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Government Corruption

HPSCI report concluded Russian government wanted Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, to win 2016 election and that CIA Director John Brennan had manipulated 2017 "Intelligence Community Assessment," or ICA,

2024-02-19

[Townhall] This week has been hellacious. And there was more damning evidence released regarding the Russian collusion hoax, where Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Gutentag unearthed new details showing how this scheme was hatched long before disgraced FBI officials Peter Strzok, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe greenlit the counterintelligence probe that was once considered the starting point for this corrupt wild goose chase. The CIA already had over two dozen Trump associates pegged for surveillance illegally, and they roped in the intelligence services of our top allies to help.

Now, we have a former White House staffer who alleges he read the intelligence report compiled by House investigators, which shredded the core of the Russian narrative. This individual also divulged two possible locations for this report since there’s now a treasure hunt to find these incriminating documents that the spook community has tried to keep buried. The trio wrote about how the CIA cooked the books for the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) to pivot away from what the evidence was concluding, which was that Moscow wanted Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 election, not Donald Trump (via Public) [emphasis mine]:

Around 10 a.m. on a Saturday in August 2018, someone made the extraordinary decision to show a White House staff member a top-secret report written by investigators working for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), which is universally pronounced as “hip C.”

The still-secret, never-released HPSCI report concluded that the Russian government wanted Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, to win the 2016 election and that then-CIA Director John Brennan had manipulated a January 2017 “Intelligence Community Assessment,” or ICA, which had come to the opposite conclusion.

[…] The former White House staffer did not want to say who brought him into the HPSCI SCIF to read the report. They did so secretly. There is no record of him reading the report.

“About one-quarter of HPSCI staff are former intelligence officers,” he said.

The authors of the 50-page HPSCI report brought it to him and left it with him to read for the next 90 minutes. Asked to recount the exact title, the man wasn’t sure but then added, “It was something like “Staff Report on the January 6, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment, ‘Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections.’”

“It was clearly something they had put a lot of time into,” he explained. “It was refined and polished. There was a main text. There were sidebars. A sidebar would be a parallel discussion or analysis. This wasn’t just an essay. It was a finished product. It was formatted and footnoted with a cover page.”

[…] Pressed further, he said, “They were pleasant, introverted people. Not political hacks. Professionals. Somewhat wonky and nerdy.”

What the HPSCI staff report showed was that the former CIA Director Brennan had manipulated the ICA.

[…] Why was the report never released?

“My understanding was the HPSCI Chairman at the time, Devin Nunes, was waiting for the Trump administration to release FISA warrants against Trump campaign officials before he released this report. They couldn’t get any traction in getting it cleared by the CIA, and given that it was a Republican administration, they thought the Trump administration could get it out.”

Added the man, “I’m sure there’s a copy [of the HPSCI report] at the CIA. In theory, there are still copies in the HPSCI SCIF.”

There’s a binder that airs all the dirty laundry regarding this rogue operation out there, compiled during the Trump administration by House investigators. That file is missing, but it’s keeping the IC up at night. Some sources told this trio of reporters—Gutentag, Taibbi, and Shellenberger—that the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid might have been influenced by this document, with federal agents speculating that it might have been stored at the former president’s Florida residence.

The staffer also said this unreleased HPSCI (“hip C”) report did include that the ICA, which was taken as gospel by the CIA, Democrats, and the liberal media, relied heavily on the Steele Dossier, an opposition research project funded by the Clinton campaign and compiled by a former MI6 spook. It was a document that was also brimming with Russian disinformation and bad intelligence. It also said, unsurprisingly, that the intelligence for the CIA’s Trump-Kremlin narrative was weak, and it was forced into the final draft by Brennan despite objections from other CIA officers. The rushed product—the CIA wanted this report released before Obama left office—did not follow department protocols.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Israel will be forced to pay and repent

2023-10-24

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Victoria Nikiforova

The Atlantic magazine, one of the most influential political publications in the United States, published an instructive article by the notable fighter of the information front, Anne Applebaum, “Netanyahu’s attack on democracy left Israel unprepared.

”Summary: the “authoritarian” Benjamin Netanyahu is to blame for Israel’s problems in general and the Hamas attack in particular. The main message is that until Israel gets rid of this “authoritarian”, it will not see victory.

Sounds quite unexpected, doesn't it? Israel has not yet recovered from the shock. Joe Biden promised his ally help - he sent an entire aircraft carrier to the region and is even trying to extort billions of dollars from Congress so that Tel Aviv could use this money to purchase weapons from American corporations. And then there’s this stab in the back.

In theory, Washington should now treat the Prime Minister of Israel in the same way as it treats Zelensky. Receive him in Congress, kiss his hands, praise him, make aunts, load all your information guns on his PR. Moreover, Ukraine is still a young partner (or partner?) of the White House. And Israel is our oldest and most devoted ally. But something went wrong.

We must understand that Applebaum is not just an ordinary propagandist. She is married to a prominent Polish politician Radoslaw Sikorski , she is a Pulitzer laureate, a member of various editorial boards and influential organizations, the author of endless discussions about how to end Russia . Her career in the field of Russophobia began with a monumental work about the Gulag, and continued with collaboration with Navalny.

Applebaum’s ancestors at one time moved to the United States from Belarus - for some reason this motivates her to fight us to the bitter end. In 2007, the propagandist gave a lecture in Russian in Moscow entitled “Repentance as a Social Institution.” She demanded that we repent for the Gulag, similar to how the Germans repent for the Holocaust, and to carry out “adequate, normal lustrations” in the country.

