In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt chose to run for a precedent-setting third term as President of the United States of America. The world was at war as France lay prostrate under the Nazi boot and Britain stood alone against Adolf Hitler, who had (temporarily) secured his “back door” for his War against the West, by entering into the astonishing Nazi-Soviet Pact with his absolute ideological opposite; Josef Stalin, to carve up Poland and the Baltic States. The fact that America was only then starting to recover from the Great Depression was another reason that Mr. Roosevelt decided to break with 152 years of tradition to run for, and win, a third term for President.
Roosevelt’s Republican opponent for the 1940 election was industrialist and utilities magnate Wendell Wilkie, who was the first presidential candidate who had never had past experience either in politics or in the U.S. military. (There would be a second in 2016). Imagine the scenario that would have occurred if the Wilkie campaign and the Republican National Committee began to spread accusations or rumors during the 1940 presidential election campaign that Franklin D. Roosevelt was trashing constitutional tradition by running for a third term; that he was physically not up to the job as he suffered from polio and wore leg braces or utilized a wheelchair (a fact kept from the people in those pre-TV days by the Press); that his mental capabilities were slipping; that he had a mistress named Lucy Mercer, or that he was helped in his bid to win a third term by isolationists who wanted the keep the U.S. out of the War, that were secretly funded by the Axis Powers, and thus FDR was in-pay to foreign interests! If this harangue by the Republicans and the defeated Weldell Wilkie continued after Roosevelt’s inauguration and throughout 1941 until Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, would not the constant assault upon Roosevelt weakened his credibility, as he was shown to have been “had” by the Axis Powers, and now was forced to ask America to send their sons to war?
A similar scenario may be faced by President Donald J. Trump and the United States in regard to the crisis with North Korea, due to the months and months of incessant and constant attacks on President Trump’s motives, character, competency, loyalty and capabilities by the Democratic Party; the holdovers of the Obama Administration and members of the Deep State; the defeated Hillary Clinton; the Mainstream Media and the Robert Mueller’s “Russia Probe!” A toll has definitely been taken on President Trump’s credibility, as he faces the nuclear threat of North Korea’s maniacal Kim Jong-Un; the absolute leader of a nation that has been officially at war with the United States since 1950! With Kim’s developing ability to deliver a thermonuclear device upon the U.S. mainland via North Korea’s rapidly advancing ICBM technology, would the country be united behind President Trump and trust his leadership should he be forced to confront an Armageddon-like threat of nuclear blackmail from Kim Jong-Un? Or, has his credibility and stature been irreparably damaged by these never-ending assaults?
$8,000,000 into Robert Mueller’s probe into “Russia’s Assault Upon Our Democracy”, the Special Counsel’s hand-picked, crack team of Democratic partisan and patently biased anti-Trump prosecutors has yielded two indictments to date, and two guilty pleas for the “process crimes” of “Lying to the FBI”. Yet, unless one reads articles about these charges in the New York Times or the Washington (Amazon) Post to the proverbial “Paragraph 18”, or divines what is not being reported within the cacophony of the latest claim of “collusion” spouting from the non-stop, breathless harangue of the talking heads of the Mainstream Media, one would never know that neither the indictments of Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates, nor the guilty pleas for lying to the FBI by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and George Papadopolos have ANYTHING to do with the stated purpose of the Special Counsel’s probe – to investigate allegations that Donald Trump and his campaign colluded with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to (somehow) “steal” the 2016 election from the heiress-apparent, Hillary Rodham Clinton!
The indictment brought against Manafort and Gates related to their lobbying efforts from at least 2006, in acting as political consultants for a pro-Moscow Ukrainian political party, the Party of Regions, whose leader, Viktor Yanushkovych, was President of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014. The indictment charged that Manafort and Gates generated tens of millions of dollars in income as the result of their Ukrainian lobbying work, conspired to launder the money through scores of American and foreign corporations, partnership and bank accounts to evade the payment of federal income taxes on the funds generated by their lobbying efforts and, acted as unregistered foreign agents in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (F.A.R.A.). NOTHING in the indictment referred in any way to the 2016 presidential election or to any activity of the defendants’ to collude with the Russians to hack DNC emails, to conspire with Russian intelligence to propagate “fake news” against Mrs. Clinton, to tamper with the electoral process, to alter the vote count, etc. On January 3, 2018, Manafort brought a civil suit against the Department of Justice, Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein seeking a Declaratory Judgment that the indictment against him by Mueller’s office should be quashed as being beyond the Special Counsel’s mandate to probe alleged interference of Russia in the election.
Yet the fanatic operatives of the Special Counsel’s office could not resist entitling Count I of the Indictment against Manafort and Gates – which described the alleged conspiracy of the defendants to launder income to avoid the payment of federal income taxes, as a “Conspiracy Against the United States.” Lazy and/or corrupt members of the Mainstream Media breathlessly reported that the one-time campaign chairman of the Trump Campaign and his business partner were charged with “conspiracy against the United States” without further details, thus inferring that the indictment had something to do with the defendants conspiring with Moscow to “steal” the election, rather than describing a conspiracy to defraud the United States in the avoidance of the payment of income taxes!
Mueller’s zealots, headed by Assistant Deputy Attorney General Andrew Weissmann (who attended Hillary Clinton’s aborted victory party in Manhattan on election night), were further unable to curb their bias-fueled excesses, by staging a violent search of Paul Manafort’s home on July 26,2o17 pursuant to a search warrant, carried-out by FBI agents at 4:00 am, who violently broke down the door of the home and dragged the 68-year- old Manafort and his wife out of bed, as if he was Tony Montana from the movie Scarface!
