Published on May 8, 2019
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton joins Lou Dobbs to discuss the current state of the FBI and the House Judiciary Committee’s attempt to hold Attorney General Barr in contempt for not appearing at a hearing.
(THE FBI IS PART OF THE DEEP STATE) – WRAY SAYS HE WOULDN’T USE ‘SPYING’ TERM TO DESCRIBE FBI SURVEILLANCE
By Chuck Ross
FBI Director Christopher Wray told senators Tuesday he would not use the term “spying” to describe the bureau’s surveillance activities, including those used against the Trump campaign.
“Well that’s not the term I would use,” Wray said in a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing when asked whether the FBI carries out “spying” during its various investigations.
Wray’s remarks are a contradiction of sorts of Attorney General William Barr’s congressional testimony that he believes government agencies spied on the Trump campaign. (RELATED: Barr: ‘I Think Spying Did Occur’ Against Trump Campaign)
“I think spying did occur,” Barr told the House Appropriations Committee on April 10.
While Wray distanced himself from Barr’s remarks, he offered a diplomatic response when asked about the use of the “spying” term.
“Lots of people have different colloquial phrases,” Wray said.
“I believe that the FBI is engaged in investigative activity and part of investigative activity includes surveillance activity of different shapes and sizes. And to me the key question is making sure that it’s done by the book consistent with our lawful authorities.”
Wray said he was not personally aware of any evidence the FBI illegally surveilled the Trump campaign.
The FBI relied on the unverified Steele dossier to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
An FBI informant, Stefan Halper, also made contact during the campaign with Page and two other Trump aides, George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis. Halper was accompanied on his outreach to Papadopoulos by a government investigators working under the alias Azra Turk. It remains unclear if Turk was working for the FBI or another government agency, such as the CIA.
The Justice Department’s inspector general is investigating the matter. Barr testified that he formed a task force within the Justice Department to investigate the origins of the Russia probe. Wray said he has been in close contact with Barr regarding the investigation.
Barr Launches Wide-Ranging Probe Into 2016 FBI Spying
By Tyler Durden
Attorney General William Barr told the Senate Judiciary Panel this week that he has assembled a team at the Justice Department to probe whether the spying conducted by the FBI against the Trump campaign in 2016 was improper, reports Bloomberg.
Barr suggested that he would focus on former senior leaders at the FBI and Justice Department.
“To the extent there was overreach, what we have to be concerned about is a few people at the top getting it into their heads that they know better than the American people,” said Barr.
Barr will also review whether the infamous Steele dossier – a collection of salacious and unverified claims against Donald Trump, assembled by a former British spy and paid for by the Clinton campaign – was fabricated by the Russian government to trick the FBI and other US agencies. (Will Barr investigate whether Steele made the whole thing up for his client, Fusion GPS?)
“We now know that he was being falsely accused,” Barr said of Trump. “We have to stop using the criminal justice process as a political weapon.”
Mueller’s report didn’t say there were false accusations against Trump. It said the evidence of cooperation between the campaign and Russia “was not sufficient to support criminal charges.” Investigators were unable to get a complete picture of the activities of some relevant people, the special counsel found.
Although Barr’s review has only begun, it’s helping to fuel a narrative long embraced by Trump and some of his Republican supporters: that the Russia investigation was politically motivated and concocted from false allegations in order to spy on Trump’s campaign and ultimately undermine his presidency. –Bloomberg
As Bloomberg notes, Barr’s review could receive a boost by a Thursday New York Times article acknowledging that the FBI sent a ‘honeypot’ spy to London in 2016 to pose as a research assistant and gather intelligence from Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos over possible Trump campaign links to Russia.
The Trump re-election campaign immediately seized on the Times report as evidence that improper spying did occur. “As President Trump has said, it is high time to investigate the investigators,” said Trump campaign manager, Brad Parscale in a statement.
During Barr’s Wednesday testimony, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) told Barr “It appears to me that the Obama administration, Justice Department and FBI decided to place their bets on Hillary Clinton and focus their efforts” when it came to investigating the Trump campaign.
Depending on what Barr finds, his review of the Russia probe could give Trump ammunition to defend himself in continuing congressional inquiries — and in a potential impeachment for obstructing justice. Barr told senators that Trump’s actions can’t be seen as obstruction if he was exercising his constitutional authority as president to put an end to an illegitimate investigation.
Barr’s efforts follow two years of work by a group of House Republicans who have been conducting dozens of interviews regarding the FBI’s and Justice Department’s conduct in the early stages of investigation of Trump and his campaign. –Bloomberg
On Thursday, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) issued a criminal referral for Nellie Ohr – a former Fusion GPS contractor who passed anti-Trump research to her husband, then the #4 official at the DOJ.
On Thursday, Meadows said that Barr’s “willingness to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation is the first step in putting the questionable practices of the past behind us,” and that the AG’s “tenacity is sure to be rewarded.”
The FBI opened its counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign after a self-professed member of the Clinton Foundation, Joseph Mifsud, fed Papadopoulos the rumor that Russia had “dirt” on Clinton. That rumor would be coaxed out of the former Trump aide by another Clinton-connected individual – Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who would notify authorities of Papadopoulos’ admission, officially launching the investigation.
Barr says he wants to get to the bottom of it.
His review will examine the above chain of events that set the investigation into motion, and whether any US agencies were engaged in spying on or investigating the Trump campaign before the probe was officially launched.
Barr said he’s working with FBI Director Christopher Wray “to reconstruct exactly what went down.” He said he has “people in the department helping me review the activities over the summer of 2016.”
Notably, Barr said his aides will be “working very closely” with the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz.
Horowitz is conducting his own investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation and whether there were abuses when the FBI obtained a secret warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in October 2016 to spy on another foreign policy adviser to the campaign, Carter Page. –Bloomberg
Barr will also investigate when the DOJ and FBI knew that the Democratic Party and Clinton was Steele.
More subterfuge, or is this really happening?
CNN’S CHRIS CUOMO SAYS ANTIFA IS A “GOOD CAUSE”
“They want social justice”
APRIL 30, 2019
CNN’s Chris Cuomo says Antifa, the group that routinely uses political violence to advance its agenda (otherwise known as terrorism) does so for a “good cause”.
The context of the conversation was the claim that Trump called Charlottesville neo-nazis “very fine fine,” something which provably didn’t happen.
“You talk about Antifa – I’ve watched them in the streets protesting in different situations – there are certainly aspects of them that are true to a cause – that is a good cause – they want social justice,” said Cuomo.
A good cause? Really?
In just the last 24 hours alone, two stories emerged proving yet again that Antifa is a violent domestic terror group.
A Muslim convert who was radicalized by Antifa-style left-wing rhetoric planned to bomb a right-wing rally and cause “as many casualties as possible” by building a nail bomb which could “penetrate the human body and puncture internal organs”.
26-year-old US Army veteran Mark Domingo also contemplated a Las Vegas massacre-style attack on Santa Monica Pier at the height of summer.
In addition, an FBI report which was released to the San Diego Union-Tribune described how left-wing Antifa activists schemed with a drug cartel associate to stage an “armed rebellion” at the US/Mexican border.
The Department of Homeland Security in New Jersey officially listed Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization last year.
This is not the first time Cuomo has praised Antifa. He seems to be content with dying on the hill of supporting a group of masked thugs which routinely attacks innocent people, including in one instance for the ‘crime’ of carrying an American flag.
Good luck with that, Chris.
FEDS DISRUPT ‘MULTIPLE TARGET’ TERROR PLOT BY MAN WHO CONVERTED TO ISLAM
Authorities say it’s unclear whether conversion was related to terror plot
APRIL 29, 2019
Federal and local law enforcement agencies have disrupted a “multiple target” domestic terror plot by a U.S. military veteran who converted to Islam.
The man was caught in an online sting operation and arrested by the FBI before he had a chance to carry out the attack in Southern California.
“It’s unclear how far the plot got, but sources said the man had specific targets, including one in Long Beach,” reports the LA Times.
The man also “tried to connect with other like-minded folks online,” one source said.
Officials are set to give a press conference at 1pm today to discuss the plot.
Authorities say it is not known whether the man’s conversion to Islam was “related to the plot”.
FBI MOVES SWIFTLY TO ARREST ALLEGED MEMBER OF UNITED CONSTITUTIONAL PATRIOTS WHO HELPED CATCH ILLEGALS – (THE FBI IS PART OF THE DEEP STATE)
This, at a time when illegal immigration and the border crisis has never been worse
APRIL 22, 2019
After hearing how the pro-American group the United Constitution Patriots caught hundreds of illegal aliens invading our southern border in New Mexico earlier this week, the FBI moved immediately to arrest one of their alleged members on a gun charge.
From NBC News:
The FBI on Saturday arrested a man connected with an armed group that has been detaining migrants in New Mexico, the state attorney general’s office said.
Larry Mitchell Hopkins, 69, of Flora Vista, New Mexico, was arrested for allegedly being a felon in possession of a weapon, New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas and the FBI said.
[…] The FBI Albuquerque division said that Hopkins, who is also known as Johnny Horton Jr., was arrested with the assistance of the Sunland Park Police Department.
The FBI said he was arrested on a federal complaint charging him with being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition. It was not immediately clear what the underlying conviction was.
The FBI said that no other information would be released until after Hopkins has his initial court appearance, which is expected Monday at 10:30 a.m. at U.S. District Court in Las Cruces. The FBI in its statement did not mention anything about an armed group stopping migrants near the border.
The FBI did nothing to stop Nikolas Cruz shooting up his school in Florida despite multiple warnings. They did nothing to stop Stephen Paddock shooting up concert goers in Las Vegas. They did nothing to stop Omar Mateen shooting up a club in Orlando. They did nothing to stop Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik shooting up Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino.
It only took them less than one week to arrest an alleged member of the United Constitutional Patriots for daring to try and protect our southern border.
This, at a time when illegal immigration and the border crisis has never been worse.
The Democrats in New Mexico and the liars in the media love saying these people have no “right” to protect our border.
First off, every indicator shows they already knew that. They simply asked these illegal aliens to stop and they did. They then called border patrol.
Odds are the border patrol just booked the illegal aliens they caught and released them throughout our country, as those are our laws now under President Trump.
The idea American citizens don’t have the right to protect their borders is laughable in itself and reflective of how backwards our society truly is. These illegals are invading our homes. We have a right to defend our homes with force and we have a right to protect our borders. Citizen’s arrests are a rich part of American history and they’re becoming more relevant than ever now that our government is refusing to uphold the law.
Never forget, the same government which claims the right to bomb every nation on earth preemptively and launch full-scale ground invasions of countries like Venezuela because we don’t like their leaders claims Americans have no right to defend our own border.
There’s a reason they’re hitting Hopkins with a gun charge rather than kidnapping. They didn’t actually do anything wrong.
That said, there’s a good chance the FBI and the authorities in New Mexico will move against them illegally and make up fake charges to persecute them with, as the FBI just did with all of President Trump’s campaign associates.
Our government is now operating under what the late paleoconservative writer Sam Francis called, “Anarcho-Tyranny.”
As Francis described it: “What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny — the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through ‘sensitivity training’ and multiculturalist curricula, ‘hate crime’ laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny.”
“The laws that are enforced are either those that extend or entrench the power of the state and its allies and internal elites … or else they are the laws that directly punish those recalcitrant and ‘pathological’ elements in society who insist on behaving according to traditional norms — people who do not like to pay taxes, wear seat belts, or deliver their children to the mind-bending therapists who run the public schools; or the people who own and keep firearms, display or even wear the Confederate flag, put up Christmas trees, spank their children, and quote the Constitution or the Bible — not to mention dissident political figures who actually run for office and try to do something about mass immigration by Third World populations.”
SCHIFF WILL ‘HAUL PEOPLE BEFORE CONGRESS’ IF NECESSARY; WON’T RULE OUT IMPEACHMENT
“There’s a difference between compelling evidence of collusion and whether the special counsel concludes that he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt the criminal charge of conspiracy.”
By Susan Jones | March 25, 2019
(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the head of the House intelligence committee, said on Sunday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller may not have had enough evidence to prosecute President Trump, “but that doesn’t mean, of course, that there isn’t compelling and incriminating evidence that should be shared with the American people.”
And he intends to “haul people before the Congress” to get answers.
Schiff, a leading congressional critic of President Trump, told ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos that “there’s a difference between compelling evidence of collusion and whether the special counsel concludes that he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt the criminal charge of conspiracy.
“And as I’ve said before, George, I leave that decision to Bob Mueller, and I have full confidence in him. And I think, frankly, the country owes Bob Mueller a debt of gratitude for conducting the investigation as professionally as he has.
“So I — I have trust his prosecutorial judgment but that doesn’t mean, of course, that there isn’t compelling and incriminating evidence that should be shared with the American people.”
Schiff said that six people “close to the president” have been indicted: “That hardly looks like vindication to me. But again, let’s see what the report has to say. If they’re so confident that the report is going to exonerate them, they should fight to make that report and the underlying evidence public and available to Congress.
“But I suspect that we’ll find those words of transparency to prove hollow, that in fact they will fight to make sure that Congress doesn’t get this underlying evidence,” Schiff said.
“But we are going to take it as far as necessary to make sure that we do. We have an independent obligation to share the facts with the American people. We in the intelligence committee have a particular obligation to determine whether there is evidence, whether the president may be compromised in any way, whether that is criminal or not, and of course there are indications he was pursuing money in Russia through Trump Tower and other potential real estate that could be deeply compromising.”
Schiff said his committee will ask administration officials — presumably Attorney General William Barr and others– to appear before his committee. “If the request is denied, subpoena,” he said. “If subpoenas are denied, we will haul people before the Congress. And yes, we will prosecute in court as necessary to get this information.”
Schiff said it was a “mistake” to allow President Trump to respond in writing to the special counsel. “If you really do want the truth, you need to put people under oath. And that should is have been done, but the special counsel may have made the decision that, as he could not indict a sitting president on the obstruction issue, as it would draw out his investigation, that that didn’t make sense.”
(Notably, the FBI did not put Hillary Clinton under oath when agents questioned her about her “extremely careless” handling of emails, as former FBI Director James Comey put it.)
Schiff refused to rule out impeaching Trump, despite the fact that the Mueller report contained no bombshells, such as additional indictments.
He again pointed to the Justice Department opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted: “That’s their policy,” Schiff said.
“And therefore, there could be overwhelming evidence on the obstruction issue. And I don’t know that that’s the case, but if this were overwhelming evidence of criminality on the president’s part, then the Congress would need to consider that remedy (impeachment) if indictment is foreclosed.
“So, it’s really too early to make those judgments. We need to see the report. And then I think we’ll all have a factual basis to discuss what does this mean for the American people? What risks are we running with this president? What steps does Congress need to take to protect the country, but in the absence of those facts, those judgments are impossible to make.”
Schiff also said Congress’s responsibility is different from that of Robert Mueller:
“It’s our responsibility to tell the American people, these are the facts. This is what your president has done, this is what his key campaign and appointees have done, these are the issues that we need to take action on, this is potential compromise.
“There is evidence, for example, quite in the public realm, that the president sought to make money from the Russians, sought the Kremlin’s help to make money during the presidential campaign while denying business ties with the Russians.
“That is obviously deeply compromising,” Schiff said. “And if it’s this president’s view that he still wants to build that tower when he is out of office, that may further compromise his policy towards Putin, towards Russia and other things. It’s our duty to expose that and take corrective action.”
TWITTER ADMITS SHADOWBANNING LISA PAGE TWEET BY FEDERALIST CO-FOUNDER “TO KEEP PEOPLE SAFE”
Sorry citizen, some facts are just too dangerous for your own good
MARCH 19, 2019
Twitter has admitted to shadowbanning a tweet by The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis in order to “keep people safe.”
Tweeting a passage last week from former FBI attorney Lisa Page’s Congressional testimony discussing the FBI’s rush to find connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, Davis pointed out the irony of Hillary Clinton’s campaign employing former UK spy Christopher Steele, a foreign national, “working with Russians to obtain damaging information about Donald Trump.”
Of note, the dossier Steele compiled which was subsequently used to obtain a warrant to spy on a Trump adviser (and later smear Trump) relied on a “senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure” and “a former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin,” according to Vanity Fair.
Following his March 12 tweet, Davis wondered if Twitter was experimenting with “shadow bans” – as he could only see his tweet if he was logged in, meaning nobody else could see it.
Six days later, Twitter confirmed with Davis that they had deliberately shadow-banned his tweet in order to “keep people safe.”
Twitter confirmed to me today via e-mail that it did shadowban one of my tweets about Lisa Page's congressional tes… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 18, 2019
“Twitter gave me no notice or explanation when it shadowbanned one of my Tweets about Russian interference in our elections,” wrote Davis, adding “But what’s worse is how Twitter apparently gives its users the fraudulent impression that their tweets, which Twitter secretly bans, are still public.”
Titter claimed in its e-mail to me that it "mistakenly remove[d]" a completely anodyne tweet about public congressi… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…—
Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 18, 2019
In short, Twitter did not want the public to consider the irony of Hillary Clinton’s campaign paying for a foreign national to collude with Russians against Donald Trump, while the FBI scrambled to prove the Trump campaign did.
Unreal.
In other censorship news, ZeroHedge is now banned in New Zealand and much of Australiafollowing our reporting on the Christchurch terror attacks.
Sorry citizen, some facts are just too dangerous for your own good.
Tom's Blog 
