Tag Archives: John S. McCain

Jan 1 2019

Perfect Year-End Metaphor: Journalists To Drop Ball During New Year Celebration….


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on December 31, 2018 by 

To cap off the most stunning year of journalistic ineptitude, the officials in charge of the New York City Time’s Square celebration have selected journalists to drop the ball.

Leading journalists will ring in the New Year Monday in New York City’s Times Square as the annual ball drop, watched globally by billions, recognizes journalism and free speech.

The group of reporters and editors will appear on stage just before midnight to push the button that officially begins the 60-second countdown to the lowering of the Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball and the New Year.  ~ Via Time

We shared a discussion thread several months ago about how the media are enmeshed within the story of the DOJ and FBI corruption. The media engagements with the parties swirling around the FBI, DOJ and Clinton-Steele Dossier are so pervasive they could not reasonably report on any aspect of the story without exposing their own duplicity.

As the year comes to a close, and more information surfaces about corrupt DOJ and FBI activity, it’s worth remembering the media’s complicit role.

Michael Isikoff highlighted that level of how enmeshed media is with the story in February when he admitted his reporting was being used by the DOJ and FBI to advance the political objectives of the intelligence community. Additionally, FBI investigator Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page were shown in their text messages to be leaking stories from the Clinton Investigation, the Trump investigation and the Mueller investigation to journalists at Politico, The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. –SEE HERE–

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was busted by the Inspector General leaking stories to the media and then lying about it to INSD and IG investigators. FBI Director James Comey admitted to leaking stories to the New York Times, and even hired his friend Andrew Richman (off-the-books), gave him access to FBI and NSA databases, and then leaked information to Richman along with another friend Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare blog.

Lest we forget, the IG report on how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation revealed that dozens of FBI officials were actually taking bribes from the media for information:

IG REPORT – We identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters. Attached to this report as Attachments E and F are two link charts that reflect the volume of communications that we identified between FBI employees and media representatives in April/May and October 2016. We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review.

[…] We do not believe the problem is with the FBI’s policy, which we found to be clear and unambiguous. Rather, we concluded that these leaks highlight the need to change what appears to be a cultural attitudeamong many in the organization. (link to pdf – page Xii of executive summary)

Madness.

This is an IG fact-based criticism of the institution of the FBI, not simply a few rogue officials within it.

But wait…. Perspective:

Later it was revealed that Andrew Weissman, Robert Mueller’s #1 special counsel prosecutor, was coordinating investigative efforts with the full support of four AP reporters who were giving Weissman tips. That’s information from journalists to use in his court filings and submitted search warrants. Make sure you grasp this: The AP journalists were feeding information to their ideological allies within the special counsel.

Nuts; simply, well, nuts.

And then there’s Devlin Barrett, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok:

(Source Link – pdf Page #5)

Additionally, Christopher Steele has stated in U.K. court records the person in charge of the Clinton Campaign’s opposition research firm, Glenn Simpson from Fusion GPS, arranged and coordinated for Mr. Steele to talk to several journalists (CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo News and Mother Jones) while Mr. Steele was also the primary source of information for the FBI investigators (including Strzok and Page):

(Source – page #8)

Make sure you read that full response from Christopher Steele above to see the scope of the media engagements he was conducting.

As more evidence surfaces the relationship between journalists, Fusion-GPS, Chris Steele and the media’s DOJ/FBI sources begins blending together. The FBI was using media reports, which were based on Fusion-GPS pitches, to bolster its investigative documents to the FISA court. It is an intelligence laundry operation:

According to the U.K records, Christopher Steele reports this September 2016 meeting with Isikoff was arranged by Glenn Simpson. According to Michael Isikoff on his February podcast, he met Christopher Steele at a Washington, D.C. hotel in Sept. 2016. They were joined by his “old friend” Glenn Simpson, the founder of opposition research firm Fusion GPS, who Isikoff now defines as a “private investigator.”

So Christopher Steele was meeting with journalists, the journalists were writing articles; the FBI was leaking to media and simultaneously citing those same articles as underlying evidence to support their counterintelligence investigations; and all of this was used to validate the investigative documents the FBI was receiving from Christopher Steele; who, along with the leaking FBI officials, was also the source of the media articles.

FUBAR! This is exponentially bonkers.

This is a circle of information, all coming from Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS, who was the opposition research firm being financed by Hillary Clinton, along with FBI officials who were using their own strategic leaks to validate their own investigation.