Only on October 24, 2017 did news break that top Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta, worked extensively with Paul Manafort as far back as 2011, to lobby on behalf of the same Ukrainian and Russian groups that are mentioned in Manafort’s indictment, and through his ties to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, may also have been instrumentally involved in the “Uranium One” transaction that netted the Clinton Foundation more than $100 million in donations; these matters are now being investigated! Both Tony and John Podesta are supposedly “central figures” in Mueller’s investigation, as well as for their potential liability for being unregistered foreign agents under F.A.R.A. As the result of these news reports, on October 30, 2017 Tony Podesta stepped down as Chairman of the powerhouse Democratic lobbying firm, the Podesta Group.
The guilty plea for “Lying to the FBI” by 30-year old, self-styled, Eastern Mediterranean oil and gas expert George Papadopolos, by all accounts a low-level foreign policy volunteer to the Trump campaign, derived from an FBI interview in which Papadopolos apparently minimized the extent and significance of contacts he was making in London with a Russian “professor” and a “Female Russian National” who claimed to be a “niece” of Vladimir Putin, (!) who claimed to have “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. (An obvious post-KGB sting operation!). Papadopolos further misstated to the FBI that he first made contact with the “professor” before becoming affiliated with the Trump campaign, rather than months afterward. Lawyers for the President have denied that George Papadopolos was instructed to make these contacts and that he free-lanced this operation on his own. No “dirt” ever was passed about HRC. The New York Times has just reported that in 2016, George Papadopolos bragged to an Australian diplomat during a night of heavy drinking in a London bar that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton as contained in “thousands of emails.” Allegedly, the diplomat subsequently reported Papadopolos’ claim to the FBI, which the Times’ claims may have been the genesis of the entire “Russia” Probe (as opposed to the now discredited Clinton campaign financed Steele dossier – see below!). While Papadopolos’ alleged actions can be defined as attempted ”opposition research” at its worst, no evidence has been unearthed to date, that his free-lance attempts to elicit unfavorable information about Mrs. Clinton were ever realized or were sanctioned by the Trump campaign.
Finally, the guilty plea by Michael Flynn for “Lying to the FBI” also had nothing to do with a conspiracy to collude with the Russians to throw the election. Flynn, who retired as a U. S. Army three-star general after a distinguished 30-year career; culminating as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Obama, became a fierce critic of Obama upon his retirement, in objection to the administration’s baseless optimistic reports on the war against Islamic militants and in defense of the Iran Nuclear Deal. He became a leading foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign and with Donald Trump’s surprise election, was designated as the National Security Advisor to-be, to the incoming president.
The “Lying to the FBI” charge stemmed from an interview Flynn underwent with Assistant Deputy A.G. Weissmann four days after Donald Trump’s inauguration, in which Flynn was not represented by counsel, concerning phone conversations Flynn had with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in DECEMBER, 2016 in his role as the incoming National Security Advisor. The phone conversation was six weeks AFTER Donald Trump was elected as the President of the United States. (BULLETIN: to ABC’s Brian Ross!!!) Flynn’s apparent misstatements to Weissmann had to do with the substance of the telephone calls with Ambassador Kislyak, namely: (1) whether a discussion was had concerning the new administration’s stance on recently-imposed sanctions that the Obama administration had placed on Russia for its alleged tampering with the election and, (2) whether Flynn requested that Russia abstain from voting on an upcoming U.N. Security Council vote condemning Israel’s building of settlements in the West Bank. Obviously, the first conversation had nothing to do with Trump’s collusion with Moscow to “steal” the election as the election had already been decided, and the second had nothing to do with the 2016 vote whatsoever.
Flynn is reported to have subsequently misled Vice President Pence on the precise content of his telephone calls with Kislyak, which was the stated reason for his dismissal as National Security Advisor only 24 days into the new administration. After his conversation with Flynn, Pence went on the various Sunday morning talk shows to repeat Flynn’s misstatements about the substance of the Kislyak phone calls.
While Michael Flynn’s conversations with Sergey Kiskyak could not have been part of a conspiracy to collude with the Russians to “steal” the election, why did Flynn not accurately (or completely) disclose the content of these conversations with Andrew Weissmann? As the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn should have known that all phone conversations with Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, were monitored pursuant to FISA warrants. He should also have known that Weissmann was armed with the transcripts of these phone conversations. So, why did Flynn fall into Weissmann’s “perjury trap”, sprung most famously on Martha Stewart on charges of insider-knowledge stock trading? Or, did Flynn “cop-a-plea” based on some other crime, or supposed “crime”, that the feds. claimed they had on him?
Michael Flynn could theoretically face legal jeopardy for potential violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (F.A.R.A.), for being an unregistered agent of TURKEY (not Russia). Reports have surfaced that have alleged that Flynn engaged in non-disclosed lobbying efforts on behalf of the regime of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. However, prosecution under F.A.R.A. requires proof that the nation that a defendant was surreptitiously representing was currently engaged in “hostilities” with the United States and further, that the violation of the statute was a willful act – the law is riddled with many exceptions. Turkey, a NATO ally, does not meet the first criteria and furthermore, proof would have to be presented that Flynn knowingly violated the statute, which is rarely enforced. Could this be the leverage that the Special Counsel has over him, to compel Flynn to plead to lying to the FBI?
The only evidence that has been surfaced about any links that Michael Flynn had to Russia were a banquet that Mr. Flynn attended back in 2015 in Moscow for the RT television network in which Vladimir Putin attended, in which Flynn received a fee of $50,000.00. Additionally, some alleged emails have surfaced that have been leaked to the press, in which Flynn supposedly expressed satisfaction about some Russian energy holdings he had invested in; reports claimed that Flynn felt these investments would increase in value upon the onset of the Trump administration. There’s not much to see here!
