Tag: john brennan

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Did Durham Just Lure Brennan into a Perjury Trap?

Welcome to your perjury trap, Mr. Brennan. – In a very interesting piece at RedState.com, a former prosecutor who writes under the pen name “Shipwreckedcrew” lays out a strong argument detailing his belief that Friday’s 8-hour-long interview of former Obama CIA Director John Brennan by U.S. Attorney John Durham and his investigators amounted to a classic perjury trap by the Department of Justice.

The author points to the fact that, instead of holding the interview at the more logical location at DOJ headquarters or the Hoover Building in Washington, DC, Durham chose to conduct it at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia:

Second, conducting the interview at the CIA facility is an interesting decision.  Why not question him at DOJ or FBI HQ?  The CIA is not a law enforcement agency.  John Brennan no longer works for the CIA.  Any CIA records that may have been needed over the course of the interview could have been made available in a secured facility at both those locations.

But that “records” excuse may have been the very justification given for the selection of the CIA HQ as the location for the interview.

DOJ and the FBI HQ are in Washington DC.  CIA Headquarters is in Langley, Virginia.

If you are geographically challenged, you can read the distinction as “United States District Court for the District of Columbia” v. “United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.”  If John Brennan offered any false answers to the investigators during the interview, the venue for that “false statement” crime is in the EDVA, not in DC federal court.

[End]

Pretty clever, if true. This would solve Durham’s conundrum about trying to get a conviction of Brennan from DC jury, which would be overwhelmingly made up of Democrats.

The former prosecutor also points to the interesting fact that Brennan chose to speak through his lawyer, Nick Shapiro, in a written statement, rather than just blast stuff out on his Twitter account, as he does on a regular basis:

First, it’s not Brennan’s statement.  Shapiro issued the statement to Obama Administration scribe Natasha Bertrand at Politico — guaranteed to dutifully publish anything requested of her by a former Obama era intelligence official now living in fear.  Shapiro then posted a string of eight Tweets on Twitter with the same text.

Both are devoid of any words actually spoken by Brennan — there are no quotations — nor is there any support offered for Shapiro’s claims by anyone actually in the room, such as Brennan’s attorneys.

Since when has Brennan been shy about saying anything on Twitter?  Why would Brennan go “third person” and have his thoughts about the interview expressed only in the words of someone else?  The most obvious reason is the statements are not going to be exactly accurate.  Running them through a third person builds in a level of “deniability” on Brennan’s part.

[End]

As I pointed out yesterday, Brennan has spent his entire adult life lying for a living and protecting himself from being held accountable for those lies by building walls of plausible deniability. Here, we see that lifelong habit in action.

The author also expands at length on the meaning of Shapiro’s claim that Brennan is not a “target” of the Durham investigation at this time. Here is a key passage:

So if you are not a “target” — meaning there isn’t sufficient evidence at this time to charge you with a crime — then by default you are a “witness.”

But “witnesses” can, and often do talk themselves into being “targets” during such interviews.  That was the purpose of the interview, Mr. Brennan, not because you have some wonderful insights to provide Mr. Durham and his investigators to make their job easier.

One important distinction between “target” and “witness” that is not well understood, but might be in play here, is that it is against DOJ policy to issue a grand jury subpoena to someone who is already a “target”.

A grand jury subpoena is a court order, under threat of contempt, to appear and answer questions under oath without the presence of counsel.  If a person is already a “Target”, the subpoena intrudes upon their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and to be represented by counsel while undergoing “custodial” interrogation — they are under subpoena after all.  Witnesses before the grand jury are allowed to assert their Fifth Amendment right, but it forces them to assert that right before the grand jurors considering charges against them.  The government is not allowed to call a criminal defendant to take the stand in his trial and force him to assert his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in front of the jury.  It is deemed prejudicial, and suggest to the jury that the defendant has something to hide.  The same principle applies to calling a “Target” in front of a grand jury and forcing them to assert their right to remain silent in front of the grand jurors without counsel present.

[End]

Oh. Again, as I pointed out yesterday, just because someone is not a “target” of an investigation today does not mean he will not become a “target” of that investigation tomorrow.