Think about the scale of the reporting, and reporting on reporting, of anonymous leaks, false leaks, lies from “people with knowledge of the matter”, “government officials involved in the matter”, “people familiar with the matter”, “government sources” etc. all going in one unified and semi-coordinated direction – against the aggregate Trump administration.

Now, it actually gets even more convoluted.

Christopher Steele has sworn under oath that he met with multiple journalists (at least eight organizations) in September, mid-October, and late-October 2016: “at Fusion’s instruction“. (pdf page #7)

Overlay upon that sworn admission with what Glenn Simpson (Fusion-GPS) told the House Intelligence Committee while also under oath about his involvement in sharing information derived from Christopher Steele:

(Testimony – pdf link, page #147)

…”without my knowledge and against my wishes”?

Huh?

FBI Director James Comey admits to leaking his ‘memos’ to the New York Times. FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was busted for leaking and lying about it. FBI #2 Counterintelligence Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Attorney Lisa Page are caught in their text messages leaking to Politico, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

…. AND the FBI is caught, in at least one FISA application, using Yahoo media reports provided by them AND their investigative source Christopher Steele to establish a basis for FISA “Title I” surveillance; the most intrusive and wide-open search and surveillance authority possible.

The Clinton Campaign is paying Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research against Donald Trump. In addition to Glenn Simpson pushing that opposition research into the media, Fusion GPS is also providing that opposition research –including information from contacts with media– directly to the FBI:

(pdf link – page #4)

… In addition to using the Fusion-GPS opposition research to underpin their counterintelligence investigation, the FBI then turn around and leak the same opposition research information to the media to create secondary support for their counterintelligence investigation.

Tell me again how the media can possibly write about this now?

The problem is not just corruption with the U.S. Justice System, the DOJ and the FBI; the problem is corruption within the media.

We’re talking about thousands of hours of media TV pundits, thousands more columns written, and almost every scintilla of it based on originating intelligence sources -from the larger intelligence system- that are now being exposed as duplicitous and conspiratorial in the scale of their malicious intent.

This larger story-line has traveled in one direction. The narrative has only traveled in one direction. Each thread converging on codependent trails for collective stories all going in one direction. One big engineered narrative endlessly pushed. Think about how far the collective media have traveled with this story over the past eighteen months?

Hell, twenty-something-year-old “journalists” were so committed to the resistance narrative they were even sleeping with their sources to get any little engineering angle possible.

Now, over a period of several months, it has become increasingly obvious the collective journey, using all that expended effort, was going in the wrong direction.

The media have fully invested themselves in eighteen months of narrative distribution in only one direction. Not a single MSM entity has questioned their travel as a result of false leaks or false sources in the totality of time they have covered the DOJ and FBI story.

Nothing within their collective need to will-an-outcome will change the media’s proximity to facts when the truthful story behind the DOJ and FBI corruption is finally exposed. The media are so far away from the place where this story ends, they have no inherent capability to even begin to travel in the opposite direction, toward the truth.

The only way they could align with the truth is to admit that virtually every scintilla of their reportage over the past 18 months was inherently false or manipulated by the “sources” distributing the material for their reporting.

There’s not a single media outlet capable of doing that.

Think about a New York Times, CNN, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, Yahoo News or Washington Post journalist now having to write an article deconstructing a foundation of two-years worth of lies they participated in creating.

Do we really think such a catastrophic level of corrupted journalism could reconstitute into genuine reporting of fact-based information?

EVER?

Impossible.

Jan 1 2019

Happy New Year & Government


Armstrong Economics Blog/Opinion

RePosted Jan 1, 2019 by Martin Armstrong

Categories: Opinion
Dec 31 2018

VICE – The Dick Cheney/Rumsfeld Conspiracy


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics

Re-Posted Dec 31, 2018 by Martin Armstrong

I went to go watch VICE – the story about how Dick Cheney took over the government with the aid of his wife – Lynne Cheney. Vice is a film that seeks to bring complicated information about the inner corruption in Washington and transform it into a digestible and entertaining format. There is no question that Christian Bale delivered a very impressive performance of how Dick Cheney really is – a secretive and distant man whose eyes were always filled with naked contempt. Amy Adams gave a fantastic performance as well and captured the real character of the former Second Lady Lynne Cheney who was very much like her husband – ambitious, and equally just as ruthless.

While the film captures the reality of what took place, it completely misses the real story behind the scenes as to even how Cheney came to be Vice President. The film shows that he was out of politics and had effectively retired for some time. It pretends that George Bush called him to be his Vice President and they negotiate that Cheney will have most of the power and Bush was too stupid to understand what he was agreeing to.

