Sara Carter held a pod-cast interview with HPSCI ranking member Devin Nunes.  At approximately 36:25 of the interview congressman Nunes discusses the testimony of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.

The transcript from Atkinson’s House testimony has never been released.  Rep. Nunes states the reason HPSCI Chairman Schiff has kept the transcript hidden and classified is because the content is extremely damaging to the origin of the impeachment fraud.  Additionally, the testimony from Atkinson conflicted with evidence which surfaced later:

“[Atkinson] is under active investigation. I’m not gonna go any farther than that because you know obviously he has a chance to come in and prove his innocence, but my guess is Schiff, Atkinson they don’t want that transcript out because it’s very damaging”… (Link)

CTH has previously outlined ICIG Michael Atkinson as a dirty player amid a network of very corrupt officials who hold self-interests from participating in unlawful abuses of government surveillance including the DOJ and FBI activity during the 2016 election.

On Sunday, October 6th, 2019, even before the revelations of Schiff working with the whistle-blower surfaced, ranking member Devin Nunes originally discussed his concerns with the testimony of Michael Atkinson.  Nunes noted the testimony “was a joke”.

Nunes told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Sunday host Matt Boyle, “[The ICIG is] either totally incompetent or part of the deep state, and he’s got a lot of questions he needs to answer because he knowingly changed the form and the requirements in order to make sure that this whistleblower complaint got out publicly.”

“So he’s either incompetent or in on it, and he’s going to have more to answer for, I can promise you, because we are not going to let him go; he is going to tell he truth about what happened,” Nunes added.  (read more)

ICIG Atkinson never reviewed the call transcript and facilitated the complaint processing despite numerous flaws.  Additionally Atkinson ignored legal guidance from both the director of national intelligence (DNI) and the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel that highlighted Atkinson’s poor decision-making.

Michael K Atkinson was previously the Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ-NSD) in 2016. That makes Atkinson senior legal counsel to John Carlin and Mary McCord who were the former heads of the DOJ-NSD in 2016 when the stop Trump operation was underway.

(Link to Atkinson Career File)

The DOJ-NSD were using sketchy legal interpretations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act  (FARA §901) to justify political surveillance.  Atkinson’s legal guidance within the department would have been critical for them to continue this approach.

[Reminder: The DOJ-NSD was purposefully under no IG oversight. In 2015 the OIG requested oversight and it was Deputy AG Sally Yates who responded with a lengthy 58 page legal explanation saying, essentially, ‘nope – not allowed.’ (PDF HERE) All of the DOJ is subject to oversight, except the NSD.]

Additionally, Michael Atkinson was the lawyer for the same DOJ-NSD players who: (1) lied to the FISA court (Judge Rosemary Collyer) about the 80% non compliant NSA database abuse using FBI contractors; (2) filed the FISA application against Carter Page; and (3) used FARA violations as tools for political surveillance and political targeting.

Yes, that means Michael Atkinson was Senior Counsel for the DOJ-NSD, at the very epicenter of the political weaponization and FISA abuse.

Immediately after the Carter Page FISA warrant is approved, in the period where DOJ-NSD head John Carlin has given his notice of intent to leave but not yet left, inside those specific two weeks, the National Security Division of the DOJ tells the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) they have been breaking the law. The NSD specifically inform the court they are aware of contractors who have been using FISA 702(16)(17) database search queries to extract information on political candidates.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz has looked into the FISA application used against U.S. Person Carter Page. Additionally, U.S. Attorney John Durham is said to be looking at the intelligence communities’ use of systems for spying and surveillance.

If the DOJ-NSD exploitation of the NSA database, and/or DOJ-NSD FISA abuse, and/or DOJ-NSD FARA corruption were ever to reach sunlight, current ICIG Atkinson -as the lawyer for the process- would be under a lot of scrutiny for his involvement.

Yes, that gives current ICIG Michael Atkinson a strong and corrupt motive to participate with the Schiff/Lawfare impeachment objective.

