Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 26, 2021 | Sundance | 71 Comments
Many people are unaware the essential framework for the 2020 election fraud took place in only seven counties which were each heavily controlled by Democrat operatives. Clark County (NV), Pittsburgh and Philadelphia (PA), Wayne County (MI), Maricopa County (AZ), Madison (WI) and Fulton County, Georgia. These populous counties were all that was needed in states were the election was tightly manipulated by political operatives.
In Georgia’s Fulton County the chain of custody documents from “Drop Box” locations still have not been produced despite the Governor signing new legislation to combat voter fraud. In total there are over 404,000 ballots that were counted in the election without chain-of-custody certifications. The margin in GA was only 12,000 votes.
GEORGIA – Four months after the November 3, 2020 presidential election, state and county officials in Georgia have failed to produce chain of custody documents for an estimated 404,691 vote by mail absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes and subsequently delivered to county registrars for counting.
As of March 3, only 56 of Georgia’s 159 counties have provided ballot transfer form data to The Georgia Star News. The number of absentee by mail ballots delivered to registrars in those 56 counties total only 195,309, or 32.5 percent, of the estimated 600,000 absentee vote by mail ballots deposited in drop boxes and delivered to county registrars and counted in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
In other words, there is no chain of custody for 67.5 percent – an estimated 404,691 – of the estimated 600,000 absentee vote by mail ballots deposited in drop boxes and delivered to county registrars and counted in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
The 2020 presidential election outcome in Georgia was decided by fewer than 12,000 votes – about three percent of the 404,000 absentee vote by mail ballots deposited in drop boxes and delivered to county registrars where they were counted.
Georgia county officials have made little progress in the two months since The Star News reported on January 3 that 28 counties had provided ballot transform forms documenting 140,628 vote by mail ballots deposited in drop boxes. (read more)
Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 26, 2021 | Sundance | 139 Comments
This is a specific example that needs to be drilled down quickly so that people with only a cursory interest in politics can understand how it impacts them. Biden’s $1400 stimulus checks are useless, literally wiped-out, when compared with the increase in gasoline prices already in place as part of the Biden energy policy.
Gas prices have already jumped $1/gal in most areas as a result of Biden killing the oil production energy sector. Factor in the increased transportation costs for goods and services, including the costs associated with deliveries of home meals, Uber rides, products delivered, airline charges; and the gas price increase hits the family checkbook far beyond the $1400 provided for stimulus.
Add to that charge and the increases in electricity prices, together with the increase in product costs that are based on petroleum (rubber, plastics, containers etc), and you can see how the increased cost of Biden’s ridiculous energy policy hits families even harder. But wait…. it gets worse…. If that were already not enough of a problem, Biden is now proposing a mileage tax on top of a gasoline tax increase that will hit the middle class much harder. [SEE Video at 01:30]
The middle-class commutes to work much more than all other sectors. Any increase in gas prices, gasoline taxes or mileage taxes hits the blue-collar worker at a disproportionate rate. A proposal to install a mileage tax does nothing but add another cost onto the American middle-class.
This is an issue of leftist policy, as the far-left now move to push their climate change agenda and simultaneously push federal infrastructure spending. Of course, in order to keep advancing their severe leftist agenda, the democrats have to pretend not to know things.
The next day, his Transportation head said a mileage tax could be one way to help pay for the plan.
“I think that shows a lot of promise,” Buttigieg said. “If we believe in that so-called user-pays principle, the idea that part of how we pay for roads is you pay based on how much you drive.”
“The gas tax used to be the obvious way to do it; it’s not anymore,” he continued. “So, a so-called vehicle miles traveled tax or a mileage tax, whatever you want to call it, could be the way to do it.” (read more)
Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 26, 2021 | Sundance | 405 Comments
[Bumped by Request /SD]
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is now getting ready to hire public companies, individual contractors outside government, to scour public data and social media in order to provide information for the new “domestic terror watch lists.” From the description it appears DHS is going to pay “big tech” (Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, etc.), via contracts, to hire and organize internal monitoring teams to assist the government by sending information on citizens they deem “dangerous.”
Gee, what could possibly go wrong with this?…
NBC is reporting on these new developments as the U.S. intelligence apparatus is preparing to go live with the assembly of lists of Americans who “could be” potential threats to the government; and need to be watched.
However, even NBC is beginning to realize the consequences: “DHS planning to expand relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligence and to better harness the vast trove of data it already collects on Americans. The department is also contemplating changes to its terrorist watch listing process.”