As always, for whatever reason, I seem to be always in the middle of just about every major event for the past 30+ years. I have stated before that I was asked to fly around the country and meet with Republicans who wanted to run for President. Prior to 1999, they were told I was there to advise them on the world economy and how it functioned. I have been to White House dinners and testified before Congress. I have taken calls from Washington in times of crisis. So meeting with people who wanted to run for President was nothing unusual for me. The real issue was not that I was giving them advice, but I was to assess whether they were capable of comprehending how the world functioned economically as well as politically. I was regarded as the unbiased adviser around the world. Europeans loved me because I was not one of them. They knew I would advise according to the cycles and markets. I cannot even bring staff with me to meetings in Brussels today for the problem because they are European and will have skin in the game. The same was true when I was asked to fly to Beijing during the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis.

The real story how Cheney got that power is significantly different from how the movie portrayed that aspect. It did a fantastic job in covering what he did once in power, with the exception of the meeting when 911 took place. The film portrays everyone in that room and its sources were correct in saying they were all confused but Cheney was more concerned about talking to his lawyer in that meeting. What I do know is that the first World Trade Center bombers were in MCC prison in Manhattan and they were given markers by the recreation officer Mr. Kumb. They drew on the walls of their cell the twin towers with planes flying into them one year BEFORE the incident. In creating Home Land Security, Congress merely stated that various agencies had information but did not share it with one another. Cheney had personal offices in all the agencies and I believe he knew well what took place on 911.

The movie correctly portrays Donald Rumsfeld as his co-conspirator. Just the day before 911 on September 10th, the Inspector General reported that $2.3 trillion was missing from the Defense Department accounting. Rumsfeld stated before Congress an investigation was necessary. The next day, the plane that struck the Pentagon hit the precise room where all those records were stored.

The World Trade Center 7 collapsed like a pancake when no plane ever touched it. That building has all the evidence of many things we will never know about. I have 20 years worth of recordings that would have been enough to put all the major New York trading banks in prison. Tapes that admitted paying bribes to Russian officials and all sorts of market manipulations. All of those tapes from my case vanished that same day. I personally believe that Cheney knew what was in the works. The mere fact that the terrorists drew the WTC on the wall of their cell 1 year before and the MCC took pictures and made a big deal out of it tells me that information had been passed on.

Now to the issue of Cheney becoming Vice President. I was asked to go to Texas to meet with George Bush, Jr during the early summer of 1999. I was told that “this is different. He’s really stupid.” Up to that point, the entire process I was involved in was to assess the qualification of those who wanted to run for President. Suddenly I was told this was different. When I asked why would you make someone stupid President, the response was “he has the name.”

I was then asked if I would accept the position of Chief Economic Adviser in the White House. I was told BECAUSE Bush was stupid, which they pay well in the movie, that they needed to surround him with smart people. I declined because to take such a position meant I would have to shut down my operation. I said thanks, but no thanks.

The kingmakers who I would go visit potential candidates for selected the people to put around Bush. Cheney had been Chief of Staff so he knew the game. He was inserted into the White House DELIBERATELY to be the default, President. The movie makes it sound that Bush Junior had to convince him to be his VP. That is absolutely NOT the way this selection process worked. They would NEVER have allowed the very person they said was “stupid” to select the people to run the country. They were selected to be the babysitters. I know this because I was one of the people asked and declined

Dec 30 2018

Sequencing the Resistance Process Through Likely Legislative Action – Tools: Cohen, Mueller, Horowitz…


There are three key congressional events likely in the first quarter of 2019. The sequencing of those events will be key to the “Resistance” political year.

The baseline is that Democrat leadership are cunning political strategists; and have likely already drawn out the big picture road-map with details to be filled in as they proceed.

  • The first event is the congressional use of Michael Cohen for a series of public committee hearings. [Oversight (Elijah Cummings) and possibly -though less likely- Judiciary (Nadler) and HPSCI (Schiff)] This likely has to happen before March 6th, 2019, when Cohen is scheduled to enter federal prison. It’s almost certain Cohen’s incarceration deferment contains the unwritten agreement to appear. [Democrat leadership almost certainly coordinated this plan with team Mueller and the SDNY some time ago.]
  • The second event is the release of the Team Mueller political report which, despite its inability to find criminal wrongdoing, will most certainly be written with highly charged innuendo as damaging to President Trump as possible. The release of this report will absolutely fuel several public committee hearings [Oversight/Reform (Cummings), HPSCI (Schiff) and Judiciary (Nadler)] without any doubt.
  • The third event is the release of the OIG Horowitz report on possible FISA abuse. Due to the nature of Mueller’s proprietary investigative blackout (Horowitz not allowed to  see investigative material or witnesses with Mueller probe ongoing), the Horowitz report will  likely come out *after* Mueller.