Isn’t all of that interesting?

There is much more in this piece, and you would to well to go read it in its entirety.

Now, this analysis may or may not be accurate. But if it is accurate, it is fair to point out that it would be entirely consistent with common DOJ practice in this kind of an investigation. These are the kinds of tactics that U.S. attorneys and other prosecutors deploy all the time.

What we have seen from both Durham and William Barr over the past year and a half is a consistent dedication to conducting this and other DOJ functions strictly by the book. Durham’s investigation has not employed the Gestapo-like strong-arm tactics or serial leaking of misleading or false information to the media, like we saw from the Mueller special counsel outfit.

Take it for what it’s worth, but this take on Friday’s meeting would be exactly the kind of thing we would expect to see from a by-the-book prosecutor like John Durham.

That is all.

Today’s news moves at a faster pace than ever. Whatfinger.com is my go-to source for keeping up with all the latest events in real time.

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John Durham Interviews John Brennan as the end of Summer Grows Near

If Brennan’s not a target for Durham, who is? – Former Obama CIA Director John Brennan was interviewed by John Durham and his investigators for 8 full hours on Friday as a part of Durham’s investigation into the SpyGate/ObamaGate election fixing/coup d’etat effort of 2016 – 2018.

No one really knows what was discussed during those 8 hours, but Brennan, through a spokesman, came out of it claiming to not be a target of the investigation, at least at this time. Here’s the statement:

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As has been the case throughout the course of his investigation, Durham and his team had no comment about the day’s activities. Thus, the public is left to make of the Brennan statement what it will.

Some will think it’s Brennan giving his pals in the corrupt news media a narrative to follow. Brennan has been a professional liar throughout his entire adult life – no word how he spent his childhood, but it was probably mainly spent lying to his parents, teachers, friends and family – and there is no reason to think he would have suddenly changed that mode of operation on Friday. This is certainly a valid line of thought.

Others will take Brennan at his word and conclude Durham is just another worthless smoke screen being placed before the public by a do-nothing Department of Justice at the behest of William Barr. Given the paltry results that Durham has produced thus far, it’s hard to say that is not a fair assessment. We certainly have no evidence otherwise, other than this week’s guilty plea by corrupt ex-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who was let off with a very light sentence.

Personally, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Durham is going to target individual conspirators against whom he and Barr determine they are likely to obtain a guilty sentence from a jury in Washington, DC. Given that the District of Columbia population is roughly 96% Democrat, doing that will require them accumulating evidence that is completely irrefutable. There simply cannot be any holes in the case for the defense to exploit in order to provide the jurors with a “reasonable doubt” that they will all be desperately searching for.

Men like Brennan and James Comey and James Clapper, who rise to the very highest levels of their respective organizations, are able to do that in large part because they are highly skilled at deflecting blame and setting up plausible deniability that insulates them from internal controversies that get people who work for them fired. They are extremely adept at setting up scapegoats and ensuring the lines of damning evidence never rise to their level.

Thus, it is fairly likely that Brennan is not a target of this investigation at this time, and that Durham is focused on obtaining indictments of or cooperation from smaller fish like Clinesmith, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr and Nellie Ohr. If he is really good at pressuring these smaller fish – and his career at DOJ indicates that he is quite skilled in this area – he may be able to get one or more of them to turn in order to protect themselves. That may well have already happened with Clinesmith, although the sentencing memo entered by DOJ in his case did not indicate as much.

The cooperation of someone like Strzok or Page might enable Durham to pierce the veil enough to get at Strok’s direct boss at the time, Bill Priestap. Cooperation from Priestap might enable Durham to go after his direct boss at the time, Andrew McCabe. Cooperation from McCabe might enable Durham to get a really big fish like Comey, and Comey could, finally, lead to Brennan.

But without any such cooperation, if these little fish are willing to let themselves be gobbled up while taking one for the treasonous team, then it is likely that those of us hoping for some real justice in this case will walk away highly disappointed at the final outcome.

Like it or not, this is how these investigations go. There is literally no reason at all to believe a single word Brennan’s spokesman had to say yesterday. But until we see some real results from Durham in terms of indictments and prosecution, there is also no real reason to think Brennan is a target at this moment in time.