Apparently, Netanyahu’s “authoritarianism” in Applebaum’s understanding is a refusal to follow the openly hostile anti-Russian course of the United States. Israel has not joined the sanctions regime, is not waging an information war against us, does not boast of supplies to Ukraine, the country has remained open to the Russians.

The Hamas attack on October 7 gave the United States excellent leverage to put pressure on Tel Aviv. If the IDF does not avenge its defeat, Netanyahu will collapse. To take revenge, we need US help - not only with money and weapons, but also with information, diplomatic and political support. And all this help comes in a package with demands to change policy in relations with Russia. Hence the parallels between Hamas and Putin that Joe Biden persistently draws. Cynically? But it works. Americans are great pragmatists, although they do not forget to wrap their business logic in rhetorical candy wrappers such as defending democracy.

In order to put more pressure on their ally, the American media are promoting the topic of pro-Palestinian protests in the United States. A new seizure of the Capitol was shown on all screens - this time it was stormed by anti-Israel protesters, who were freely allowed inside by the police and filmed by television cameras from all points.

The number of pro-Palestinian sympathizers among US Democratic voters is widely debated. Approval of Israel among their ranks has declined radically in recent years. According to a Gallup poll , only 38 percent of Democrats support the Jewish state, while 49 percent sympathize with the Palestinians. Support for Israel in the United States remains high among Republicans and “independent” nonpartisan voters. However, the ruling US party can at any moment refer to a split in its ranks and turn off the valve for “aid” to Israel.

The results of the Gallup study were published back in March, when mass protests against judicial reform began in Israeli cities. Evil tongues in Israel then said that it was beneficial for the Americans to support these protests. Anne Applebaum speaks with great sympathy in her article about the protesters. In the summer, at the height of the rallies, she herself traveled to Israel, spoke with demonstrators, and now uses her interviews to accuse Netanyahu.

But even more profitable for the United States was the Hamas attack on Israel. It ensured Washington's return to the Middle East as a decision maker and allowed it to put pressure on Tel Aviv, which dared to have its own opinion on foreign policy issues.

Years ago, Senator Biden said, “If Israel didn’t exist, it would have to be invented.” To paraphrase Sleepy Joe, if the October 7 attack had not happened, the Americans should have made it up. I wouldn’t like to go into conspiracy theories, but the failure of the legendary Iron Dome, the suddenly open border with the Gaza Strip, and the amount of top-secret information that Hamas fighters were able to somehow obtain in order to plan and successfully carry out such a thing look extremely strange. large-scale invasion. The Israeli military is openly talking about the many misunderstandings of this story.

I would not like to think that Washington is capable of such a provocation against its closest ally. Perhaps the original idea was less bloody, but then everything didn’t go as expected. But even if the Americans are not involved here, they are trying to make the most of the current situation.

The pressure on Israel is so palpable that a member of the ruling Likud party , Amir Weitman, understanding what his overseas patrons demand, has already launched threats against Russia. His sudden hysteria would have been as incomprehensible as Applebaum's article. But if the US goal in the Palestinian-Israeli aggravation is to force Israel into confrontation with Russia, then the puzzle fits together.

And everything falls into place.

Another thing is that the deterioration of relations with our country makes Israel’s loneliness absolutely comprehensive. A country surrounded by enemies has no one left at all. But isn't that what they are trying to achieve in Washington?

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Government Corruption

How To Create Conspiracy Theories

2023-07-24

[VDH] It is easy to birth conspiracy theories.

All that is required is chronic government stonewalling of reasonable requests for transparency. Then add in high officials serially lying under oath, along with the blatantly unequal application of the law. Institutionalize arguments from authority of politicians and bureaucrats who refuse to adjudicate arguments empirically.

Include the weaponization of investigatory and intelligence bureaucracies. Finish with the transformation of an obsequious media into a mouthpiece of the state. And presto, you end up with a skeptical, cynical public that learns to believe the very opposite from what it is told by elites.

JANUARY 6th
Curiously. some conservative politicians, media and politicos often remark of their surprise that so many of the Trump base insists that the January 6 riot at the Capitol was in part a federally driven conspiracy, or perhaps just a mere "demonstration" gone awry.

But whether true or not, why would some not believe that—given the efforts of the state to hide and warp facts?

Consider what drives rational people to embrace supposed "conspiracy" theories around the so-called "insurrection?"

One reason, of course, is that there was evidence of FBI informants present on January 6. Do not take the word of conservatives for such suppositions.

Instead, remember what award-winning New York Times’s reporter and keen follower of right-wing political activity, Matthew Rosenberg said of January 6, albeit in an ambush interview conducted by Project Veritas:

The left’s overreaction — the left’s reaction to it in some places was so over the top. They were making it too big a deal ... that gave the opening for lunatics in the right to be like, ’Oh, well, nothing happened here. It was just a peaceful bunch of tourists,’ you know, and it’s like, but nobody wants to hear that."

Rosenberg then remarked that he spotted numerous FBI informants among the crowd milling around the Capitol. Or as he put it, "There were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol." Cannot the FBI refute such allegations?

Apparently not. Given such speculation, one would expect that FBI Director Christopher Wray might at least categorically deny such inflammatory accusations.