That’s the three key events the Democrats and media will be most likely to exploit for maximum political benefit in the first quarter of 2019.   The sequence between Mueller and Horowitz might reverse (though unlikely and I’ll explain later). Other investigative resistance paths will spur from these three primary Q1 events.

Again, there is very little doubt the approach has already been mapped out in post-election meetings between: Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, the Democrat committee heads, allies in the lawfare community, political allies inside the executive branch (IC, DOJ, FBI etc.), along with feedback from political networks, DNC (Perez) and major resistance donors.

The real trick to discovering the plan (as early as possible) will be to spot the signals that will tell us where they are going before they shift in their planned direction. Example: We already know Michael Cohen is a key starting point (aforementioned reasons).

To better understand the Resistance landscape, next let’s look at: (1) the most reasonable predictions for committee structure; (2) the new Gang of Eight line-up; and (3) the broad political alliances that are also predictable.

♦Key Committee Structure – The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) will likely be Chairman Adam Schiff and ranking member Devin Nunes.  The House Judiciary Committee will be Chaired by Jerry Nadler and ranking member Doug Collins.  The House Oversight and Reform Committee will be Chairman Elijah Cummings and ranking member Jim Jordan.

♦Gang of Eight (IC Oversight) – The Go8 line-up will be radically different in 2019 and far more adversarial to the executive branch.  Ranked by influence over IC:

  1. Nancy Pelosi (D) – Speaker of House.
  2. Adam Schiff (D) – Chair, HPSCI
  3. Senator Mitch McConnell (R) – Senate Majority Leader
  4. Senator Richard Burr  (R) –  Chair, SSCI
  5. Kevin McCarthy (R) – Minority Leader House.
  6. Senator Chuck Schumer (D) – Senate Minority Leader
  7. Devin Nunes (R) – Ranking Member HPSCI
  8. Senator Mark Warner (D) – Vice Chair, SSCI

♦The Broad Political Alliances – Overlaying the DC political alliances within the intelligence community Gang of Eight you see a resistance ratio of 7:1 against the executive branch.

Pelosi, Schiff, McConnell, Burr, McCarthy, Schumer and Warner all allied with the overall UniParty resistance objective; and only Devin Nunes as an ally to the White House.  That’s a ration of 7:1 in favor of “The DC Resistance” against the Executive Branch.

That’s the landscape.

So if we take the first quarter resistance events/narratives (¹Cohen appearance, ²Mueller Report and ³Horowitz report); and we overlay what has already surfaced; we can then begin to get a picture of how things will reasonably be expected to play out.

SC Robert Mueller (the team, not the person) and DAG Rod Rosenstein have already explained to POTUS Trump that if he attempts any declassification of documents currently part of Mueller’s investigative purview (that’s literally everything and or anything they lay claim to), the Special Counsel investigative unit will consider that interference with their investigation of him (President Trump).   That threat, and the advice of White House lawyers (prior counsel no longer present), led to Trump backing down in September:

[Obviously “speed” is a relative term, it’s soon to be 4 months]

So it stands to reason if they (Rosenstein, Mueller, etc.) are telling the president he can’t take any action,…. common sense says the same general ‘hands-off‘ principle would apply to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz; who is ultimately under much more of the institutional DOJ control system than President Trump.

See the issue?  As time progresses, and with hindsight as a corruption guide, it becomes more clear how Robert Mueller has been playing his cards.  Horowitz is frozen in place by an inability to see evidence until Mueller says he’s finished with his investigation.

[While it is absolutely blood-boiling to witness, that professional DOJ hoodwinking -the inherent ‘catch 22‘- is the administrative state doing some of its finest work. See the scale of it? There’s no-one to technically hold accountable, it’s the system self-actuated.  This is an example of why you can never be cynical enough when it comes to DC.]

The Democrats take control on January 3rd, 2019, (next Thursday) – they will likely utilize the first two weeks of compliant media coverage to spike the football and position maximum demoralization toward their new minority party republican colleagues.

The Democrats will have to balance the level of smug condescension (which the media and their base are looking forward to) with their visible faux-apoplexy toward the current appropriations battle and government shut down.   They will pat the republicans on the head and position themselves as the professionals in charge now.

If we extend the sequencing with all the above in mind it looks like the House Oversight Committee (Cummings) and House Judiciary Committee (Nadler) will likely kick the resistance operation into action (after Superbowl) with Michael Cohen’s scheduled appearances broadcast on television for the better part of two weeks use.

That first phase event will likely be followed by a late Feb/early March dropping of the Mueller report.  There will be a grand lead-in, roll-out and press spectacle designed for maximum exposure.  The tail end of that phase will lead to more hearings throughout March perhaps into early April with subpoenas based on the report framework.

Again, remember these are Democrats.  This stuff is already planned out in the broad strokes.  The upcoming congressional calendar has all of these events considered. Pelosi and Schumer have told their key underlings of preliminary vacation blackout dates etc.  Nothing professional democrats do is without specific intent, purposeful design and well communicated organization.  This is what they do. This is all they do.

While these events are happening the HPSCI will be demanding discovery from the White House and intelligence apparatus that will be spurred by Cohen and Mueller.  The DOJ and FBI will find a new interest in congressional compliance especially given the House General Counsel, Douglas Letter, is one of their allied Resistance members.

On the positive side for Team Trump, once Mueller actually presents a report – his operational leverage over the White House will be effectively over.

Mueller (the team, not the individual) will be handing the Resistance baton to their allies in congress; and the team will then set off for a well indulged, stunningly compensated, media tour which will likely include numerous advanced offers from Hollywood types for movie rights. Most of them will enjoy job offers from major networks and political allies.

Dec 29 2018

Retiring Duo Goodlatte and Gowdy Bid Investigative Farewell to Whitaker, Horowitz and McConnell….


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on December 28, 2018 by 

With the congressional year now effectively over Bob Goodlatte and Trey Gowdy are retired.  With that in mind they submit a joint letter to the DOJ and Senate saying, essentially: ‘wish we could have done more… but, oh well, c-ya‘.

Outta’ there like a couple of fat kids playing dodge-ball.

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/396480008/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-1aibfpbnMABu6no8GibU

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Dec 29 2018

Pelosi Names Corrupt Former Deep State DOJ Embed as House General Counsel To Lead Resistance…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on December 28, 2018 by 

Incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has selected corrupt former DOJ career embed, Douglas N Letter, as Chief Legal Counsel for the House of Representatives.  Mr. Letter has agreed to come out of retirement to aid the House effort, and structure legal pathway to impeach President Trump.

San Francisco — Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi announced today that she will appoint Douglas N. Letter to be the new General Counsel of the House of Representatives.

Until February 2018, Letter served as the Director of the Civil Division Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice, retiring this year after 40 years of distinguished service at the agency. He is now a Senior Litigator at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he is also a Visiting Professor of Law. He is a recipient of many prestigious honors, including the Presidential Meritorious Rank Award.

“Douglas Letter has an outstanding and highly decorated record of achievement in service of America,” Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi said. “He will bring deep experience and legal expertise to the House, as he counsels and represents our institution, Members and staff as House General Counsel.”

“I look forward to serving the interests of the House of Representatives and its Members,” Letter said. “I am eager to apply my litigation experience as I take on the challenges and opportunities that come with the important position of House General Counsel.”  (read more)

Eric Holder

✔@EricHolder

Doug Letter personifies what is best about the Justice Department and at the same time is typical of DOJ lawyers: dedicated, smart and sacrificed to serve his country. Thank you for your service Doug. Job well done.

Benjamin Wittes

✔@benjaminwittes

This is a very big deal—and a very sad thing. Doug Letter has run this office for a long time. He is an institution guy who has represented administrations of both parties through some of their toughest litigations. It says worlds that he won’t be representing this one any more. https://twitter.com/bobloeb/status/948314872911204352 …

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The Lawfare group and DNC far-left are ecstatic at the selection.  Doug Letter was a deep political operative within the institution of the DOJ who worked diligently to promote the weaponized political values of former democrat administrations.

(Via NPR) Letter fought for the DOJ — no matter which political party controlled it — through the Reagan and Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies. After the terrorist attacks in September 2001, his docket included cases about treatment of detainees, lethal drone strikes and more.

Asked for his proudest moments, he mentions this one, from the Obama years: “The Obergefell case,” he said. “That’s the one where the Supreme Court decided that gay marriage was constitutionally protected.” (more)

After the 2016 election Mr. Letter resigned his post, and now with democrats taking back control of the House, Mr. Letter gleefully comes out of retirement to assist in the primary resistance agenda.

Mr. Letter will help lead the House in their efforts to retrieve documents and executive branch information that will underpin the House investigative committee efforts against the president.  As a former member of the DOJ team, Mr. Letter will be able to help leak any internal documents that can be engineered for maximum political benefit.

Dec 29 2018

Beyond Ridiculous – McClatchy News Beclowns Themselves With Michael Cohen Sourcing…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on December 28, 2018 by 

After claiming to have proprietary information that Michael Cohen visited Prague, McClatchy News reporter Greg Gordon appeared on MSNBC to share the origin of the story.   Not only did the reporters who wrote the article not see the evidence, the sources they used for the claim that Cohen visited Prague also did not see the evidence.

Apparently, a person told another person, who then told Greg Gordon and Peter Stone what the 3rd hand person told them.  That’s the sourcing for the claim that Michael Cohen’s cell phone was in Prague.   Watch this beclowning interview on MSNBC.

.

Mr. Greg Gordon is the real life personification, of every caricature, of every low-IQ doofy newsroom journalist.  Doonesbury Gordon might not have lost all his cognitive marbles, but there’s definitely a hole in the bag…

…”We believe, maybe, a senior Russian official”..

So our conspicuous “Kremlin Gremlin” Oleg Deripaska may have told one of his Russian intelligence friends (he’s notorious for this stuff) to reach out to some other people… and then tell them to reach out to any fool in U.S. media who might be stupid enough to write an article about it.   Because Trump….

Dec 28 2018

“Nude Selfies”? – Mueller’s Russian Target, Concord Management, Responds to Request to Block Discovery…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on December 27, 2018 by 

Almost everyone who has researched the substance behind Rosenstein and Mueller’s heavily promoted Russian indictments knows the underlying claims are centered on the thinnest of evidence.

Given the nature of the politicization behind the Mueller investigation, many people argue there is no actual evidence at all; it’s a manufactured ruse created only for purpose of advancing a necessary political narrative, an excuse for media column inches and pundit talks.

And there is a great deal of reason to believe the cynics are entirely accurate; particularly when you overlay the series of events that highlight the prosecution never thought anyone would actually show up in court and challenge their claims.

Greasy Bear hackers and Macedonian Bot Farms might sound like a good justification for a prosecution when pitched to an incurious media. However, when Greasy Bear and the accused Macedonians show up in court, well, the prosecutors might just have a problem.

That is the backdrop for a series of bizarre requests from the Special Prosecutor to seal the evidence against the accused, Concord Management, and the defendants response.

In July,2018, Robert Mueller asked a federal judge in Washington for an order that would protect the handover of voluminous evidence to lawyers for Concord Management and Consulting LLC, one of three companies and 13 Russian nationals charged in a February 2018 indictment. They are accused of producing propaganda, posing as U.S. activists and posting political content on social media as so-called trolls to encourage strife in the U.S.

The threat of public or unauthorized disclosure of evidence would help foreign intelligence services, particularly in Russia, in “future operations against the United States,” Mueller’s prosecutors wrote in a court filing.   In essence Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller were  asserting they should be permitted to prosecute their claim of election interference without actually producing evidence to support their prosecution; or explain how they obtained the evidence they are using.

“The substance of the government’s evidence identifies uncharged individuals and entities that the government believes are continuing to engage in interference operations like those charged in the present indictment,” prosecutors wrote.

Improper disclosure would tip foreign intelligence services about how the U.S. operates, which would “allow foreign actors to learn of those techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining ongoing and future national security operations,” according to the filing.

Not surprisingly the defense team objects to the absurdity of it, and a responsive filing today highlights Concord’s incredulous position:

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/396423394/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-o1lGFbGtxgC4cu76Dqae

.

Apparently whatever ‘super secret‘ methods the special counsel used to gather the evidence for their prosecution against Concord, also enabled Mueller to access naked selfies of people associated with the case.

 

Dec 28 2018

Same Sketchy Journalists Claim Again Michael Cohen in Prague Story…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on December 27, 2018 by 

McClatchy journalists Peter Stone and Greg Gordon are once again attempting to prop-up the most disproven allegation in the Chris Steele/Nellie Ohr dossier about Michael Cohen making a trip to Prague.  They appear to stir this false story approximately every six months.  [See Here]  This iteration is framed around cell-phone tower pings.