Barr promised action by the “end of summer.” As of today, that is exactly one month away. Durham has 31 days to assure half of the U.S. population that justice still exists in our country. He can either become a true American hero, or prove he is just another Deep State snake.

Stay tuned.

That is all.

Today’s news moves at a faster pace than ever. Whatfinger.com is my go-to source for keeping up with all the latest events in real time.

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Friday News Roundup: Durham Targets Brennan, Portland Rioters Expand Their Operations

This happened on Thursday:

Now, ok, I get it: Many of you are going to respond with “well, it’s about time! What in the hell has Durham been doing????” Yeah, ok, get it out of your system. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

…

There, you done? Feel better now?

Ok. Look, in this kind of case, which involves literally dozens of potential targets for prosecution and dozens more potential witnesses who must be vetted, federal prosecutors like Mr. Durham will always – ALWAYS – wait to interview the big fish last.

The reason why is simple: They want to give the smaller fish – like, say, Peter Strzok or Bruce Ohr or Kevin Clinesmith – every opportunity to make a deal and turn state’s witness before they talk to the really big targets like Durham and Comey. This is the natural progression of any such investigation.

So, for better or worse, this is actually great news, a sign that Durham is finally getting to the end of his investigation. Attorney General William Barr has twice promised a “report” from Durham by the “end of summer,” which is September 22. Barr has also indicated that Durham has had at least one grand jury convened, and it is the job of a grand jury to true bill indictments.

Hopefully it isn’t all a Jeff Sessions-like smoke screen, but we will find out either way soon enough.

Stay tuned.

Hey, look: A random act of actual journalism at NPR. – Watch despicable Nancy Pelosi’s reaction as her trusted toady Judy Woodruff goes off-script and actually asks her a semi-tough question:

For a moment there, Woodruff must have remembered that she used to be a journalist. You can be sure she will not make that mistake again when talking to Pelosi.

And now a word from the mindless blithering hacks at Morning Joe. – Watch this clip and marvel as the liberals at Morning Joe twist themselves into racist pretzels in their efforts to serve as apologist for the Democrat Party’s addled nominee, Joe Biden:

You just could never make this stuff up, folks. What you are watching here in real time is the Democrat Party removing its own mask and returning to its Jim Crow past. All for the sake of getting the Bad Orange Man out of the White House. Amazing.

Gosh, Ted, who tipped you off? – Portland’s communist Democrat Mayor Ted Wheeler suddenly woke up on Thursday and realized that the Democrat-funded and sponsored rioters who he has been allowing to run wild in his city are creating b-roll for President Donald Trump to use in his re-election campaign ads. Hey, I wonder what tipped him off?

From a piece at KGW8 TV in Portland:

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell spoke about the ongoing violence in Portland during a news conference Thursday.

On Wednesday night, Portland police declared a riot, arrested 8 people and used tear gas after a crowd of a couple hundred people gathered outside the East Precinct. Some people in the crowd tried to set the building on fire while officers and others were inside, the mayor said. Others tried to smash the glass doors of the precinct building and threw large, heavy rocks and other items at officers.

Wheeler said what happened Wednesday night “was intended to cause serious injury or death, and it very well could have.”

“When you commit arson with an accelerant in an attempt to burn down a building that is occupied by people that you have intentionally trapped inside, you are not demonstrating. You are attempting to commit murder,” Wheeler said.

[End]

Oh, you don’t saaaaayyyyy. But it gets better.

From a piece at Willamette Week:

“Don’t think for a moment that, if you are participating in this activity, you are not being a prop for the reelection campaign of Donald Trump,” Wheeler said. “Because you absolutely are. You are creating the B-roll film that will be used in ads nationally to help Donald Trump during his campaign. If you don’t want to be part of that, then don’t show up.”

[End]

Ok, so, what did the Democrat-funded and sponsored rioters do in response to their partner’s admonitions? Why, they expanded their operations into a residential district, naturally.