It now looks like the Lawfare network constructed the ‘whistle-blower’ complaint aka a Schiff Dossier, and handed it to allied CIA operative Eric Ciaramella to file as a formal IC complaint.  This process is almost identical to the Fusion-GPS/Lawfare network handing the Steele Dossier to the FBI to use as the evidence for the 2016/2017 Russia conspiracy.

Atkinson’s conflict-of-self-interest, and/or possible blackmail upon him by deep state actors who most certainly know his compromise, likely influenced his approach to this whistleblower complaint.   That would explain why the Dept. of Justice Office of Legal Counsel so strongly rebuked Atkinson’s interpretation of his responsibility with the complaint.

In the Justice Department’s OLC opinion, they point out that Atkinson’s internal justification for accepting the whistleblower complaint was poor legal judgement.  [See Here]  I would say Atkinson’s decision is directly related to his own risk exposure:

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Michael Atkinson was moved from DOJ-NSD to become the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) in 2018.  What we end up with is a brutally obvious, convoluted, network of corrupt officials; each carrying an independent reason to cover their institutional asses… each individual interest forms a collective fraudulent scheme inside the machinery of the FBI apparatus.

The motive behind the DOJ/FBI effort to cover for Senate Intelligence Committee Security Director James Wolfe’s unlawful classified information leaks, is connected to this network and expands into the SSCI Chairman (Richard Burr) and Vice-Chair Mark Warner.

Security Director Wolfe was working on instructions from inside the committee itself; his leak of the FISA application to journalist Ali Watkins was in alignment with the intents/motives of the SSCI in March 2017.   Dirty politicians corrupting staff.

The DOJ and FBI didn’t charge James Wolfe with the leaking of classified information because it would have exposed corruption within the SSCI.  Wolfe was prepared to call the senators in his defense…. this could not be allowed.  The SSCI has oversight over the intelligence community to include the FBI, DOJ, DOJ-NSD, CIA, ODNI etc.

How does all of this corruption come together?….  More importantly how does this level of institutional corruption create the inability of FBI whistle-blowers to come forward?

♦ The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is the approver for any nominations for any executive appointed position involving the intelligence community.

If the senate intel committee wants to block the nomination, likely adverse to their interests, they can… simply, they don’t take it up. (See Trump’s attempt to appoint Representative John Ratcliffe as ODNI as an example.)

However, along with approving Christopher Wray and David Bowditch (recommendations from DAG Rod Rosenstein), the SSCI also approved former DOJ-NSD legal counsel Michael Atkinson to become Intelligence Community Inspector General.

Who would an honest intelligence whistle-blower have to go through?  Dirty ICIG Michael Atkinson.  The same dirty Michael Atkinson who was the top legal counsel to the head of the DOJ-NSD when the corrupt DOJ-NSD agency operations were ongoing.

See how the whistle-blower block works?

Aligned interests – The Senate Intel Committee used the placement of Atkinson to block any whistle-blower action that would be adverse to their interests.  Honest whistle-blowers ain’t stupid, they know what surrounds them.

You might remember recently how Burr and Warner would not support Rep. John Ratcliffe for Director of National intelligence under the auspices of Ratcliffe not having enough “experience” within intelligence operations. However, those same “experience” concerns were absent when they approved dirty ICIG nominee Michael Atkinson.

Senator Mark Warner […] You’re also aware that this Committee is leading the review into the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. During this hearing I want to hear assurances from both of you that you will fully cooperate with this review and provide this Committee with all the information requested in a timely fashion.

Mr. Atkinson, as the Inspector General of the Intel Community your job is especially critical because of the nature of the material that they handle every day, whistleblowers within the IC generally can’t go public to expose misbehavior and misuse of official resources. We the Congress and the American people will depend upon you as an independent agent of accountability for the Office of the DNI and, for that matter, for the whole intel community.

While you don’t have previous experience as an inspector general, I look forward to hearing your plans for the righting
of the ship at the IC’s IG when it comes to both whistleblower protections and investigations.

I’m very concerned by the significant number of open cases that I believe have lingered too long. If confirmed, I will ask you to make the whistleblower program a priority. This is an area that cuts across party lines and committee jurisdictions. (continue transcript)

The intelligence apparatus is a key part of the rogue administrative state that operates in direct alignment with a rogue state department and politicians who use their influence to gain material wealth from sales/control of policy.