Michael Cohen has denied the claim for years.  Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, has clearly denied the claim.  The special counsel has reviewed and walked-away from the claim.  The Washington Post spent months trying to substantiate the claim, and could find no evidence [See Here].  According to WaPo reporter Greg Miller, the CIA and FBI have refuted the claim.  It simply did not happen.

However, that said, the Cohen mistake within the Dossier continues to point toward how the FISA-702 FBI/NSA database was likely exploited by government intelligence ‘contractors’ to extract political opposition research.  Their FISA(16)(17) “about” queries of the database simply returned a result of the wrong Michael Cohen.

According to prior research, there was a Michael Cohen in the region; that Cohen is a New York City based art dealer with the same name as Donald Trump’s former lawyer.

Washington Post Greg Miller obliquely noted a reference to the art world when he was explaining how reporters spent months in Praque, and surrounding area, checking through hotel records and asking questions while finding no evidence. [Watch here]

That notation to “artwork” by Greg Miller reflects a melding of the original claim with the mistaken identity of an art dealer named Michael Cohen.  It is likely Nellie Ohr, or someone with similar FISA database access, doing similar research, received the wrong result from a FISA(17) “about query” search and passed it along to Christopher Steele who included it within his dossier.  As FISC Judge Collyer noted (see above) the non-compliant, unlawful, rate for the database searches were 85%.

It still seems most likely that Nellie Ohr wrote much of the dossier from the research already held by her employer Glenn Simpson at Fusion-GPS, in combination with material extracted from database searches.  Christopher Steele was used to launder the opposition research and give it the appearance -and validity- of an intelligence research document.

Mrs. Nellie Ohr refused to answer questions when brought before the joint congressional committee.  She invoked ‘Spousal Privilege’.

The FBI did not verify the Ohr/Steele material because they needed a legal justification for already existing surveillance on the Trump campaign.  The sketchy Ohr/Steele dossier was used to obtain sketchy FISA warrants on Trump campaign officials; making sketchy surveillance legal through the fraudulent construct of a counterintelligence operation.

The Cohen mistake within the Ohr/Steele dossier is one data-point that seems to outline how the entire operation was connected.  Officials inside government and allies (contractors and journalists) outside government were working in collaboration.

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Dec 26 2018

The FBI and DOJ Were Working to Protect Hillary Clinton a Lot Longer Than Generally Discussed…


Re-Posted from The Conservative Tree House on December 25, 2018 by 

Arguably the biggest story of 2018 is how much we have learned about institutional political corruption within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  With that level of new knowledge in mind, some earlier stories about the DOJ and FBI take on an entirely different light.

Here’s one from late 2016 – You might not know the name Marc Turi but if you are familiar with the Benghazi Brief, or more specifically with Operation Zero Footprint, you’ll likely know the issues.

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Marc Turi was the guy who constructed the covert weapons shipments into Libya to overthrown Mouamar Gaddaffi (2011) and send weapons to the Libyan Transitional National Government supported by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Mustafa Abdel JalilDuring the original phase of the Libyan uprising, early February 2011, the first defector from the official Gaddaffi regime was a foreign justice minister named Mustafa Abdel Jalil.

Jalil became the international face of the anti-Gaddaffi elements within the Libyan government. However, Jalil was an extremist Brotherhood member and somewhat of a patsy. When we were outlining his ideology, and the extremists who were behind him, almost no-one was paying attention.

Following Jalil’s moves was ultimately what enabled CTH to construct the Benghazi Briefso accurately – because during the shell game Mustafa Jalil was the pea.

Justice Minister Mustafa Jalil (pictured above) formed a loose coalition of extremist forces within Eastern Libya; however, behind Jalil were Muslim Brotherhood members who were released from the Cairo prisons by Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood head Mohammed Morsi.

When Morsi opened the prisons and released the Brotherhood, the key person released was Mohammed al-Zawahiri.

Mohammed al-Zawahiri is the brother of al-Qaeda’s #2 guy Ayman al-Zawahiri who was/is running al-Qaeda from Afghanistan.

Mohammed Al ZawahiriAyman-Al-Zawahiri11

[left Mohammed al-Zawahiri (Egypt) – right Ayman al Zawahiri (Afghanistan)]

You might remember when the U.S. Cairo Egyptian embassy protest began on the morning of September 11th 2012 (before the Benghazi attack), it was Mohammed al-Zawahiri who was talking to CNN’s Nic Robertson about the release of the Blind Sheik (pictured below). This video has been scrubbed almost everywhere because it entirely undercuts the White House narrative on the origin of the Cairo Protests.

https://videopress.com/embed/6dthGNHv?hd=0&autoPlay=0&permalink=0&loop=0.

cairo protest 2cairo protest 1

After his release from jail, Mohammed al-Zawahiri crossed the border into Eastern Libya (Benghazi) and coordinated with Mustafa Abdel Jalil. This was the origin of the crisis started by Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, Susan Rice, Samantha Power and President Obama .

