It looks like Sidney Powell has angered Emett Sullivan as the DC judge has now granted all of the requests by prosecuting amicus John Gleeson.

In an order today Judge Sullivan granted Gleeson with the requested schedule to include a July 10th briefing deadline and oral arguments scheduled for July 16th.

Just as the news broke Flynn’s defense attorney Sidney Powell appeared on Lou Dobbs to react.

An exclusive Treasury Department whistleblower outline in the Ohio Star is almost an absolute match to our research {Go Deep} on how President Obama constructed the political surveillance network during his second term.

According to the article in mid-December 2015 the Treasury whistleblower started noticing data-search transactions with the Treasury Dept. for specific people that aligned with the 2016 GOP primary.  The searches included Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump and his family as well as certain members of congress.

[(L-R) Denis McDonough, Joe Biden, President Obama, Tom Donolin, Jack Lew]

The complaint outlines an unnamed database [likely NSA] was used as the first search mechanism.  After initial data was extracted the results were then used to transfer more specific searches to the Treasury dept.   The level of detail within the whistleblower complaint is eerily familiar to our own research based on declassified records.

OHIO STAR – […] By March 2016, the whistleblower said she and a colleague, who was detailed to Treasury from the intelligence community, became convinced that the surveillance of Flynn was not tied to legitimate criminal or national security concerns, but was straight-up political surveillance among other illegal activity occurring at Treasury.

“When I showed it to her, what she said, ‘Oh, sh%t!’ and I knew right then and there that I was right – this was some shady stuff,” the whistleblower said.

“It wasn’t just him,” the whistleblower said. “They were targeting other U.S. citizens, as well.”

Only two names are listed in the whistleblower’s official paperwork, so the others must remain sealed, she said. The second name is Paul J. Manafort Jr., the one-time chairman of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The other names include: Members of Congress, the most senior staffers on the 2016 Trump campaign and members of Trump’s family, she said.

“Another thing they would do is take targeted names from a certain database – I cannot name, but you can guess – and they were going over to an unclassified database and they were running those names in the unclassified database,” she said.

This ruse was to get around using classified resources to surveil Americans, she said. Once the Treasury personnel had enough information about someone they were targeting from the black box, they would go to the white box for faster and more informed search.

It was routine for these searches that had no criminal nor national security predicate, merely a political predicate, she said. (read more)

What is described in that article is exactly what our own research discovered as we overlaid numerous declassified reports from the NSA, FISA Court, and testimony to congress around the previous use of the IRS to target political opposition.

The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.

[…] There is little doubt the FISA-702(16)(17) database system was used by Obama-era officials, from 2012 through April 2016, as a way to spy on their political opposition.

Quite simply there is no other intellectually honest explanation for the scale and volume of database abuse that was taking place; and keep in mind these searches were all ruled to be unlawful. Searches for repeated persons over a period time that were not authorized.

This whistleblower complaint simply makes sense.

We know Jack Lew was moved from President Obama’s White House to the position of Treasury Secretary specifically because the IRS targeting became public.   As Treasury Secretary Mr. Lew was in position to keep damaging information from surfacing.

Political spying 1.0 was actually the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:

The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)

Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.

The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal.

Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.

[…] The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database.

Sometime around the summer of 2012 the Obama administration shifted from direct searches of the Treasury IRS files, to using contractor access to the NSA database as a way to conduct political surveillance and export search results without any minimization.

The process of exploiting the NSA database continued for years until March 2016 when a severe uptick in activity, coinciding with candidate Donald Trump becoming the presumptive GOP nominee, flagged the NSA database auditor.

Early in 2016 NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) “About” queries using the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.

The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016, for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May 1st, 2016.

While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) “about query” option, and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016

It just makes sense the exported contractor results from database access would then transfer to non-classified (Treasury) searches on other networks for more details.   That process is exactly what the Treasury whistleblower is outlining.

Here’s the full background story.

House Intel Committee ranking member Devin Nunes appears on Fox News to discuss the remarks earlier in the day where AG Bill Barr does not foresee any criminal investigation of President Obama or Vice-President Joe Biden.

Rep. Nunes again refers to the buckets of intelligence that would help outline everything that has taken place. Bucket-1 DOJ/FBI activity prior to July 31, 2016. Bucket-2 DOJ/FBI activity between July 31, 2016 and the inauguration. Bucket-3 everything that takes place after the Trump inauguration, to include the Mueller investigation.