A more esoteric possibility is that Michael Flynn pled to the charge of Lying to the FBI, over threats of prosecution for violation of the obscure, Logan Act, passed by Congress in 1799. This antiquated statute makes it a felony for a private citizen to “interfere” in international “disputes” between the United States and foreign governments. After all, Michael Flynn was still a “private citizen” in December, 2016, when he engaged in the phone conversations with Sergey Kislyak! (?) However, the potential prosecution of Michael Flynn for violating the Logan Act would immediately run into some serious challenges. First, no one has ever been prosecuted for violation of the Logan Act, primarily because most legal scholars believe the statute to be unconstitutional as being in violation of the First Amendment. Any indictment would immediately be challenged as being unconstitutional, as well as being attacked on due process grounds for lack of notice, on the theory that this never-enforced statute is suddenly now being utilized, for the first time, against Mr. Flynn. Secondly, no “dispute” technically exists at the minute between the United States and Russia. Finally, Michael Flynn was no ordinary “private” citizen in December, 2016; he was the incoming National Security Advisor, to take office within the month! It was his duty to set the framework for the foreign policy of the new administration ever before it took power, as many incoming advisors have done in the past; he would have been negligent had he not been engaging in these contacts!
Yet, despite the lack of these necessary elements to charge Michael Flynn with a violation of the Logan Act and despite past precedent, Obama administration Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates testified before Congress in January, 2017 that her “concerns” that Flynn may have violated the Logan Act were the reason that Yates ordered the investigation of Michael Flynn, and triggered the FBI interview which ultimately led to his guilty plea! Yates testified that she launched an investigation against Michael Flynn on the theory that he was subject to being blackmailed by the Russians, for his alleged violation of this antiquated, never-enforced and probably unconstitutional statute, as well as for his misstatements to Vice President Pence. Was the potential prosecution of Michael Flynn for violation of the Logan Act the leverage that Robert Mueller has over him?
Have you noticed that neither the indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, nor the guilty pleas of George Papadopolos and Michael Flynn, had anything to do with a charge of “collusion” with Russia to “steal”, “tamper” or even influence last year’s presidential election – the stated purpose of the “Russia” Probe? That is because “collusion” – whatever that means – with a person, entity or even a foreign power, to release unfavorable information about an opponent during an election campaign, IS NOT A CRIME! No Federal statute exists that would criminalize ANY of these claimed, supposed acts of conduct of Donald Trump or any member of his campaign, as screamed incessantly by the Mainstream Media, even if facts were unearthed to support such a charge!!!!! Further, the crime of Conspiracy would not be a viable criminal charge, as there must be an underlying crime, made illegal by an existing criminal statute, that the conspiracy was formed to violate!
That could be the reason that the narrative now seems to be shifting to trying to impeach Donald Trump on a bogus charge of Obstruction of Justice for his firing of FBI Director James Comey (which was totally within his constitutional powers and was for many good reasons, as seen below), or for the President “wishing” that prosecutors “go easy” on Michael Flynn as “he is a good guy” – both of these efforts are now being claimed to be an attempt by Trump to “obstruct” the prosecution of a non-existent crime! Alternatively, New York Senator Kirstin Gillibrand is now spearheading an effort to impeach the President on allegations of past sexual harassment, as if that “issue” hadn’t already been fully litigated, and decided upon, in November, 2016!
If neither of those tactics succeed, listen to the increasing volume of the far-off drumbeats of the “top-flight” psychologists retained by the Mainstream Media (or schlock “journalists” like Michael Wolff!), as they now presume to “psychoanalyze” Mr. Trump from afar, (against the ethics code of the American Psychiatric Association prohibiting “psychoanalysis” of political candidates in the Press – the “Goldwater Rule”) and offer their “expert” opinions on Trump’s “lack of mental fitness and stability”, in an attempt to set the narrative to have the President removed from office pursuant to the Twenty-Fifth Amendment! Perhaps the all-knowing Media Talking Heads should crack open the Constitution and read Section 4 of that Amendment, to learn what the terms actually are to remove a sitting president, pursuant to that Constitutional provision!!!
The “Russia Probe” is thus a sham, masquerading as a criminal investigation! In reality, it is nothing more than a Democrat-fueled, extralegal, disinformation campaign to attempt to engineer a coup d’etat to topple this constitutionally elected president! As Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief, once famously said: “show me the man and I will find you the crime.” And as will be outlined below, it is the Democrats along with their allies in the Media and the Deep State, that have “colluded” to topple Donald Trump with none other than RUSSIA, in an attempt to realize this outcome!!!!
On December 12th, the first of a series of damning emails authored by top leadership officials of the Justice Department and the FBI were made public, which demonstrated with naked clarity, that rank bias; a wishful suspension of disbelief of a dubious intelligence source that turned out to be a Clinton campaign-funded, piece of almost totally fictional opposition research against Donald Trump; a virulent hatred of Mr. Trump, and an overriding preference for Hillary Clinton that trashed all concepts of “equal justice under the law”, all fueled the launching of the FBI counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign, which has now morphed into “The Russia Probe!”
The most notorious email that has been released to date is the now infamous August 16, 2016 email of the FBI’s deputy counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok to his mistress, Justice Department lawyer Lisa Page, with whom he was having an extramarital affair. The email referred to a meeting held in the office of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe by Strzok and other FBI counter-intelligence officials who discussed the “frightening” possibility of a Trump presidency. Strzok wrote of Trump’s candidacy that “there’s no way he gets elected”, but on the remote possibility that he was able to cobble together an electoral college victory, the FBI had no choice but to carry out a plot to undermine Trump’s candidacy as the Bureau “can’t take that risk”. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.” What was the “insurance policy” that Strzok was referring to, that smacks so much like a KGB plot that FBI special agents like Strzok spent their careers battling? As Andrew McCarthy so brilliantly analyzed in his National Review article of December 23rd, Strzok’s “insurance policy” against a Donald Trump presidency was most likely the now notorious, Hillary Clinton-funded, Russian-collaborated and Obama Administration-utilized, Christopher Steele Dossier!!!
