to approach the supreme court at this time. The en banc majority opinion was sanitized to the extent that an analysis of the government's motion to dismiss, and the circumstances in which a judge might grant or deny it, was nowhere to be found.

Bombshell–FBI Special Agent Barnett Blows the lid Off of the Coup Against Trump by Larry C Johnson

Last week (September 17, 2020) the investigators for US Attorney for the Eastern District, Jeffrey B. Jensen, who is conducting an ongoing review of the FBI investigation that led to charges in this case of General Michael Flynn, interviewed FBI Special Agent William Barnett, who handled the counterintelligence investigation of Mr. Flynn, and was subsequently assigned to the Special Counsel’s Office investigating Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. Barnett’s testimony is devastating for Jim Comey, Andy McCabe and Peter Strzok and a host of other FBI collaborators keen on destroying Donald Trump.

Barnett’s testimony is succinct. Here are the key snippets from his sworn testimony:

When It Comes To Bribery, Russian Collusion and Prostitution the Democrats and Media Ignore Hunter Biden’s Complicity by Larry C Johnson

Have you seen this headline? “Progeny of Senior US politician uses dad’s influence to garner millions of dollars and supports sex trafficking of Eastern European women.” Yeah, me neither. Virtual crickets. If this story were about the misdeeds of Eric or Don Trump Jr., the media would be on fire with outrage. And justifiably so. We would watch old timers like Wolf Blitzer run in concentric circles with his hair on fire while furiously decrying the corruption. But this has nothing to do with the Trumps. It is all about Hunter Biden. The evidence is clear and damning. Instead of reporting, the media is channeling Helen Keller–they are deaf, dumb and blind. They see nothing. They hear nothing. They say nothing.

The facts presented this week in a report on Hunter Biden, Burisma and the Ukraine by the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs require no assumptions on the part of the reader. The report details multiple nefarious deals that Hunter Biden made while his dad, aka Sleepy Joe, was Vice President. These are more than basic quid pro quo deals. They represent a level of corruption not seen since the days of Warren G. Harding. Being Joe’s son was a profitable deal for Hunter.

On May 14, 2014, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian Holding Company focused on the energy sector. The founder of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, is described by the U.S. Embassy in Kiev as a corrupt, “odious oligarch”. George Kent, the Acting Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, complained to Vice President Joe Biden’s office in early 2015 about the perception of a conflict of interest with respect to Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board.

Hunter Biden was serving on Burisma’s board (supposedly consulting on corporate governance and transparency) when Zlochevsky allegedly paid a $7 million bribe to officials serving under Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Vitaly Yarema, to “shut the case against Zlochevsky.”

John Brennan’s CIA Trump Task Force by Larry C Johnson

I was mildly amused by Paul Sperry’s recent tweet announcing as “breaking news” that Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, set up a Task Force to target Donald Trump. This should not be considered something “new.” I reported on this almost one year ago (October 2019 to be precise). You can check out the original pieces here and here. The following provides an updated, consolidated piece.

While chatting in late October 2019 with a retired CIA colleague, he dropped a bombshell–he had learned that John Brennan set up a Trump Task Force at CIA in early 2016. One of my retired buddy’s friends, who was still on duty with the CIA in 2016, recounted how he was approached discreetly and invited to work on a Task Force focused on then Presidential candidate Donald Trump. The Task Force members were handpicked instead of following the normal procedure of posting the job. Instead of opening the job to all eligible CIA personnel, only a select group of people were invited specifically to join up. Not everyone accepted the invitation, and that could be a problem for John Brennan

A “Task Force” normally is a short term creation comprised of operations officers (i.e., guys and gals who carry out espionage activities overseas) and intelligence analysts. The purpose of such a group is to ensure all relevant intelligence capabilities are brought to bear on the problem at hand. I am not talking about an informal group of disgruntled Democrats working at the CIA who got together like a book club to grouse and complain about the brash real estate guy from New York. It was a specially designed covert action to try to destroy Donald Trump.

A “Task Force” is a special bureaucratic creation that provides a vehicle for bring case officers and analysts together, along with admin support, for a limited term project.  But it also can be expanded to include personnel from other agencies, such as the FBI, DIA and NSA. Task Forces have been used since the inception of the CIA in 1947. Here’s a recently declassified memo outlining the considerations in the creation of a task force in 1958.  The author, L.K. White, talks about the need for a coordinating Headquarters element and an Operational unit “in the field”, i.e. deployed around the world.

A transcript and court documents in the criminal case against former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith

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

https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/FISC%20FISCR%20Judges%20August%202020%20200824.docx.pdf

 

Former DCI Brennan Spokespeson Says Brennan Told By Durham He's Not Target Of Criminal Probe. by J

 
A spokesperson for Brennan said Friday that Durham told the former DCI that he's not the subject or target of a criminal probe. 

How can that be?  Isn't Durham aware how Brennan using his 'independent businesses that deal with Intelligence' attempted using them in the election process. Brennan has businesses in the  IIO (Influence Intelligence Operation) . 

Brennan according to some former independent contractors used intelligence and software attempting to change/manipulate U.S. election outcomes. Should not these accusations against Brennan be investigated for criminal misconduct by Brennan?

Mr. Durham was not election tampering or attempted tampering not a crime?  Or is Durham's investigation nothing more than smoke-n-mirrors, another dog-n-pony show.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/22/john-brennan-spoke-john-durham-part-review-russia-probe/3418778001/

J.

FBI Lawyer Kevin Clinesmith Admits He Lied by Larry C Johnson

Our “beloved” mainstream media is going out of its way to ignore today’s guilty plea by FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted he lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court about Carter Page’s prior relationship with the CIA. But it was not a drafting error or a failure to remember a critical detail. It was a deliberate altering of a communication (a classified email) from the CIA.

Let us start with the relevant portions of John Durham’s complaint, which explains Clinesmith’s crime. (Note–I had to copy and paste images of the PDF because it is formatted in a way that does not permit copy and paste of text.)

Here are some notes to help you understand the acronyms:

OGA–Other Government Agency, which in this case is shorthand for “CIA.”

Individual #1–This is Carter Page.

Digraph Source–A digraph is a two letter acronym for a CIA Division. In this case it means “NR” aka National Resources Division. NR, according to Wikipedia, is the domestic division of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Its main function is to conduct voluntary debriefings of U.S. citizens who travel overseas for work or to visit relatives, and to recruit foreign students, diplomats and business people to become CIA assets when they return to their countries.

Here is the key information you should understand when you read the Durham complaint. The entire Crossfire Hurricane team, which includes Jim Comey, Andy McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, had received a document from the CIA notifyng the FBI that Carter Page had been an “approved” operational contact for NR from 2008 to 2013. That message provided in detail the information that Carter Page had passed to the CIA.

This failure to include this information in the first and succeeding FISA applications was not the fault of Kevin Clinesmith. That is entirely on the hands of Jim Comey and Andy McCabe. They were in charge. They had a moral an ethical obligation to inform the FISA court that Carter Page had been in contact with Russian intelligence officers while working on behalf of the CIA.

Here is what we know from the first FISA document–Carter Page was clearly identified as likely working for the Russians.

