Former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard “Ric” Grenell explained last night why DC hates President Donald Trump and the stakes in the 2020 election.  WATCH: 

Of all the *tells* that have surfaced in the past four years, this is the biggest.  This is the one that reveals just how corrupt and duplicitous the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence really is.   Do not pass over this information without pausing and evaluating just how explosive this refusal is amid the largest, most corrupt scheme in political history.

The republican led Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI) is refusing to provide documents to republican senators from their Russia investigation.  Citing archaic justification within senate parliamentary rules current Chairman Marco Rubio (R) and Vice-Chairman Mark Warner are refusing to allow Senator Johnson and Senator Grassley to review the evidence the SSCI assembled to create their report on Russian election interference.

The reason and motives for the denial are simple, yet the majority of Americans have no idea…. The SSCI was the legislative entity, both republicans and democrats, who participated in the unlawful effort to remove President Trump from office.  The risk of exposure is exactly why Mitch McConnell put Senator Marco Rubio on the committee as chairman to replace Richard Burr.  The Senate was participating in the soft-coup.

WASHINGTON DC –  The Republican and Democratic leaders on the Senate Intelligence Committee rejected a broad request from two Republican Senate leaders seeking access to the panel’s records to assist in their investigation into the Trump-Russia investigators.

Acting Chairman Marco Rubio of Florida and Vice Chairman Mark Warner of Virginia rejected a late August letter from Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who said that they “respect the authority” of the Senate Intelligence Committee to protect its interests, adding that “ultimately, we have the right as United States Senators” to access the records.

“We note that your request of the Committee is made pursuant to Senate Rule 26, but fails to account for the unique authorities and obligations invested in this Committee through Senate Resolution 400 and respected over decades of Senate and Committee practice,” Rubio and Warner responded. “Accordingly, we must reject the absolutist interpretation of Rule 26 that you propose. If this Committee elects to share materials that it has collected and generated in the course of its investigation into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, it will do so pursuant to these long-standing Committee rules, and specifically, the joint agreement of the Chairman and the Vice Chairman.”

Rubio and Warner added: “Independent of whether that agreement is forthcoming, our position on this matter obviously does not preclude you from pursuing your own investigation, using your own authorities, as you see fit, within the confines of your committees’ jurisdictions.”  (read more)

I cannot overemphasize the importance of this sunlight avoidance enough.

Back on March 17, 2017, the SSCI secretly received the FISA application used on Carter Page from FBI supervisory special agent Brian Dugan.   The ‘review and return’ application was delivered to Senate Security Director James Wolfe, who then placed it in the senate scif to be reviewed by Vice-Chairman Mark Warner (and possibly Chairman Richard Burr).  It appears no other senators were informed of this production.

James Wolfe then leaked the FISA application to reporter Ali Watkins.  All indications are that Wolfe leaked the application to Watkins as directed by Warner, possibly with Burr’s full knowledge.

FBI Agent Brian Dugan then completed a nine-month leak investigation resulting in James Wolfe admitting to the leak.  The leak was Dugan’s FBI equity.  Due to the severity of the leak; and specifically because the leak encompassed the FISA application; in/around mid-January 2018 the special counsel in Main Justice was notified of Dugan’s findings and the investigative file was shared with the Weissmann team.

The Weissman team then took apart the investigative file and began running cover for the corrupt background story that included the participation by Senator Mark Warner.  Part of that file surfaced when the text messages between Warner and Chris Steele’s lawyer Adam Waldman were made public on Feb 9, 2018.

In a pre-planned operation, as soon as the explosive Warner/Waldman texts were released Senator Marco Rubio rushed to the microphones to fraudulently state that Warner had informed the committee during his early spring (2017) contacts with Waldman and Chris Steele.  This claim by Rubio was a lie.  Rubio was running cover for Warner as part of his own affiliation with the origin of the Fusion-GPS opposition research and the subsequent transfer of information to the Clinton campaign and ultimately through Chris Steele to the corrupt FBI investigative unit.  [Later to the Weissmann/Mueller crew]

Rubio’s motive to downplay the ramifications of the Warner effort, and the subsequent Wolfe leak, directly ties to his own involvement with the Fusion-GPS effort.   Remember, at the time of this obfuscation (late ’17 and early ’18) no-one yet knew the Fusion-GPS fraudulent story (which became the Steele dossier) was originally funded by the Super-PAC funding the Rubio campaign.

Go look at when the Weissmann/Mueller special counsel deleted their iPhone records and history.  The scrubbing took place mid-January 2018 as soon as they realized the previously unknown leak investigation by Washington Field Office FBI agent Brian Dugan had bumped into the special counsel operation that was coordinating with the SSCI.