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The bottom line is we need full transparency and a complete declassification of the underlying documents that were redacted and hidden to protect the prior behavior.

Against the backdrop of all things DC swamp, this move was entirely predictable.  No-one takes over as chair of the SSCI without senate leadership having (blackmail) material on the appointee to have full control over their activity.  Marco Rubio is fully compromised.

Today Mitch McConnell announces that Senator Marco Rubio will replace Richard Burr as chairman of the notoriously corrupt Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI):

MITCH McCONNELL – “I am glad to announce that Senator Marco Rubio has accepted my invitation to serve as Acting Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“The senior senator for Florida is a talented and experienced Senate leader with expertise in foreign affairs and national security matters. Senator Rubio was the natural choice for this temporary assignment on the basis of accumulated committee service. His proven leadership on pertinent issues only made the decision easier.

“Senator Rubio has spent a decade as a leading member on the Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees. His care for our nation’s security, advocacy for our values and interests, and vigilance toward threats have earned a national reputation. On subjects ranging from China and Russia to Iran and North Korea to tyranny and unrest in our own hemisphere, Senator Rubio has been on the case for years.

“By and large, our nation’s intelligence professionals are dedicated, hard-working men and women who counter foreign threats and keep Americans safe. They deserve all the resources and support Congress can provide. But as recent years have made painfully clear with respect to federal law enforcement, we also need proactive leadership from within and thorough oversight from Congress to keep partisan bias and political interference out of these sensitive activities.

“I appreciate the Acting Chairman’s commitment to lead on all these fronts during this temporary assignment — to help ensure the intelligence community stays ahead of our adversaries, out of politics, and out of the press.” (link)

To understand numerous layers within the overall dynamic it is important to remember Rubio was a never-Trumper.  Nikki Haley, Trey Gowdy and Marco Rubio formed the trio of GOPe advocates to defend the interests of the deep state during campaign 2016.  The original opposition research into Trump by Fusion-GPS came as an outcome of Rubio supporters initiating and funding the research.  That effort evolved into the Steele Dossier after team Rubio dropped funding in March 2016; and the Clinton campaign took over.

There has long been an open secret within DC that Rubio was a compromised individual and there was/is a considerable amount of blackmail material known about him.

As a result of the FBI investigation into SSCI leaks by security director James Wolfe, covert communications in the spring of 2017 between SSCI Vice-Chair Mark Warner and Christopher Steele were discovered.

Six months after Warner was conspiring with Christopher Steele… (in October of 2017), the FBI questioned Senator Warner’s staff and requested the messaging information.

Mark Warner’s efforts with Chris Steele were February through May 2017.  Warner waited until he was caught, then told the committee about his “no paper trail” attempts to coordinate with Steele in October 2017.  The contacts and text messages were later made public in February 2018.

As soon as the covert SSCI communications surfaced (Feb ’18); which were part of the overall committee effort to remove President Trump; chairman Richard Burr and Marco Rubio provided cover by claiming Warner was honest with them in October 2017.

The committee was notified in October 2017, yet not a single member of the SSCI (R or D) demanded Vice-Chairman Mark Warner make an immediate, full and public disclosure of the VERY SERIOUS conflict he engaged in.  Instead the committee waited until after the covert communication was public in February 2018 and then Burr and Rubio defended Warner.

The SSCI is the enabler for a weaponized intelligence apparatus.  McConnell appointing Marco Rubio to the position of acting chair of the committee is simply more swamp defensive positioning.

That’s the larger backdrop to frame this recent tweet by President Trump:

When you peel back all of the layers of the ‘remove trump’ effort; and when you overlay those efforts in individual pieces to see the ramifications in 2020; it is clear one of the biggest scandals continues to revolve around the SSCI and the failure of the DOJ to prosecute James Wolfe for the leak.

Once the Dept. of Justice Wolfe decision was made… it set into action a chain of events that continues to go forward to today.  It’s like the old saying about once you tell a lie you have to tell another lie to cover the original lie; and then another lie to cover the lie about the original lie; and the sequence continues….

This is so far outside the bounds of traditional judicial activity it is unprecedented.  In the case against Michael Flynn the court appointed amicus curiae, essentially a court appointed outside lawyer enlisted to prosecute the case despite the DOJ withdrawal motion, John Gleeson has now filed a motion requesting: (1) a briefing schedule, (2) oral arguments; and (3) the possibility of interviewing witnesses.

Within Mr. Gleeson’s motion (link here) he will file his amicus brief on June 10th, and asks Judge Sullivan to set up a briefing schedule and allow him to make oral arguments.

Why would John Gleeson get the chance for a hearing to make an oral argument within the court, yet Flynn’s defense team couldn’t get a hearing scheduled on his original motion to withdraw his plea?  This is ridiculous.

In the traditional sense, to the extent that traditional applications can be considered in this bizarre situation, the amicus would present a written briefing to the court for the judge to consider; and that’s it.   However, Mr. Gleeson appears to be requesting his amicus status to be elevated to the position of intervening authority where he replaces the prosecution.

A request for a briefing schedule?  The only purpose of Judge Sullivan allowing a briefing schedule would be to drag this case out as long as possible.  Perhaps that is the goal; we shall see in his decision on this ridiculous request.

“Any additional factual development” would seem to imply Mr. Gleeson is planning to spend time investigating facts that are not currently before the court; including the possibility of Mr. Gleeson interviewing witnesses.

If Judge Emett Sullivan grants anything even close to the requests within this motion he will be operating so far outside of judicial boundaries an appellate court must intervene.

Seriously, this is Lawfare madness in the extreme.

During a press conference to outline new evidence in the Pensacola terror case, Attorney General William Barr coordinated a pre-staged question from the media. Responding to a question about President Trump’s tweets the AG said: based on his knowledge of the Durham probe so far, he does not expect the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into former President Barack Obama or Vice President Joe Biden.

Curiously within the statement Bill Barr notes: “what happened to the president during the 2016 election and throughout the first two years of his administration was abhorrent”, within that statement he is now saying the activity by special counsel Mueller was part of the “grave injustice”.

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Full Presser below:

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Representative Doug Collins of Georgia appears for an interview with Maria Bartiromo to discuss holding China accountable and the ongoing revelations surrounding the Obama administration targeting of Michael Flynn and President Trump.

More than a week after CBS first constructed their editorial narrative they finally released the full interview between Catherine Herridge and AG Bill Barr.  Many people read the transcript; however, thankfully Michael Sheridan excerpts a portion of the video that doesn’t come across in the transcript.

When the attorney general is questioned about “still having confidence” in FBI Director Christopher Wray, a newly articulated hesitancy is visible that doesn’t come across in the transcript. WATCH:

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Since February 2019 Bill Barr has been a staunch and very public defender of Chris Wray. However, with new revelations about recent FBI efforts to block the release of information as it relates to Michael Flynn, it now appears the AG has less confidence.

This shift is important because as the public have a renewed focused on the question of who illegally leaked Flynn’s communication with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, there has always been a rather curious contrast issue with the known classified intelligence leaking of James Wolfe.  If finding Flynn’s leaker is important then why didn’t the DOJ/FBI take action when they found a classified intelligence leaker in 2018?

The position of Bill Barr today is a direct result of decisions made by the DOJ and FBI in the Fall of 2017 & Summer of 2018. The events surrounding the leaking of the FISA warrant used against U.S. person Carter Page, and the 2018 DOJ decision not to prosecute SSCI Security Director James Wolfe for those leaks.

The Summer of 2018 was the fork in the road for the DOJ and FBI.

Attorney General Jeff Session was recused, Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein was in charge and the Mueller investigation was ongoing. That was when the DOJ made a decision not to prosecute Wolfe for leaking classified information. DC U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu signed-off on a plea deal where Wolfe plead guilty to only a single count of lying to the FBI.

If the DOJ had pursued the case against Wolfe for leaking the FISA application, everything would have been different.  The American electorate would have seen evidence of what was taking place in the background effort to remove President Trump. We would be in an entirely different place today if that prosecution or trial had taken place.

Three 2018 events revealed the Wolfe issue:

EVENT ONE – On February 9th, 2018, the media reported on text messages from 2017 between Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman Mark Warner and Chris Steele’s lawyer, a lobbyist named Adam Waldman.

EVENT TWO – Four months after the Mark Warner texts were made public, on June 8th, 2018, another headline story surfaced.  An indictment for Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Security Director James Wolfe was unsealed on June 7th, 2018.

EVENT THREE – Slightly less than two months after release of the Wolfe indictment, another headline story.  On July 21st, 2018, the DOJ/FBI declassified and publicly released the FISA application(s) used against former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.

♦ Later on December 14th 2018 a fourth albeit buried public release confirmed everything.  The FBI filed a sentencing recommendation proving it was the Carter Page FISA that was leaked by Wolfe:

A prosecution of Wolfe would have exposed a complicit conspiracy between corrupt U.S. intelligence actors and the United States senate (SSCI). Two branches of government essentially working on one objective; the removal of a sitting president. The DOJ decision not to prosecute Wolfe for leaking the classified FISA application protected multiple U.S. agencies and congress.

In 2018 DAG Rod Rosenstein could not prosecute James Wolfe without exposing ‘seditious‘ activity within the U.S. government itself.  Not pretend sedition or theoretical sedition, but an actual pre-planned subversive operation with forethought and malice.

The 2018 decision in the Wolfe case is critical. That’s the fork in the road. If the Wolfe prosecution had continued it would have undoubtedly surfaced that key government officials and politicians were working together (executive and legislative).

Additionally, amid a series of documents released by the Senate Judiciary Committee [SEE HERE] there is a rather alarming letter from the DOJ to the FISA Court in July 2018 that points toward another institutional cover-up.   [Link to Letter]

In the cover letter for this specific release to the Senate Judiciary and Senate Intelligence committees, the DOJ cites the January 7, 2020, FISA court order:

Keep in mind that prior to this release only the FISA court had seen this letter from the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD).  As we walk through the alarming content of this letter I think you’ll identify the motive behind the FISC order to release it.

First, the letter in question was sent by the DOJ-NSD to the FISA Court on July 12, 2018.  It is critical to keep the date of the letter in mind as we review the content.

Aside from the date the important part of the first page is the motive for sending it. The DOJ is telling the court in July 2018: based on what they know the FISA application still contains “sufficient predication for the Court to have found probable cause” to approve the application.   The DOJ is defending the Carter Page FISA application as still valid.

However, it is within the justification of the application that alarm bells are found. On page six the letter identifies the primary participants behind the FISA redactions:

As you can see: Christopher Steele is noted as “Source #1”.  Glenn Simpson of Fusion-GPS is noted as “identified U.S. person” or “business associate”; and Perkins Coie is the “U.S-based law firm.”

Now things get very interesting.

On page #8 when discussing Christopher Steele’s sub-source, the DOJ notes the FBI found him to be truthful and cooperative.

This is an incredibly misleading statement to the FISA court because what the letter doesn’t say is that 18-months earlier the sub-source, also known in the IG report as the “primary sub-source”, informed the FBI that the material attributed to him in the dossier was essentially junk.

Let’s look at how the IG report frames the primary sub-source, and specifically notice the FBI contact and questioning took place in January 2017 (we now know that date to be January 12, 2017):

Those interviews with Steele’s primary sub-source took place in January, March and May of 2017; and clearly the sub-source debunked the content of the dossier itself.

Those interviews were 18-months, 16-months and 14-months ahead of the July 2018DOJ letter to the FISC.   The DOJ-NSD says the sub-source was “truthful and cooperative” but the DOJ doesn’t tell the court the content of the truthfulness and cooperation.  Why?

Keep in mind this letter to the court was written by AAG John Demers in July 2018.  Jeff Sessions was Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein was Deputy AG; Christopher Wray was FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy, and Dana Boente is FBI chief-legal-counsel.

Why would the DOJ-NSD not be forthcoming with the FISA court about the primary sub-source?  This level of disingenuous withholding of information speaks to an institutional motive.

By July 2018 the DOJ clearly knew the dossier was full of fabrications, yet they withheld that information from the court and said the predicate was still valid.  Why?

It doesn’t take a deep-weeds-walker to identify the DOJ motive.

In July 2018 Robert Mueller’s investigation was at its apex.

This letter justifying the application and claiming the current information would still be a valid predicate therein, speaks to the 2018 DOJ needing to retain the validity of the FISA warrant…. My research suspicion is that the DOJ needed to protect evidence Mueller had already extracted from the fraudulent FISA authority.  That’s the motive.