 

If the Facts Matter, Andrew McCabe Will Be Indicted for Lying by Larry C Johnson

I will be very clear up front--I have no inside information about what John Durham is going to do. But if he is simply following the facts and the evidence, Andrew McCabe will be one of the first to fall in the probe into the failed coup to destroy the Presidency of Donald Trump. The record on this is indisputable. He lied in three separate instances--1) He lied to FBI investigators, according to Michael Horowitz, 2) He lied to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and 3) He lied to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

McCabe's record of lying starts with questions put to him by FBI investigators about leaks of sensitive FBI evidence to the media in the fall of 2016:

Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe faced scorching criticism and potential criminal prosecution for changing his story about a conversation he had with a Wall Street Journal reporter. Now newly released interview transcripts show McCabe expressed remorse to internal FBI investigators when they pressed him on the about-face. 

In the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, the Journal broke news about an FBI investigation involving then-candidate Hillary Clinton, describing internal discussions among senior FBI officials.

The apparent leak drew scrutiny from the bureau’s internal investigation team, which interviewed McCabe on May 9, 2017, the day President Donald Trump fired James Comey from his post as FBI director. The agents interviewed him as part of an investigation regarding a different media leak to the online publication Circa, and also asked him about the Journal story. 

In that interview, McCabe said he did not know how the Journal story came to be. But a few months later, his story changed after he reviewed his answer. 

McCabe's actions as an Artful Liar did not result in a prosecution. The Trump Justice Department reportedly decided to take a pass on that front, conceding that McCabe might prevail by insisting he just misremembered.

The court of appeals wants oral argument about disqualifying Judge Sullivan in the Flynn case

By Robert Willmann

In its first order allowing a rehearing en banc of the Michael Flynn mandamus action, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit specified an issue to be discussed at the oral argument, and added that a second order would follow with the amount of time each lawyer participating would have to argue.  The second order, filed on 5 August 2020, said that each lawyer can argue for 20 minutes in the rehearing en banc, which is a consideration of the mandamus by all of the active judges eligible to take part, and which starts it back at square one.  Granting the rehearing vacated the earlier decision by a three-judge panel in Flynn's favor.  However,  the second order contains a little surprise--

"Further ordered that, in addition to the issue set forth in the court's order filed July 30, 2020, the parties be prepared to address at oral argument the effect, if any, of 28 U.S.C. sections 455(a) and 455(b)(5)(i) on the District Court judge's Fed. R. App. P. 35(b) petition for en banc review".

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelflynn_2nd_order_rehearing_en_banc.pdf

The court of appeals was being polite to trial court Judge Emmet Sullivan in its order because it left out the name of that particular section 455:  "Disqualification of justice, judge, or magistrate judge" [1].

The court of appeals worded the issue carefully by saying, "... the effect, if any, ... on the District Court judge's ... petition for en banc review".  It speaks to the effect of the disqualification statute on Sullivan's "petition for en banc review".  This raises the question:  Disqualified from doing what?  If Sullivan should be disqualified, would he be disqualified from asking for a rehearing en banc, which should restore the earlier decision in Flynn's favor?  Would he be disqualified from asking the U.S. Supreme Court if it will agree to hear the case if Flynn prevails in the court of appeals?  Would Sullivan be disqualified from continuing to preside over the Flynn criminal case in the trial court?  All or part of the above?

Even the CIA Thought the Steele Dossier Was Crap by Larry C Johnson

Well what do you know? John Brennan, the congenital liar and Obama's CIA Chief, actually made the right call when it came to the Steele Dossier. More importantly, we discover that Brennan inadvertently admitted that there was no substance to the Steele Dossier. If he had one shred of supporting evidence, you can be assured he would have been fully on board with the FBI request. But that is not what happened. According to a Senate Intelligence Committee report declassified this week, Brennan pushed back against the FBI's Jimmy Comey and Andy McCabe on the matter of whether to include the allegations reported in the Steele Dossier in the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Interference in the U.S. Presidential Election. Chuck Ross reports that:

Documents declassified on Tuesday detail an intense debate between the CIA and FBI in late 2016 over the handling of information from Christopher Steele, with one CIA official telling the Senate Intelligence Committee that the former British spy’s allegations about Trump-Russia collusion were “very unvetted.”

Despite the CIA’s concerns about Steele’s allegations, the FBI successfully lobbied to include his information in an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. The bureau also continued using information from Steele to conduct surveillance against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Investigators have since debunked several of Steele’s allegations.

The newly declassified information is from a Senate Intelligence Committee report released on April 21 that detailed the creation of an ICA released on Jan. 6, 2017.

A rehearing is granted by the court of appeals in the Michael Flynn mandamus action

By Robert Willmann

The opinion and order in Michael Flynn's favor in his mandamus action issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on 24 June 2020 has been vacated, and a rehearing by all of the judges on the court of appeals eligible to to participate will occur (a rehearing en banc), with oral argument set for Tuesday, 11 August 2020, at 9:30 a.m.  Appeals are almost always heard and decided by a panel of three judges.  A rehearing by all of the judges is rare--

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelflynn_order_rehearing_en_banc.pdf

Although this is not good news, the law is on Flynn's side that the case should be dismissed in the trial court, as requested by the Department of Justice (DOJ).  The en banc rehearing might be decided in Flynn's favor.   But if the court of appeals issues a new opinion and order denying the mandamus and rules against Flynn, he will certainly ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, although it does not have to, since a decision on whether to hear the case is in its discretion.

The danger zone is a possible race against the clock if the case goes back to the trial court for Judge Sullivan to rule one way or the other on the DOJ motion to dismiss.   He could then deny the motion to dismiss and end up sentencing Flynn to prison, which would result in more legal action in the court of appeals to reverse the ruling denying the dismissal and to reverse the judgment of conviction and the sentence.  Or, Sullivan might sit on the case without making a prompt ruling, and if president Trump loses the election in November, the judge might then continue to sit on it until a new Attorney General is appointed, who might then withdraw the DOJ motion to dismiss.  However, if Sullivan sits on the case without making a ruling on the motion to dismiss, Flynn will likely file another application for a writ of mandamus in the court of appeals asking for an order instructing Sullivan to rule on the motion to dismiss by a date certain and to stop delaying. 

Judge Sullivan asks for a rehearing in the mandamus action, but that allows Michael Flynn to get more exculpatory material

By Robert Willmann

When filing his request for a rehearing in the Michael Flynn mandamus action in the court of appeals, Judge Emmet Sullivan fully exposed his personal obsession against Gen. Flynn, which may have been encouraged and helped along by others.  But this act might come back to bite him and his enablers, because it keeps the whole case active and has allowed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to give more exculpatory material to Flynn, and his lawyers have promptly filed it with the clerk of the trial court. 

After Sullivan's filing on 9 July, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued an order directing Flynn to file a response within 10 days, and the DOJ may in its discretion do so also.  The court helpfully said that "the effectiveness of this court’s order issued June 24, 2020, will be stayed pending disposition of the petition for rehearing en banc"--

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelflynn_court_of_appeals_orders_response.pdf

Flynn then filed a Second Supplement in Support of Agreed Dismissal, and described the material from the DOJ that was disclosed to him on 7 July--

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelflynn_2nd_supp_supporting_dismissal.pdf

When the DOJ gives discovery material to Flynn, it files a notice that it has done so with the trial court clerk, and includes the cover letter to Flynn that accompanied the material.  The letter for this disclosure says, in part [1]--

"The enclosed documents were obtained and analyzed by USAO EDMO during the course of its review. The documents include handwritten notes of former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Tashina Gauhar from a January 25, 2017 meeting (23487-80), notes of former Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok from that same meeting (23491-92), an internal DOJ document dated January 30, 2017 (23493-97), and handwritten notes of then Acting Attorney General Dana Boente, dated March 30, 2017 (23498-500)".