Yet in congressional testimony when asked whether the FBI had inserted informants among the protestors, sphinxlike Wray merely shrugged, "So I really need to be careful here talking about where we have or have not used confidential human sources."

Then there is the mysterious case of Ray Epps, initially sought by FBI "as a person of interest" for allegedly inciting demonstrators to break the law and enter the Capitol.

But then oddly Epps was de facto exempted for some 30 months from arrest—even as hundreds who urged no such action were indicted and convicted of "illegal parading" or unlawfully "demonstrating in front of the Capitol"—misdemeanors that ended up resulting in felony-type sentencing.

In one video clip, as Epps attempts to gin up the stationary crowd to move illegally into the Capitol, he is met with "conspiratorial" accusations from skeptical bystanders calling out: "Fed! Fed! Fed!"

Epps filed suit against Fox News for defamation on grounds that anchor Tucker Carlson had tied him to efforts to incite January 6 violence. Yet then suddenly Epps announced that he believes he will soon be charged, after all, by the government for his role in the January 6 protests.

If true, such an arrest was long anticipated, since Epps is caught on tape, unambiguously, on more than one occasion, urging demonstrators to enter the Capitol unlawfully (e.g., "We need to go to the Capitol").

If one would like to hatch an Epps conspiracy theory, then one could do no better than quoting another Ray Epps braggadocious claim that he had texted to his nephew: "I orchestrated it."

It did not help the Left’s construction of a January 6 "insurrection" theory that it serially misled the country about the actual loss of life. At first, Democrats insisted, falsely, that Officer Sicknick’s tragic death was due to protestor violence. Yet an autopsy revealed that he died a day later from a stroke.

Then Democrat leaders pivoted to claim that any law enforcement officer present on January 6, who for any reason subsequently committed suicide, was to be counted a victim of protestor violence.

All the while, the media kept largely quiet about the fact that the only unambiguously violent death that day was that of military veteran Ashli Babbitt. She was unarmed as she was shot unlawfully entering the Capitol through a broken window.

The name and identity of the officer, remember, were suppressed for months—a protective protocol unlike any other accorded law enforcement officers in the country who lethally shoot unarmed suspects.

ASYMMETRIES
If all that was not enough to create suspicion about media and political narratives, then there was the asymmetrical media coverage and the reaction of the Justice Department to the 2020 summer riots.

Touch an officer on January 6, and one sat in jail for months. Club an officer in summer 2020, and the offender was likely to become certified as a member of the Antifa or BLM resistance, albeit acting up a bit during the "summer of love."

Unlike January 6, the violence of arsonists, murderers, rioters, and Antifa and BLM mobs resulted in 1,500 injured law enforcement officers, more than 35 violent deaths, nearly $2 billion in property damage, and 14,000 arrests. Yet most of the indictments were dropped, or plea bargained down to minor misdemeanors by sympathetic leftwing city and state prosecutors.

Note that the 2020 rioters also targeted iconic and government buildings. Rioters attempted to burn down a federal courthouse, a police precinct headquarters, an historic Washington D.C. church—all topped off by the mob’s nocturnal effort to stampede into the White House grounds to get to the president.

That failed assault precipitated a hasty Secret Service effort to put Trump and his family in a secure subterranean bunker. Again, why was such violence aimed at the White House largely unpunished given its intensity matched or exceeded that of the Capitol riot?

Even more importantly, the investigatory January 6 committee also fed rather than quieted conspiracy theories. The Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives first denied nominated Republican representatives any seats on the select committee.

Instead, they cherry-picked just two Republicans—on the apparent requisite that both Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were a) die-hard Trump haters, and b) politically inert and headed for forced retirement.

The committee neither called any contrarian witnesses nor subpoenaed documents and videos felt to be antithetical to their narrative of a rightwing violent and armed "insurrection." Yet, again, they did not produce evidence that anyone arrested inside the Capitol was in possession of a firearm.

Nor were any plans found of "insurrectionists" planning to occupy government property for any length of time—in the fashion of, say, Seattle’s "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" (CHAZ) or (CHOP) "Capitol Hill Organized Protest."

In that case, rioters simply annexed government space as their own for over three weeks, ran the sanctuary-like mini-revolutionary state, forbid the police to enter, and were granted exemptions from city and state authorities.

The January 6 narrative of continuous threats of an armed revolution was leveraged to justify deploying 20,000 armed soldiers —the largest militarization of Washington D.C. since Jubal Early’s Confederate raid of 1864. Again, such use of federal troops stood in dire contrast to the abject appeasement of the far more violent 2020 rioters, when sympathetic mayors and governors resisted calls to deploy federal troops to their jurisdictions.

Recall that the suspicions arising around January 6 followed a long series of revelations about government misconduct that confirmed the suspicions of once reviled "conspiracists."

In numerous cases, the wild charge of conspiracists eventually were proven, while the sober and judicious defense narratives of government officials were exposed as outright lies, and occasionally themselves conspiracies.

THE TRUE CONSPIRACISTS
There was no "Russian collusion" conspiracy.

There was a Clinton conspiratorial effort.

It sought to hide campaign money through three paywalls to hire Christopher Steele to add to his ad hominem lies and to ensure that they were disseminated throughout the media and government. The point was solely to emasculate her opponent, Donald Trump.

As far as the first Trump impeachment phone call, given the multimillion-dollar corruptions abroad of the Biden family syndicate, and the boasts of Joe Biden about his past interference in Ukraine politics to fire a bothersome prosecutor, any president would have warned Ukraine to clean up its act with the Bidens or face holds on American largess.