As the revelations of the last few weeks have revealed, the first of a series of reports, collectively known as the “Steele Dossier”, was written for hire (see below!), by British former MI-6 spy Christopher Steele on June 20, 2016, in which Steele described a purported, conspiratorial relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, in which Putin’s regime had alleged to have been “cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least five years”, without providing any credible verification on how Putin had been allegedly supporting Trump, or on Donald Trump’s role or even knowledge of, such “assistance”. What the Dossier did graphically detail were the totally debunked, tales of debauchery involving Mr. Trump that supposedly would subject him to blackmail by Russia, the most famous being the “golden showers” yarn about urinating prostitutes with Trump on a Moscow hotel bed that was formerly utilized by Barack and Michelle Obama, a tale that even the Mainstream Media had heard of for months and rejected, until the left-wing website Buzzfeed saw it as their duty to release it three days before Donald Trump’s inauguration! CNN then breathlessly took up the cudgel!
The record reflects that the FBI and the Department of Justice had favorable past dealing with Christopher Steele, as information provided by him was credited toward successfully prosecuting the international bribery scandal involving top officials of FIFA – the world soccer federation. The Bureau was thus favorably predisposed toward him. However, what appeared to be the linchpin that convinced the FBI to credit the entire content of Christopher Steele’s Dossier against Donald Trump, was the Bureau’s confirmation of Steele’s claim that a tangential Trump foreign policy advisor named Carter Page had indeed traveled to Moscow on a three-day trip in July, 2016, as reported by Steele, where he delivered a commencement address at the New Economic School. Page, like George Papadopolos, was another loosely-connected Trump advisor whose expertise was in the Eastern European oil and gas market. The record shows that Mr. Page asked permission of the Trump campaign to make the trip which was first denied by the Campaign. Page apparently then asked again and for his second effort, was granted permission to go to Russia, but only in his “private capacity”. A top-ranking graduate of the US Naval Academy, Carter Page worked in investing after his naval career and for several years worked at the Merrill Lynch office in Moscow. He has readily acknowledged being a Russophile and an apologist for the Putin regime; he has championed appeasement for the sake of better US-Russian relations. Yet, the allegations of Christopher Steele as contained in his Dossier, accused Carter Page of engaging in activities of a treasonous nature, during his three-day Russian trip.
As reported by Andrew McCarthy in his National Review article, the Dossier of Christopher Steele claimed that on July 19th, Carter Page held secret meetings in Moscow with two senior functionaries of Vladimir Putin – Igor Sechin, the president of Russia’s energy conglomerate Rosneft, and Igor Diveykin of Putin’s “Internal Political Department”. Mr. Steele claimed to have been informed “by an Russian source close to Sechin”, that Sechin floated to Page the possibility of US-Russia energy cooperation in exchange for the lifting of Western sanctions against Russia over Russian incursions into Ukraine. Page was reported to have reacted “positively” by Steele, but in a manner that was “non-committal.” Another source of Page’s alleged activities in Moscow that was claimed by Christopher Steele in the Dossier was “an official close to Putin’s chief of staff Sergei Ivanov who had confided to a compatriot” that Diveykin told Page that the Putin regime had a dossier of “kompromat” – compromising information on Hillary Clinton that it would consider releasing to Trump’s “campaign team”, but also hinted “more strongly” that the regime also had “kompromat” on Donald Trump himself, “which the latter should bear in mind in his dealings with them.” (As McCarthy observed: “Note the dizzying multiple-hearsay basis for this information.”) Steele’s report went on to state that in late July 2016, Steele claimed to have been told by “an ethnic Russian close associate of Trump” that there was a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between Trump’s inner circle and the Russian leadership”, “managed on Trump’s side by Paul Manafort who was using foreign policy advisor Carter Page and others as intermediaries.” (Note that Mueller’s indictment of Manafort speaks nothing of these accusations.) Steele further claimed that the same source (or sources) informed him that “the Russian regime had been behind the leak of the DNC emails to the WikiLeaks platform with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team”, in return for which “Trump agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue” and further agreed “to raise the failure of NATO nations to meet their defense commitments as a distraction from Russian aggression in Ukraine.” The hacked DNC emails were first released on July 22, 2016, shortly after Page’s return, before the start of the Democratic National Convention.
Carter Page has since testified on more than one occasion in close sessions before both the House and the Senate intelligence committees and has reportedly also testified before the Grand Jury in Robert Mueller’s special-counsel investigation. Note that as of this date, no criminal charges have been brought against him. He has denied all of the allegations against him as contained in the Steele Dossier, in several FBI interviews and in public statements. He has further stated that he has never met Paul Manafort. Mr. Page has filed a federal defamation lawsuit against the press outlets that he claims have defamed him, as the result of their publication of the Dossier.
Former FBI James Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June, 2017, that the content of the Steele Dossier were “salacious and unverified.” If the allegations of the Dossier were still unvetted as of June of 2017 as stated by the then-fired FBI Director, they certainly could not have been verified at the time the claims of Christopher Steele were apparently acted upon by the FBI months earlier, in August, 2016!!!!
The Steele Dossier reports had been trickling in to the FBI at the time of the meeting in Andrew McCabe’s office with Peter Strzok and other counterintelligence agents on August 16, 2016, when the Bureau determined that it was “imperative” to “aggressively investigate”, the “allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia” as alleged in the Dossier. It was startlingly revealed only on October 25, 2017, that Christopher Steele was paid $12,000,000.00 for his Dossier against Donald Trump by the Hillary Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee as an effort of “OPPOSITION RESEARCH”, through the Democratic law firm Perkins Coie, which in April, 2016 retained the research firm Fusion GPS to serve as the conduit to Steele!!! Without question, the FBI knew just from a cursory reading of the Dossier that Christopher Steele’s claimed sources were high ranking apparatchiks within the Putin regime!!! However, did the FBI also know on August 16, 2016, that the “allegations of collusion” by the Trump campaign as alleged by Steele in his Dossier, were additionally a product of “opposition research”, funded by Donald Trump’s electoral opponent, Hillary Clinton???