The material is in an exhibit to Flynn's second supplement supporting dismissal, with some large areas blacked out and redacted--

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelflynn_exhibit_2nd_supp_supporting_dismissal.pdf

Judge Sullivan's motion in the court of appeals asks for a rehearing "en banc", which would be a reconsideration of the mandamus by all of the judges on the court who are in "regular active service" and not disqualified to hear the case.

Bounties for Taliban? The New Big Russia Lie by Larry C Johnson

Anyone who embraces the stupid and absurd claim that Russia's military intelligence outfit, the GRU, is paying (has been paying) the Taliban to kill U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan, is either guilty of ignorance or congenitally retarded. It is that simple. There is not gray area here. The claim is a lie.

Let us start with this fact--the Taliban do not need a financial incentive to kill U.S. military personnel. They have willingly taken up that cause for more than 20 years.

Then there is this fact--the number of U.S. military personnel who died in the last six months in Afghanistan are dwarfed by the number of young black men killed in Chicago over the Memorial Day Holiday. If the Russians goal is to kill Americans they would be better off spending their money on the drug gangs that infest the American cities governed by Democrats. They would get more bang for their bucks. Only eight U.S. military personnel have died in Afghanistan in 2020 and only four of those were killed in "hostile" engagements. The other four succumbed to accidents. Twenty six U.S. military personnel died in Afghanistan in 2019. Twenty of those were from hostile actions. (Icasualties.org provides the details). 

If it is true that Russia's military intelligence unit is putting out hits on U.S. military personnel, then they are terrible at their job. The violence they are allegedly inflicting on our soldiers is so inconsequential that the U.S. media rarely does any detailed reporting when a soldier falls in action in sand pits of Taliban-land.

Untangling the Lies About The Obama Biden Coup Meeting of January 5, 2017 by Larry C Johnson

The release this week of Peter Strzok's notes on the 5 January 2017 meeting convened by Barack Obama and attended by his national security and law enforcement chiefs makes it clear that Sally Yates and/or Susan Rice are lying about what transpired and when it happened.

Strzok adds scintillating details to the depth and scope of the plot to try to destroy Donald Trump and his Presidency and, for now, provides the only record of what transpired prior to Obama dismissing Clapper, Brennan and the NSC staff. Here is the problem,  Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told FBI agents that OBAMA DISMISSED THE GROUP (i.e., Joe Biden, Susan Rice, Jim Clapper, John Brennan and "others" from the National Security Council) and asked Yates and FBI Director Jim Comey to "stay behind."

But that is not what Susan Rice claims. Her now infamous memo to the file (drafted in the final moments of the Obama Administration) notes that she, along with Sleepy Joe Biden, also stayed behind.

Strzok's memo destroys the claims of Yates and Rice about the select group Obama asked to "stay behind."

Yates account is that she only learned of the intercepted conversations between Michael Flynn and the Russian Ambassador after the others left. Channeling the spirit of Inspector Renault from Casablanca (he was shocked to discover gambling in the Casino), poor Sally was surprised and shocked when Obama, on his own, brought up Michael Flynn's conversation with the Russian Ambassador and specifically identified "SANCTIONS" as the substance of that conversation. Obama then said, according to Yates, that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the Obama White House should be treating Flynn differently going forward.

President Obama and Vice President Biden Directly Involved in Coup to Stop Trump (UPDATE) by Larry C Johnson

When it comes to the Michael Flynn case the media, along with vast swaths of the pliant public, are like a stupid dog that reflexively chases a shiny object or a phantom squirrel. The latest development is that the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled 2 to 1 to order crooked Judge Emmet Sullivan to accede to the Department of Justice request to drop the case against Flynn. While this ruling merits attention, the real news is that we now have documentary evidence that President Obama and Vice President Biden were involved directly and personally in orchestrating the entrapment and prosecution of Michael Flynn.

A Peter Strzok note, apparently penned on the 4 January 2017, recorded the discussion about Flynn with Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Sally Yates, Jimmy Comey, Susan Rice and Strzok (it looks like Comey took him along specifically as his note taker). Here it is:

Judge Sullivan created an awkward situation for the DOJ, Michael Flynn, and the Court of Appeals

By Robert Willmann

The audio recording of the oral argument from last Friday, 12 June, in the mandamus action brought by Gen. Michael Flynn in the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit became available that afternoon [1].  In the dry, almost bland style of most arguments before courts of appeals, it revealed an awkward situation created by Judge Emmet Sullivan for the Department of Justice (DOJ), Flynn, and the Court of Appeals.  But not for himself.

Judge Sullivan has been presiding over the criminal case since Judge Rudolph Contreras recused himself in December 2017 shortly after conducting the hearing at which Flynn pled guilty through a plea bargain with "special counsel" Robert Mueller's group.  In June 2019, Flynn replaced his original lawyers with new ones, and began to dig into what had happened to him as information started to be disclosed about misconduct by the FBI and others in an investigation of the Donald Trump presidential campaign and Russia.  The fascinating developments in Flynn's case have been discussed here on SST after he changed attorneys last year.

The disclosures got so bad that the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, Jeffrey Jensen, was asked by Attorney General William Barr to check the Flynn case going back to its beginning.  Jensen had been both an FBI agent and an Assistant U.S. Attorney before being appointed to his present position.  He began to give exculpatory and mitigating evidence to Flynn which had not been previously turned over by the Justice Department and the Mueller group, as required by law.  Flynn had filed a request to withdraw his guilty plea, which can be done pursuant to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure [2].  What was brought out by Jensen then led to a request by the DOJ to dismiss the case against Flynn entirely.

Normally, this would have ended the whole sordid affair quickly and quietly, since motions to dismiss criminal cases by the government are usually granted; "leave of court" is required for the dismissal [3].  But nothing has been normal about the investigation and prosecution of Michael Flynn.

Black Judge Sullivan Believes Every Black Man Falsely Accused of Murder Must Be Charged with Perjury? by Larry C Johnson

Headline got your attention? Good. If I am reading the amicus brief filed by discredited former Federal Judge John Gleeson on behalf of Judge Emett Sullivan, Gleeson and Sullivan are incensed that Michael Flynn had the audacity to withdraw his guilty plea, which Flynn insists was coerced. Gleeson argues that Flynn (and I presume others who have done the same thing) must be charged with perjury for having the audacity to go into court and recant his plea. You do not need a keen sense of irony to appreciate the hypocrisy of Judge Emmet Sullivan, an African American, wanting to throw the book at Flynn for doing what many black men falsely accuse of crimes have done. If the Emmet Sullivan and John Gleeson standard becomes the rule--i.e., once you confess to a crime in court under oath you cannot take back your confession--then there are a bunch of innocent black men we need to round up and put back in the pokey.

