Tag: UKRAINE

Barr Is The Man For The Job. It Scares The Heck Out Of Those He’s Investigating.

By Sara Carter

Department of Justice Attorney General William Barr is the perfect man for the job. He is methodical, attentive, calm and rides the storm of chaos with the demeanor of a man who knows he is standing on the side of truth.

It is evident that former senior Obama administration officials and opponents of President Trump know that and fear it. It began last night with the ‘non-story’ that Special Counsel Robert Mueller prosecutors weren’t happy with Barr’s four page letter explaining their report on the Russia investigation.

“We did not understand exactly why the special counsel was not reaching a decision,” Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“We don’t conduct criminal investigations just to collect information and put it out to the public. We do so to make a decision,” Barr told lawmakers. He suggested that Mueller should have come to a decision but avoided the criticism of Democrats by passing the ball to him with regard to obstruction.

Barr’s Testimony To Senate Judiciary Committee

It was also apparent in the opinion editorial placed in the New York Times by disgraced and fired former Director of the FBI James Comey. Comey challenged Barr’s use of the word ‘spying.’ That’s exactly what Comey’s office did to the Trump campaign even if the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court sanctioned the bureau’s probe into former Trump campaign volunteers, like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.

“How could Mr. Barr, a bright and accomplished lawyer, start channeling the president in using words like “no collusion” and F.B.I. “spying”? And downplaying acts of obstruction of justice as products of the president’s being “frustrated and angry,” something he would never say to justify the thousands of crimes prosecuted every day that are the product of frustration and anger,” wrote Comey.

Channeling the president? What is Comey talking about. Mueller found no evidence of conspiracy with Russia and Barr, along with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, found no grounds for obstruction.

The use of the word ‘spying’ is a common phrase used for exactly what it is meant. Just look it up in Webster’s Dictionary.

However, Comey is well aware that the public fight is all he has left. He is walking a legal tight rope and he knows it.

If there is anyone who was channeling anybody, it was Comey. He channeled the words of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch when he called the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private sever to send classified government emails ‘a matter’ and not an investigation.

He channeled Obama when he uttered the same phrases that Clinton was not ‘intentionally’ putting American lives in jeopardy when she sent classified information on a server, our government believes was penetrated by multiple foreign state actors.

Remember what Obama said in April 2016: “Hillary Clinton was an outstanding secretary of state. She would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy.”

Comey said months later in July 2016, when he exonerated Clinton: “We did not find evidence sufficient to establish that she knew she was sending classified information beyond a reasonable doubt to meet the intent standard.” It wasn’t about meeting the standard, under the law it’s about gross negligence.

Barr has taken charge. Comey and his crew of FBI cohorts, along with other senior Obama administration officials, have a lot to worry about.

The DOJ is now investigating the origins of the FBI’s investigation and that frankly, is scaring the heck out of those who were involved. The public can thank Barr. He isn’t new to  the internal politicking in Washington D.C. and is well aware of the intelligence and law enforcement apparatus. He is also very familiar with all the players involved.

And they are fighting back with whatever ammo they have left. The ammunition is disinformation and gaslighting the public using main stream outlets. It is a war and they are in the final battle using everything at their disposal to go after the one man that can expose all of it: Barr.

However, it won’t work. As they say in old detective movies “the jig is up” and the American people, along with the DOJ, have seen enough evidence to prove that the bureau’s probe was fraught with problems.

It was spying. Plain and simple.

Barr should know, he worked with the CIA early in his career.

He also is not worried about being ‘politically correct’ to benefit the Democrats grilling him before the Senate Judiciary Committee and no matter how many tantrums they throw it isn’t going to stop him from getting to truth.

 

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Deep State Blame Game: Comey, Clapper, Brennan Spar over Who Pushed ‘Pee’ Dossier as Credible Intel Round 1: Comey Made Paper Trail Pointing to Brennan

CAP

By Aaron Klein

Disgraced ex-FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director turned anti-Trump activist John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence and Trump critic James Clapper are the subjects of a dispute over which top Obama administration officials advocated for the infamous Steele dossier to be utilized as evidence in the Russia collusion investigation.

The argument erupted into the open with a Brennan surrogate being quoted in the news media opposing Comey not long after Attorney General William Barr appointed a U.S. attorney to investigate the origins of the Russia collusion claims.

The fiasco was kicked into high gear after Fox News cited “sources familiar with the records” pointing to an email chain from late-2016 showing Comey allegedly telling FBI employees that it was Brennan who insisted that the anti-Trump dossier be included in a January 6, 2017 U.S. Intelligence Community report, known as the ICA, assessing Russian interference efforts.

A former CIA official, clearly defending Brennan, shot back at the assertion, instead claiming that it was Brennan and Clapper who opposed a purported push by Comey to include the dossier charges in the ICA.

The dossier was also cited as evidence in three successful FISA applications signed by Comey to obtain warrants to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The first was signed in October 2016; the second and third were renewal applications since a FISA warrant must be renewed every 90 days.

The dossier, authored by former British spy Christopher Steele, was produced by the controversial Fusion GPS firm. Fusion was paid for the dossier work by Trump’s main political opponents, namely Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) via the Perkins Coie law firm.