Here’s the article:
WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security, created after the 9/11 attacks to protect the country from international terrorism, is moving toward a sweeping set of policy changes aimed at detecting and stopping what intelligence officials say is now a top threat to the homeland: domestic violent extremism.
Two senior Biden administration officials told NBC News that DHS, whose intelligence division did not publish a warning of potential violence before the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, is seeking to improve its ability to collect and analyze data about domestic terrorism — including the sorts of public social media posts that threatened a potential attack on the Capitol, but were not deemed “actionable” by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.
DHS is planning to expand its relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligence, one of the senior officials said, and also to better harness the vast trove of data it already collects on Americans, including travel and commercial data through Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service and other DHS components. (read more)
Expand your thinking to what was initiated with the COVID model for “contact tracing” and you can quickly see how physical proximity to a rogue dissident, a person with wrong thoughts – aka a domestic extremist, can result in you being labeled along with that dissident…. and you are on the list. Then overlay the efforts of Big Tech to assist the administrative state with an electronic trail of your habits, contacts, phone calls, text messages and internet patterns…. and you are on the list.
Remind yourself what FBI “contractors’ with access to the NSA database already did in their quest for political opposition research and surveillance {Go Deep}. Then overlay all of the above and you get an alarming picture that is not something to dispatch.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 26, 2021 | Sundance | 20 Comments
Border Patrol Union President Brandon Judd describes what it was like for GOP senators to visit the border crisis and how the Mexican cartel smugglers were laughing at the inept politicians who can do nothing to stop their activity. Quite a stunning interview:
Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 26, 2021 | Sundance | 58 Comments
A contingent of Republican senators traveled to Texas on Thursday for a tour of the border region to understand the scale of the problem currently facing Border Patrol. After a night and early day visit of the border region the GOP senators gathered to brief the press and answer questions.
Senator Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) was emphatic about the stunning statistics that are now evident. As Johnson shared during his portion of the briefing, under President Trump the border region was secured and together with agreements with Central American and Mexico the southern border wall was working well to stop illegal alien influx.
However, Joe Biden eliminated all of the agreements and policies that stabilized the border. Immediately after his installation as head of the executive branch the Biden policies opened a floodgate of illegal alien border crossers. As many as 6,000 border apprehensions in a single day in the Rio Grande Valley sector. Stunning statistics.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 27, 2021 | Sundance | 22 Comments
Sometimes if you don’t laugh at the absurdity of it all, you’ll explode the blood pressure cuff from sheer annoyance. Yes, the entire world can see the absurdity of the Biden administration – even if the professional left have to pretend like they cannot see it.
In this interview Mark Steyn accurately outlines the incredible stupidity of it all, and how the compliant media make a mockery of themselves as clapping seals sitting in grand obedience before the naked emperor while they swear an ability to see his beautiful and magnanimous clothing.
I get emails from friends in Britain who envy the US, saying if they had the right to have guns, they would be protecting their liberty. The Biden Administration has moved to force everyone to register guns. The next step is to just bust into your house and confiscate them. They are taking these steps in an incremental fashion to disarm America. Their designs are to impose the Great Reset, as we are watching in Europe with outrageous fines if you dare leave the country and 10 years in prison for lying about where you have been. Britain is no longer a free country.
The West is becoming authoritarian, unfortunately, precisely as our computer has been forecasting for years. This is why the government and its surrogates pretending to be real analysts are so intent upon preventing people from ever listening to Socrates. They hate the fact that our computer has been accurately projecting what they would do next simply based upon the economics and past incidents as to how people respond.
Now the Biden Administration is arguing in the U.S. Supreme Court in Caniglia v. Strom that the government should be allowed to enter or bust into your home and confiscate your guns without ever having to get a search warrant. That means that they can come into EVERY home and search for guns. In the meantime, anything else they would find that violates any law will be used to prosecute you. The Biden Administration and attorneys general from nine Democratic-controlled states are now urging the Supreme Court to uphold warrantless gun confiscation. That will effectively eliminate the Fourth Amendment while they are really undermining the Second Amendment. They need to disarm Americans because they know a revolution is coming.
The Supreme Court has already eliminated the Fourth Amendment, which allows the government to openly violate that restraint. In 1984, the United States Supreme Court nullified the Fourth Amendment for political reasons, which does not bode well for the future of the United States.
Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431 (1984), focused on the disappearance of a 10-year-old white girl in Des Moines, Iowa. The defendant, who was black and had mental problems, was arrested and arraigned in Davenport, Iowa. Officers informed the defendant’s attorney that they would drive him back to Des Moines without questioning him, but during the trip one of the officers began a conversation with him that ultimately resulted in his making incriminating statements and directing the officers to the child’s body. A systematic search of the area that was being conducted with the aid of 200 volunteers and had begun before the defendant made his statements was terminated when he guided the officers to the body. The defendant was convicted of the child’s murder, but his conviction was later reversed by the United States Supreme Court in Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387 (1977), when the Court ruled that an officer had obtained the statements in violation of the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
They put him on trial again, and the state did not offer the defendant’s statements into evidence, nor did it seek to show that the defendant had directed the officers to the child’s body. However, what they admitted into evidence was the condition of her body when it was found, articles and photos of her clothing, and the results of post-mortem medical and chemical tests on the body. The trial court found that the state had proven by a preponderance of the evidence, rather than proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that if the search had not been suspended and the defendant had not led the officers to the victim, her body would have been discovered within a short time in essentially the same condition as it was actually found.
The defendant was convicted again of the murder of the child. However, a federal appellate court later reversed the conviction, which legally it should have been. That court assumed that there was an inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule, and the exception required proof both that (1) officers did not act in bad faith in committing the constitutional violation, and (2) the evidence involving the child’s body would have been discovered absent a constitutional violation. The court then found that the state failed to show that the officers did not act in bad faith (therefore, it was unnecessary for the court to decide the second issue) and reversed the defendant’s conviction.
The United States Supreme Court granted the same case again because it was way too political — a black man killed a 10-year-old white girl. The Supreme Court reversed that ruling, which should have stood. The police should have simply done their job the right way, but they cheated, and that changed the law for everyone.
The Court noted that although its prior case law on the exclusionary rule involved Fourth Amendment violations, the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine as it was known, the court then stated that the prosecution should not be put in a better position than it would have been if no illegality had occurred. Therefore, the prosecution should not be put in a worse position simply because there was some law enforcement error or misconduct. There and then, the Supreme Court held that when challenged evidence has an independent source had it been properly-obtained, that was enough to show probable cause to support a search warrant after setting aside improperly obtained evidence. Therefore, the exclusion of evidence would put the prosecution in a worse position than they would have been in the absence of a violation.
Today that has been so distorted that police just do as they like and claim if they had acted legally, they would have still obtained the evidence. This case was highly political with the press calling for the blood of this black man who killed a 10-year-old white girl. We can see the same fever-pitch rising now with the aid of the Boulder shooting that everyone with any gun should not require a search warrant for they should just act. There were two dissents, and Justice Marshal aptly put it best that the doctrine they created to make sure this black man did not escape punishment because he was guilty “inconsistent with the requirements of the Constitution.”More correct words were never spoken. Allowing no search warrants and for police to just bust down your door and ransack your house, all they have to say is they thought you had a gun. They can then charge you for anything else they might find that they will claim is illegal.
The American legal system was built upon the British Common Law. What was once noble has perished and the historical recognition that proof BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT exists no more. The American law has twisted the principles to ensure the exact opposite of the maxim which Sir William Blackstone articulated that it is far better than 10 guilty escape than one innocent suffers. About 70% of our prisons today are filled with people on conspiracy charges as the prosecutors simply threaten one person to testify against another without proving actual guilt. The law was once intended to protect the innocent, but those days are long gone. Thus we presume an accused person’s guilt today and the press immediately pronounces them guilty using the word “alleged” and never look at the evidence. There is no innocence until they are proven guilty anymore. If the government charges you, they have a 99% conviction rate with the remainder committing suicide.
The preeminent English jurist William Blackstone and his works were what the framers of the Constitution used to define America. John Adams made similar arguments in defending British soldiers after the Boston Massacre, “[W]e are to look upon it as more beneficial, that many guilty persons should escape unpunished than one innocent person should suffer,” (Alexander Volokh, “n Guilty Men,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 146 (1997) id/p. 176). This principle is also be found in religious texts and in the writings of the American Founders. Benjamin Franklin went further arguing “it is better a hundred guilty persons should escape than one innocent person should suffer.” (Benjamin Franklin, “Letter from Benjamin Franklin to Benjamin Vaughn (Mar. 14, 1785),” The Works of Benjamin Franklin 11, ed. John Bigelow (1904)).
In Nix v. Williams, the Supreme Court abandoned this cornerstone of law. When I still read Blackstone’s Commentaries, it not only illustrates the cycle within the law and how every principle of liberty has been undermined to ensure that government power is now supreme, but it brings tears to my eyes to think of how much we have really lost over the course of the past 232 years.
Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England remains to this day one of my most cherished books. It is a stark reminder of the cycle of civilization itself how we evolved from trial by ordeal where it was assumed if you were innocent God would intervene (walking on hot coals or throwing a suspected which into water), to trial by combat (where we duel it out or later hired people to fight to the death in your stead). The rule of law was supposed to be the pinnacle of civilization. Oh, how it has fallen. It now lies on the grown broken like the limbs of a stupendous statue that are no more even recognizable. To ensure that one black man pay for his crime, they changed the law of the nation and eliminated the Fourth Amendment. Now the Biden Administration is asking to even but aside probably cause.
Then in Segura v. the United States, 468 U.S. 796 (1984), the Supreme Court went even further and held that the exclusionary rule reaches not only primary evidence obtained as a direct result of an illegal search or seizure but also evidence later. Effectively, the Supreme Court has already nullified the Fourth Amendment, and the Biden Administration is asking to kill it altogether. The Democrat’s view is there should be no limitation on government whatsoever. I have warned that their goal is to really eliminate the Constitution, precisely as Klaus Schwab proposes that Democracy should be terminated. This is the end goal. They have already eliminated democracy in Europe where the people have no right to vote for the European Commission or who is even the head of the EU. They vote simply for a Parliament that has no power to overrule the Commission or the head of the EU. It is just there for symbolism. They may bash China in public, but behind closed doors, they envy their political structure.
Those who voted for Biden because they hated Trump, I’m sure you never knew this was their real agenda. To search any house without a warrant means they do not have to show you have gun registration. They only need to say what they thought! Nobody will be safe — even those without guns. Those who voted for Biden have driven a stake right through the heart of what was once liberty.
As I stated, Sidney Powell’s legal argument was simply that there was no harm even if she had just made up the story, which she states she did not. CNN misrepresented what her brief states:
“Powell, who repeatedly pressed unfounded claims of voter fraud on the airwaves and in court, now says that “reasonable” people would not accept her statements as “fact” because the legal process hadn’t yet played out. It was a stunning admission from a woman who served for a time as one of Trump’s top legal lieutenants.”
CNBC also engaged in Fake News saying “‘no reasonable person’ believes election claims were ‘statements of fact’ when the bref is quoting the legal standard id/p27. The leftist press is cherry-picking words and trying to say that Powell has admitted her statements were false. Nowhere in the brief does she admit such a fact.
I have gotten a copy of her reply brief (read here: Powell Reply Brief) and I must say, Fake News is twisting the story again. The pertinent section reads:
“All the allegedly defamatory statements attributed to Defendants were made as part of the normal
process of litigating issues of momentous significance and immense public interest,”
Reasonable people understand that the “language of the political arena, like the language used in labor disputes … is often vituperative, abusive and inexact.” Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705, 708 (1969). It is likewise a “well recognized principle that political statements are inherently prone to exaggeration and hyperbole.” Planned Parenthood of Columbia/Willamette, Inc. v. Am. Coal. of Life Activists, 244 F.3d 1007, 1009 (9th Cir. 2001). Given the highly charged and political context of the statements, it is clear that Powell was describing the facts on which she based the lawsuits she filed in support of President Trump. Indeed, Plaintiffs themselves characterize the statements at issue as “wild accusations” and “outlandish claims.” Id. at ¶¶ 2, 60, 97, 111. They are repeatedly labelled “inherently improbable” and even “impossible.” Id. at ¶¶ 110, 111, 114, 116 and 185. Such characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support Defendants’ position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process. Furthermore, Sidney Powell disclosed the facts upon which her conclusions were based. “[W]hen a defendant provides the facts underlying the challenged statements, it is ‘clear that
the challenged statements represent his own interpretation of those facts,’ which ‘leav[es] the reader free to draw his own conclusions.’” Bauman, 377 F. Supp. 3d at 11 at n. 7 (citations omitted). The documents supporting the various lawsuits were made available to the public on the DTR website, as the Complaint makes clear. See, e.g., Compl. at ¶¶ 6, 77, 82, 85, 87, 89. Similarly, all the documents related to the election lawsuits filed were publicly available through the websites of the various courts.12 Likewise, on December 23, 2020, the Complaint alleges, Powell published a 270- page document to the Zenger News website. She added a link to the Zenger website on her own website with the caption, “READ IT: SIDNEY POWELL BINDER OF ELECTION FRAUD EVIDENCE.” Id. at ¶ 149.