The tight nexus of high ranking officials within the FBI and the Department of Justice who launched the “Russia Probe” against Donald Trump and his campaign, based on the “salacious and unverified” allegations of the Steele Dossier – and who likely utilized the spurious claims of the Dossier to seek warrants from the FISA Court to “wiretap” the communications of Carter Page, other members of the Trump campaign and possibly the presidential candidate himself (!), were the same functionaries that carried-out the “investigation” of Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of top-secret communications while Secretary of State, as routed through her unauthorized and unprotected, home-based internet server. Of course, these two probes were being conducted concurrently while Clinton and Trump were vying to succeed Barack Obama as the next president! The conflicts of interest of these same top law enforcement officials, as they simultaneously wore the two hats of the “Clinton” and the “Russia” probes, are utterly staggering!:
-GLENN SIMPSON, FUSION GPS, BRUCE OHR, NELLIE OHR and SALLY YATES: Glenn Simpson is one of three former Wall Street Journal reporters that in 2011 founded the commercial research and strategic intelligence firm Fusion GPS, based in Washington, DC, which conducts open-source investigations and provides research and strategic advice for businesses, law firms and investors, as well as political inquiries, including opposition research. Simpson and Fusion GPS had previously been investigated for operating as unregistered lobbyists in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (F.A.R.A.) for campaigning on behalf of RUSSIA, to influence and overturn the Magnitsky Act, which was passed by Congress as a sanction against certain Russian officials for human rights abuses in Russia in general, and for the 2009 death of activist Sergey Magnitsky in a Moscow prison, in particular. As stated, in October, 2017, it was first revealed that in April, 2016, the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton Campaign utilized the Democratic law firm of Perkins Coie for the expressed purpose of retaining Fusion GPS, as a conduit for the hiring British ex-spy Christopher Steele; known for his Russian contacts, to compile an opposition research report on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, for a fee of $12,000,000.00.
On Friday, June 9, 2016, the now notorious meeting took place in Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and others, with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and her retinue. When the news first broke about the meeting, Donald Jr.’s original explanation for the purpose of the meeting; arranged by London impresario Rob Goldstone, a common acquaintance of the Trumps and a client of Veselnitskaya, was to discuss “adoption issues”, but was soon amended to admit that Trump Jr. agreed to meet Ms. Veselnitskaya because she claimed to have “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. claimed that the meeting did not even last twenty minutes; that Veselnitskaya had nothing on Hillary; that the conversation quickly shifted to repeal of the Magnitsky Act, and that Manafort and Kushner left the left the room not long after the beginning of this (treasonous?) meeting, when they determined it to be a waste of time.
Donald Jr. has since been called to Capitol Hill before closed sessions of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on more than one occasion to testify on his amateur attempts at opposition research. But it wasn’t until November 7, 2017, that it was revealed that hours before Natalia Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Donald Trump Jr. on June 9, 2016, Ms. Veselnitskaya met with Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS in a Manhattan Federal courtroom!! Simpson is reported to have also met with Veselnitskaya after the meeting with the young Trump.!! Can we all chant SET-UP in unison!!!
Five weeks later, on December 13, 2017, news broke that the Fusion GPS employee who collaborated with both Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele in realizing what has become known as the Steele Dossier was a Russian scholar named Nellie Ohr, who is none other than the wife of Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, the Obama Administration Justice Department’s point man for “Transnational Organized Crime and International Affairs!” It has been further reported that Bruce Ohr himself personally met with both Christopher Steele and Glenn Simpson as the Dossier was being formulated! As the head of the international organized crime section of the D.O.J., Bruce Ohr reported to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who no doubt was monitoring his efforts to foster the Dossier. Since the revelation of the involvement of both Nellie Ohr and himself in the Steele Dossier, Bruce Ohr has since been demoted in the Justice Department “for (allegedly) concealing his meetings with Fusion GPS!”
On January 9, 2018, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D.- Ca.), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, unilaterally released the 312 page transcript of the closed-session testimony of Glenn Simpson before the Committee, in which Simpson had invoked the Fifth Amendment numerous times. Feinstein’s motivation for releasing the transcript contrary to the majority vote of the Committee, was apparently Simpson’s contention that the allegations of Russian collusion in the Steele Dossier were corroborated by a “source” the FBI had “within” the Trump campaign! However, “upon further review”, the realization quickly set in that the “source” that Simpson was referring to, that the FBI had “relied upon”, was none other than the drunken ramblings of George Papadopolos!!!!
Sally Yates, who was the holdover acting Attorney General during the opening days of the new administration, was famously was fired by President Trump on January 30, 2017 for her naked insubordination in refusing to follow the President’s order to enforce what popularly became known as the “Travel Ban”, which was ultimately held constitutional by the Supreme Court. (Yates’ “resistance” prompted an email from Assistant Deputy A.G. Andrew Weissmann lauding Yates for her “courage.”) However, the outsized role of Sally Yates as being at the center of the swirling events of 2016 cannot be questioned! Sally Yates, as the Obama Administration’s Deputy Attorney General, monitored the day-to-day operations of the FBI pursuant to the chain of command of the Justice Department – James Comey reported to her! Thus, Yates was not only overseeing Bruce Ohr’s efforts to coordinate the compilation of the Steele Dossier within Justice Department as discussed above, but was also the “managing director” of both the “Clinton” and the “Russia” probes in the Federal Bureau of Investigation!!