The Covid-19 virus did escape from a nearby Chinese virology lab. It was a media and government fed lie that it was birthed naturally in the wild by a bat or pangolin, part of a three-year long effort to appease the Chinese communist party. And there was a clear role of the NIAID and NIH in funding dangerous gain-of-function research under the auspices of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

Most of what the government assured about the quarantines and vaccinations proved eventually to be wrong or only half-true. That reality proved ironic when those who warned of lockdown dangers were eventually vindicated, but never received apologies from their accusers.

Given the blanket exemptions provided to Hillary Clinton for unlawfully destroying subpoenaed material and using a home server to transmit classified information, and the reduction of Hunter Biden’s numerous felonies to minor misdemeanors, and the likely exemption given Joe Biden for storing classified files for years at his various homes and offices, why would anyone not believe that the government and the media work hard to suppress the truth?

And why would any citizen believe the government or the media after the Biden campaign solicited "51 intelligence authorities" to swear falsely that the genuine Hunter Biden laptop was likely a product of "Russian disinformation."

The entire concocted lie was a Biden-campaign effort to use the gravitas of former government officials and the complicity of the media to promote a fantasy to influence the impending presidential debate. And it worked to a tee.

Note as well that the FBI hired out Twitter employees to suppress information concerning the Biden laptop. The truth was deemed "disinformation" in order to mislead voters on the eve of the 2020 election.

Normally, distinguished government heads of hallowed bureaus carefully weigh in on investigations to warn against idle speculations and convulsed conspiracies. But who currently in Washington could be sure of any such voice since our most esteemed intelligence and investigative directors are admitted liars?

Former FBI Director James Comey feigned amnesia in congressional testimony. He passed off a dossier he knew to be fallacious as genuine evidence to a FISA court.

His successor Andrew McCabe lied on four occasions to federal investigators. Current Director Christopher Wray has continually stonewalled congressional oversight committees.

Special counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller preposterously claimed he knew nothing of the Steele dossier or Fusion GPS.

Both John Brennan, former CIA Director, and James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, admittedly lied under oath to Congress. None of these liars faced any legal consequences.

Anthony Fauci’s incriminating emails keep appearing in the public domain, making a mockery of his earlier, ludicrous claim that he had not channeled U.S. dollars to the Wuhan lab to ensure the continuance of outlawed gain—of-function research.

Worse still, so often those screaming "conspiracy theory" are conspiracists themselves. Hillary Clinton schemed with dark money and paywalls to smear her 2016 opponent.

As election denialists Hillary Clinton ("He knows he’s an illegitimate president") and Jimmy Carter ("He [Trump] lost the election and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf") refused to accept the 2016 verdict, projecting such denialism onto others.

So how does the government abort a conspiracy theory?

Simple: Quit the chronic lying and for once tell the truth.

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Government Corruption

John Durham Gives Chilling Response to Harriet Hageman Question About Two-Tiered Justice System: ‘The Nation Can't Stand' (VIDEO)

2023-06-23

[Gateway] Wyoming Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman of Wyoming questioned John Durham yesterday, using her time to point out the rotting corruption at the FBI.

She excoriated the Democrats and their deep state allies for using a lie to try to destroy Trump’s candidacy and then his presidency, noting that they knew it was a lie and didn’t care, as long as it was effective.

She then asked Durham if he believed the country could survive a two-tiered justice system.

Transcript via RedState:

Nothing — and I repeat, nothing — that the FBI did was designed to show that Donald J. Trump was a Russian asset. That wasn’t the purpose of the entire charade. How do I know this is true? Because they told us so. The very people who cooked this up, and the ones who ran this entire operation: Strzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, Clinesmith, Steele, the DNC, Perkins Coie.

It was never their purpose to prove Russian collusion, and in fact, from the very beginning, they knew that no such thing actually existed. They knew that the entire Russian collusion narrative was fabricated by the Clinton campaign to deflect attention from her mishandling of classified materials and destruction of official emails. They didn’t need to prove Russian collusion. They just had to keep the investigation alive.

And how has this corruption and rot manifested itself in our everyday lives? In our national culture? In our ability to solve the problems we are facing? It has destroyed some of the key foundations of this country, a foundation built on equal protection, on the belief that justice is blind, on the belief that you will be held accountable if you commit a fraud of the magnitude of what we have been discussing here today, on the belief that due process, justice, and constitutional rights are more than mere words. It has left a smoldering hot volcanic mess where the soul of this country used to be — all because a few people in the FBI decided they wanted to destroy a political candidate and ultimately a president and anyone associated with him...

Mr. Durham, here is my question: How long do you think that this country will survive with a two-tiered justice system that seeks to persecute people based on their political beliefs?

This was Durham’s response:

I don’t think that things can go too much further with the view that law enforcement, particularly the FBI or Department of Justice, runs a two-tiered system of justice. The nation can’t stand under those circumstances.

Watch the clips below:

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Government Corruption

VDJ - Indict Walt Nauta? Why Not the Biggest Liars First?

2023-06-17

[The Blade of Perseus] Walt Nauta is a 10-year-Navy veteran and served as an aide to former President Trump both in and out of office.

Special Counsel Jack Smith has now indicted him for allegedly "making false statements in interviews with the FBI." The indictment’s subtext is that Nauta refused to cooperate with, and turn state’s evidence to, the special counsel in its efforts to convict the former president.