Most of the brief deals with the fact that they deliberately filed in Washington assuming that is a Democrat-controlled court so they are seeking political favoritism. Sidney Powell really had no connection to Washington and claiming she represented Flynn in DC has nothing to do with this case. It should be dismissed or sent to Texas where she is a resident but neither Dominion nor Powell are in DC. That is very strange, to begin with.
The claim that “no reasonable person would have believed” which some media claims to have quoted, simply does not exist in her reply brief. They are quoting cases that people normally assume political speech “is often vituperative, abusive and inexact.”
As I said, I understand her legal argument, but she should have known that arguing EVEN IF the statements were wrong, is still political speech, and protected by the First Amendment was not the best argument. As I have also said, the only way to prove allegations of fraud against Dominion will require access to the program code. That cannot be determined from the results. I still believe that the fraud was with the mail-in ballots. It may have existed in the machine counts, but that could only be established by accessing the programs. If I were her, I would not go after all the program source code, the names of every programmer who EVER worked on the project. Dominion must have been out of their mind to file such a lawsuit.
The DOJ and FBI appear to be maintaining an aggressive posture against their political opposition on behalf of the ongoing ‘domestic extremist’ narrative. In a remarkable statement prosecutor Michael Sherwin claims that charges of sedition are possible for those who attended the January 6th protest in DC against the outcome of the 2020 election.
Conducting political surveillance, abusing the NSA database by extracting personal information in violation of the fourth amendment, lying to a FISA court to get a title-1 surveillance warrant against Donald Trump’s campaign, fabricating a false Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, pushing knowingly false information to the media to support a fraudulent investigation, initiating a special counsel to hide the trail of wrongdoing; and the FBI conducting political operations against the Trump administration, was apparently no big deal. However, attend a protest against the corrupt interests of the deep state in DC and you are guilty of “sedition.”
The weaponized institutions of government are openly displaying their intent now.
WASHINGTON DC – Michael Sherwin, the federal prosecutor tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, told “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Sunday night evidence collected thus far likely meets the threshold to charge some suspects with sedition.
Any person charged with sedition is effectively accused of attempting to overthrow the U.S. government and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Scott Pelley, the correspondent, pointed out that the U.S. government has not charged anyone tied to the riot with sedition, but he quoted the statute and said that it seems like a “very low bar” to bring the charge.
Sherwin disagreed. “But I will tell you this,” he said. “I personally believe the evidence is trending towards that, and probably meets those elements.” (read more)
WATCH THE SEGMENT:
Consider…. During the time-frame of December 2015 through April 2016 the NSA database was being exploited by contractors within the intelligence community doing unauthorized searches.
On March 9, 2016, oversight personnel doing a review of FBI system access were alerted to thousands of unauthorized search queries of specific U.S. persons within the NSA database.
NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was made aware.
Subsequently NSA Director Rogers initiated a full compliance review of the system to identify who was doing the searches; & what searches were being conducted.
On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access (Crowstrike) to the database after he learned FISA-702 “about”(17) and “to/from”(16) search queries were being done without authorization. Thus begins the first discovery of a much bigger background story.
When you compile the timeline with the people involved; and the specific wording of the resulting review, which was then delivered to the FISA court; and overlay the activity that was taking place in the GOP primary; what we discover is a process where the metadata collected by the NSA was being searched for political opposition research and surveillance.
Additionally, tens-of-thousands of searches were identified by the FISA court as likely extending much further than the compliance review period: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of the non compliant queries since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 period coincided with an unusually high error rate”.
In short, during the Obama administration the NSA database was continually used to conduct surveillance. This is the critical point that leads to understanding the origin of “Spygate”, as it unfolded in the Spring and Summer of 2016.
It was the discovery of the database exploitation and the removal of access as a surveillance tool that created their initial problem. Here’s how we can tell.
Initially in December 2015 there were 17 GOP candidates and all needed to be researched.
However, when Donald Trump won New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina the field was significantly whittled. Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich and Carson remained.
On Super Tuesday, March 2, 2016, Donald Trump won seven states (VT, AR, VA, GA, AL, TN, MA) it was then clear that Trump was the GOP frontrunner with momentum to become the presumptive nominee. On March 5th, Trump won Kentucky and Louisiana; and on March 8th Trump won Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii.
The next day, March 9th, NSA security alerts warned internal oversight personnel that something sketchy was going on.
This timing is not coincidental. As FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer later wrote in her report, “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” Put another way: attributes belonging to a specific individual(s) were being targeted and queried, unlawfully. Given what was later discovered, it seems obvious the primary search target, over multiple date ranges, was Donald Trump.