It is a synergy of DC interests.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley appeared on ‘Fox & Friends’ this morning to outline a proposal for Senate action to throw out the impeachment case if Democrats don’t prosecute it.

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Congressman John Ratcliffe appears on Sunday Morning Futures to discuss several issues in DC.   On the impeachment front Ratcliffe may, if called-upon, represent the interests of President Trump during a Senate trial on the fraudulent impeachment articles.

On the ‘Spygate’ issues, Ratcliffe again draws attention to the conflicting testimony between former CIA Director John Brennand and former FBI Director James Comey. One of them lied.

Representative Doug Collins appears on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the status of the ‘stalled’ impeachment articles and the lack of congressional curiosity toward the DOJ and FBI outcome in the Horowitz investigation.

Fox News host Dan Bongino interviews Rudy Giuliani for his podcast.  The topics include increased crime in New York City; Iran, the ‘Spygate” surveillance scandal; the IG report on FISA abuses against the Trump campaign, and Joe Biden’s history of corruption.

The interview starts around 04:00 minutes into the video.

Yesterday CTH noted 2020 as the year when a variety of prior democrat operations will converge with a single goal in mind. We will see several years effort merging.  Today, more evidence toward that objective is visible.

The House Judiciary Committeee (HJC) argued in the DC court of appeals to obtain the Mueller grand jury information [6(e) material], and compel testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn.  Also today, more leaks from the inside the administration.

The House has a group of dozens of various DOJ and former Obama officials working on their behalf. That House network also has several currently employed DOJ, FBI, State Department and Intelligence Community officials feeding them information on current real-time events. The HJC are currently arguing the Mueller material and the McGahn testimony are needed for the impeachment trial of President Trump.

First, if the HJC team wins the argument to the three member DC Appellate Court, the DOJ will likely file for a full ‘en banc’ review by the entire panel. If the HJC wins the ‘en banc’ argument the DOJ will likely appeal for an administrative stay by the Supreme Court.

However, if the HJC team loses, they will most likely not file an appeal and will quickly release the impeachment articles to the Senate. The impeachment articles (Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress) are currently withheld in an effort to bolster the DC appeals court argument; lose the legal argument and the Dems just start leaking anyway.

Second, the primary goal is to gain the Mueller material. By design the impeachment process was/is a means toward that end. Impeachment is not the end; impeachment is the means to an end. Impeachment is the legal standing to exploit the Mueller Dossiermaterial.

It is the year-long contention of CTH that Team Nadler (HJC) already has the Mueller material. The Mueller Dossier is opposition research. The Mueller team was/is designed, and specifically constructed, to deliver that opposition research to the resistance group now represented inside the House by the aforementioned dozens of contracted lawyers.

It is our further contention to the Mueller material was collected with the intention to deliver this material to the House crews: Team Schiff (HPSCI) and Team Nadler (HJC).

Meaning, and it is important that everyone understand this:

…the Mueller investigation used their massively expanded scope authority (2017 and 2018), and purposefully went into a bunch of irrelevant sideline issues (unrelated to Trump-Russia) because they were using their legal authority to assemble massive files of political research material – to leave for discovery and/or leak-use in 2020.

The outcome of the Mueller investigation is irrelevant.

What Mueller wrote in his report is irrelevant.

The investigation itself was purposed to dig, legally, into every aspect of Donald Trump, his family, his friends, his finances, his companies, his legal holdings, his lawyers, his accountants, his history… all of it… and they did so under both Title-1 and Title-3 surveillance authority because the Mueller probe was a counterintelligence operation.

President Trump: travel records, phone records, electronic files, electronic communications, emails, electronic records, family files, medical records, bank records, tax records,… THE WORKS …all with unlimited surveillance authority as granted by former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the useful status of an unlimited counterintelligence operation.  Think about the scale of the material Weissmann and Mueller gained access to.

Think about the scale of these Trump files we now call the Mueller Dossier.

Mueller was the insurance policy.  What Weissmann and Mueller assembled was the insurance policy files.  They legally spied on President Trump for more than two years; and they legally dug into his background for the same amount of time.  This is the massive Mueller edition of the “Trump Dossier”.

Remember, dozens of Democrat operatives behind Nadler have much of that Mueller collected material already; or they have been told about the content.

The HJC lawsuit is an attempt to gain legal authority to exploit it. However, if they don’t get the legal authority, meaning they lose the lawsuits, they will use it anyway – through a system of leaks to their resistance allies in the media.

Which brings us to the new phase….

♦ Understanding this ongoing process is the key to understanding a new “Leak Clearing House” created with this intent in mind. The clearing house is JustSecurity.Org

The “Just Security” group is similar to the “Lawfare” group. Their purpose is to receive and then distribute leaked material. They will be leaking material from Mueller, via the House teams, as well as material from current insider operations from the resistance.

As rcogburn discovered:

Justsecurity.org is part of the Reiss Center at NYU Law. Article on them in, of all places, the World Socialist Web Site. Most of it is easily verifiable (e.g. Andrew Weissman is a distinguished fellow and the place is run by ex-Obama people) and seems truthful, judge for yourself.

Highlights here. Article is in two parts, linked:

“A think tank for the national security establishment and the Democratic Party.”

“the Center’s research is intimately integrated with the Democratic Party wing of the State Department and intelligence agencies. Its leading bodies are staffed with top national security and foreign policy officials from the Obama administration. Out of the 18 people on its list of Fellows and Affiliates, 14 are ex-Obama administration officials. Two members of its Board of Advisors and two of its Leadership Team are also former Obama administration officials.”

“In 2018, following Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency, the center integrated the publication JustSecurity.org, which is playing a central role as a resource for pro-Democratic party media in the impeachment crisis. ”

“Through both its fellows and its publication, JustSecurity.org, the Reiss Center is closely integrated into the anti-Russia campaign of the national security apparatus and the Democratic Party, and their efforts to impeach Trump on a pro-war and anti-democratic basis. There is a direct connection to the anti-Russia campaign and impeachment efforts by the Democratic Party and intelligence agencies through Andrew Weissman, who is a distinguished senior fellow at the Reiss Center.

“Rachel Goldbrenner, the center’s Executive Director and a professor of law at NYU, served as a senior advisor to Samantha Power…has connections to Eric Ciaramella.”

“David S. Cohen, an advisor to the Center, was working in the Treasury Department in the Obama administration and was the deputy director of the CIA between 2015-2017. … Cohen played a critical role in whipping up anti-Russian hysteria with unsubstantiated claims of interference in the 2016 election”

“Lisa O. Monaco… distinguished senior fellow…was the Homeland Security Advisor of Obama from 2013 to 2017. Jon Finer is another fellow who is the ex-Chief of State at US State Department, where he served as the senior advisor to John Kerry. He was also the US lead negotiator at the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal and the 2016 Paris Climate Accord.

The co-editor of JustSecurity.org is Ryan Goodman…he served as special counsel to the general counsel of the Department of Defense in 2015-2016”

“The Reiss Center’s public involvement proceeds through its JustSecurity.org publication. First established in 2013, the website was based at the Law School’s center for Human Rights and Global Justice, before being relocated to the Reiss Center in September 2018, shortly after the latter’s renaming. It is funded by NYU’s School of Law as well as the Atlantic Philanthropies and Open Society Foundations—both founded and chaired by George Soros.”

Part 1
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/10/nyu1-d10.html
Part 2
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/11/nyu2-d11.html

Justsecurity.org and the Reiss Center are hosting a panel on Jan 16, “Reforming the FISA Process: Proposals for the Future.”

Featured speakers: Andrew McCabe and Andrew Weissman. You can’t make this stuff up.

https://www.lawandsecurity.org/calendar/reforming-the-fisa-process/

The Just Security group will leak material which will then be picked up by specific Democrat politicians and used as evidence to attack and undermine President Trump.

That effort began yesterday:

[…] Last month, a court ordered the government to release almost 300 pages of emails to the Center for Public Integrity in response to a FOIA lawsuit. It released a first batch on Dec. 12, and then a second installment on Dec. 20, including Duffey’s email, but that document, along with several others, were partially or completely blacked out.

Since then, Just Security has viewed unredacted copies of these emails, which begin in June and end in early October. Together, they tell the behind-the-scenes story of the defense and budget officials who had to carry out the president’s unexplained hold on military aid to Ukraine. (read more)

Democrat operatives inside government, and inside the Trump administration, leak the material to Just Security. Those leaks are then used by Democrat Politicians:

And that effort continues today:

None of this is organic. All of this has been pre-planned.  Just like the planning by Team Mueller when they were investigating President Trump with the intent to deliver the material to their political allies.

What Mueller assembled over two years was a “Trump Dossier” similar to the Steele Dossier.

The political opposition research against President Trump will either come out legally via HJC, or it will come out illegally via leaks.  However, it will come out. The DC Appeals Court and/or the Supreme Court decisions will determine which path.

Most of the Mueller team material is irrelevant for the purpose of Trump-Russia. There is no there ‘there’, and there never was. The Mueller investigation in 2017/2018 was never really designed to find evidence of Trump-Russia… it was designed to find dirt on Trump and his family.  That dirt, under the guise of investigative evidence, was then assembled into a political dossier.

Anyone who could deliver rumor, innuendo, gossip or manufactured evidence toward that end, similar to the Steele Dossier was used and included in the Mueller material.

Forget about arguing the Mueller probe found nothing on Trump-Russia therefore… (fill in blank). That argument is moot. The purpose of the Mueller effort was dirt on Trump; it didn’t (and doesn’t) matter what that dirt is. Essentially: find dirt, put in file.

Resistance 2020 is now the use of that material.

♦ The other aspect that will be used in this 2020 effort will be for current insiders to direct those outside government exactly what the specifics are for targeted FOIA requests. All effective FOIA is a matter of knowing where to look. The inside groups will be telling the outside teams the agencies, people, dates, times and subjects of specific material that will be helpful in discovering the information. [Example Here]

(Buzzfeed) […] The hundreds of pages of documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, were the subject of a protracted legal dispute between the Justice Department and the House Judiciary Committee, which sought them over the summer as part of its impeachment inquiry. The committee had requested access to an unredacted copy of the Mueller report, grand jury testimony from the investigation, and the FBI’s summaries of 33 interviews. The Justice Department resisted, claiming the impeachment inquiry does not entitle the panel to see those records. A federal judge disagreed, ruling in October that “DOJ is wrong” and that the White House and the Justice Department were “openly stonewalling” the committee. (link)

This is the background context for everything that will be taking place.

CTH cannot duplicate this explanation every time the activity is discovered and highlighted, therefore if you need to share it to someone coming in mid-story, bookmark it now.

This is the 2020 baseline.

Think about all of the media panel discussions on gun ownership you have watched; segments where second amendment advocates were ridiculed by media pundits for daring to bring up the possibility of the U.S. government using arms against U.S. citizens who hold opposing political views…  There are hundreds of recent reference points.

Now consider, earlier today U.S. House of Representatives Legal Counsel, Douglas Letter, argued in court it would be a possible remedy -for a conflict between branches of government- for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to order an armed “gun battle” between the House and the United States Department of Justice.   Yes, this actually happened.

At the same time as national Democrat political candidates are arguing to remove the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners, the highest ranking Democrat in the United States; a person only two succession-steps away from the presidency; is arguing in DC federal court the House could begin an armed conflict against the Dept. of Justice.

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Hat Tip Michael Sheridan for the segment – Full Hearing Audio is HERE Via CSPAN

BACKGROUND – Federal appeals court judges aggressively grilled lawyers for the Justice Department and the House of Representatives Friday in a pair of intertwined cases that could have major implications for Donald Trump’s presidency and the Democrats’ ongoing efforts to remove him from office.

During back-to-back hearings spanning about three hours, the judges drilled in on the House Judiciary Committee’s dual quests to learn special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury secrets and to secure testimony from Don McGahn, Trump’s former top White House lawyer. The two hearings were overseen by two partially overlapping, three-judge panels. (read more)