For coverage of that, we must turn to real, actual journalist Andy Ngo, since the hacks in the corrupt corporate news media refuse to do their jobs:

But never fear: The Democrat Antifa/BLM rioters did not abandon their downtown mission:

So, the situation in Portland – which your corrupt news media continues to describe as “mostly peaceful” – is now about to spiral out of control unless the rioters’ Democrat sponsors pull their funding. Maybe this was why President Trump was once again speculating about ramping up federal involvement in that city again yesterday.

That is all.

Today’s news moves at a faster pace than ever. Whatfinger is my go-to source for keeping up with all the latest events in real time.

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Trump Yanks John Brennan’s Security Clearance and 12,000 U.S. Troops From Germany

Rejoice, citizens, for good news abounds!

This is what sensible people would refer to as “a good start.”– For starters, President Donald Trump (I still never tire of typing those three glorious words in that order) announced this morning that the United States of by-God America is pulling 12,000 troops out of Germany. For those keeping count, that is fully 3,000 more troops than Trump indicated he would be pulling out of that country when the topic was first raised a few weeks ago.

Even better is the reason the President gave for making the move:

Beautiful. Wonderful. Absolutely glorious.

More detail from a report at Politico:

The Pentagon on Wednesday laid out a plan to shift nearly 12,000 service members out of Germany after President Donald Trump repeatedly said the country was “delinquent” on defense spending.

Top defense leaders said the plan, which would bring 6,400 service members home and reposition nearly 5,600 to other countries in Europe, is part of the Pentagon’s broader effort to redistribute U.S. forces across the world to better compete with new threats from Russia and China. The move will leave 24,000 troops in Germany, where the United States has stationed a significant number of forces since the end of the Cold War.

…

Esper stressed that the plan will enhance NATO’s ability to deter Russian aggression and strengthen U.S. alliances in Europe, yet also reiterated the president’s criticism of Germany.

“Let’s be clear: I think Germany is the wealthiest country in Europe, Germany can and should pay more to its defense, It should certainly meet the 2 percent standard and I would argue go above and beyond that,” Esper said, noting that the plan has already received “very positive feedback” from several European countries.

The move will cost in the “single-digit” billions of dollars, Esper said, and will begin in the coming weeks.

German officials immediately trashed the plan. Norbert Röttgen, chair of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, noted in a statement to POLITICO that the move would weaken the NATO alliance and reduce the effectiveness of the U.S. military against Russia and in the Middle East.
[End]

Thus in the end does Germany’s spokesman prove the President’s point: The country that is delinquent in its dues to NATO accusing the country that funds the preponderance of that out-dated alliance’s operations of moving to “weaken” it. Stunning hypocrisy that makes one question the wisdom of our country spending another dollar defending the German homeland.

Just as a reminder for those who have forgotten: NATO was created to defend Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union hasn’t existed for 30 years, and Russia is far less a threat to the free world than China, Iran or even North Korea.

Tell us again why NATO still exists, because the answer is truly no longer clear.

But…but…but the New York Times assured us a year ago that Brennan’s security clearance had never been revoked. – They wouldn’t lie to us, would they?

Apparently, they would. The Washington Examiner reports today that corrupt Obama CIA Director John Brennan discovered he no longer has access to classified information while he was working on a new book.

From the DC Examiner piece:

Former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of President Trump, found out he had been blocked from accessing his classified notes and records while working on his new memoir.

He writes in his forthcoming book, Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad, that after months of “haggling” he discovered the CIA was abiding by the directive Trump gave in August 2018 “that purportedly forbids anyone in the intelligence community from sharing classified information with me.”

The White House confirmed the directive was being enforced, which is news considering the New York Times reported in May of last year that the president never revoked Brennan’s security clearance.

“The President has constitutional authority to control access to classified information, which he exercised here in view of Mr. Brennan’s erratic behavior and the President’s belief that access to classified information should be solely for the benefit of the government and the American people,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said.

[End]

Brennan, who has been clearly implicated in the Obamagate schemes to fix the 2016 election and spy on the Trump campaign and transition team, is currently a target of John Durham’s investigation and likely in jeopardy of spending many years in federal prison. Obviously, it would not be in any way appropriate for such a person to maintain a security clearance while the investigation is ongoing.