“Former Director Brennan, along with former [Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, are the ones who opposed James Comey’s recommendation that the Steele Dossier be included in the intelligence report,” the official told Fox News.

“They opposed this because the dossier was in no way used to develop the ICA,” the official added. “The intelligence analysts didn’t include it when they were doing their work because it wasn’t corroborated intelligence, therefore it wasn’t used and it wasn’t included. Brennan and Clapper prevented it from being added into the official assessment. James Comey then decided on his own to brief Trump about the document.”

The official was addressing the reported email from Comey fingering Brennan as insisting that the dossier be utilized in the ICA report on Russian interference.

Discussing the issue during a segment on Fox News, former GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy said on “The Story with Martha MacCallum” that “Comey has a better argument than Brennan, based on what I’ve seen.”

One day earlier, Gowdey stated on Fox News, “Whoever is looking into this, tell them to look into emails” from December 2016 concerning both Brennan and Comey.

Gowdy told Fox News, where he is now a contributor, that his comments on the matter were based on sensitive documents that he reviewed while he served as chairman of the Republican-led House Oversight Committee.

Contrary to the ex-CIA official’s assertion that the dossier was not included in the intel community’s ICA Russia report, there have been testimony and media statements involving key players saying that it was part of the overall assessment.

Last December, Comey outright contradicted Brennan’s own testimony that the anti-Trump dossier was, as Brennan put it, “not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community’s assessment” that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

In testimony before the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees, Comey stated that material from the Steele dossier was indeed utilized in the IC report. Internally, the FBI referred to the dossier as “crown material.”

“So do you recall whether any quote, crown material or dossier material was included in the IC assessment?” Gowdy asked Comey at the time.

“Yes,” Comey replied. “I’m going to be careful here because I’m talking about a document that’s still classified. The unclassified thing we talked about earlier today, the first paragraph you can see of exhibit A, is reflective of the fact that at least some of the material that Steele had collected was in the big thing called the intelligence community assessment in an annex called annex A.”

Annex A in the report was titled, “Russia—Kremlin’s TV Seeks To Influence Politics, Fuel Discontent in US.”

The annex, like the rest of the report, contains the following disclaimer:

This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment; its conclusions are identical to those in the highly classified assessment but this version does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign.

Comey went on to describe a conversation that he said he had with Brennan about how to include the dossier material in the IC assessment:

Gowdy: Do you recall the specific conversation or back and forth with then-Director Brennan on whether or not the material should be included in the IC assessment?

Comey. Yes. I remember conversation — let me think about it for a second. I remember there was conversation about what form its presentation should take in the overarching document; that is, should it be in an annex; should it be in the body; that the intelligence community broadly found its source credible and that it was corroborative of the central thesis of the intelligence community assessment, and the discussion was should we put it in the body or put it in an attachment.

I’m hesitating because I don’t remember whether I had that conversation — I had that conversation with John Brennan, but I remember that there was conversation about how it should be treated.

Comey’s descriptions are at direct odds with a statement Brennan made during May 2017 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in which Brennan claimed the dossier was “not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community’s assessment” on alleged Russian interference. Brennan repeated that claim during numerous news media interviews.

Comey is not the only former top official involved in the IC report to say that the dossier played a role in the report’s conclusions.

 

As RealClearPolitics.com documents, former NSA Director Rogers wrote in a classified letter that the dossier played a role in the IC’s assessment and a dossier summary was included in an initial draft appendix:

In a March 5, 2018, letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, Adm. Rogers informed the committee that a two-page summary of the dossier — described as “the Christopher Steele information” — was “added” as an “appendix to the ICA draft,” and that consideration of that appendix was “part of the overall ICA review/approval process.”

Meanwhile Clapper, who served as director of National Intelligence under the Obama administration, conceded during a previous CNN interview that the IC assessment was able to corroborate “some of the substantive content of the dossier,” implying that the dossier itself was a factor.

“I think with respect to the dossier itself, the key thing is it doesn’t matter who paid for it,” Clapper said. “It’s what the dossier said and the extent to which it was — it’s corroborated or not. We had some concerns about it from the standpoint of its sourcing which we couldn’t corroborate.”

“But at the same time, some of the substantive content, not all of it, but some of the substantive content of the dossier, we were able to corroborate in our Intelligence Community assessment which from other sources in which we had very high confidence to it,” he added.

It was Clapper’s agency that released the Intelligence Community report.

The purported inclusion of the dossier may help to explain why Rogers’ NSA assessed the conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin favored Trump and worked to get him elected only with a classification of “moderate confidence,” while the FBI and CIA gave it a “high confidence” rating.

The dispute comes as U.S. Attorney John Durham has been charged by Barr with conducting a probe of the origins of the Russia investigation. In addition to ICA report tactics, Durham’s probe is likely to also focus on the use of the dossier in obtaining a FISA warrant to spy on Page.

John Brennan Fueled the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theory

Regardless of his role in the ICA assessment and the dossier, Brennan was still a central player in fueling the anti-Trump dossier that spread unsubstantiated, conspiratorial claims of collusion with Russia.

As Breitbart News previously documented, Brennan helped lead official classified briefings to then-President Obama and President-elect Trump on the discredited dossier even though the questionable document was funded by Trump’s primary political opponents.

Those two classified briefings were subsequently leaked to the news media and set in motion an avalanche of anti-Trump news media coverage on the dossier’s wild allegations.

Brennan’s CIA also co-authored the questionable ICA report saying Russia’s intentions for allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election included the goal of ensuring Trump was victorious over Hillary Clinton. An extensive House report later accused the CIA and the two other agencies that co-authored that report of politicizing intelligence and other analytical failures.

And, as Breitbart News documented, Brennan reportedly convened a highly compartmentalized unit of CIA, FBI and NSA analysts to conduct operations related to what eventually became the allegations of Russian interference and controversial claims that Putin worked to elect Trump. The secretive unit was reportedly housed in the CIA’s headquarters.

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White House Denies House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler’s Document Request ‘political theater pre-ordained to reach a preconceived and false result’

CAP

By Joshua Caplan

The White House said Wednesday that it is rebuffing the House Judiciary Committee’s request to hand over documents regarding topics broadly focused on 2016 Trump presidential campaign figures.

“The White House will not participate in the Committee’s ‘investigation’ that brushes aside the conclusions of the Department of Justice after a two-year-long effort in favor of political theater pre-ordained to reach a preconceived and false result,” a letter sent by White House counsel Pat Cipollone reads, according to ABC News.

Democrats launched a sweeping probe of President Trump in March, an aggressive investigation targeting eighty-one individuals and entities requesting records as part of their investigation ”into the alleged obstruction of justice, public corruption, and other abuses of power by President Trump, his associates, and members of his Administration.”

Cipollone wrote that Nadler’s investigation is “duplicative” of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into now-debunked collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and requested that the committee seek a more “narrow” scope.

“Congressional investigations are intended to obtain information to aid in evaluating potential legislation, not to harass political opponents or to pursue an unauthorized “do-over” of exhaustive law enforcement investigations conducted by the Department of Justice,” argued the White House general counsel.

Former Trump campaign chief Stephen K. Bannon and the National Rifle Association (NRA) are among several figures and groups that have provided documents or responses to the panel.

President Trump has previously denounced the probe, tweeting that Nadler and other Democrats “have gone stone cold CRAZY. 81 letter sent to innocent people to harass them. They won’t get ANYTHING done for our Country!”

Nadler has said that the document requests, with responses to most that were due by March 18, are a way to “begin building the public record.”

“Over the last several years, President Trump has evaded accountability for his near-daily attacks on our basic legal, ethical, and constitutional rules and norms,” the New York Democrat said upon launching the probe. “Investigating these threats to the rule of law is an obligation of Congress and a core function of the House Judiciary Committee.”

Separate congressional probes are already ongoing, including an effort announced by three other House Democrat chairmen to obtain information about private conversations between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In a letter to the White House and State Department, the House intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Reform panels sent broad requests for details about President Trump and Putin’s private meetings by phone and in person. In addition to document requests, the committees are asking to interview interpreters who sat in on meetings, including a one-on-one session in Helsinki, Finland, last summer.

The State Department pledged to “work cooperatively with the committees.”

The AP contributed to this report. 

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Biden: ‘Not a Single Bit of Evidence’ Son Asked Me to Help Him in Ukraine

CAP

By Charlie Spiering

Former Vice President Joe Biden denied Monday that his son Hunter Biden asked him for a favor in Ukraine while serving on the energy board of a Ukrainian energy company.

“We never once discussed it when he was there,” Biden told the Associated Press. “There’s not a single bit of evidence that’s been shown in any reporting that’s been done that he ever talked about it with me or asked any government official for a favor.”

When he was vice president, Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees for Ukraine if officials did not fire the country’s top prosecutor, who was pursuing a corruption investigation of an energy company while his son Hunter was serving on the board.

The connection was revealed in author Peter Schweizer’s best-selling book Secret Empires,and the reporting was confirmed in the New York Times.

Hunter Biden was paid as much as $50,000 per month while serving on the board, as his father led the Obama administration’s policy with Ukraine.

Biden’s “not a single bit of evidence” defense echoes former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s repeated assertion that there was no evidence of improper paybacks after she approved the Uranium One deal — despite receiving $145 million in pledges and donations for the Clinton Foundation.

Biden’s Ukraine connection made recent headlines after President Donald Trump’s personal attorney suggested he would travel to Ukraine to investigate the issue before ultimately deciding against it.

Biden criticized Giuliani for even considering the idea.

“I can’t remember any lawyer representing the president, conferring with the president, deciding to go overseas, where a government relies on U.S. largesse to try to get them to do something that everybody knows never happened,” Biden said during an interview with WMUR.

In the same interview, he also pointed to the reporting surrounding the conflict of interest.

“All the reports indicated that not a single, solitary thing was inappropriate about what my son did. He never talked to me. He never talked to anybody in the administration,” Biden said.

In his interview with the Associated Press, Biden defended his son’s role on the board.

“I have great confidence in my son,” he said. “He’s a man of great integrity.”

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