Let me introduce you to two black men from Chicago--Kevin Bailey and Corey Batchelor. They were physically coerced by an Area 2 Chicago Police detective into falsely confessing to the June 1, 1989 murder of Lula Mae Woods--Bailey subsequently served 28 years for the crime while Batchelor was imprisoned for 15 years.

According to the Innocence Project:

Bailey and Batchelor eventually sought post-conviction relief, with the Innocence Project and the People’s Law Office representing Bailey and The Exoneration Project and The Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth representing Batchelor. Despite early opposition by the prior Cook County State’s Attorney, attorneys secured DNA testing of the crime scene evidence. Bailey and Batchelor were excluded as the source of all DNA detected. Further, hairs with matching DNA profiles were recovered from (1) the Domino’s Pizza cap worn by the murderer and (2) a bloody towel found near the body. Bailey and Batchelor have been excluded as the source of these hairs. The identity of the person who shed his hair on these key items is still unknown.

“This is yet one more example of detectives from the Chicago Police Department closing murder cases too quickly by coercing false confessions from black teenagers,” said Steven Drizin, one of Batchelor’s attorneys from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth. “This further cements Chicago’s reputation as the ‘false confession capital’.”

Over 120 Black men and women were subjected to torture that was racially motivated and included electric shock, mock executions, suffocation and beatings by now convicted former Police Commander Jon Burge and his subordinates. Although Burge was terminated from the Chicago Police Department in 1993 and convicted for perjury and obstruction of justice stemming from the torture cases in federal court in 2010, scores of individuals continue to languish in prison as a result of confessions based in whole or in part on physically coerced confessions.

Transcripts of Flynn - Kislyak telephone calls are declassified and released

By Robert Willmann

Transcripts of phone conversations between Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.) and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were declassified and released today by the new Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe--

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelflynn_phone_calls_kislyak.pdf

 

Hack WashPost Reporter Carries FBI Dirty Water in Lame Attack on Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson

The Deep State, in a desperate attempt to try to mitigate the damage from the revelation that 39 different members of the Obama Administration unmasked Michael Flynn's name in at least 15 separate NSA intelligence reports, turned to Washington Post stenographer, Ellen Nakashima, to insist that Michael Flynn was really not unmasked. 

Nakashima is a longstanding go-to-tool for the CIA and FBI coup plotters eager to sow propaganda and disinformation among the American people. It was her June 14, 2016 article that pushed the contrived fantasy that Russia hacked the DNC. Now that we have the testimony of Shawn Henry, President of Crowdstrike, on the record and under oath before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, we know that his company never found any evidence that the DNC emails were exfiltrated by Russians.

Here are some key snippets from Nakashima's latest propaganda missive:

A Republican effort to determine who may have leaked the name of Michael Flynn in connection to his 2016 contact with the Russian ambassador has centered on the question of which Obama administration officials requested his identity be “unmasked” in intelligence documents.

But in the FBI report about the communications between the two men, Flynn’s name was never redacted, former U.S. officials said. . . .

Unmasking is a routine practice used to identify U.S. individuals who are referred to anonymously in an intelligence document, and it is meant to help government officials better understand what they are reading. But conservatives have long seized on Flynn’s unmasking to imply that he was treated unfairly by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials. . . .

The unmasking issue appears to be part of an effort by the president and his allies to tar former president Barack Obama with what Trump says was an unfounded criminal investigation into potential conspiracy between Russia and Trump associates — or what he now calls “Obamagate.” Obama is expected to be one of the most effective advocates for his former vice president, Joe Biden, in his bid to unseat Trump this fall.

The president’s allies are casting the unmasking requests as evidence of a malign effort to damage Trump through leaks to the media.

Nothing to see here. Move along. This was just routine sedition. Nakashima is lying by insisting that what was done to Michael Flynn was normal and routine. She is pushing the fantasy that the only way the FBI learned about Flynn's conversation with the Russian Ambassador was because the FBI was routinely monitoring Kislyak's conversations and just happened to capture Trump's incoming National Security Advisor.

How Can Susan Rice Know What Obama and Comey Said if She Was Not Present? by Larry C Johnson

Here is the bottomline in a nutshell--Susan Rice has been caught red handed trying to construct a lie about what Barack Obama knew and did not know with respect to General Michael Flynn. She claimed to be present when Barack Obama discussed the Michael Flynn intercept but, according to Sally Yates, who was interviewed by the FBI, only Yates, Jim Comey and Barack Obama were present. This new revelation--made possible by the declassification of the Susan Rice email written in the last moments of the Obama Administration--actually bolsters Michael Flynn's contention that he was the victim of a political hit job designed to take out Donald Trump.

Let me remind you of the essential facts that you must have in mind in order to understand Rice's clumsy attempt to fabricate an excuse for Obama's inexcusable spying on Donald Trump, his family and his team.

1. December 29, 2016: Michael Flynn, who was vacationing in the Dominican Republic, returned Russian Ambassador Kislyak's phone call at the behest of the Trump Transition team back in Mar-a-Lago and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner (see here). 

2. January 3, 2017: Deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe tells Department of Justice official, Mary McCord, that the FBI had been planning to close the Flynn investigation but "discovered" his phone calls with the Russian Ambassador. McCabe described the content to the calls (Exhibit 3, page 2).

3. January 4, 2017: The FBI Agent leading the investigation of the General Flynn sends Peter Strzok the memo recommending the case be close because there was no evidence against the General. (Exhibit 1) Peter Strzok tells the Agent that the "7th Floor" is interested.

4. January 5, 2017: Barack Obama tells Acting Attorney General Sally Yates in the presence of Jim Comey that he had learned about Flynn's conversation with the Russian Ambassador on sanctions. (Exhibit 4)

Please take a close look at Sally Yates' account to the January 5, 2017 meeting:

According to Sally Yates, OBAMA DISMISSED THE GROUP (i.e., Susan Rice, Jim Clapper, John Brennan and "others" from the National Security Council) and asked Yates and FBI Director Jim Comey to "stay behind." It was Obama who brought up Michael Flynn's conversation with the Russian Ambassador and specifically identified "SANCTIONS" as the substance of that conversation.

Obama then said, according to Yates, that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the Obama White House should be treating Flynn differently going forward.

Now we have the Susan Rice account of this meeting and it differs markedly from Yates. How could Susan Rice know what was said in the January 5th meeting? She wrote this email 15 days after the meeting the email is supposed to record and, according to Yates, was not present.

The Media and Pundits Are Lying--The Flynn Unmasking Was Uncommon and Unusual by Larry C Johnson

The Deep State propaganda machine is spinning at hyperdrive. You are being repeatedly told that unmasking is common. Nothin unusual here. Move along. Reminds me of the scene from the Naked Gun when faux detective Frank Drebin tried to tell people they were not seeing what they were seeing:

 

Leave it to lying Jimmy Clapper to pop up as one of the prevaricators eager to feed a false meme to a gullible public. He is caught up in the unmasking with his metaphorical pants down around his ankles and his hideous junk exposed--simply put, Clapper spied on Michael Flynn. Here is Clapper's pathetic attempt to put lipstick on this crooked pig:

Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper said Thursday it is “routine” to “unmask” American citizens who have been caught up in surveillance of foreign individuals as Republicans spark an uproar over allegations that officials spied on former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Clapper and other apologists are counting on your ignorance of intelligence community processes and procedures for collecting intelligence. What I find shocking is that there are thousands of intelligence professionals who understand that Clapper is spewing total bullshit but, because of their hatred of Donald Trump, stay silent and allow Clapper's lies to go unchallenged.