The special counsel warned Warner; took action to remove specific evidence assembled by Dugan (which included the Warner/Waldman text messages); created a fictitious cover story for the SSCI to use; extracted the Dugan version of the FISA application he used to catch Wolfe (which they later released under the guise of FOIA); then sent a deconstructed (now useless) investigative file back to DC USAO Jessie Liu who had nothing left except to present a DC grand jury with James Wolfe lying to investigators.

That corrupt, unlawful and coordinated cover-up effort lies at the heart of why the SSCI will not share any information with GOP senators today.

Senators Johnson and Grassley were asking for the FISA application in 2018, not knowing the original and first renewal were previously provided to the SSCI on March 17, 2017.

When congress (House Intel, House Judiciary, Senate Judiciary and Senate Homeland Security) were writing to FISA Court presiding judge Rosemary Collyer seeking a copy of the FISA application from the court they had no idea one early copy was already provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee.  Chairman Burr and Vice-Chair Warner kept their review and use secret; but the information about their reception came out because James Wolfe leaked it and FBI agent Brian Dugan was awaiting that leak.

FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer never told any of the chairmen about the March 2017 copy of the application that was provided to Brian Dugan to deliver to the SSCI.

Throughout the attempt to remove President Trump from office, which included the impeachment effort, the SSCI was participating and assisting; now they are in cover-up mode.  That’s the reason why Mitch McConnell put Marco Rubio in charge of that committee.

There’s a reason why senior staff from Senator Ron Johnson’s committee and senior staff from Chuck Grassley’s committee are asking for SSCI documents.  It might not come out before the election, but it will come out…

BACKSTORY:  (Read Here – and All Citations)

The sequence is critical:

1.  Adam Waldman text messages. (release date Feb 9, 2018)

https://www.scribd.com/document/371101285/TEXTS-Mark-Warner-texted-with-Russian-oligarch-lobbyist-in-effort-to-contact-Christopher-Steele#

2. Justice Dept. Letter to journalist Ali Watkins (release date Feb 13, 2018)

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4498451-Justice-Department-Records-Seizure.html

3.  James Wolfe indictment (release date June 8, 2018)

https://www.scribd.com/document/381310366/James-Wolfe-Indictment-Senate-Intelligence-Committee-Leaker#

4.  FISC / Senate Judiciary Letter (public release April, 2020 – event date July 12, 2018) The letter from DOJ-NSD (Mueller Special Proseuctors) to the FISC is important.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/download/2018-doj-letter-to-fisc&download=1

5.  Carter Page FISA application (release date July 21, 2018)  Only need the first application section. 83 pages of original application.

https://www.scribd.com/document/384380664/2016-FISA-Application-on-Carter-Page#

6.  Government Sentencing Wolfe Case memo and recommendation for upward departure and/or variance. Filed December 11, 2018

https://www.scribd.com/document/395499292/James-Wolfe-DOJ-Sentencing-Memo-December-11

7.  Govt. Reply to Defendant (Wolfe) sentencing memo (date Dec 14, 2018)  Govt. Exhibit #13 (two page attestation is critical).

https://www.scribd.com/document/395775597/Wolfe-Case-DOJ-Response-to-Defense-Sentencing-Memo

Misc:

July 27, 2018,  – Wall Street Journal  – Wolfe lawyers threaten SSCI subpoenas.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-intelligence-committee-aides-lawyers-want-testimony-from-senators-1532692801?mod=e2tw

Dec 11, 2018 – Politico – Senators seek Leniency:

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/11/senate-intelligence-committee-leaking-james-wolfe-1059162

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I have a standing rule never to write about current events in a state of anger; forgive me for violating my own standard… this is infuriating (albeit not unexpected).  The two-tiered judicial process to target a ‘transparently innocent’ man continues.  [Links Below]

As anticipated, on the last day prior to DC Circuit Judge Griffith departure, the DC en banc panel has rejected the Flynn writ of mandamus and now sends the case back to Judge Emmet Sullivan for final disposition.  One way of looking at this is the DC circuit attempting to save face for Judge Sullivan by granting him the ability to do the right thing.

Another way of looking at this is a judicial stall tactic allowing the case to drag on even further until after the election.  [60-page ruling pdf here – also available here]

As expected the majority of the panel hung their argument on the fact that Judge Sullivan had not yet ruled prior to the request for the writ of mandamus; and as an outcome Sullivan should be allowed to reach final disposition.  As noted: “we expect the District Court to proceed with appropriate dispatch“…

The unopposed motion to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn is now back in the court of presiding Judge Emmet Sullivan.