In July 2018 if the DOJ-NSD had admitted the FISA application and all renewals were fatally flawed Robert Mueller would have needed to withdraw any evidence gathered as a result of its exploitation.  The DOJ in 2018 was protecting Mueller’s poisoned fruit.

If the DOJ had been honest with the court, there’s a strong possibility some, perhaps much, of Mueller evidence gathering would have been invalidated… and cases were pending.  The solution: mislead the court and claim the predication was still valid.

This is not simply a hunch, because that motive also speaks to why the FISC would order the current DOJ to release the letter.

Remember, in December the FISC received the IG Horowitz report; and they would have immediately noted the disparity between what IG Horowitz outlined about the FBI investigating Steele’s sub-source, as contrast against what the DOJ told them in July 2018.

The DOJ letter is a transparent misrepresentation when compared to the information in the Horowitz report. Hence, the court orders the DOJ to release the July letter so that everyone, including congressional oversight and the public can see the misrepresentation.

The court was misled; now everyone can see it.

The content of that DOJ-NSD letter, and the subsequent disparity, points to an institutional decision in 2018; and as a consequence the FISC ordered the DOJ to begin an immediate sequestration effort in January 2020 to find all the evidence from the fraudulent FISA application.  The proverbial fruit from the poisonous tree…. And yes, that is ongoing.

Thus ample reason for Attorney General Bill Barr to reevaluate any confidence in FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Two more big misstatements within the July 2018 letter appear on page #9.  The first is the DOJ claiming that only after the application was filed did they become aware of Christopher Steele working for Fusion-GPS and knowing his intent was to create opposition research for the Hillary Clinton campaign.  See the top of the page.

According to the DOJ-NSD claim the number four ranking official in the DOJ, Bruce Ohr, never told them he was acting as a conduit for Christopher Steele to the FBI.   While that claim is hard to believe, in essence what the DOJ-NSD is saying in that paragraph is that the FBI hoodwinked the DOJ-NSD by not telling them where the information for the FISA application was coming from.  The DOJ, via John Demers, is blaming the FBI.

The second statement, equally as incredulous, is at the bottom of page nine where the DOJ claims they had no idea Bruce Ohr was talking to the FBI throughout the entire time any of the FISA applications were being submitted.  October 2016 through June 2017.

In essence the claim there is that Bruce Ohr was working with the FBI and never told anyone in the DOJ throughout 2016 and all the way past June 29th of 2017.  That denial seems rather unlikely; however, once again the DOJ-NSD is putting the FBI in the crosshairs and claiming they knew nothing about the information pipeline.

Bruce Ohr, whose wife was working for Fusion-GPS and assisting Christopher Steele with information, was interviewed by the FBI over a dozen times as he communicated with Steele and fed his information to the FBI.  Yet the DOJ claims they knew nothing about it.

Again, just keep in mind this claim by the DOJ-NSD is being made in July 2018, six months after Bruce Ohr was demoted twice (December 2017 and January 2018).  If what the DOJ is saying is true, well, the FBI was completely off-the-rails and rogue.

Neither option speaks well about the integrity of either institution; and quite frankly I don’t buy the DOJ-NSD spin.  Why?  The reason is simple, the DOJ is claiming in the letter the predication was still valid… if the DOJ-NSD genuinely didn’t know about the FBI manipulation, they would be informing the court in 2018 the DOJ no longer supported the FISA application due to new information.  They did not do that.  Instead, in July 2018, they specifically told the court the predicate was valid, yet the DOJ-NSD knew it was not.

The last point about the July 2018 letter is perhaps the most jarring.  Again, keep in mind when it was written Chris Wray is FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy and Dana Boente is FBI chief legal counsel.

Their own FBI reports, by three different INSD and IG investigations; had turned up seriously alarming evidence going back to the early 2017 time-frame; the results of which ultimately led to the DC FBI office losing all of their top officials; and knowing the letter itself was full of misleading and false information about FBI knowledge in/around Christopher Steele; this particular sentence is alarming:

“The FBI has reviewed this letter and confirmed its factual accuracy?”

Really?

As we have just shared, the July 2018 letter itself is filled with factual inaccuracies, misstatements and intentional omissions.  So who exactly did the “reviewing”?

This declassification release raised more questions than any other in recent memory.

As we said at the time of the release, perhaps AG Bill Barr will now start asking some rather hard questions to FBI Director Christopher Wray.