But why stop the indictments with a man who loyally served and followed the orders of the former president of the United States, was a Navy veteran, and a hard-working immigrant from Guam?

Are there not far bigger fish to fry to remind Americans that justice is blind?

After all, when Special Counsel Smith announced his indictments of Trump, he lectured America on the rule of law and the cherished notion that no one is above it.

So let us start with the former interim director of the FBI itself, Andrew McCabe.

McCabe admittedly lied four times about his illegally leaking sensitive information to witnesses and mishandling classified information.

Have those crimes suddenly ceased being felonies?

Or is it now the policy of the United States government that an FBI director can lie with impunity, and leak, and mishandle sensitive classified information?

Yet Walt Nauta may be sent to prison while McCabe will continue to earn a fine salary at CNN as a paid "expert" to deplore . . . what exactly?

What McCabe knows best from his own experience with the deed—the "mishandling of classified information"?

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-Short Attention Span Theater-

Trump Critics Worried About DA's Charges

2023-04-06

[Epoch Times] "Speaking as someone who very strongly does not want Donald Trump to get the Republican presidential nomination, I’m extraordinarily distressed by this document," Bolton told CNN Tuesday. "I think this is even weaker than I feared it would be."

"And I just what I understood the District Attorney to say that he thinks there’s a New York election law involved here. All I can say is the Federal Election Campaign Act [of 1971] absolutely preempts any state or local law to the contrary. How could it be otherwise? You’ve got one law governing corporate finance and a presidential election at the federal level. You’re gonna have 50 state laws interfering with it, so he’s just wrong on the applicability of the New York statute," Bolton said Tuesday.

Other Trump critics have raised questions about the viability of Bragg’s indictment. Among them, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe claimed to CNN that Bragg is haphazardly trying to elevate a misdemeanor offense to a felony.

"It’s disappointment. I think everyone was hoping we would see more about the direction that they intend to take this prosecution. What is the legal theory that ties that very solid misdemeanor case, 34 counts of misdemeanors, to the intent to conceal another crime, which is what makes it a felony?" he told CNN. "It simply isn’t there."

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who voted to impeach Trump twice and has frequently criticized him, stated that he wasn’t impressed with the charges Bragg laid out on Tuesday.

"I believe President Trump’s character and conduct make him unfit for office," Romney said Tuesday. "Even so, I believe the New York prosecutor has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda."

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Government Corruption

Retired FBI boss says agency has lost independence, been co-opted by liberal DOJ ideologues

2023-01-04

[JustTheNews] Former Assistant Director Chris Swecker says bureau has been pressured into improper domestic spying, censorship.

In a stunning rebuke, the FBI's retired chief of criminal investigations says his old agency has yielded the independence Congress gave it under the law and is now subservient to a group of liberal ideologues inside the Justice Department who have pressured agents to stray into unwarranted domestic spying and censorship.

Ex-FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker on Tuesday became the latest law enforcement or political figure to support creating an independent commission modeled after the U.S. Senate's 1970s Church Committee to investigate the FBI's practices and impose reforms on the storied law enforcement agency.

He told Just the News that the bureau's problems start with the politicization of its ranks by DOJ.

"What I see is that it's basically a wholesale takeover by the Department of Justice, which is filled with political appointees in every top position, and then by extension, right into the administration," Swecker said in a wide-ranging interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast.

"You see DOJ people — and many of the top executive positions inside the FBI now — you see people that have made a career out of bouncing in and out of silk-stocking law firms between the Department of Justice and then these law firms. And I have to say they are incredibly liberal in their politics. And that has now sort of taken over the FBI, and they are inserting that ideology into their high-profile investigations."

Swecker, a lawyer himself, said one of the many tell-tale signs that the FBI has lost its independence is the bureau's relationship with Big Tech firms, as exposed by recent internal file releases by Twitter and a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri.

The original partnerships, he said, were designed to legitimately counter foreign influence operations on U.S. social media but have since evolved into spying and censorship operations impacting Americans.

"The FBI has an industry outreach program to help exchange information with industry, helping in the counterintelligence efforts of the FBI. This has gone well beyond that," he said. "This is nothing but domestic spying, and this is nothing but suppression of First Amendment rights and ideas."

He said the bureau's role in pressuring Twitter and other social media and search sites to censor Americans "needs to be the first line of inquiry" in a new Congress.

A growing number of prominent figures — including House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and retired FBI intelligence chief Kevin Brock — have embraced the idea that Congress should create a blue-ribbon panel modeled after the 1970s Church Committee to probe where the FBI has gone astray and to craft meaningful reforms.

Swecker said he believes that is a good approach, noting that while he remains friends with Christopher Wray, the current FBI director has allowed his agency to lose significant public trust.

"The Church Committee was a full inquiry into what were perceived to be some very serious abuses by the FBI in the domestic surveillance area, in terms of watching U.S. citizens doing things involving U.S. citizens that were considered to be abuses of their power," he said. "And I think we've come full circle here."

Swecker said the FBI's involvement in labeling school parents "domestic terrorists," and its "bare-knuckles" pursuit of Donald Trump contrasted with its "kid gloves cases" against Hillary Clinton, Andrew McCabe and Hunter Biden have not only shaken public trust but also the internal confidence of the FBI.

"I'm telling you the retired agent community and many agents inside the FBI on active duty are saying this needs to be looked at," he said. "I'm not big fan of congressional inquiries, but they need to shine some light on this."

Swecker has some experience in independent inquiries: he chaired the independent commission that investigated the culture at the U.S. Army Fort Hood that led to the murder of a female soldier.

Swecker, who retired as the assistant director for criminal investigations after 24 years inside the FBI, said the bureau's problems have been long in the making, beginning near the end of Director Robert Mueller's term and accelerating under his successors, James Comey and Christopher Wray.

"I think there's a cultural shift that started late in Mueller's term and then we got into sort of full stride in Comey's term, and is now being sort of perpetuated under Chris Way's term, and that is that DOJ has basically taken over the FBI," he said. "They were supposed to have some independence despite being a Bureau under the Department of Justice."

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-Lurid Crime Tales-

WSJ: Musk's Twitter files shows real 'disinformation' threat is America's former intel leaders

2022-12-07

[Hot Air] Point of order: Didn’t we learn that in 2013 when James Clapper perjured himself before Congress? And didn’t we learn that the American media enthusiastically facilitated that disinformation potential by hiring Clapper and former FBI executive Andrew McCabe after getting fired for lying to investigators? Among dozens of others?

We did indeed, but the editors of the Wall Street Journal want to underscore that point in the release of Twitter’s files on the Hunter Biden laptop story. They also note the media’s complicity in promoting this "disinformation," even in the face of independent corroboration:

Recall that former Democratic intelligence officials James Clapper and John Brennan led the spooks in issuing a public statement suggesting that the laptop may have been hacked and its content was Russian disinformation. On Oct. 16, 2020, Mr. Clapper told CNN that "to me, this is just classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work." On Oct. 19, 51 former spooks released their statement claiming that the arrival of the emails "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." (The statement and signers are published nearby.)

We now know that the Clapper-Brennan claims were themselves disinformation and that the laptop was genuine and not part of a Russian operation. CBS News recently waddled in two years later with a forensic analysis of its own and concluded it is real.

But the claims by the spies gave an excuse for the media to ignore the Hunter Biden story and even to dismiss Hunter’s former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, who went on the record before the election to confirm much of the content on the laptop with documentation in the form of voluminous text messages.

We examined those messages ourselves at the time, and our Kimberley Strassel spoke with Mr. Bobulinski and put it all on the record before the election. We also wrote an editorial. But nearly all of the rest of the press ignored or trashed the story.

One could almost forgive such a snap judgment in the moment, except for the fact — as the WSJ’s editors point out — that independent corroboration was available at the same time. Bobulinski spoke out repeatedly to verify the e-mails about Hunter’s business transactions were genuine. and the photos and videos spoke for themselves. Yet it took eighteen months for the New York Times to grudgingly report that the laptop and its materials were not "Russian disinformation," and weeks after that for other media outlets to follow suit.

Here’s a thought: perhaps news orgs should rethink the idea of hiring ex-intel leaders as "analysts." Especially those who have already demonstrated a predilection for lying, either in public or during investigations. If media outlets are interested in actual news and analysis rather than sef-serving spin, that is.

Clearly, they have something else in mind.

The real disinformation threat didn’t turn out to be the laptop or the Russians. Strictly speaking, it’s not even the political hacks who left the intel community to peddle their manipulative crankery on television. It’s the media outlets themselves who hired perjurers as analysts and then pushed their perjury as truth through one national election and almost through another.

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-Short Attention Span Theater-

Frank Hawkins - The 10 Most Destructive Americans of My 8 Decades

2022-11-30

Update urgently needed.
[American Thinker - July 2018] America has undergone enormous change during the nearly eight decades of my life. Today, America is a bitterly divided, poorly educated and morally fragile society with so-called mainstream politicians pushing cynical identity politics, socialism and open borders. The president of the United States is threatened with impeachment because the other side doesn’t like him. The once reasonably unbiased American media has evolved into a hysterical left wing mob. How could the stable and reasonably cohesive America of the 1950s have reached this point in just one lifetime? Who are the main culprits? Here’s my list of the 10 most destructive Americans of the last 80 years.

10) Mark Felt — Deputy director of the FBI, aka "Deep Throat" during the Watergate scandal. This was the first public instance of a senior FBI officially directly interfering in America’s political affairs. Forerunner of James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe.

9) Bill Ayers— Represents the deep and ongoing leftist ideological damage to our education system. An unrepentant American terrorist who evaded punishment, he devoted his career to radicalizing American education and pushing leftist causes. Ghost wrote Obama’s book, "Dreams of My Father."

8) Teddy Kennedy — Most folks remember Teddy as the guy who left Mary Joe Kopechne to die in his car at Chappaquiddick. The real damage came after he avoided punishment for her death and became a major Democrat force in the US Senate, pushing through transformative liberal policies in health care and education. The real damage was the 1965 Hart-Cellar immigration bill he pushed hard for that changed the quota system to increase the flow of third world people without skills into the US and essentially ended large-scale immigration from Europe.

7) Walter Cronkite — Cronkite was a much beloved network anchor who began the politicalization of America’s news media with his infamous broadcast from Vietnam that described the Tet Offensive as a major victory for the Communists and significantly turned the gullible American public against the Vietnam War. In fact, the Tet offensive was a military disaster for the NVA and Viet Cong, later admitted by North Vietnamese military leaders. Decades later Cronkite admitted he got the story wrong. But it was too late. The damage was done.

6) Bill and Hillary Clinton—It’s difficult to separate Team Clinton. Bill’s presidency was largely benign as he was a relative fiscal conservative who rode the remaining benefits of the Reagan era. But his sexual exploits badly stained the Oval Office and negatively affected America’s perception of the presidency. In exchange for financial support, he facilitated the transfer of sensitive military technology to the Chinese. Hillary, a Saul Alinsky acolyte, is one of the most vicious politicians of my lifetime, covering up Bill’s sexual assaults by harassing and insulting the exploited women and peddling influence around the globe in exchange for funds for the corrupt Clinton Foundation. She signed off on the sale of 20% of the US uranium reserve to the Russians after Bill received a $500,000 speaking fee in Moscow and the foundation (which supported the Clinton’s regal lifestyle) received hundreds of millions of dollars from those who benefited from the deal. Between them, they killed any honor that might have existed in the dark halls of DC.

5) Valerie Jarrett - The Rasputin of the Obama administration. A Red Diaper baby, her father, maternal grandfather and father-in-law (Vernon Jarrett who was a close friend and ally of Obama mentor Frank Marshall Davis) were hardcore Communists under investigation by the U.S. government. She has been in Obama’s ear for his entire political career pushing a strong anti-American, Islamist, anti-Israeli, socialist/communist, cling-to-power agenda.

Frank Hawkins video on Vietnam found at this link.

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Government Corruption

Spygate Docs and Trump's RICO Lawsuit: Exploring the Real Reasons Behind the FBI Raid

2022-08-20

[America News] Following the FBI’s raid of the residence of erstwhile President Donald Trump, there’s been overmuch speculation astir the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) motivation. Was it done to forestall Trump from moving again successful 2024, oregon was the raid related to documents and grounds surrounding the January 6th Commission? While these factors whitethorn person had immoderate bearing connected the FBI’s raid, immoderate wholly different, and perchance larger, factors whitethorn beryllium astatine play.

It is apt that the FBI’s raid connected Trump was driven by quality assemblage fears implicit accusation that was contained wrong those documents relating to the RussiaGate hoax.

The DOJ’s coordinated FBI raid of Trump was apt related to the imaginable unsealing and nationalist presumption of this information—particularly successful narration to Trump’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) suit against Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and erstwhile FBI officials similar erstwhile Director James Comey, erstwhile Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, erstwhile cause Peter Strzok, and erstwhile FBI lawyer Lisa Page—and his amended RICO suit, which added much defendants.

As caller accusation has travel to light, we’ve gained accrued assurance and present consciousness adjacent much powerfully regarding this theory. The immense breadth and scope of the hunt warrant unsocial person bolstered this theory. But that’s acold from being the lone crushed down our belief.

An Aug. 17 nonfiction from Newsweek included immoderate singular statements from 2 sources wrong the Intelligence Community.

One of these sources noted that "agents went into Trump’s residence connected the pretext that they were seeking each authorities documents...but the existent people was this backstage stash" of documents amassed by Trump, "which Justice Department officials feared Trump mightiness weaponize." The 2nd Intelligence Community root claimed that though the FBI supposedly "collected everything that rightfully belonged to the U.S. government," the existent people of the DOJ-led FBI raid was "these documents that Trump had been collecting since aboriginal successful his administration."

Both sources enactment that the "sought-after documents woody with a assortment of quality matters of interest" to Trump—"including worldly that Trump seemingly thought would exonerate him of immoderate claims of Russian collusion successful 2016 oregon immoderate different election-related charges." In different words, documents that Trump had collected and held wrong his possession that proved the RussiaGate hoax was precisely that—a hoax. One that was led by officials from wrong our nation’s highest institutions—including, but not constricted to, the FBI and the DOJ.

Although we’re mostly not successful the wont of giving much, if any, heed to sources wrong the Intelligence Community, these peculiar revelations overlay with our ain mentation and the accusation we’ve travel across. As we shall spot from events successful the timeline, Trump’s actions, and the documents helium amassed implicit time, look to person presented a precise nonstop menace to the agencies that prevarication down our government, prompting an organization effect that manifested itself successful the FBI’s Aug. 8 raid of Mar-a-Lago. In particular, the RICO suit brought by Trump successful 2022 presented a imaginable conveyance for these documents to marque their mode into the nationalist realm.

On Jan. 19, 2021, then-President Trump declassified "a binder of materials related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation" though helium besides accepted immoderate "redactions projected for continued classificati...

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Government Corruption

Durham Court Filing Reveals DOJ Inspector General Horowitz Withheld Key Evidence From Special Counsel

2022-01-29

[ZH] A new court filing by special counsel John Durham reveals that Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz concealed crucial information from Durham in connection with the ongoing prosecution of Michael Sussmann, a former attorney to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The filing also reveals that Horowitz failed to disclose that his office is in possession of two cellphones used by former FBI general counsel James Baker. The phones may contain information that’s important to the Sussmann case, as well as to a separate criminal leak investigation of Baker that Durham personally conducted between 2017 and 2019.

Horowitz first came to public prominence in June 2018 when he issued a report on the FBI’s actions leading up to the 2016 presidential election. Horowitz followed up in December 2019 with another report on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the bureau’s pursuit of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Durham’s filing on Jan. 25 involves discovery issues surrounding Sussmann’s upcoming trial for allegedly making a materially false statement to the FBI’s then-general counsel James Baker. As part of Durham’s discovery obligations, the Special Counsel’s Office met with Horowitz and his team on Oct. 7, 2021, and subsequently requested any materials, including any "documents, records, and information" regarding Sussmann that may have been in the possession of the Office of Inspector General (OIG).