Let us start with the basics. The document that Acting DNI Grenell declassified last week regarding the "unmasking" of Michael Flynn gives us only the names and dates that requests were made to the NSA. But those requests came in response to a NSA intelligence report or document that the requestors had read. That means finished intelligence.

The following is an example of the formatting and content of the type of NSA messages that the Obama people were reading when they encountered an "unnamed" American citizen and just had to know who it was.

Understanding the Mueller Lies About Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson

I want to help the average citizen understand how egregious and dishonest the Mueller team was in bringing charges against Michael Flynn for lying to FBI agents about what he said to Russia's Ambassador in a telephone conversation, which was likely intercepted by the CIA. Michael Flynn did not do a damn thing wrong in that conversation and the notes from FBI agents Strzok and Pientka, which Sidney Powell finally pried loose after more than two years of the prosecutors hiding exculpatory evidence, do not support the Statement of Offense.

I suspect most of you reading this have never read the Statement of Offense. I am going to let you read for yourself the salient portions:

b. On or about December 28, 2016, the Russian Ambassador contacted FLYNN.

c. On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN called a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team ("PTT official"), who was with other senior members of the Presidential Transition Team at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian Ambassador about the U.S. Sanctions. On that call, FLYNN and the PTT official discussed the U.S. Sanctions, including the potential impact of those sanctions on the incoming administration's foreign policy goals. The PIT official and FLYNN also discussed that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the situation.

d. Immediately after his phone call with the PIT official, FLYNN called the Russian Ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner.

e. Shortly after his phone call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with the PTT official to report on the substance of his call with the Russian Ambassador, including their discussion of the U.S. Sanctions.

Got that? Michael Flynn acted professionally and followed protocol. The Russian Ambassador called him. General Flynn called K. T. McFarlane, who was at Mar a Lago with the Trump Transition Team and asked for guidance on whether or not to respond and, if he was going to respond, what to say.

Understanding Unmasking Gate by Larry C Johnson

If you are confused or bewildered by the furor over the Obama administration's "unmasking" of Donald Trump, you are not stupid. Even if you worked in the intelligence community at some point in your life you might not understand it. So let me help you understand how astounding and damning the documents are that were declassified by DNI Grenell and released by Senators Johnson (no relation) and Grassley today.

Here is a section from the testimony to HPSCI (i.e., House Intel Committee) of an unnamed FBI Agent. Let's assume that this was a report that our National Security Agency put out.

Note--A NSA generated intelligence report is usually the product of collecting a phone call, an email or some other form of electronic communications. At the very top of the message and at the bottom and at the start of each paragraph there will be classification markings.

So, look at the following as a manufactured example:

TOP SECRET UMBRELLA AARDVARK ORCON

013005132020 (DATE TIME GROUP)

1. (TS/OC) In a conversation before the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, FBI Agent US CITIZEN stated:

So I reach out to him, I said, hey, let me know, you know, what you think about the information. He emails back, and that was maybe the 23rd, 24th of September, and states that the information that - in the dossier corroborated information that they received FROM A FOREIGN DIPLOMAT that actually predicated all this investigation.

So, you are Joe Biden. You have just read this message provided to you as part of your intel briefing. You want to know the name of the FBI Agent and the name of the FOREIGN DIPLOMAT. To get this info Biden, or one of this staffers, fills out an electronic request to the originating agency, i.e. the organization that put out the Intel Report. In this case, it is NSA. In filling out that report you have to give a valid reason based on a national security priority in order to explain why you want that information. Biden does not just get to say, "CUZ I WANTS TO KNOW."

That message goes to the NSA official in charge of "unmasking" who decides to approve the request. He or she sends back the UNMASKED message to Biden. Here is what he read (it is still classified TOP SECRET RIDICULOUS):

1. (TS/OC) In a conversation before the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, FBI Agent JOHN MARCINKOWSKI stated:

So I reach out to him, I said, hey, let me know, you know, what you think about the information. He emails back, and that was maybe the 23rd, 24th of September, and states that the information that - in the dossier corroborated information that they received FROM A AUSTRALIAN AMBASSADOR ALEXANDER DOWNER that actually predicated all this investigation.

This is what Joe Biden and 38 other members of the Obama Administration, including CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director Jim Comey, did to General Michael Flynn.

It is important to understand the following to appreciate how unusual this activity was.

 

The NSA list of people asking that a name be unmasked which turned out to be Michael Flynn

By Robert Willmann

Released today is a list from the National Security Agency of officials who asked -- between 8 November 2016 and 31 January 2017 -- that a name be unmasked in intercepted communications, and the name turned out to be Gen. Michael Flynn--

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelflynn_nsa_unmasking_requests.pdf

Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the Director of the NSA, included the list with a short memo to Richard Grenell, the Acting Director of National Intelligence, who declassified the list and then routed it today to U.S. Senators Charles Grassley and Ron Johnson.

I think the senators should have asked for a wider time frame.

 

UPDATE (2pm 13 May 2020)--Andrew McCabe and His Lies to HPSCI by Larry C Johnson

If you want to understand what a work of slime and mendacity that Andrew McCabe is, you just need to read the transcript of his testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and compare that with the documents released by the Department of Justice last week to dismiss the charges against General Michael Flynn. McCabe, who recently derided the DOJ decision as foolish, is either stupid or did not take time to read and remind himself of what he actually said and did.

Here is the bottomline--the transcript of General Flynn's conversations with Russia's Ambassador in December 2016 was deliberately leaked to give the FBI a pretext for interviewing and trapping Flynn and Andrew McCabe lied to HPSCI about this. The leak helped create the predicate to ambush Michael Flynn.

How was it a pretext? Nothing that Michael Flynn said in the phone call with the Russian Ambassador was illegal. It was the type of conversation that one would expect the incoming National Security Advisor to have with a senior foreign diplomat. It was not a public conversation. Only the NSA or the CIA had the ability to intercept this communication which took place outside the United States.

The FBI and their co-conspirators in the intelligence community (i.e., Clapper and Brennan) needed to get that information out into the public. Once it was publicized they could monitor what Flynn and other members of the Trump Administration said in response to the publicity and, if anyone said something the FBI deemed to be "untrue" they could be charged with lying to a Federal law enforcement officer if they repeated the lie. David Ignatius, who received the leaked information, was the obedient water carrier for the FBI.

Larry Johnson--Two Important Transcripts Shedding Light on the FBI and Two of Their Informants

This piece is based on two of the transcripts that Adam Schiff was forced to release last Thursday and they are revelatory.

The first concerns Felix Sater (here's the transcript).

The second is from the FBI Agent who handled Christopher Steele (here's the transcript). The agent's name is kept confidential.

If you are the FBI and you are running a counter intelligence investigation into Trump's ties with the Russians you would want Felix Sater, who helped the FBI on several cases involving Russian spies and Russian organized crime. He was a business partner of Donald Trump's since at least 2001. And what does Sater reveal about The Donald's ties to the Russian mob and Russian spies? He exonerates Trump.

Then we have the unnamed FBI handler of Confidential Human Source Christopher Steele. He admits to knowing Sater and some of the things he did for the FBI. Any evidence of Trump cavorting with the Russians? NOPE. After you read the transcript you will appreciate why this FBI agent is not named. He did his job honestly and professionally. In fact, he's the one who terminated Steele as a source.

FELIX SATER:

I have written extensively about Felix Sater, the President/CEO of Bayrock Group, who was an informant for both the FBI and the CIA (you can read my early work on Mr. Sater here and here). His work as an FBI informant began in December of 1998 and then he started providing the CIA with good intel on Osama Bin Laden and other terrorist activities. Felix was born in Russia, speaks Russia and became friends with Michael Cohen (yeah, that Michael Cohen) when they were teenagers.

Felix Sater testified under oath to the House Intelligence Committee and confirmed the following:

• He had been working for the FBI and the CIA since December 1998 and provided important intelligence information on terrorism and assisted the FBI in criminal investigations. (see pages 5-12 of the deposition).
• Sater met Donald Trump for the first time in 2000/2001. It was at Sater's initiative (Sater rented space in the Trump Tower). Sater proposed they work on real estate deals. Sater was President of the Bayrock Group (see page 16).
• Trump had not and was not conspiring with Russian intelligence, Russian politicians nor Russian mobsters.

Throughout the lengthy deposition, Sater was repeatedly asked if President Trump had ever conspired, colluded or coordinated with any Russian political leaders or mobsters. He always said "no." Here is the money quote from Mr. Sater's deposition (see page 141):

Question: Returning back to the four parameters of the committee's investigation we discussed sort of at the outset, in our time together today, do you remember the discussion we had about collusion, coordination, and conspiracy?

Answer: Yes, sir.

Question: And I asked you with respect to yourself. I asked you with respect to then-candidate Trump. I asked you with respect to folks affiliated, officially affiliated with the campaign and folks unofficially affiliated with the campaign. Has looking at the documents and all of the discussion we had today changed your answer in any way?

Answer: Absolutely not.

One critical question no one on either the Republican or Democrat side asked him was this,  "Has the FBI ever asked you to work as a Confidential Human Source to ascertain if Donald Trump was working for or with the Russians?" I bet you the answer to that would be yes. And Sater's response would be, "I never saw any such thing."

Now we come to FBI Agent John Doe. I came to like this guy the more I read his testimony. The man is a straight shooter.

He met Steele for the first time in April 2010 at the request of Bruce Ohr (see pages 9-10). In the fall of 2013 (I get this date based on some earlier comments by Mr. Doe, the actual year is blacked out--see pages 12-14).

The DOJ moves to dismiss the criminal case against Michael Flynn

By Robert Willmann

In a 20-page document filed today in the criminal case against Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.), the U.S. Department of Justice asked that the charging document against him, the "information", be dismissed with prejudice, meaning that it cannot be re-filed in the future.

Filed before the motion to dismiss was a notice by the Robert Mueller group lawyer Brandon Van Grack that he is withdrawing as an attorney for the government in the case.  He is still employed at the DOJ as chief of the Foreign Agents Registration Act section.

Thirteen exhibits were attached to the government's motion.  Here is the request, without the exhibits--

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelflynn_gov_motion_dismiss.pdf

I may have to get on the road, but I hope to provide more information soon.

 

Larry Johnson--DOJ Case Against Flynn Collapsing

This just in--Flynn's crooked Prosecutor, who has lied to Judge Sullivan's court and withheld evidence from Michael Flynn, has withdrawn from the case. I do not know if Van Grack jumped or was pushed. It is possible that he is stepping down after being told he needed to drop the case. Or, maybe he is smart enough to realize he faces potential criminal penalties for his illegal actions taken against Michael Flynn.

Here is his letter:

 

This is very good news for Michael Flynn and certainly reflects a growing recognition among the Mueller co-conspirators that the gig is up. They have been caught and Bill Barr is ensuring that their mendacity and criminality will be fully exposed.

 

Michael Flynn Did Not Lie, He Was Framed by The FBI==by Larry C Johnson

Two and one-half years ago, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller unveiled charges against Michael Flynn for "lying to Federal agents." At the time I gave Mueller the benefit of the doubt and assumed, incorrectly, that the investigation was fair and honest. We now know without any doubt that the so-called investigation of Michael Flynn was frame-up. It was a punishment in search of a crime and ultimately led the FBI to manufacture a crime in order to take out Michael Flynn and damage the fledgling Presidency of Donald Trump.

It is important to understand the lack of proper foundation to investigate Michael Flynn as a collaborator with Russia as part of some bizarre plot to steal the 2016 Presidential election for Donald Trump.

Flynn was perceived as a threat to the CIA and refused to cook the intelligence for the Obama Administration while he was Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

In 2010, Flynn co-authored an important analysis, Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan. Flynn's key conclusion warned that the U.S. intelligence effort in Afghanistan was failing:

The paper argues that because the United States has focused the overwhelming majority of collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, our intelligence apparatus still finds itself unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which we operate and the people we are trying to protect and persuade.

Flynn's work did not sit well with Jim Clapper and John Brennan. John Schindler, a rabid anti-Trumper, wrote a hit piece on Flynn in December 2017, that highlights the Deep State anger at Flynn. Schindler characterizes Flynn's work in unflattering terms and claims that Flynn:   

lambasted American intelligence performance in Afghanistan. . . [It] pulled no punches, using words like “marginally relevant,” “ignorant,” “hazy,” and “incurious” to describe U.S. intelligence work in Afghanistan in a scathing fashion.

Early January 2017 Recommendation To Close Case on General Flynn Rebuffed by FBI Leaders by Larry C Johnson

The document dump from the Department of Justice on the Michael Flynn case continues and the information is shocking and damning. It is now clear why previous leaders of the Department of Justice (Sessions and Rosenstein) and current FBI Director Wray tried to keep this material hidden. There is now no doubt that Jim Comey and Andy McCabe help lead and direct a conspiracy to frame Michael Flynn for a "crime" regardless of the actual facts surrounding General Flynn's conduct.

The most stunning revelation from today's document release is that the FBI agents who investigated Michael Flynn aka "Crossfire Razor" RECOMMENDED on the 4th of January 2017 that the investigation of Flynn be closed. Let that sink in. The FBI agents investigating Flynn found nothing to justify either a criminal or counter-intelligence investigation more than two weeks before Donald Trump was inaugurated as President. Yet, FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Director McCabe, with the help of General Counsel Jim Baker, Assistant Director for Counter Intelligence Bill Priestap, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok decided to try to manufacture a crime against Flynn.

The documents released on Wednesday made clear that as of January 21st, the FBI Conspirators were scrambling to find pretext for entrapping and charging General Flynn. Here is the transcription of Bill Priestap's handwritten notes:

The Dawn of Justice for General Michael Flynn? by Larry C Johnson

Based on conversations with friends and reading comments on conservative websites, there is a lot of frustration and doubt with respect to Attorney General William Barr and whether he will drop the hammer on the Deep Staters, such as Brennan, Clapper and Comey, for their respective roles in fomenting and promoting a coup to take out Donald Trump. The impatience and frustration is quite understandable, but recent developments indicate that Barr is not going to let these creeps off the hook.

To understand Barr's supposed sloth--i.e., why he has not already indicted or prosecuted bent officials like Andy McCabe or Peter Strzok--you must realize that the US Attorney who runs things in the District of Colombia works in a massive building about 6 blocks north of the Department of Justice, i.e. The Judiciary Center at 555 Fourth St., N.W. in Washington, DC. While that US Attorney in theory answers to Barr, in reality that Attorney is free to pursue her or his own agenda. To make matters worse, that US Attorney has an Army of attorneys at her (now his) disposal. This is where Robert Mueller's horde of corrupt attorneys hung out when Jesse Liu was in charge. Now, Timothy Shea is running things and appears to be less inclined to pursue his own agenda. Still, he is surrounded by a nest of vipers.

There is no way to put this nicely--the Judiciary Center and the Courts they use in the District of Columbia, show significant signs of corruption and deceit. You need only look at the gross injustice perpetrated on Roger Stone--Judge Amy Berman Jackson allowed the jury forewoman to lie about her bias and permitted the equivalent of an all white jury of Klansman being asked to try an African American.

John Solomon's Vindication--John McCain Gave FBI Different Version of the Steele Dossier by Larry C Johnson

Some important tidbits from the latest document dump obtained by Judicial Watch confirm John Solomon's reporting from two years ago. Solomon reported in July 2018 the following:

Now, memos the FBI is turning over to Congress show the bureau possessed at least three versions of the dossier and its mostly unverified allegations of collusion.

Each arrived from a different messenger: McCain, Mother Jones reporter David Corn, Fusion GPS founder (and Steele boss) Glenn Simpson.

That revelation is in an email that disgraced FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok wrote to FBI executives around the time BuzzFeed published a version of the dossier on Jan. 10, 2017.

“Our internal system is blocking the site,” Strzok wrote of the document posted on BuzzFeed. “I have the PDF via iPhone but it’s 25.6MB. Comparing now. The set is only identical to what McCain had. (it has differences from what was given to us by Corn and Simpson.)”

Now you can see the email for yourself thanks to Judicial Watch's latest FOIA harvest:

Senate Judiciary Document Dump Exposes FBI and DOJ Corruption by Larry C Johnson

If you are exhausted from the drumbeat of doom and gloom surrounding the Corona virus pandemic, here is a welcome diversion--corruption and malfeasance by the FBI and the Department of Justice. The Senate Judiciary Committee dumped several critical documents Thursday night relevant to the Deep State plot to portray Donald Trump and his team as agents of Putin's Russia. Jim Hoft was first out of the box posting the links to the damning documents (see here). You can click on the links in Jim's article and read the original documents for your self.

The Conservative Treehouse also provided an excellent piece focusing on the cover letter sent to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court trying to explain why the errors in the FISA applications were not important errors. That was a big lie. The letter  was signed by  AAG John Demers in July 2018, when Jeff Sessions was Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein was Deputy AG; Christopher Wray was FBI Director, David Bowditch was the Deputy, and Dana Boente was FBI chief-legal-counsel. This letter was a lame effort at trying to cover the FBI's crooked ass.

There are many fascinating and damning revelations in these documents. They confirm what I have written in the past about the FBI role in the attempted coup against Donald Trump. This July 12, 2018 letter to Judge Rosemary Collyer tries to put lipstick on the pig of FBI misdeeds and pretend that the FBI's FISA applications were the equivalent of the gorgeous Marilyn Monroe in her heyday. Instead, the FBI misdeeds are exposed as a fat, ugly crone. 

Demers' letter continued to insist that four FISA applications to spy on Carter Page were properly predicated. That is balderdash.

Let me take you on a detailed journey through the first FISA application seeking permission to spy on Carter Page. Congressional Democrats falsely insisted that Steele's lies and misinformation played little role. You can see from the following how wrong that assertion is:

A Cornerstone of Russia Hacked the 2016 Election Collapses by Larry C Johnson

Big news last night (Monday). Buried amid the panic over the corona virus. Robert Mueller's prosecutors got the green light to flush down the toilet  one of their major cases allegedlng that Russia hacked the 2016 U.S. Presidential election--U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich on Monday evening granted the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the case against Concord Management and Consulting. This is more than a black eye. It is an indictment and rebuke of a corrupt group of prosecutors who worked for Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. They filed a case without foundation and smeared a group of foreigners that they (the prosecutors) did not think would fight back. Big mistake.

Let me take you back to February 2018. The headlines of the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and The Atlantic blared the following propaganda:

Mueller’s Indictment Puts Details Behind Claims of Russian Interference

This was it. Real proof that the Russians helped elect Donald Trump. Here is the Atlantic's breathless take on the matter:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals on Friday connected to Russia’s Internet Research Agency—a Kremlin-backed outfit whose employees posed as Americans and spread disinformation online in an attempt to influence the 2016 election.

The indictment details highly specific allegations—including names, dates, and the text of private messages—that appear to substantiate central elements of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia made an active, concerted effort to subvert American democracy.

Did you catch that? This indictment is prima facie evidence that the flawed, disingenuous Intelligence Community Assessment put out in January 2017 was "substantiated." 

The truth challenged former Director of the CIA, John Brennan, also has some major crow to eat. That buffoon took an unfounded victory lap reacting to the news of the indictment of Concord Management:

“Claims of a ‘hoax’ in tatters,” John Brennan, the former CIA director, said in a tweet. “My take: Implausible that Russian actions did not influence the views and votes of at least some Americans.”

Message for John Brennan--you cemented your status as a certified moron and a walking, talking hoax. The only thing in "tatters" is your claim to be a competent commentator on legal matters and intelligence issues. 

The indictment that Brennan so enthusiastically and prematurely celebrated was flushed down the toilet on Monday, March 16, 2020 by the very prosecutors who brought it in the first place. They finally realized they had no case and asked the Judge to "dismiss with prejudice." The Judge said "yes." For those of you who are not lawyers, the phrase, "dismiss with prejudice" is the legal equivalent of a slam dunk by Lebron James in basketball:

a court case that is dismissed with prejudice means that it is dismissed permanently. A case dismissed with prejudice is over and done with, once and for all, and can't be brought back to court.

Let us briefly revisit what Mueller and his band of white collar criminals alleged in the February 2018 indictment of Concord Management et.al.(Note--I replace the term "Defendants" with the actual name, e.g. IRA and Concord):

Defendant INTERNET RESEARCH AGENCY LLC (aka IRA). . . . worked in various capacities to carry out  IRA's interference operations targeting the United States. . . . Beginning as early as 2014, the IRA began The IRA received funding for its operations from Defendant YEVGENIY VIKTOROVICH PRIGOZHIN.

The IRA had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Concord personnel posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Concord's operations included supporting the presidential campaign ofthen-candidate Donald J. Trump ("Trump Campaign") and disparaging Hillary Clinton. Concord made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities. Concord also staged political rallies inside the United States, and while posing as U.S. grassroots entities and U.S. persons, and without revealing their Russian identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation, solicited and compensated real U.S. persons to promote or disparage candidates. Some Concord personnel, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.

All of this is an unsubstantiated allegation. No evidence. No proof that would have held up in court. The Mueller team folded in the face of a real lawyer, hired by Concord Management. That is what the Mueller team never counted on.

But this was not the first setback for the Mueller team in this case. They were admonished by the Judge last year for falsely and improperly allegeding that the IRA was a Russian Government tool for intelligence operations. 

On April 25, 2019, Concord filed the instant motion in which it argues that the Attorney General and Special Counsel violated Local Rule 57.7 by releasing information to the public that was not contained in the indictment. Concord’s main contention is that the Special Counsel’s Report . . . improperly suggested a link between the defendants and the Russian government and expressed an opinion about the defendants’ guilt and the evidence against them.

The Court ordered the government “to refrain from making or authorizing any public statement that links the alleged conspiracy in the indictment to the Russian government or its agencies.”

The Court further ordered that “any public statement about the allegations in the indictment . . . must make clear that, one, the government is summarizing the allegations in the indictment which remain unproven, and, two, the government does not express an opinion on the defendant’s guilt or innocence or the strength of the evidence in this case.”

The Judge's order for the Prosecutors to cease linking the alleged conspiracy in the indictment to the Russian government was vindicated with the final decision to throw the case out for good. If the Mueller prosecutors actually had real evidence that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 US Presidential contest then they would not have dropped the case permanently. If it was a matter of figuring out how to introduce intelligence information to buttress their evidence they would have left the door open for a future revival of the case. But they did just the opposite. They asked that the charges be dropped completely and permanently.

 

WHY IS CROWDSTRIKE CONFUSED ON ELEVEN KEY DETAILS ABOUT THE DNC HACK? by Larry C Johnson

Here is the bottom-line—despite being hired in late April (or early May) of 2016 to stop an unauthorized intrusion into the DNC, CrowdStrike, the cyber firm hired by the DNC's law firm to solve the problem, failed abysmally. More than 30,000 emails were taken from the DNC server between 22 and 25 May 2016 and given to Wikileaks. Crowdstrike blamed Russia for the intrusion but claimed that only two files were taken. And CrowdStrike inexplicably waited until 10 June 2016 to reboot the DNC network. 

CrowdStrike, a cyber-security company hired by a Perkins Coie lawyer retained by the DNC, provided the narrative to the American public of the alledged hack of the DNC, But the Crowdstrike explanation is inconsistent, contradictory and implausible. Despite glaring oddities in the CrowdStrike account of that event, CrowdStrike subsequently traded on its fame in the investigation of the so-called Russian hack of the DNC and became a publicly traded company. Was CrowdStrike’s fame for “discovering” the alleged Russian hack of the DNC a critical factor in its subsequent launch as a publicly traded company?

The Crowdstrike account of the hack is very flawed. There are 11 contradictions, inconsistencies or oddities in the public narrative about CrowdStrike’s role in uncovering and allegedly mitigating a Russian intrusion (note--the underlying facts for these conclusions are found in Ellen Nakashima's Washington Post story, Vicki Ward's Esquire story, the Mueller Report and the blog of Crowdstrike founder Dmitri Alperovitch):

Did Joe Biden's Former IT Guy Masquerade as Guccifer 2.0? by Larry C Johnson

Why does the name of Joe Biden's former Internet Technology guru, Warren Flood, appear in the meta data of documents posted on the internet by Guccifer 2.0? In case you do not recall, Guccifer 2.0 was identified as someone tied to Russian intelligence who played a direct role in stealing emails from John Podesta. The meta data in question indicates the name of the person who actually copied the original document. We have this irrefutable fact in the documents unveiled by Guccifer 2.0--Warren Flood's name appears prominently in the meta data of several documents attributed to "Guccifer 2.0." When this transpired, Flood was working as the CEO of his own company, BRIGHT BLUE DATA. (brightbluedata.com). Was Flood tasked to masquerade as a Russian operative?

Give Flood some props if that is true--he fooled our Intelligence Community and the entire team of Mueller prosecutors into believing that Guccifer was part of a Russian military intelligence cyber attack. But a careful examination of the documents shows that it is highly unlikely that this was an official Russian cyber operation.

Donald Trump, the Richard Jewell of the 21st Century by Larry C Johnson

Richard Jewell is a true American hero and deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom. More about that later. If you are not familiar with Mr. Jewell, he was a security guard at Centennial Park in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics and discovered what turned out to be a terrorist bomb. His action in warning authorities and helping push people away from the backpack containing the bomb, which was placed under a park bench, saved lives. He was hailed briefly as a hero until a Georgia police officer told an Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter, Kathy Scruggs, that the FBI suspected Jewell of being the bomber.

Richard Jewell experienced what Donald Trump, Michael Flynn, George Papdopolous and numerous others in the Trump galaxy have endured during the Russia Gate Hoax. Jewell's entire life was mined for every unflattering detail and news reports often got the information wrong. He was electronically lynched by a stupid, lazy media. But the lynching was made possible by equally corrupt, lazy FBI.

I strongly encourage you to get and watch Clint Eastwood's movie on the case, Richard Jewell. It shows how the FBI tried to railroad and frame Jewell as the culprit. FBI agents on the case, for example, tried to manipulate Jewell into waiving his constitutional rights by telling him he was taking part in a training film about bomb detection. All the FBI had to do was look at three critical pieces of evidence from the phone call from a phone booth near Centennial Park warning that a bomb would go off. First, it was impossible for Jewell to have made the call because the phone was located more than a six minute walk from where Jewell was stationed. Second, the voice in the recording did not match Jewell's. Third, there were numerous eyewitnesses who could testify to Jewell's presence before and during the bombing.

The Russia Interference Hoax--Deja Vu All Over Again by Larry C Johnson

Admiral Bill McRaven is proving himself to be an ignorant buffoon. Yes, I'm calling a so-called military hero a clown. He is out today with a despicable op-ed attacking President Trump for removing ACTING DNI Joe Maguire. Here is a sampling of McRaven's stupidity:

Edmund Burke, the Irish statesman and philosopher, once said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Over the course of the past three years, I have watched good men and women, friends of mine, come and go in the Trump administration — all trying to do something — all trying to do their best. Jim Mattis, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Sue Gordon, Dan Coats and, now, Joe Maguire, who until this week was the acting director of national intelligence. . . .

But, of course, in this administration, good men and women don’t last long. Joe was dismissed for doing his job: overseeing the dissemination of intelligence to elected officials who needed that information to do their jobs.

 

As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.

Bill, you are wrong as you can be. Are you too damn lazy to do some simple reading and research?

Jimmy Comey, Sanctimonious Moron by Larry C Johnson

I hear that Lionel Ritchie is re-writing one of his legendary pop hits in honor of former FBI Director James Comey. The song starts like this:

He's once, twice, three times a liar to us.

Sounds like a hit. Seriously, Jim Comey set a new record last December (2019) when the Inspector General for the third time in a two year period excoriated Comey for his utter failure as the leader of America's supposed premier law enforcement organization.

Here are the links to the three reports. 

JUNE 2018--A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election

AUGUST 2019--Report of Investigation of Former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey's Disclosure of Sensitive Investigative Information and Handling of Certain Memoranda

DECEMBER 2019--Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation

I want to take you through a brief summary of the Comey low lights. First up was the conduct of the FBI and Comey with respect to the investigation of Hillary Clinton and her illegal storage of classified material on her unclassified servers. Jimmy Comey took it upon himself to deliver what amounted to a public indictment of Clinton and then, with his closing remarks, gave her a pass on being prosecuted. Here's how Inspector General Horowitz viewed Comey's behavior: