JUDICIAL WATCH SUES FOR RECORDS OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN CLAPPER, BRENNAN, CNN
Watchdog files FOIA to unearth truth about Steele dossier
MARCH 28, 2019
Dossier-Related Communications Between Clapper and ex-CIA Director John Brennan also Sought
(Washington, DC) — Judicial Watch announced today it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) seeking records of communications between former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and CNN around the time the Clinton-Democrat National Committee Trump dossier was being pitched to key media outlets.
A House report detailed that Clapper leaked information regarding the dossier to CNN in January 2017. The former ODNI chief signed on as an analyst for CNN in August 2017.
Judicial Watch is also seeking records of communications between Clapper and Obama CIA Director John Brennan regarding the dossier , which was authored by former British spy and FBI payee Christopher Steele.
Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch v. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Central Intelligence Agency (No. 1:19-cv-00776)) after the agencies failed to respond to an April 23, 2018 FOIA request seeking:
All records of communication, including emails (whether on .gov or non-.gov email accounts), text messages and instant chats, between officials in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, including but not limited to James Clapper, and employees, representatives and contractors of CNN.
The time frame for the records request is May 2016 through May 2017.
All records of communications between the office of the Director of Central Intelligence and representatives of CNN; DCI John Brennan and DNI James Clapper regarding the collection of memos known as the “Steele Dossier:” and between DCI John Brennan and DNI James Clapper regarding CNN.
All records of communication, including emails (whether on .gov or non-.gov email accounts), text messages and instant chats, between officials in the office of the Director of Central Intelligence, including but not limited to DCI John Brennan, and employees, representatives and contractors of CNN. The time frame for the requested records is May 2016 through May 2017.
All records of communication, including emails (whether on .gov or non-.gov email accounts), text messages and instant chats, between DCI John Brennan and DNI James Clapper regarding the collection of memos known as the “Steele Dossier”. The time frame for records requested in this bullet item is May 2016 through January 2017.
All records of communication, including emails (whether on .gov or non-.gov email accounts), text messages and instant chats, between DCI John Brennan and DNI James Clapper regarding the news network CNN. The time frame for records requested in this bullet item is May 2016 through January 2017.
In a March 2018, report, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee said, “Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, now a CNN national security analyst, provided inconsistent testimony to the Committee about his contacts with the media, including CNN.” And, “when questioned by the Committee … Clapper admitted that he confirmed the existence of the dossier to the media.
Clapper later admitted he had discussed the Steele dossier with CNN’s Jake Tapper and other journalists in early 2017, shortly before President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
In a January 10, 2017 report with bylines from Tapper, Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto and Carl Bernstein, CNN first revealed that then-FBI Director James Comey had briefed then-President-elect Trump on the dossier’s allegations.
The Intelligence Committee’s report said that “Clapper subsequently acknowledged discussing the ‘dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,’ and admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists about the same topic. Clapper’s discussion with Tapper took place in ‘early January 2017,’ around the time [intelligence officials] briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump, on ‘the Christopher Steele information.’”
Shortly after CNN’s January 10, 2017 report, BuzzFeed News published the dossier in full.
The four CNN reporters were awarded the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Merriman Smith Award for their coverage of the dossier story.
Brennan, in an interview with NBC News on February 4, 2018 insisted that the Steele dossier “did not play any role whatsoever” in early intelligence assessments on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Several subsequent reports strongly contradict Brennan’s claim.
In a June 4, 2018 report for National Review, Victor Davis Hanson noted that Brennan “served as a stealthy conduit” to ensure the dossier was “disseminated widely.”
Hanson wrote: “Brennan, in May 2017, as an ex-CIA director, again almost certainly did not tell the truth to Congress when he testified in answer to Rep. Tray Gowdy’s questions that he neither knew who had commissioned the Steele dossier nor had the CIA relied on its contents for any action. Yet both the retired National Security Agency director, Michael Rogers, and the former director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, have conceded that the Steele dossier — along with the knowledge that it was a Clinton-campaign-funded project — most certainly did help shape the Obama intelligence communality interagency assessments and actions, often under the urging of Brennan himself.”
“Judicial Watch is again in court trying to get the truth about the Obama gang illegal leaks and conspiracy targeting President Trump,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “Clapper and Brennan were key proponents of the big lie, exposed by the Mueller report, that President Trump colluded with the Russians. Judicial Watch FOIA litigation is the best hope for getting full accountability on this attack on our constitutional republic.”
MEMO TO JOURNOS: IF YOU’RE WHITE, GET OUT
By Betsy Rothstein
“Black press only!”
This was the warning emblazoned on the glass doors of a Savannah church, where an event associated with a Georgia mayoral race took place Wednesday.
Also Scotch-taped to the doors of the Historic Bolton Street Missionary Baptist Church: “No audio or video recording!” And “no media (TV, radio, etc…).”
White political reporters were absolutely S.O.L. As noted by the AP, organizers convening to powwow about an upcoming mayoral race forbid anyone who isn’t black from entering the premises. As reported by the Savannah Morning News, white reporters were barred entry to God’s house while two black reporters were allowed in. TV cameras and recording devices were also absolutely forbidden.
Rev. Clarence Teddy Williams refused to comment to the local newspaper on why white reporters were shunned. Williams organized the event and was a part of a decision making process that concluded that white press was bad news.
But the racial details of the race may give you some idea.
Mayor Eddie DeLoach, who is white, is the town’s first mayor in two decades. Come November, he’s throwing his hat in the ring to continue being mayor. Three black candidates are also vying for the job. At least two of those candidates showed up to the meeting that allowed only black press.
According to the Savannah newspaper, Savannah Tribune‘s Shirley James, a black publisher, was permitted to attend.
In an incredible act of racism, Savannah Alderman Van Johnson, who is black and running for mayor, said people have the right to do what they want to do. He claimed it was not his meeting, so not his rules.
Louis Wilson, the other black mayoral hopeful, also claimed that it wasn’t his meeting.
The Mirror reached out to a reverend at the church to ask questions.
No one picked up the phone and there was no answering machine.
‘Nobody is panicking!’ Rachel Maddow sheds 500,000 viewers in post-Mueller slump
After putting all its eggs in the Russiagate conspiracy-theory ‘basket’ only to be let down by the contents (or lack thereof) of the Mueller report, MSNBC – and its top attraction, Rachel Maddow – are hemorrhaging viewers.
Russian-collusion high priestess Rachel Maddow’s nightly news show has slipped from number one in cable news to number six since Special Counsel Robert Mueller turned in his report on Friday, hemorrhaging half a million viewers in the space of a week. An MSNBC insider spilled the beans to the Daily Beast, assuring them that no one at the network was panicking.
“It was obviously a big couple of nights for Fox,” they said. MSNBC’s second-top-rated program, ‘The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,’ was also down half a million pairs of eyes.
#Resistance media reactions to Mueller’s “no more indictments” recommendation have varied wildly, from desperate pleas to “wait and see” what’s in the full report to claims that Mueller himself was compromised, or asking the wrong questions, all along. Maddow herself seems to have chosen the “denial” route:
“Can we expect President Trump and the Trump White House to finally accept the underlying factual record that Russia did in fact attack us?” she asked on Monday, interpreting the report summary of Attorney General William Barr, which found no evidence to suggest Russian collusion, as proof that the Russian menace was even more menacing than previously believed.
Maddow’s privileged status as Queen of the Russiagaters has largely insulated her from the standard journalistic responsibilities of telling the truth, fact-checking, and otherwise maintaining a reality-based narrative, but the Beast cited “many producers” at MSNBC who had noticeably backed away from other fiery preachers of the Russiagate gospel, like Malcolm “Russia has been plotting to invade the US for 20 years! Also memes are cruise missiles“ Nance.
‘Opportunistic, xenophobic’: WikiLeaks mocks Rachel Maddow’s latest Russia scare story
Despite the temporary ratings death spiral, network insiders took the long view, speaking of a “pivot to 2020” and keeping the faith that the Trump administration would provide plenty of raw meat for its pundits in the coming months.
And Trumpworld has already begun distributing that meat, blasting a memo to all TV news producers on Monday night that was half victory lap, half threat.
“At this point, there must be introspection from the media who facilitated the reckless statements and a serious evaluation of how such guests are considered and handled in the future,” the missive chided, mentioning some of the worst offenders – including former CIA director John Brennan and Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez – by name.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Ignorantly, CNN claims, Obama did NOT have any scandals – #Sheeeeeit #TFNOriginal
THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF AMERICA
Liberals love to rewrite history.
Conspiracy Theory Peddling CNN Talker Brian Stelter Offers Excuse for CNN’s Abysmal Ratings
CNN’s eunuch has an interesting take on why his network’s ratings are falling.
By
A conspiracy theorist and host at CNN made a downright bizarre excuse for his network’s plummeting ratings after the collapse of the RussiaGate hoax.