Jalil, the patsy, was presenting a sympathetic moderate appearance toward Western media and Western politicians like France’s Sarkozy and the U.S. Hillary Clinton.  However, Zawahiri and Jalil’s goal, openly stated after Libyan victory, was to get the U.S. and NATO allies to be the air force of al-Qaeda against their adversary President Gaddaffi.

Not only did Sarkozy, Clinton and eventually Obama, fulfill the request, they ended up shipping weapons (via CIA/Panetta) directly to Eastern Libya, to Zawahiri and Jalil.

The Muslim Brotherhood, via Mohammed Zawahiri, almost immediately directed many of those CIA weapons from Libya to his al-Qaeda brother in Afghanistan and to their ideological brothers in Syria who later identified themselves as ISIS.

Within weeks, U.S. aircraft operating in Afghanistan began seeing surface to air missiles used against them for the first time in a decade. Ultimately, this is the biggest issue with the weapons shipments and the reason no one in the Obama administration ever wanted to discuss the program.

benghazi 1Sarkosy with Clinton - whatz weeth you americanz nowMustafa-Abdel-Jalil-POTUS

Under the code name “Zero Footprint” Marc Turi originally drew up the plan to coordinate the flow of weapons from the U.S. through the intermediary of Qatar into Libya. Those U.S. weapons ended up in Libya and Syria being used by the enemies of the U.S., specifically al-Qaeda.  [All Citations within The Benghazi Brief]

In February of 2012 Asst. Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro admitted the State Department had been attempting to relocate and buy-back those weapons since August of 2011. However, on September 11th 2012, while those efforts were still ongoing, the attacks in Benghazi against the U.S. State Department Ambassador Chris Stevens took place, and four Americans were killed.

In 2014 the DOJ filed charges against Marc Turi essentially for non registered weapons shipments. Turi’s defense was that the weapons were unregistered because the State Department and the CIA needed covert cover. Elements within the CIA confirmed the basic outline for Turi’s assertion.

In 2015 Turi provided Fox News with documents and email exchanges he had with high-level members of Congress as well as military, and State Department employees to back up his claim that the Obama administration authorized in 2011, at the height of the Arab Spring, a covert weapons program that spun out of control.

Marc Turi’s legal defense team said if the DOJ was going to prosecute him for the arms shipments, his defense would necessarily reveal how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was actually the driver of the entire program.

The DOJ tried to claim “national security” issues and keep the aspects relating to the U.S. State Department and Secretary Clinton under wraps during the pre-trial motions. However, in October of 2016 a federal judge ruled the defense was allowed to use the documented evidence Turi possessed to defend himself.

The case was slated to begin trial on November 8th, 2016; ironically the same day as the U.S. presidential election.  As a direct consequence of the October ruling, the DOJ announced they were dropping all the charges. The motive was transparently to protect Hillary Clinton:

[…] Federal prosecutors faced a Wednesday deadline to turn over discovery documents to the legal team of American Marc Turi, who had been charged with selling weapons to Libyan rebels. Late Tuesday, an announcement came that the government was dropping the case, which was set to go to trial on Nov. 8 – the day American voters choose between Clinton and GOP nominee Donald Trump. The move may avert a release of potentially explosive documents.

“I am glad this horrific five-year ordeal is over and I am pleased to be able to move on with my life,” Turi told Fox News in a statement. “The American public has the right to know that an injustice was committed against an innocent American.” (read more)

When all of this information originally surfaced in 2016 we knew the DOJ and FBI were bad, but we had no idea the level of corruption within both institutions.   Today, in 2018 we have an solid understanding of how politicized the DOJ and FBI were during the latter years of the Obama administration.

In hindsight, all of these political maneuvers to defend Hillary Clinton from scrutiny make a lot more sense.   Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, James Comey and Andrew McCabe were part of a highly political apparatus within government working primarily toward political goals.

This Pandora’s box is open now; everyone can see it; it cannot be closed.   No-one will ever look at the DOJ and FBI the same way.   Both organizations are still in denial.  Even with Trump officials they still think they can simply cover-up their history and get away with it.

Perhaps they are right.  Perhaps they will all get away with it…. however, no-one will ever look at the DOJ and FBI the same way.