There were tens-of-thousands of unauthorized search queries; and as Judge Collyer stated in her report, there is no reason to believe the 85% non compliant rate was any different from the abuse of the NSA database going back to 2012.
As you will see below the NSA database was how political surveillance was being conducted during Obama’s second term in office. However, when the system was flagged, and when NSA Director Mike Rogers shut down “contractor” access to the system, the system users needed to develop another way to get access.
Mike Rogers shuts down access on April 18, 2016. On April 19, 2016, Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson’s wife, Mary Jacoby visits the White House. Immediately thereafter, the DNC and Clinton campaign contract Fusion GPS… who then hire Christopher Steele.
Knowing it was federal “contractors”, outside government with access to the system, doing the unauthorized searches, the question becomes: who were the contractors?
The possibilities are quite vast. Essentially anyone the FBI or intelligence apparatus was using could have participated. Crowdstrike was a known FBI contractor; they were also contracted by the DNC. Shawn Henry was the former head of the FBI office in DC and was the President of Crowdstrike Services; a rather dubious contractor for the government and a politically connected data security and forensic company. James Comey’s special friend Daniel Richman was an unpaid FBI “special employee” with security access to the database. Nellie Ohr began working for Fusion-GPS on the Trump project in November 2015 and she was a CIA contractor; and it’s entirely likely Glenn Simpson or people within his Fusion-GPS network were also contractors for the intelligence community.
Remember the Sharyl Attkisson computer intrusions? It’s all part of this same network; Attkisson even names Shawn Henry as a defendant in her ongoing lawsuit.
All of the aforementioned names, and so many more, held a political agenda in 2016.
It seems likely if the NSA flags were never triggered then the contracted system users would have continued exploiting the NSA database for political opposition research; which would then be funneled to the Clinton team. However, once the unauthorized flags were triggered, the system users (including those inside the official intelligence apparatus) needed to find another back-door to continue… Again, the timing becomes transparent.
Immediately after NSA flags were raised March 9th; the same intelligence agencies began using confidential human sources (CHS’s) to run into the Trump campaign. By activating intelligence assets like Joseph Mifsud and Stefan Halper the IC (CIA, FBI) and system users had now created an authorized way to continue the same political surveillance operations.
When Donald Trump hired Paul Manafort on March 28, 2016, it was a perfect scenario for those doing the surveillance. Manafort was a known entity to the FBI and was previously under investigation. Paul Manafort’s entry into the Trump orbit was perfect for Glenn Simpson to sell his prior research on Manafort as a Trump-Russia collusion script two weeks later.
The shift from “unauthorized exploitation of the NSA database” to legally authorized exploitation of the NSA database was now in place. This was how they continued the political surveillance. This is the confluence of events that originated “spygate”, or what officially blossomed into the FBI investigation known as “Crossfire Hurricane” on July 31.
If the NSA flags were never raised; and if Director Rogers had never initiated the compliance audit; and if the political contractors were never blocked from access to the database; they would never have needed to create a legal back-door, a justification to retain the surveillance. The political operatives/contractors would have just continued the targeted metadata exploitation.
Once they created the surveillance door, Fusion-GPS was then needed to get the FBI known commodity of Chris Steele activated as a pipeline. Into that pipeline all system users pushed opposition research. However, one mistake from the NSA database extraction during an “about” query shows up as a New Yorker named Michael Cohen in Prague.
That misinterpreted data from a FISA-702 “about query” is then piped to Steele and turns up inside the dossier; it was the wrong Michael Cohen. It wasn’t Trump’s lawyer, it was an art dealer from New York City with the same name; the same “identifier”.
A DEEP DIVE – How Did It Work?
Start by reviewing the established record from the 99-page FISC opinion rendered by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer on April 26, 2017. Review the details within the FISC opinion.
I would strongly urge everyone to read the FISC report (full pdf below) because Judge Collyer outlines how the DOJ, which includes the FBI, had an “institutional lack of candor” in responses to the FISA court. In essence, the Obama administration was continually lying to the FISA court about their activity, and the rate of fourth amendment violations for illegal searches and seizures of U.S. persons’ private information for multiple years.
Unfortunately, due to intelligence terminology Judge Collyer’s brief and ruling is not an easy read for anyone unfamiliar with the FISA processes. That complexity also helps the media avoid discussing it; and as a result most Americans have no idea the scale and scope of the Obama-era surveillance issues. So we’ll try to break down the language.
For the sake of brevity and common understanding CTH will highlight the most pertinent segments showing just how systemic and troublesome the unlawful electronic surveillance was.
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 (keep these dates in mind).
Here are some significant segments:
The key takeaway from these first paragraphs is how the search query results were exported from the NSA database to users who were not authorized to see the material. The FBI contractors were conducting searches and then removing, or ‘exporting’, the results. Later on, the FBI said all of the exported material was deleted.
Searching the highly classified NSA database is essentially a function of filling out search boxes to identify the user-initiated search parameter and get a return on the search result.
♦ FISA-702(16) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (“702”); and the “16” is a check box to initiate a search based on “To and From“. Example, if you put in a date and a phone number and check “16” as the search parameter the user will get the returns on everything “To and From” that identified phone number for the specific date. Calls, texts, contacts etc. Including results for the inbound and outbound contacts.
♦ FISA-702(17) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (702); and the “17” is a check box to initiate a search based on everything “About” the search qualifier. Example, if you put a date and a phone number and check “17” as the search parameter the user will get the returns of everything about that phone. Calls, texts, contacts, geolocation (or gps results), account information, user, service provider etc. As a result, 702(17) can actually be used to locate where the phone (and user) was located on a specific date or sequentially over a specific period of time which is simply a matter of changing the date parameters.
And that’s just from a phone number.
Search an ip address “about” and read all data into that server; put in an email address and gain everything about that account. Or use the electronic address of a GPS enabled vehicle (about) and you can withdraw more electronic data and monitor in real time. Search a credit card number and get everything about the account including what was purchased, where, when, etc. Search a bank account number, get everything about transactions and electronic records etc. Just about anything and everything can be electronically searched; everything has an electronic ‘identifier’.
The search parameter is only limited by the originating field filled out. Names, places, numbers, addresses, etc. By using the “About” parameter there may be thousands or millions of returns. Imagine if you put “@realdonaldtrump” into the search parameter? You could extract all following accounts who interacted on Twitter, or Facebook etc. You are only limited by your imagination and the scale of the electronic connectivity.
As you can see below, on March 9th, 2016, internal auditors noted the FBI was sharing “raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information”.
In plain English the raw search returns were being shared with unknown entities without any attempt to “minimize” or redact the results. The person(s) attached to the results were named and obvious. There was no effort to hide their identity or protect their 4th amendment rights of privacy; and database access was from the FBI network:
But what’s the scale here? This is where the story really lies.
Read this next excerpt carefully.
The operators were searching “U.S Persons”. The review of November 1, 2015, to May 1, 2016, showed “eighty-five percent of those queries” were unlawful or “non compliant”.
85% !! “representing [redacted number]”.
We can tell from the space of the redaction the number of searches were between 10,000 and 99,999 [six digits]. If we take the middle number of 50,000 – a non compliant rate of 85 percent means 42,500 unlawful searches out of 50,000.
The [six digit] amount (more than 10,000, less than 99,999), and 85% error rate, was captured in a six month period, November 2015 to April 2016.
Also notice this very important quote: “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” This tells us the system users were searching the same phone number, email address, electronic identifier, repeatedly over different dates.
Specific person(s) were being tracked/monitored.
Additionally, notice the last quote: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of” these non lawful searches “since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 coincided with an unusually high error rate”.
That means the 85% unlawful FISA-702(16)(17) database abuse has likely been happening since 2012.
2012 is an important date in this database abuse because a network of specific interests is assembled that also shows up in 2016/2017:
Who was 2012 FBI Director? Robert Mueller, who was selected by the FBI group to become special prosecutor in 2017.
Who was Mueller’ chief-of-staff? Aaron Zebley, who became one of the lead lawyers on the Mueller special counsel.
Who was 2012 CIA Director? John Brennan (remember the ouster of Gen Petraeus)
Who was ODNI? James Clapper.
Remember, the NSA is inside the Pentagon (Defense Dept) command structure. Who was Defense Secretary? Ash Carter
Who wanted NSA Director Mike Rogers fired in 2016? Brennan, Clapper and Carter.
And finally, who wrote and signed-off-on the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment and then lied about the use of the Steele Dossier? The same John Brennan, and James Clapper along with James Comey.
Tens of thousands of searches over four years (since 2012), and 85% of them are illegal. The results were extracted for?…. (I believe this is all political opposition use; and I’ll explain why momentarily.)
OK, that’s the stunning scale; but who was involved?
Private contractors with access to “raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI’s requests“:
And as noted, the contractor access was finally halted on April 18th, 2016.