“It’s true that Fox’s prime time ratings have popped this week while CNN and MSNBC’s ratings have been below average. That makes sense: On the right, the Barr letter is being celebrated like a sequel to election night. Since the letter’s release on Sunday, there hasn’t been much news. So I’m not surprised by the ebb and flow, but I’m keeping an eye on it…” said Brian Stelter in his morning newsletter.
Stelter hosts the show “Reliable Sources,” which proved itself unreliable on multiple occasions, but confirmed its unreliability after the CNN’s president said that the network’s reporters “are not investigators.”
The excuse that there “hasn’t been much news” this week is bogus.
America’s favorite alleged hate crime hoaxer Jussie Smollett was mysteriously exonerated by tight-lipped prosecutors in Chicago who have deep ties to the Democratic Party establishment, all the way up the ladder to the Obama family.
Going to, not from jail is former CNN darling Michael Avenatti, whose alleged un-indicted co-conspirator is Mark Geragos, a former CNN legal analyst who has now been released by the network. The network once let both men dominate their airtime. Now, Stelter says they’re not newsworthy.
CNN could always discuss their own legal woes. The network was recently served with a $250 million lawsuit by the attorneys for Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann, alleging that the network defamed him. That was on March 9. CNN first covered the story on March 21 – then dropped it altogether.
There’s plenty of news to cover. Perhaps Stelter could drop the charade and be honest about why his network is rapidly losing viewership.
The Russian “collusion” scandal was always a conspiracy theory, and CNN and the rest of the cable nets perpetuated it for two years.
TUCKER: REAL COLLUSION IS BETWEEN MEDIA AND DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Carlson opened Wednesday night’s edition of his show with a “story about collusion, actual collusion that’s currently” taking place “in the open on live television.”
MARCH 28, 2019
Tucker Carlson argued Wednesday that the media shifted from the Russiagate hoax to talking about “healthcare” by taking cues from Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi.
From The Daily Caller:
Fox News host Tucker Carlson contended that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi successfully changed the coverage agenda at CNN from the Mueller report to health care.
Carlson opened Wednesday night’s edition of his show with a “story about collusion, actual collusion that’s currently” taking place “in the open on live television.”
“This is a story about where your news comes from,” he said.
[…]“Something had to be done,” Carlson said. “So into this disaster stepped the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. On Monday, just hours after the collusion story collapsed, Pelosi announced that the Democratic Party would be switching gears. Going forward, Democrats would focus intently on health care, just like she disingenuously claimed they always have.”
What Tucker said about both networks talking about “healthcare” during his monologue a little after 8PM EST was entirely true:
Exclusive: Devin Nunes Sending Criminal Referral to DOJ over Spygate ‘now go on offense and track down all these dirty cops and bad players’
By Kristina Wong
House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-CA) is planning to send a criminal referral next week to the Justice Department that will detail “multiple referrals on a number of different crimes,” including leaking classified information, as part of his investigation into misconduct at the Justice Department and the FBI.
“As of now, it’ll be one criminal referral but with multiple referrals on a number of different crimes,” he told Breitbart News on Wednesday in an exclusive interview. “We will have some leakers in there for sure.”
“We knew this was a joke from the beginning, and I’ve said as much for a long time. Basically from the time our report came out, which has been a year. But now, the real work begins. It’s good to not have that sitting out there. But we have to now go on offense and track down all these dirty cops and bad players,” he said.
In addition, Nunes plans to interview about 50 people—some who have never been called before Congress—who were involved or know about the pushing of the “pee dossier” within various U.S. government agencies, and its use to get a surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Nunes—who took a beating from mainstream news outlets for challenging the Russian collusion narrative—wants to get to the bottom of how it all began, which he said was long before the FBI claims they officially began their investigation of the Trump campaign in late July 2016.
“It all stems from the fact that we know that this investigation started long before the end of July,” he said. “We are quite confident that this investigation started long before they told us that it did.”
He said it reaches all the way to the Obama White House, though it is not yet clear how involved former President Barack Obama was.
“Look, there’s big problems — big problems that the public needs to know about. Maximum transparency is the best thing here,” he said.
Nunes said he believes Barr will have to act on his criminal referral. “There’ll be things in there that cannot be ignored. There will be crimes … so they have to be dealt with,” he told Breitbart News.
He told Fox News on Tuesday he would target “people who lied to Congress, perjury, [and] criminal conspiracy.”
As far as his Democrat colleagues who have not given up on the idea that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, he said, referring to the mythical beast, “These guys are chasing Chupacabra.”
“That really is what they’re looking for … unicorns, the Lochness monster—they’re interchangeable,” he said.
Nunes said the question of whether his Democrat colleague, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), should resign as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, should be directed to Democrat leadership.
“I’ll let our leadership speak to that. My job is to work with whoever is there. At the end of the day, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi makes the decision. But I’ll just say that I think more real journalists need to ask real questions to Team Chupacabra,” he said.
Russiagate diehards can’t let the collusion narrative go, come up with new theories instead
The conspiracy known as ‘Russiagate’ should have ended with the news that, after intense investigation, no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was found — but die-hard collusion truthers are finding it hard to move on.
Attorney General William Barr sent a four-page letter summarizing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings to Congress on March 24. Quoting the report directly Barr wrote that the investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” in 2016.
That unambiguous conclusion was reached with the help of 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts and forensic accountants, among other professionals. In pursuit of any evidence to prove Trump colluded with Moscow, Mueller issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses.
But none of that was enough to satisfy or dent the resolve of the Russiagate true believers (on social media or in the mainstream media) who are still convinced that they were right all along and are coming up with new theories in a last-ditch effort to prove it.
‘Barr is lying for Trump!’
Following the letter, the first instinct of the Russiagaters was to cast Barr as the new villain. It was too early to turn on Mueller (who had been held up for two years as a Messiah-like figure who would save them from the Trump presidency).
“Barr is a Trump appointee!” they shouted on Twitter, suggesting that the AG lied or misconstrued the contents of Mueller’s report while he sat by and said nothing. Former Hillary Clinton adviser Adam Parkhomenko even accused Barr of engineering a “coverup” of Mueller’s real evidence.
This was followed by demands for the release of the report in its entirety, which is a fair request. Trump himself in the past has said he would have “no problem” with the full report being released, so time will tell whether he’ll stick to that position or not. Regardless, what the Russiagaters are expecting to find in the full report is a bit of a mystery, since we already know there was no evidence of collusion established by Mueller.
‘Mueller didn’t investigate the right things!’
Perhaps realizing that accusing Barr of spinning the report in Trump’s favor wasn’t going to cut it, collusion enthusiasts finally began to set their sights on Mueller himself. A piece in the New York Times noted the “sense of mourning” that had set in among “disappointed Mueller fans” who were now beginning to “rethink the pedestal they built for him.”
“Mueller’s scope was too narrow!” the former fans insisted, after pledging their hopes on his investigative skills for two years and hanging on every “bombshell” and “turning point” the media — including the Times — had offered them. Some were so disillusioned that they decided the whole thing must have been “a setup” from day one.
‘Forget Mueller, the evidence is in plain sight!’
Others maintained that Mueller (“a Republican!”) was simply ignoring all the “evidence” of collusion that was in “plain sight.” The “plain sight” narrative was boosted by the unrelenting Rep. Adam Schiff, who led the Democrats’ collusion charge and even claimed that he seen the evidence of collusion himself. Yet, on Tuesday, Schiff told CNN that the problem was an inability to establish proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” and promised that Congress would continue its own investigations of Trump to prove that he was “compromised” by Russia.
Some did stick by Mueller, however, insisting that they trust him and will accept whatever is in the report. Whether they will stand by that assessment if they are disappointed by the contents of the full report remains to be seen.
‘But what about *insert theory*?’
Then there were those who went back to basics and dug up all the old theories. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia Evelyn Farkas suggested that maybe Trump secretly owes buckets of money to Russians “close to Putin.”
What about that Trump Tower meeting? What about WikiLeaks? What about Trump saying nice things about Putin? Come on, there must be something they can catch him on.
Media madness
US media has taken two different approaches to the Mueller news. There are the ones who are eager to move on and forget Russiagate ever happened (no need to reflect on the role journalists played in hyping the conspiracy) — and there are those who are doubling down.
Preferring the ‘let’s all move on’ option, two CNN reporters penned an unintentionally funny article suggesting that the finding of no collusion was an opportunity to quickly “move past a dark period,” but worried that the president “isn’t prepared to let go.” One assumes they haven’t recently encountered any of the congressional Democrats who are insisting that investigations of Trump will continue indefinitely.
Coming as a surprise to no one, MSNBC’s chief Russiagate prophet Rachel Maddow is one who has opted to double down, barely acknowledging on her Monday night show that no collusion had been found and pouring ample skepticism on Barr’s letter. Poor, desperate Maddow was then unironically dubbed the “queen of collusion” in the Washington Post, which was hardly a beacon of reason and moderation over the last two years.
Anyway, best to stay tuned; who knows what new theories the Russiagate devotees will come up with next.
Danielle Ryan RT
Like this story? Share it with a friend!
Tom's Blog 