Flynn’s defense counsel Sidney Powell ‘could’ appeal the full panel ruling to Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts for an emergency stay (not likely) reinforcing the original ruling (mandamus enforcement); or Powell could wait and see whether Judge Sullivan returns to judicial norms and allows the dismissal of the case prior to seeking any higher intervention (more likely).  The latter approach just extends the timeline further.

As CTH noted last week the timing of this was predictable with Judge Griffith exiting the court.  Additionally: “the DC appeals court likely doesn’t want this decision being reviewed any further (SCOTUS). It would make sense for the DC panel to seek a face-saving exit for Sullivan that doesn’t put Flynn’s defense in a position to appeal to Supreme Court Justice Roberts for intervention.”  This appears to be the path the DC Circuit has taken.

Another possible option, albeit rather stark -highly unlikely- and loaded with implications, would be for the DOJ to simply refuse further case engagement completely.

CTH noted several months ago if the DOJ just refused further participation in the case, it would put Judge Sullivan in a very odd position of holding hearings where no prosecution shows up.  However, this case is so far outside the normal boundaries of judicial proceedings anything is possible.

Here’s the embed pdf of the ruling.  Judge Griffith (extreme anti-Flynn activist) representing the opinion of the court.  Judges Rao and Henderson (who originally agreed to the writ) writing the dissent.

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No two cases highlight the two-tiered system of justice like the comparative behind National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and SSCI Security Director James Wolfe.

In the Wolfe case corrupt elements of the judicial system allowed a transparently guilty man to escape accountability because it would have exposed massive multi-branch government corruption on an institutional scale that is almost unfathomable.  Wolfe leaked top-secret classified documents at the request of members within the Senate Intelligence Committee.  The DOJ then hides the wrong-doing.

In the Flynn case a transparently innocent man is framed by corrupt elements within the same institution, the FBI, by defining what the word “sanctions” means.  A corrupt DOJ then transfers the corrupt intent into the judicial branch using a clear political agenda.

Anger…

FUBAR.

If Vladimir Putin was willing to help President Barack Obama seal the misbegotten Iranian nuclear deal, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),was not. His resistance made him a target, especially once he started advising candidate Donald Trump. As to who launched the disinformation campaign against Flynn, the jury is still out. Best evidence, however, suggests forces within the CIA working in tandem with its friends in the media.

The co-conspirators started publicly setting the trap with a February 2016 Reuters article teasingly titled, “Trump being advised by ex-U.S. Lieutenant General who favors closer Russia ties.” https://reut.rs/2EwzoEL This was a bold gambit. As recently as July 2015 Obama was telling Tom Friedman of the New York Times, “We would have not achieved this [Iran nuclear] agreement had it not been for Russia’s willingness to stick with us and the other P5-Plus members in insisting on a strong deal.” https://nyti.ms/3jaDTnz 

Obama praised Putin a year after Putin annexed the Crimea. That invasion was so much water under the bridge for Obama but apparently not for Flynn. Just months later, it was considered newsworthy that Flynn would advise Trump to “work more closely with Russia to resolve global security issues.”

“Flynn raised eyebrows among some U.S. foreign policy veterans,” wrote Steve Holland and Mark Hosenball of Reuters, “when he was pictured sitting at the head table with Putin at a banquet in Moscow late last year celebrating Russia Today, an international broadcasting network funded by the Russian government.” The reporters’ “three sources,” all said to be “former foreign policy officials,” failed to mention that Flynn had been briefed by the DIA before the dinner and debriefed afterwards.

What made me suspicious about this article was the Mark Hosenball byline. Hosenball appears to have been carrying water for the intelligence community (IC) for at least twenty years, maybe twice that long. To say the least, he has a curious background.

Hosenball moved to England when he was 17 to attend school. After spending a year in England and three in Ireland, he moved back to England to become a reporter. This information comes from a 1977 British appeals court document explaining why the United Kingdom chose to deport the 25-year-old Hosenball “in the interests of national security.”

“The Secretary of State believes that Mr. Hosenball is a danger to this country. So much so that his presence here is unwelcome and he can no longer be permitted to stay,” reads the document. Reportedly, Hosenball was one of a group of people who were “trying to obtain information of a very sensitive character about our security arrangements.” The document does not identify on whose behalf Hosenball was allegedly spying, but it affirms the government’s decision to deport him nonetheless.