[Coincidentally (or likely not), the wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, goes to the White House the very next day on April 19th, 2016.]
None of this is conspiracy theory.
All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87: “deliberate decisionmaking“:
This specific footnote, if declassified, could be a key. Note the phrase: “([redacted] access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding entered into [redacted])”, this sentence has the potential to expose an internal decision; withheld from congress and the FISA court by the Obama administration; that outlines a process for access and distribution of surveillance data.
Note: “no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016“, that is important.
Summary: 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.
The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation; and we are not the only one to think that’s what this system is being used for.
Back in 2017 when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was working to reauthorize the FISA legislation, Nunes wrote a letter to ODNI Dan Coats about this specific issue:
SIDEBAR: To solve the issue, well, actually attempt to ensure it never happened again, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers eventually took away the “About” query option permanently in 2017. NSA Director Rogers said the abuse was so inherent there was no way to stop it except to remove the process completely. [SEE HERE] Additionally, the NSA database operates as a function of the Pentagon, so the Trump administration went one step further. On his last day as NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers -together with ODNI Dan Coats- put U.S. cyber-command, the database steward, fully into the U.S. military as a full combatant command. [SEE HERE] Unfortunately it didn’t work as shown by the 2018 FISC opinion rendered by FISC Judge James Boasberg [SEE HERE]
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.
When we reconcile what was taking place and who was involved, then the actions of the exact same principle participants take on a jaw-dropping amount of clarity.
All of the action taken by CIA Director Brennan, FBI Director Comey, ODNI Clapper and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter make sense. Including their effort to get NSA Director Mike Rogers fired.
Everything after March 9th, 2016, had a dual purpose: (1) done to cover up the weaponization of the FISA database. [Explained Here] Spygate, Russia-Gate, the Steele Dossier, and even the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (drawn from the dossier and signed by the above) were needed to create a cover-story and protect themselves from discovery of this four year weaponization, political surveillance and unlawful spying. Even the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel makes sense; he was FBI Director when this began. And (2) they needed to keep the surveillance going.
The beginning decision to use FISA(702) as a domestic surveillance and political spy mechanism appears to have started in/around 2012. Perhaps sometime shortly before the 2012 presidential election and before John Brennan left the White House and moved to CIA. However, there was an earlier version of data assembly that preceded this effort.
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.
Lesson Learned – It would appear the Obama administration learned a lesson from attempting to gather a large opposition research database operation inside a functioning organization large enough to have some good people that might blow the whistle.
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. If our hunch is correct, that is what will be visible in footnote #69:
How this all comes together in 2019/2020
Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 just to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign, and were monitoring everything by exploiting the FISA database.
However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post facto justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.
That’s why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, were so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content.
The Steele Dossier, an outcome of the Fusion contract, contains three insurance policy purposes: (1) the cover-story and justification for the pre-existing surveillance operation (protect Obama); and (2) facilitate the FBI counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign (assist Clinton); and (3) continue the operation with a special counsel (protect both).
An insurance policy would be needed. The Steele Dossier becomes the investigative virus the FBI wanted inside the system. To get the virus into official status, they used the FISA application as the delivery method and injected it into Carter Page. The FBI already knew Carter Page; essentially Carter Page was irrelevant, what they needed was the FISA warrant and the Dossier in the system {Go Deep}.
The Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to give them a plausible justification for already existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion-GPS gave them that justification and evidence for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier.
Ultimately that’s why the Steele Dossier was so important; without it, the FBI would not have a tool that Mueller needed to continue the investigation of President Trump. In essence by renewing the FISA application, despite them knowing the underlying dossier was junk, the FBI was keeping the surveillance gateway open for Team Mueller to exploit later on. Additionally, without the Steele Dossier the DOJ and FBI are naked with their FISA-702 abuse.
…. But sedition charges are reserved for Capitol Hill protestors.
There are now 13,000+ children in custody at the border. This is the mess that was created by the Democrats bashing Trump all the time, so they painted themselves into a corner where they had to take the opposite position that has led to a major order crisis. The Border Patrol Agents are under a gag order from the Biden administration restricting any information agents are allowed to share with the media. Biden is trying to prevent the press from reporting on the real state of affairs. The rhetoric of the Democrats has created the entire problem during the election that they wanted to hand citizenship to some 11 million illegal aliens. The problem is that even the conservative Democrats disagree, as is the case with the Republicans. The crisis emerging is all the people flocking to get into the USA, assuming they will get citizenship. They are sending their children into the USA in hopes of gaining citizenship and then they would be able to join them.
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This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
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