On Dec. 17, 2021, Horowitz’s office provided Durham with information that Sussmann had given the OIG information in early 2017, that an OIG "employee’s computer was ’seen publicly’ in ’Internet traffic’ and was connecting to a Virtual Private Network in a foreign country." It isn’t clear what this information was about, why Sussmann would know about this information, or why he would have been interested in the internet activities of OIG employees.

It also isn’t known why Sussmann, a private citizen, would have been seeking out the OIG shortly after he was pushing information detrimental to Trump to both the FBI and the CIA.

At the time of the Dec. 17 disclosure, "the OIG represented to [Durham’s] team that it had "no other file or other documentation" relating to this cyber matter." However, last week, Sussmann’s attorneys informed Durham that there was additional information, including the fact that Sussmann had met with Horowitz in March 2017 to personally pass along the information about the OIG employee’s computer VPN use. This meeting between Horowitz and Sussmann hadn’t been disclosed by Horowitz to Durham during their previous meetings and interactions.

It isn’t known why Horowitz would have taken a personal meeting from Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer. According to Bill Shipley, a former federal prosecutor, "[y]ou don’t generally just call the IG and get a meeting with him personally." It also isn’t clear why Horowitz chose not to inform Durham of the meeting—particularly as it pertained directly to information that Horowitz’s office had been specifically requested to relay to Durham’s special counsel probe.

Sussmann’s attorneys further informed Durham that the VPN information had come from Rodney Joffe, a computer expert with close connections to the FBI. This was another material fact that hadn’t been disclosed by Horowitz. Joffe is of great import to Durham’s case against Sussmann and to the wider investigation into the origins of the Russia collusion investigation, since he was alleged to have provided Sussmann with falsified data about contacts between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank.

Those alleged contacts were used by Hillary Clinton and her campaign to push the narrative that Trump was compromised by the Kremlin. Durham had noted in a previous filing that "[Joffe’s] goal was to support an ’inference’ and ’narrative’ regarding Trump that would please certain ’VIPs.’" A subsequent filing by Durham noted that these VIPs were "individuals at the defendant’s [Sussmann’s] law firm and the Clinton Campaign." Joffe also is alleged to have been offered a high-ranking position in a Clinton administration.

The omission of information by Horowitz didn’t end with his meeting with Sussmann or the information on Joffe. Durham’s office has since discovered that the OIG "currently possesses two FBI cell phones" that belonged to Baker, the former FBI general counsel. Durham’s discovery of Horowitz’s possession of Baker’s two phones does not appear to have come through Horowitz or his office.

According to Durham’s filing, "in early January 2022, the Special Counsel’s Office learned for the first time that the OIG currently possesses two FBI cellphones of the former FBI General Counsel."

Sussmann is alleged to have lied to Baker when he tried to push incriminating data about Trump and Alfa Bank to the FBI; that data later turned out to be false.

That makes Baker, and his cellphones, central to the case against Sussmann.

There’s also another matter that relates directly to Baker and his undisclosed phones. Baker had been the subject of a criminal leak investigation for "unauthorized disclosures to the media" that was being conducted by Durham when he was the U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut.

During this investigation, Durham or a member of his team reportedly questioned Baker’s credibility. That memo is currently being sought by Sussmann’s attorneys. Although it’s not known with certainty, it’s believed that the leak investigation into Baker ultimately was closed without any charges. The disclosure about Baker’s cellphones would appear to be material not only to the Sussmann case, but also to the Baker leak investigation.
High Profile Investigations

Horowitz was in charge of a sequence of highly influential investigations into events leading up to and following the 2016 presidential election. Horowitz examined the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s private email server as well as the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign, alleged Russian collusion, and the resulting Carter Page FISA and abuse of the FISA court.

The Clinton email investigation review resulted in a 2018 OIG report that outlined a number of failures on the part of the FBI and made recommendations such as improving the FBI’s media contact policy and clarifying guidelines on making public statements. However, certain crucial issues, such as the fact that then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was supervising the investigation while his wife was running for a Virginia state Senate seat and had received large sums of campaign funding from Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe, were glossed over by Horowitz.

The IG merely recommended that "ethics officials include the review of campaign donations for possible conflict issues when Department employees or their spouses run for public office."

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-Great Cultural Revolution

Disgraced FBI No. 2 Andrew McCabe Calls For Feds To Treat ‘Mainstream' Conservatives Like Domestic Terrorists

2022-01-11

How fortunate he no longer has any power to act on his nasty ideas.

[The Federalist] Have you ever wondered what disgraced former deputy FBI directors do after trying to stage a coup and lying under oath? Apparently, they give talks about "protecting democracy" at top-rated institutions of higher learning. Indeed, this last Thursday the University of Chicago invited former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe to join a panel of partisans to discuss the Jan 6 "insurrection."

McCabe was fired as the deputy FBI director for leaking sensitive information about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation and then lying about it under oath. He also took part in spying on the Donald Trump campaign through a secret warrant granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.

The dossier he used to obtain the surveillance warrant was funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and, in an ironic twist, was itself the product of Russian disinformation. McCabe and his allies in corporate media justified all sorts of similar illegal and undemocratic tactics to discredit and attempt to unseat President Trump.

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