The American intelligence community did not appear troubled by Hosenball’s actions. As the New York Times reported at the time, “A United States Embassy spokesman said that he knew of no United States pressure on Britain to discipline Mr. Hosenball.” https://nyti.ms/3jeLgdO Nor did the deportation seem to hurt Hosenball’s career. By 1993, he was working for Newsweek. By 1997, he was using Newsweek to spread CIA disinformation.

In 2003, I met Hosenball at the Newsweek office. At the time, I was promoting First Strike, a book I co-authored with James Sanders on TWA Flight 800, the 747 that mysteriously exploded off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996.

In that pivotal election year, surely with a nod from the Clinton White House, the CIA quietly masterminded the disinformation campaign that followed TWA 800’s destruction. After sixteen months of behind-the-scenes chicanery, the CIA assured America that what the eyewitnesses actually saw was not a missile streaking toward the 747, but the fuselage of the burning, climbing 747 rocketing upwards some three-thousand-plus feet after its fuel tank had blown up spontaneously. As would happen again in 2016, the FBI publicly fronted for the CIA. In a presidential election year, the media, of course, played along.

At the time, no reporter endorsed the CIA’s fraudulent scenario more enthusiastically than did Hosenball. His Newsweek article on the subject began with a dig at “conspiracy theories” and went nowhere positive from there. https://bit.ly/3lk50OM CIA analysts had convinced Hosenball that “infrared images captured by spy satellites” proved its theory of the plane’s demise. This revelation came as news to the FBI. Its comprehensive summary issued just a week before Hosenball’s November 1997 article did not once mention the word “satellite.”

The NTSB’s final report made only vague mention of “infrared sensor information from a U.S. satellite” and that in reference to the CIA’s video recreation. The New York Times avoided the subject altogether. Yet here was Hosenball saying that the CIA had “spy satellites designed to monitor unfriendly foreign countries pointed at the Eastern Seaboard.”

This was bunk. If the satellites showed what Hosenball claimed, federal officials would not have needed the CIA’s trumped up zoom climb animation. Surely, too, the FBI and NTSB would have used the data to buttress their shaky, inconclusive summaries. In a letter to then congressman John Kasich two months after the press conference, the CIA quietly buried the subject: “No satellite imagery of the disaster exists.” This translates, “No satellite imagery exists that would help us make our case.”

Hosenball uncritically embraced the CIA video. Under his byline, Newsweek ran a fully affirmative, nine-frame, full-color recreation captioned with the unlikely boast, “CIA Photos.” For Hosenball, the video provided a necessary rebuttal to “speculation about a mystery missile.” As he told the story, “some” of the “244” FBI witnesses claimed to have seen a streak of light arcing across the sky. In reality, 258 of the 736 official FBI witnesses claimed to have seen a missile or missiles attacking the plane, several of whom were pilots.

Had Hosenball been sporting a CIA nametag he could not have done more to legitimize the agency’s crude rewrite of history. As it happens, his Newsweek writing partner at the time was Michael Isikoff. I met with both of them. Neither had any interest in seeing the information Sanders and I had gathered.

Oh, yes, that was the same Michael Isikoff who in September 2016 first revealed that intelligence officials were investigating Trump adviser Carter Page’s “private communications with senior Russian officials.” Christopher Steele was Isikoff’s direct source. A few weeks after the article’s publication in Yahoo News, the DOJ and the FBI packaged the Isikoff article along with the Steele dossier in their application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), specifically to monitor Carter Page.

Renegade Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi was the only journalist on his side of the barricades to say what should have been obvious to everyone in the media: “Being on any team is a bad look for the press, but the press being on team FBI/CIA is an atrocity, Trump or no Trump.”

To check out Jack Cashill’s new book, Unmasking Obama, or his previous book, TWA 800: The Crash, The Cover-up, The Conspiracy, please see cashill.com.

CTH friend, researcher and producer John Spiropoulos helps connect the dots within the operation to cover-up corrupt activity by James Comey, Andrew McCabe, James Baker, Christopher Wray, Dana Boente and the entire special counsel group.

In this video John walks us through the internal evidence showing how the FBI intentionally hid the statements by Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source Igor Danchenko.  The result…. a 34 month cover-up operation.

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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham released the declassified documents on July 17th. [Thank You John Ratcliffe] The documents relate to how the intelligence apparatus conducted surveillance abuses against the Trump campaign in 2016; and ultimately the Trump administration after the inauguration.

The first document [Direct pdf here] is the Washington Field Office (WFO) FBI briefing summary of a three day interview with Chris Steele’s primary sub-source. The document is highly redacted, but we already know from the IG release what the total content of the briefing revealed. The first interview was conducted on January 12, 2017, during the transition period between administrations. The classification term “SIA” stands for Source Identifying Attribute.

Per Senator Lindsey Graham:

♦ This document not only demonstrates how unsubstantiated and unreliable the Steele dossier was, it shows that the FBI was on notice of the dossier’s credibility problems and sought two more FISA application renewals after gaining this awareness.

♦ The document reveals that the primary “source” of Steele’s election reporting was not some well-connected current or former Russian official, but a non-Russian based contract employee of Christopher Steele’s firm. Moreover, it demonstrates that the information that Steele’s primary source provided him was second and third-hand information and rumor at best.

♦ Critically, the document shows that Steele’s “Primary Sub-source” disagreed with and was surprised by how information he gave Steele was then conveyed by Steele in the Steele dossier. For instance, the “Primary Sub-source”: did not recall or did not know where some of the information attributed to him or his sources came from; was never told about or never mentioned to Steele certain information attributed to him or his sources; he said that Steele re-characterized some of the information to make it more substantiated and less attenuated than it really was; that he would have described his sources differently; and, that Steele implied direct access to information where the access to information was indirect.

In total, this document demonstrates that information from the Steele dossier, which “played a central and essential role” in the FISA warrants on Carter Page, should never have been presented to the FISA court. (Senate Link)

Here’s the FBI Briefing Summary: [Direct pdf Link]

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The inspector general already reviewed this briefing material and explained the content in the IG report on FISA Abuse in December 2019. Here’s the nub of that full review:

The aspect of the primary sub-source deconstructing and undermining the underlying material within the Steele Dossier is critical because ultimately the dossier underpinned the FISA application.

When you recognize the FISA application itself was based on a fraudulent premise; and you recognize the intentional ignoring of the underlying evidence; then the motive behind the FISA becomes clear. The FISA against Carter Page was used as a justification for surveillance of Donald Trump that had been ongoing by Obama intelligence officials.

This context becomes stunningly more important when you look at how the FISA was used by the Mueller investigation to continue its weaponization throughout 2017 and even into 2018. Remember, in July of 2018 long after the source material was debunked, the special counsel office was still telling the FISA court the predication for the FISA application and renewals was valid.

Drive this point home.

This is a key to understanding the scope of how weaponized the Mueller team was.

In July of 2018 the special counsel resistance group was lying to the FISA court in order to protect the cornerstone document that permitted them to weaponize the intelligence apparatus.

This letter was written July 12, 2018. It is NOT accidental that only a week later, July 21st, the special counsel released the FISA application under the guise of FOIA fulfillment.

Aside from the date the important part of the first page is the motive for sending it. The Mueller team running 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 resistance unit running the DOJ is defending the Carter Page FISA application as still valid.

On page #8 [Source Document Here] when discussing Christopher Steele’s sub-source, the special counsel group 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.

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.

♦ The FISA was also released in July 2018 in order to retain the false premise behind it. The copy that was released by the special counsel, through Rod Rosenstein, contained redacted dates because the special counsel needed to hide the fact the FBI (Washington Field Office) had actually used the FISA to catch a leaker of classified intelligence, James Wolfe.

Again, Wolfe’s story is the fulcrum…. tell that story and the House of Cards collapses like the Potemkin village it is. {GO DEEP}

The resistance lawyers in the Mueller team released the same initial FISA application (and first renewal) used to catch Wolfe; they had to release that specific March 17, 2017, copy. However, they had to redact the dates on the document they released because the dates were changed by SSA Brian Dugan to catch Wolfe.

The March 17, 2017, copy of the FISA, an FBI investigative equity, went into Main Justice with the leak trap visible. When the special counsel released the FISA application to Rosenstein for public FOIA fulfillment they had to redact the dates or people would ask questions about why this specific version had different dates than the original.

The March 17, 2017, copy of the FISA application is the only one to date that has been in the public sphere; including reviewed by OIG Michael Horowitz. That’s why when Horowitz originally released his FISA report, the OIG kept the dates redacted and only revealed them after the irrelevance of classification was pointed out.

The March 17th Wolfe copy of the first half of the full FISA application (original and first renewal), is the only copy that has ever been made public. If we were to ever see the modified and unredacted copy the FBI gave to Wolfe, the dates would not match with the actual dates of the application(s). The dates were used as part of the leak trace.

The Mueller team knew the explosive nature of the FBI investigation to catch the SSCI leaker. The Mueller team, with full control over Main Justice, was the group that buried FBI Supervisor Special Agent Brian Dugan’s explosive investigative findings.

Expose the conduct of this group and everything about the insurance policy falls into place: