Oh this is sketchy as hell.  The notorious activist DC Judge Amy Berman Jackson announced today she will deliver the sentence for Roger Stone on Thursday; however, she will immediately postpone execution of that sentence until the issues around the request for a new trial are resolved.   Here’s what appears to be happening….

Judge Amy Berman-Jackson doesn’t want to deal with; and doesn’t want the optics of; the serious issue surrounding the activist jury foreperson, Tomeka Hart, prior to delivering her sentence.

Within the process to deal with Stone’s motion for a new trial, judge Berman-Jackson knows the petition would involve bringing in Tomeka Hart to her courtroom for questioning.  The judge doesn’t want that damaging political optic prior to delivering her sentence.  Obviously, such an appearance begs the question of how poorly Judge Berman-Jackson handled jury selection.  This CYA is a seriously political and sketchy decision.

Judge Amy Berman-Jackson will pass her sentence on Stone, and then take up the issue of a new trial *AFTER* the sentence is announced.  As a consequence the judge will not carry out execution of the sentence until the Tomeka Hart issues are addressed.  FUBAR.

WASHINGTON – […] In a 12-minute conference call with the defense and prosecution teams on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said she will still hand down Stone’s sentence at Thursday’s hearing, but indicated she plans to defer the execution of the sentence until the court addresses Stone’s request for a new trial.

[…] Prosecutors told Jackson they were in favor of moving forward with Thursday’s sentencing as planned. But Seth Ginsburg, a lawyer for Stone, argued they should hold off until the motions before the court are fully addressed.

“This issue goes to the heart of this case,” Ginsburg said. “It should be resolved before any further proceedings are had.”

[…] Two newly assigned prosecutors on the case — John Crabb Jr. and J.P. Cooney — made their debuts on behalf of the government on Tuesday. (read more)

And what is “J.P. Cooney’s most recent claim to public fame?…

Lawyers representing Michael Flynn presented a strong argument today (pdf below) in reply to the governments’ continued efforts to refute prosecutorial wrongdoing.

Within the reply motion Sidney Powell highlights the conduct of prosecutor Brandon Van Grack and hypocrisy within the government arguments: “Mr. Van Grack’s contention that he satisfied the government’s obligations by providing this information before Mr. Flynn’s sentencing now proves the point that he suppressed it when it was most important to Mr. Flynn: before his guilty plea on December 1, 2017, and before what was scheduled to be his sentencing on December 18, 2018.”

Prosecutor Van Grack suppressed evidence to protect… “the prosecutors, his team, and the cadre of malfeasant FBI agents from the discovery of their negligence, crimes, and wrongs.”

The tone of the reply motion reads like the Flynn defense is chomping at the bit to take this case to trial. Perhaps that is a strategy to add weight to their dismissal argument; or perhaps that is a reflection of defense confidence they can highlight all of the abuses at trial.

The entire briefing is worth a good read and it includes some good timeline information to emphasize the abuses.

Here’s the reply motion:

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When the FISA Court responded to the DOJ Inspector General report in December and January 2020 they requested an action plan from the DOJ and FBI to respond to the issues raised about misrepresentations to the court.

The DOJ/FBI replied to the FISA Court admitting the last two FISA renewals (April, June ’17) used against Carter Page were insufficiency predicated while withholding opinion on the original application (Oct ’16) and first renewal (Jan ’17).

To address the consequences of fraudulently obtained FISA warrants the DOJ and FBI informed the court they would begin a process to “sequester” all collected evidence from all four FISA warrants. [FISA COURT LINK]

Sequestering the evidence is essentially a search for what investigative material the FISA warrants were used to obtain; ie. the search for the fruit of the poisoned tree; and then a review of all DOJ/FBI cases that may have utilized that investigative material.

In late January the DOJ contacted the FISA court and asked for an extension to the deadline.  The FISA court granted an extension until February 5th [LINK]  The response from the DOJ has not yet been declassified or released by the FISC for public review.

However, with recent media reporting of AG Barr using “outside prosecutors” to review current, former and ongoing cases, it simply makes sense this ‘outsider’ effort is part of the DOJ/FBI sequestration review.

If you consider that several DOJ offices may be involved with the material under review, including the Southern District of New York; The Eastern District of New York; The Eastern District of Virginia; The Washington DC District, and even Main Justice itself; it makes sense that outside DOJ personnel would be needed for this review.

Additionally, all of the various FBI field offices who may have used the FISA authorizations as the underpinning evidence to gain separate Title-1 and/or Title-3 warrants, wiretaps or National Security Letters, in their various investigative cases would also need to be reviewed.   This is an aspect the media is not discussing while they write opinions about AG Bill Barr bringing in outside DOJ attorneys.

The media are framing the use of outside attorneys as Bill Barr working on behalf of President Trump to undermine current and former prosecutions.  However, understanding the FISC order requiring the sequestration effort, the use of outsiders is absolutely necessary.

The same U.S. Attorneys, prosecutors and FBI agents who used evidence gathered from the FISA warrants cannot be the same attorneys, agents and prosecutors making decisions about what parts of the warrants were used to gather evidence and how each part of any case was assembled by the use therein.  It is a simple matter of a conflict of interest.

Additionally, the Robert Mueller team of FBI investigators and special counsel prosecutors certainly used the fraudulently obtained FISA warrants as part of their investigative evidence collection.   Common sense would tell us this had to be the case or the FBI and Mueller team would not have requested renewals of the FISA warrant.

If the FBI & Special Counsel were not using the FISA warrant(s) to capture information, they would not have needed them renewed.  Despite media spin to the contrary, the simple truth of renewals holding investigative value is evident in the renewal itself (ie. common sense).

Under this rather extensive effort to find exactly which investigations -over the course of three years- were touched directly, or indirectly, by the four FISA warrants; and/or which investigative paths may have been influenced downstream or enhanced -by varying degrees of importance- by evidence stemming from the FISA warrants; a reasonable person could see how AG Bill Barr would need to put a team together to retrace the investigative steps and make the sequestration determinations.

Obviously, for reasons of biased intent, corporate left-wing media would like to ignore why outside prosecutors are needed under this framework.  Ignored in part because honest reporting would require an admission the FISA warrants were fraudulently obtained; and in part because the left-wing media have never informed the public of the DOJ/FBI sequestration effort in the first place.  Likely more than half the country has no idea the DOJ and FBI have been told to go find the material.

There have been numerous articles, thousands of words, and endless hours of pundit protestations about Bill Barr using outside DC lawyers to review all of the previous DOJ Attorney activities; yet not a single time have they ever acknowledged the originating order from the FISA court requiring the DOJ/FBI to conduct the review.   Imagine that?

New York Times – Mr. Barr has also installed a handful of outside prosecutors to broadly review the handling of other politically sensitive national-security cases in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, the people said. The team includes at least one prosecutor from the office of the United States attorney in St. Louis, Jeff Jensen, who is handling the Flynn matter, as well as prosecutors from the office of the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen. (more)

Lastly, perhaps within this process we can finally get an answer as to what legal justification Robert Mueller and the Special Counsel team used in order to gain access to all of the Trump transition team communications; which included attorney-client privileged material.

This issue from late 2017 was ignored by the mainstream media at the height of their willful blindness toward any corruption within the Mueller team:

FULL letter outlining the issues:

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Resources:

FISA Court Order – Requiring DOJ Response

FISA Court Order – Granting extension until Feb 5, 2020.

LINK to FISA Court Public Records

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham has submitted a list of people he wishes to call as FISA-gate witnesses to Attorney General Bill Barr.  Tonight Sean Hannity invites Senator Graham to his Fox television show to listen to Hannity talk about it.

Lou Dobbs doesn’t suffer fools easily; he prefers to cut through the filibuster and get to the heart of the matter.  That approach is one reason his show is highly successful.

Within a similar outlook… Where we are now is the direct result of bad decisions where we came from. Going forward on the same corrupt path only takes us further in the wrong direction. This natural truism is the current dilemma for AG Bill Barr.

During his show tonight Lou Dobbs takes the audience back to a very specific decision by the DOJ; a fork-in-the-road decision that put the department on path traveling further and further away from justice. The specific moment outlined was the DOJ decision to bury the intelligence leak by SSCI Security Director James Wolfe.

[BACKSTORY HERE]

However, amid all the chaff and countermeasures there is good news. When you realize that continuing forward on a path initiated by corrupt decisions only takes you further and further from the truth; you realize there are signs showing the DOJ is indeed reversing course back to the moment when the wrong path was selected.

♦ U.S. Attorney John Durham is reported to be going back to the origination of the Russian Collusion conspiracy. The reversal of a corrupt path taken.

♦ The FISA Court has asked the DOJ to identify and sequester all of the downstream consequences to the fraudulently obtained FISA warrants. A reversal of a corrupt path taken.

♦ And, importantly, there are reports AG Bill Barr has asked a Saint Louis U.S. Attorney to go back through everything surrounding the prosecution of Michael Flynn and re-evaluate the path taken.

I would be remiss if I did not point out the reporting about AG Barr bringing in outside prosecutors to review conduct in prior investigations, happened almost immediately after the FISC deadline for the DOJ to inform the court of their sequestration efforts….

…A subtle (as a brick through a window) connection not identified in media…. Yet.

Perhaps the connection between the FISC required DOJ “sequester” efforts and the DOJ “outside prosecutors” should be just kept between us, ok.

FEBRUARY 14, 2020 WASHINGTON — Attorney General William P. Barr has assigned an outside prosecutor to scrutinize the criminal case against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, according to people familiar with the matter.

The review is highly unusual and could trigger more accusations of political interference by top Justice Department officials into the work of career prosecutors.

Mr. Barr has also installed a handful of outside prosecutors to broadly review the handling of other politically sensitive national-security cases in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, the people said. The team includes at least one prosecutor from the office of the United States attorney in St. Louis, Jeff Jensen, who is handling the Flynn matter, as well as prosecutors from the office of the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen. (more)

The media PR firm for the FBI and DOJ objectives is the New York Times.  The media PR firm for the State Department is CNN.  The media PR firm for the CIA is The Washington Post.  This pattern has existed for several years.

The Washington Post is very concerned about a growing possibility the investigation into the origin of intelligence community work may expose the fraudulent nature of the entire ‘Russian Election Interference Collusion-Conspiracy‘ narrative.  Very concerned.

The WaPo/CIA express concern by stating that President Trump is attempting to “rewrite history”; disingenuously skipping the part where Trump isn’t attempting anything.  For more than three years President Trump has simply pointed out the obvious. It is is the media and the intelligence apparatus that set up a fictitious narrative for political needs.

WASHINGTON POST – […] As his reelection campaign intensifies, Trump is using the powers of his office to manipulate the facts and settle the score. Advisers say the president is determined to protect his associates ensnared in the expansive Russia investigation, punish the prosecutors and investigators he believes betrayed him, and convince the public that the probe was exactly as he sees it: an illegal witch hunt.

[…] Last week alone, Trump called the Russia investigation “tainted,” “dirty,” “rotten,” “illegal,” “phony,” a “disgrace,” a “shakedown,” a “scam,” “a fixed hoax” and “the biggest political crime in American History, by far.”

He argued that the probe into Russian election interference was based on false pretenses, despite a recent report from the Justice Department’s inspector general stating the opposite even as it criticized the FBI’s surveillance of a former Trump campaign aide. And he claimed, again without evidence, that Mueller, a former FBI director regarded for his precision with facts, lied to Congress — which happens to be one of the charges Stone was convicted of by a jury last November. (read more)

The Washington Post/CIA are very worried about where John Durham’s investigation is going. Simultaneously they are worried about President Trump being proven right (he was); and by extension the entirety of the media narrative around Russia will be shown as a political effort by the U.S. intelligence apparatus (it was). This is the real motive for their current defensive narrative.

CTH has previously outlined how the December 29th, 2016, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) on Russia Cyber Activity was a quickly compiled bunch of nonsense about Russian hacking; assembled in the aftermath of the November election to undermine the incoming administration.

The JAR was followed a week later by the January 7th, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment. The ICA took the ridiculous construct of the JAR and then overlaid a political narrative that Russia was trying to help Donald Trump.  In its most essential form the ICA was the justification for “Spygate” ie. Crossfire Hurricane and all of the preceding intelligence surveillance upon the Trump campaign.  Intel ass-covering on steroids.

The ICA was the brain-trust of John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey. While the majority of content was from the CIA, some of the content within the ICA was written by FBI Agent Peter Strzok who held a unique “insurance policy” interest in how the report could be utilized in 2017. NSA Director Mike Rogers would not sign up to the “high confidence” claims, likely because he saw through the political motives of the report.

(JUNE 2019 – New York Times) […] Mr. Barr wants to know more about the C.I.A. sources who helped inform its understanding of the details of the Russian interference campaign, an official has said. He also wants to better understand the intelligence that flowed from the C.I.A. to the F.B.I. in the summer of 2016.

During the final weeks of the Obama administration, the intelligence community released a declassified assessment that concluded that Mr. Putin ordered an influence campaign that “aspired to help” Mr. Trump’s electoral chances by damaging Mrs. Clinton’s. The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. reported they had high confidence in the conclusion. The National Security Agency, which conducts electronic surveillance, had a moderate degree of confidence. (read more)

Questioning the construct of the ICA is a smart direction to take for a Durham review or investigation. By looking at the intelligence community work-product, Durham could cut through a lot of the chatter and get to the heart of the intelligence motives.

Apparently, if media reports are to be believed, John Durham is looking into just this aspect: Was the ICA document a politically engineered report stemming from within a corrupt intelligence network?

The importance of that question is rather large. All of the downstream claims about Russian activity, including the Russian indictments promoted by Rosenstein and the Mueller team, are centered around origination claims of illicit Russian activity outlined in the ICA.

If the ICA is a false political document…. then guess what?

Yep, the entire narrative from the JAR and ICA is part of a big fraud. [Which it is]

(Read ICA via pdf)

When you understand this operation, you understand exactly why actors within the DOJ, FBI and Intelligence Community needed to throw a bag over Julian Assange.

Assange would have exposed a complicit conspiracy between corrupt U.S. intelligence actors and a host of political interests who created a fraudulent Russia-collusion conspiracy with the central component of Russia “hacking” the DNC.

If Assange were not controlled he might show he received the DNC emails from a leaker, and not from a hack, the central component of the Russia interference narrative would collapse. The DOJ decision to target Assange protected multiple U.S. agencies and Robert Mueller.

As soon as Robert Mueller was going to release his Russia report, the EDVA shut down Assange with the DOJ indictment; in a similar way the same DOJ shut down James Wolfe with a weak plea agreement.

What took place then, and where we are now, is all connected to the original decisions by corrupt government officials.

Representative Matt Gaetz appeared with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the ongoing issues within the DOJ and FBI.  Additionally, Gaetz outlines some questions he would consider for the Attorney General during his upcoming testimony to congress March 31st.

Former congressman Trey Gowdy appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the issues surrounding the non-indictment of Andrew McCabe for lying to DOJ-OIG investigators about his leaks to the media.

Gowdy breaks out the narrow issue surrounding the internal McCabe investigation as compared to potential criminal conduct that may exist outside that narrow window.

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Additionally, Gowdy notes John Durham is looking at specific issues related to former CIA Director John Brennan and activity within the intelligence community that took place prior to the official opening of Crossfire Hurricane on July 31st, 2016.

Included in that Durham review are documents that show CIA activity….

…and CTH has a pretty good idea exactly what “communications” Durham is looking for. It sounds like U.S. Attorney Durham is looking for what Comey outlined in the “crown material” discussion. First, the article from the New York Times (emphasis mine):

WASHINGTON — The federal prosecutor scrutinizing the Russia investigation has begun examining the role of the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan in how the intelligence community assessed Russia’s 2016 election interference, according to three people briefed on the inquiry.

John H. Durham, the United States attorney leading the investigation, has requested Mr. Brennan’s emails, call logs and other documents from the C.I.A., according to a person briefed on his inquiry. He wants to learn what Mr. Brennan told other officials, including the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, about his and the C.I.A.’s views of a notorious dossier of assertions about Russia and Trump associates. (more)

U.S. Attorney John Durham appears to be looking for a very specific email written by John Brennan to James Comey. Because Comey wrote another email saying: ..”Brennan is insisting the Crown Material be included in the intel assessment.”

Do you remember the “crown material“?

The Christopher Steele dossier was called “Crown Material” by FBI agents within the small group during their 2016 political surveillance operation. The “Crown” description reflects the unofficial British intelligence aspect to the dossier as provided by Steele.

In May 2019 former House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy stated there are emailsfrom former FBI Director James Comey that outline instructions from CIA Director John Brennan to include the “Crown Material” within the highly political Intelligence Community Assessment.

Specifically outlined by Gowdy, the wording of the Comey email is reported to say:

…”Brennan is insisting the Crown Material be included in the intel assessment.”

However, on May 23rd, 2017, in testimony -under oath- to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) John Brennan stated [@01:54:28]:

GOWDY: Director Brennan, do you know who commissioned the Steele dossier?

BRENNAN: I don’t.

GOWDY: Do you know if the bureau [FBI] ever relied on the Steele dossier as part of any court filing, applications?

BRENNAN: I have no awareness.

GOWDY: Did the CIA rely on it?

BRENNAN: No.

GOWDY: Why not?

BRENNAN: Because we didn’t. It wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment that was done. Uh … it was not.

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Video of the exchange [prompted 01:54:28 just hit play]

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As Victor Davis Hanson wrote at the time:

[…] James Clapper, John Brennan, and James Comey are now all accusing one another of being culpable for inserting the unverified dossier, the font of the effort to destroy Trump, into a presidential intelligence assessment—as if suddenly and mysteriously the prior seeding of the Steele dossier is now seen as a bad thing. And how did the dossier transmogrify from being passed around the Obama Administration as a supposedly top-secret and devastating condemnation of candidate and then president-elect Trump to a rank embarrassment of ridiculous stories and fibs?

Given the narratives of the last three years, and the protestations that the dossier was accurate or at least was not proven to be unproven, why are these former officials arguing at all? Did not implanting the dossier into the presidential briefing give it the necessary imprimatur that allowed the serial leaks to the press at least to be passed on to the public and thereby apprise the people of the existential danger that they faced? (read more)

Fox News Maria Bartiromo has more knowledge of the details within the 2016 political surveillance scandal than any other MSM host. Bartiromo has followed the events very closely and now she is the go-to person for those who are trying to bring the truth behind the scandal to light.

On the morning of May 20th, 2019, on her Fox Business Network show Ms. Bartiromo outlined the current issues between Comey and Brennan. WATCH:

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It certainly looks like former CIA Director John Brennan has exposed himself to perjury. However, beyond that and even more disturbing, what does this say about the political intents of a weaponized intelligence apparatus?

CTH has previously outlined how the December 29th, 2016, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) on Russia Cyber Activity was a quickly compiled bunch of nonsense about Russian hacking.

The JAR was followed a week later by the January 7th, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment. The ICA took the ridiculous construct of the JAR and then overlaid a political narrative that Russia was trying to help Donald Trump.

The ICA was the brain-trust of John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey. While the majority of content was from the CIA, some of the content within the ICA was written by FBI Agent Peter Strzok who held a unique “insurance policy” interest in how the report could be utilized in 2017. NSA Director Mike Rogers would not sign up to the “high confidence” claims, likely because he saw through the political motives of the report.

(JUNE 2019 – New York Times) […] Mr. Barr wants to know more about the C.I.A. sources who helped inform its understanding of the details of the Russian interference campaign, an official has said. He also wants to better understand the intelligence that flowed from the C.I.A. to the F.B.I. in the summer of 2016.

During the final weeks of the Obama administration, the intelligence community released a declassified assessment that concluded that Mr. Putin ordered an influence campaign that “aspired to help” Mr. Trump’s electoral chances by damaging Mrs. Clinton’s. The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. reported they had high confidence in the conclusion. The National Security Agency, which conducts electronic surveillance, had a moderate degree of confidence. (read more)

Questioning the construct of the ICA is a smart direction to take for a review or investigation. By looking at the intelligence community work-product, it’s likely Durham will cut through a lot of the chatter and get to the heart of the intelligence motives.

Apparently John Durham is looking into just this aspect: Was the ICA document a politically engineered report stemming from within a corrupt intelligence network?

The importance of that question is rather large. All of the downstream claims about Russian activity, including the Russian indictments promoted by Rosenstein and the Mueller team, are centered around origination claims of illicit Russian activity outlined in the ICA.

If the ICA is a false political document…. then guess what?

Yep, the entire narrative from the JAR and ICA is part of a big fraud. [Which it is]

(Read ICA via pdf)