-PETER STRZOK, LISA PAGE, ANDREW McCABE and JAMES COMEY: The emails first released on December 12, 2017 between Peter Strzok and his paramour, Justice Department attorney Lisa Page, exposed the virulent bias that these top law-enforcement officials had against Donald Trump and their equally fawning preference for Hillary Clinton, during the time they held critical positions of power in the investigation of both the “Clinton” and the “Russia” probes! Strzok told Page that “Trump was an idiot” and that “Hillary should win 100 million to 0”; Page responded that Trump “was a loathsome human”. (In addition to the rank bias of these comments, notice the banality of the quotes of these top-flight “legal eagles”, written as if they were still in high school!)
Further, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, to whom Peter Strzok directly reported, was also compromised by bias and conflicts of interest during these investigations, as it has been reported that his wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, received $467,500.00 from very close Clinton-confidant and Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee in 2015, to run as the Democratic candidate in a state senate race in Virginia, in which she was defeated. Despite these obvious conflicts of interest, McCabe never felt that it was his duty to recuse himself from either the “Clinton” or the “Russia” probes! After being grilled for two days in closed sessions before the House Intelligence Committee concerning all of the shenanigans reported above, McCabe has announced that he intends to take an early retirement in the next few weeks.
While it has now been revealed that Stzrok was one of the prime movers in insisting that it was “imperative” to “aggressively investigate” the “allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia” as alleged in the unverified Steele Dossier, during the meeting in Andrew McCabe’s office on August 16, 2016, reports have also now surfaced that it was none other than Peter Strzok, who was responsible for the re-editing of FBI Director James Comey’s July 5, 2016 Declaration in such a way, that exonerated Hillary Clinton for her mishandling of classified communications while Secretary of State!
The original draft of the memo written for James Comey back in May, 2016, stated that:
“there is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton and others, used the email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with the respect to the handling of classified information” * * * and that “it was reasonably likely that Hillary Clinton’s private email server had been infiltrated by hostile foreign powers.”
However it was revealed only on December 14, 2017, that on June 10, 2016; well before the investigation of the email scandal had been concluded and before the FBI interviews of the key players were conducted (including Mrs. Clinton herself), that Peter Strzok deliberately watered-down the original memo of May, 2016 by editing the text in such a way as to transform the memo into an “Exoneration Declaration” of Mrs. Clinton, by patently misstating the burden of proof required for prosecution under the relevant criminal statute, 18 U.S.C. Section 793(f). Director Comey obviously acquiesced to Peter Strzok’s re-write of the Declaration. The following was proclaimed by James Comey on July 5, 2016:
“although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of the classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information * * * and that “it was possible that hostile actors had gained access to Clinton’s server.” * * * “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” (Why, because her name was Clinton?)
Section 793(f) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code makes it a felony for an individual who have been granted lawful access to highly classified materials, to act in a grossly negligent manner in the handling of such materials, by removing such materials from their proper place of custody, or by transmitting such materials or causing such materials to be transmitted to others not authorized to have access to such materials (Anthony Weiner?), in violation of the trust granted to such an individual through his/her federal security clearance.
In order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass in 2016, Strzok, Comey, McCabe & Company re-labeled Clinton’s conduct as “extremely careless” instead of the statutory requirement of “gross negligence” and further, they in affect “rewrote” the applicable statute by inserting an intent element that Congress did not require and consequently was not present within the text of Section 793(f)! As Andrew McCarthy has also observed: “the point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant.”
Peter Strzok, the former deputy chief of counterintelligence for the FBI, has now been demoted from his top position of authority within the Bureau, and is now serving as head of the Human Resources department for the FBI! The current fate of Lisa Page is unknown. New emails have just surfaced between Strzok and Page, which seem to indicate that they were prime sources of leaks to the Mainstream Media during both the “Clinton” and the “Russia” probes, in direct violation of their oaths as sworn officers of the Justice Department! Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr and Nellie Ohr are all expected to be called to testify before Congressional committees in the coming weeks!
It is patently obviously that while Strzok, McCabe, Comey and others deliberately misstated the terms of the relevant law in order to exonerate Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information, they also ignored relevant facts that constituted evidence that Mrs. Clinton and her aides Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson, Monica Hanley, Brian Pagliano and others, were potentially liable not only for their own violations of Section 793(f), but also could be liable for potential prosecution for Obstruction of Justice for their alleged roles in deleting 33,000 emails that had previously been demanded by Congressional subpoenas; for using the data-scrubbing product Bleachbit to forever eradicate the data on the hard drive of Clinton’s home-based server; for smashing the utilized Blackberry smart phones with mallets, etc.
It has been further reported that during their FBI interviews, both Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills testified that they had no knowledge that Mrs. Clinton was utilizing a home-based, unauthorized internet server while Secretary of State. These statements were proven to be falsehoods which directly contradicted the emails of both Abedin and Mills which referred to Hillary’s home-based server! Therefore, both Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills are could both have been charged for “Lying to the FBI”, as have Michael Flynn and George Papadopolos! But no, each Clinton functionary was granted immunity by the FBI during the “Clinton” probe, as did Samuelson, Pagliano, State Department staffer John Bentel and I.T. aide Paul Combetta!!! The FBI was giving out immunity like it was candy during the Clinton investigation!! Normally, immunity is granted to a lower player in a conspiracy chain as an incentive to “rat out” someone higher in the conspiracy; but here, it is patently obvious that immunity was granted to protect the higher-ups!!! After all, Hillary Clinton was the odds-on favorite to win the election and no one thereafter would ever be the wiser, right?????
The fact that the Obama Administration’s Justice Department and the FBI never sought to have a Grand Jury empaneled to look into Mrs. Clinton’s mishandling of classified information through her home-based email server, and the conspiracy that developed after the news broke of Clinton’s server (thank you, New York Times!); the fact that the applicable statute was re-written just for Hillary Clinton so she could be exonerated; the fact that when Hillary Clinton was finally interviewed by the FBI (by Peter Strzok, no less – his fingerprints are everywhere!), she was allowed to be accompanied by Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson as her “attorneys”, though both were witnesses in the investigation; the fact that Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with Bill Clinton, in what was supposed to be a secret meeting, on the tarmac of the Phoenix airport just days before James Comey’s Exoneration Declaration; the fact that discovery requests for documents and tangible items by the FBI were made on a “pretty please” basis rather than through compulsion by Grand Jury subpoenas (or via 4:00 am raids on the key players’ homes!); the fact that obvious acts of Obstruction of Justice by the conspirators were ignored; the fact that key individuals who lied in their FBI interviews were given a pass, and the fact that President Obama, who endorsed Hillary Clinton as his successor, made it clear in many previous public statements that he did not want Mrs. Clinton to be charged, all lead to the conclusion that key law-enforcement officials that were running the “Clinton” probe, may be guilty of Obstruction of Justice themselves!!! They would prefer to label their decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton, based on the results of the “fruits” of their “investigation”, to be one of “Prosecutorial Discretion!!!
Reports have just come out that the the Clinton email investigation; inquiries into the “pay-to-play” allegations involving the Clinton Foundation, and the “Uranium One” transaction, will be reopened and/or explored. Perhaps justice may yet have its day! One issue that would have to be dealt with would be the validity of the grants of immunity to Abedin, Mills and others during what was obviously a mock investigation in which “the fix was in!!!”
What cannot be hidden behind the defense of “Prosecutorial Discretion”, is whether the “unverified and salacious” allegations of the “Steele Dossier”, as financed by the Clinton campaign and fostered by the Justice Department and the FBI during the “Russia” probe, were used by the same key law-enforcement officials of the Obama Administration, to seek and receive permission from the FISA Court to conduct electronic eavesdropping of Donald Trump and members of his campaign – Hillary Clinton’s electoral opponent, both before and after the election of November 8, 2016, who then illegally “unmasked” the identity of hundreds of Americans, in contravention of the FISA statute!!!
-LORETTA LYNCH, SUSAN RICE, JOHN BRENNAN, BEN RHODES and SAMANTHA POWER: As stated, on June 27, 2016, Attorney General Lynch met with Bill Clinton, the husband of the target of an ongoing federal investigation, on the tarmac of Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport in what was supposed to be a secret meeting, in which they “talked about their grandchildren”. Seven days later, Hillary Clinton was finally interviewed by Peter Strzok and two days after that, James Comey delivered his Exoneration Declaration. The timeline of events that has been outlined above, makes it clear that even as of June 27th, the “fix” was already in to bend both the law and the facts to exonerate Mrs. Clinton, so what was the purpose of the meeting? Was the meeting to “seal the deal” to insure that only the right result would be forthcoming from the Justice Department? Or, was the meeting intended to formally offer Loretta Lynch the option to stay on as the Attorney General in the Hillary Clinton administration-to-be, after Mrs. Clinton’s expected exoneration? What has been learned about the meeting as of only August 9, 2017, was that at least ten high-level Justice Department staffers were assigned after the tarmac meeting to devise “talking points” for Attorney General Lynch to explain the purpose and the content of the meeting to the Press! It was also learned that these staffers were also tasked to investigate how the secret of the meeting between Lynch and Clinton was exposed, not on how such a breach of Justice Department protocol and obvious conflict of interest occurred!!! Mrs. Lynch, like Andrew McCabe, did not seem to feel that legal ethics required her to recuse herself from the ongoing “Clinton” probe after her rendezvous with President Clinton was revealed, despite the blatant conflict of interest and “appearance of impropriety!” Obviously, the election polls gave all involved a feeling of invulnerability!
Section 1804 of Title 50, U.S. Code, which established the FISA Court in 1978 and set the ground rules for the appropriate use of the Government’s now vast and massive powers to monitor, eavesdrop and surveil all forms of electronic communications, clearly states that the only legal usage for electronic surveillance under the Act is if the “significant purpose” for the need for FISA intercepts is to obtain “foreign intelligence information” and only if “appropriate minimalization procedures are in place” to safeguard American individuals’ identities that are incidentally ensnared in a FISA cyber dragnet.
Obama Administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch was of course the chief executive officer of the Justice Department; Sally Yates, the Deputy A.G. who ran both the “Clinton” and the “Russia” probes on a day-to-day basis, ultimately reported to her. However, pursuant to Justice Department rules and regulations, the Attorney General herself was the official that was required to personally authorize Motions to be presented before the secret FISA Court to seek warrants for electronic surveillance and was the only functionary authorized to sign a surveillance warrant once approved by the FISA Court. What appears clear is that Loretta Lynch did sign-off on a FISA warrant targeting Carter Page in August, 2016, after the now famous meeting in Andrew McCabe’s office, which was most likely based on the spurious claims of the Steele Dossier. Reports that have subsequently come out suggest that this warrant led to the “incidental” intercept of the communications of hundreds of Americans, including many members of the Trump campaign and perhaps the candidate himself; the illegal leaking of surveilled conversations to the Media and the “unmasking” of the identities of those Americans, such as Carter Page and Michael Flynn, surveilled during otherwise “incidental” conversations with foreign (and not only Russian) individuals and/or entities. As has been reported, Obama Administration functionaries such as Susan Rice, John Brennan, Ben Rhodes, and most curiously Samantha Power over at the UN, apparently had an insatiable desire to “unmask” the identities of hundreds of Americans who were incidentally surveilled in this FISA cyber dragnet, even going so far as to seek the names of Trump associates just before the Inauguration! The cyber surveillance also most likely led to the constant leaks that were a daily fact during the opening weeks of the new administration, including the leaked transcripts of Mr. Trump’s telephone conversations with foreign leaders, all aided by President Obama’s decision just before Donald Trump’s inauguration, to alter past practices and allow the National Security Agency to disseminate information from FISA intercepts to now be shared among 16 other governmental agencies and hundreds of additional governmental officials! In affect, these activities of the Obama Administration constituted nothing less than a calculated plan, unprecedented in U.S. history, to lay a pattern of “land mines” by an outgoing party, to be dealt with, in turn, by a new administration of the opposite political party!!!
Was the “significant purpose” of the FISA warrant targeting Carter Page to obtain “foreign intelligence information”, or was the real reason for Mrs. Lynch’s approval of the Motion to seek approval of the surveillance of Carter Page; most likely based on “unverified and salacious” claims of the Steele Dossier as financed by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, in order to spy on the inner workings of Trump campaign to ensure Mrs. Clinton’s electoral victory? Further, was Carter Page even an appropriate target to be electronically surveilled under the FISA Act?
Once again, voicing Andrew McCarthy in his December 23rd National Review article:
“under federal surveillance law (Section 1801 of Title 50, U.S. Code), the probable-cause showing the Government must make to prove that a person is an agent of a foreign power is different for Americans than for aliens. If the alleged agent is an alien, Section 1801(b)(1) applies, and this means that no probable cause of evidence of a crime need be established, the Government need only show that the target is acting on behalf of a foreign power in the sense of abetting its clandestine anti-American activities. By contrast, if the alleged agent is an American citizen, such as Carter Page, Section 1801(b)(2) applies: the Government must show not only that the person is engaged in clandestine activities on behalf of a foreign power but also that these activities: (1) involve or may involve a violation of criminal statutes of the United States; (2) involve the preparation for or commission of sabotage or international terrorism; (3) involve using a false identity to enter or operate in the United States on behalf of a foreign power; or (4) involve conspiring with or aiding and abetting another person in the commission of these criminal activities. All of these involve evidence of a crime.”
For Carter Page, as an American citizen, to be electronically surveilled pursuant to the FISA Act, the Government must have shown probable cause that no only was Mr. Page engaging in clandestine activities on behalf of Russia, but also that he was engaging in one of the crimes as spelled out in Section 1801(b)(2) of the FISA Act, as cited above! To date, Carter Page has not been charged with any crime.
Several questions need to be answered: (1): What were the specific “allegations of collusion with Russia” that prompted the FBI to launch an aggressive investigation of the Trump campaign in August, 2016? That answer has been sought for by months by Chairman Devin Nunes (R.-Ca.) of the House Intelligence Committee; the FBI and the Department of Justice have slow-walked and stonewalled the Committee’s demands for answers, citing “protection of intelligence sources” and an ongoing, internal Justice Department probe by Inspector General Michael Horowitz. As of January 3, 2018, the FBI and the DOJ and Congressman Nunes have reportedly finally reached an agreement that the documents sought by the Committee should finally be released. (2): Were the specific allegations of collusion between Trump and Russia based on the “unverified and salacious” Russian-fueled claims as contained in the Steele Dossier? (3): If so, were the specific allegations of the Steele Dossier spelled-out in the sworn Affidavit that was submitted to the FISA Court by the FBI and the DOJ to contend that there was “probable cause” for the FISA Court to issue a warrant to surveil the communications of Carter Page? It appears clear that the approval of this FISA warrant resulted in the “incidental” intercept of the communications of many Americans and the illegal “unmasking” of their identities, including many members of the Trump campaign and potentially Donald Trump himself, as he so famously charged: “being wiretapped in Trump Tower!” A copy of the actual Affidavit has also been sought for months by Chairman Nunes’ Committee. (4): At what point did the FBI and the DOJ learn that the Dossier was actually a partisan “opposition research” project funded by Donald Trump’s electoral opponent? Was that fact learned before the Motion was presented before the FISA Court by the FBI and the DOJ to seek a warrant to surveil Carter Page? Finally, (5): if the Steele Dossier claims were included in the Affidavit presented to the FISA Court and if the FBI and the DOJ knew the Dossier was in actuality a product of “opposition research” project commissioned and funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was that fact kept from the FISA Court as it weighed the evidence to determine whether there was “probable cause” to issue a warrant to surveil Carter Page?
If this scenario is true, it would amount to nothing less than government- sanctioned electronic eavesdropping on a political opponent during a presidential election, a tactic worthy of a banana republic!!! It would amount to a massive “fraud upon the Court!” And, it would have caused a wholesale trashing of the Fourth Amendment by the Obama Administration!! The civil right implications would be incalculable!! And yes if true, this scandal would truly be “WORSE THAN WATERGATE!!!!!”
As of this date, no evidence has been unearthed that the Trump campaign “colluded” with Russians to hack DNC emails; to conspire with Russian intelligence to propagate “fake news” against Hillary Clinton; to tamper with the electoral process or to alter the vote count. George Papadopolos’ free-lance London meeting with a Russian professor and Putin’s “niece” who claimed they had “dirt” on Hillary Clihton was obviously a post-KGB trap. Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, has since been proven to be, in actuality, a staged Set-Up by Fusion GPS – both were naïve, amateur attempts at opposition research that are not even illegal, let alone constitute “collusion”. The indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates for tax evasion from years back and the “Lying to the FBI” plea of Michael Flynn, both have nothing to do with the election.
In contrast, there is abundant evidence that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee commissioned and funded the Dossier authored by Christopher Steele, who utilized unverified, untrustworthy and perhaps fictional Putin regime disinformation to craft a Dossier of salacious “opposition research” against Donald Trump and his campaign. The evidence further shows that Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee then COLLUDED with the Obama Administration to use the spurious allegations of the Steele Dossier, as the vehicle to obtain a FISA warrant to electronically surveil the Trump campaign, which yielded information that was leaked to Obama’s Mainstream Media allies and fueled the narrative that Donald Trump had colluded with the Russians to win the election in return for the lifting of sanctions against Russia. This then morphed into the “Russia Probe!”
In the name of justice and in the name of history, all of the above questions must be fully answered!
-The Chicago Patriot
Copyright 2018, William O. Fasciana. All rights reserved.