It is also pretty obvious that Brennan’s book is designed to build up a fund with which to pay his legal bills, which are no doubt already mounting up. There is no reason why the federal government that he betrayed should allow him continued access to classified information with which he has very clearly demonstrated he cannot be trusted.

President Trump should be celebrated for protecting the nation from a clear and present danger.

That is all.

Today’s news moves at a faster pace than ever. Whatfinger is my go-to source for keeping up with all the latest events in real time.

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Ric Grenell Releases Obama Unmasker List – Joe Biden Included ***UPDATED***

UPDATE: Ok, let’s talk about why all of the stuff revealed by Catherine Herridge in the tweet copied below is important.

First, there is nothing illegal about the practice of “unmasking” in and of itself. It is standard procedure in Democrat and Republican administrations alike for officials to make these requests so that they can better understand briefings and other documents they are attempting to digest. So, it’s all probably legal, and every one of the 39 Obama officials named in today’s release had proper authorization to “unmask” General Flynn for these specific purposes and for their own use.

The scandal here is that many of the people on this list were engaging in unmasking not only General Flynn but a wide variety of U.S. citizens, not for their own internal, private use, but in order to be able to broadcast this information throughout the Obama Administration and cause it to be leaked, either by themselves or others, to willing accomplices within the corrupt news media.

Look at these documents copied below, and note the flurry of activity that took place on December 14 and 15. Fully 35 of the 39 Obama officials who appear on this list made an unmasking request on those dates. Why do you think that is the case?

Well, it’s most likely because that was right at the time when then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued an order that dramatically broadened the number of agencies and levels of employees with whom this information could be shared by the requesters.

Remember that? Prior to that order, government officials were very restricted in sharing this information with others in the government. Obviously, that restriction was there in order to protect the U.S. citizens who were the subjects of the unmasking efforts.

But Clapper – almost certainly acting on direct orders from Obama himself – took care of that, and as a result enabled the creation of a mountain of leaks that we saw during the Trump transition.

That’s the biggest part of this scandal.

But there’s more. For one thing, consider the fact that that flurry of activity on the 14th and 15th took place two full weeks before Flynn’s infamous phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on December 29. Remember: It is that call that Comey/McCabe/Strzok, et all at the FBI have always claimed as the event that triggered their suspicions about Gen. Flynn. This list proves that is all just another lie, and that the Obama coup cabal was targeting Flynn much earlier.

Also, think about the nature of the names you see on this list. The person with the most requests is Samantha Power, who was the Ambassador to the United Nations. What in the hell was the UN Ambassador doing making such numerous requests specific to General Flynn?

And what in the world was going on at the U.S. Treasury Department? You had no fewer than 6 Treasury officials feeling the need to unmask the designated incoming National Security Advisor. Why?

What do you think motivated the President’s own Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, to make an unmasking request on January 5? Could have been because that was the exact day on which Obama held that meeting with his national security team, and then afterwards took James Comey and Sally Yates aside to specifically talk about the operation to entrap Flynn? Could be. Seems likely.

Finally, what possible legitimate reason would the outgoing Vice President of the United States have to unmask General Flynn on January 12, 2017, just 8 days before he was to leave office. At the very least, shouldn’t Mr. Biden be asked that question by every corrupt journalist who interviews him from now until November 3? If Biden were a Republican, we all know that would certainly happen.

So, the fallout from this specific release of documents is not going to be that anyone is going to jail for doing this. The fallout is that it demonstrates once again the organized effort at the highest levels of the Obama Administration to hamper the Trump transition team, an effort that continued after Trump had assumed office.

The impact to Biden is that it clearly shows once again that he was personally involved in these efforts. There is little question that this revelation will only serve to amplify efforts by many Democrats to prevent him from becoming the nominee. This man is already operating in an atmosphere in which a new poll out this week shows that 30% of Democrat voters still do not expect him to ultimately be nominated at the party’s convention. That percentage will grow because of today’s revelation, especially when you factor in the fact that just yesterday, Biden denied any knowledge about any of this on national television.

One reader asked earlier if this might trigger Bernie Sanders to reactivate his own campaign. That’s a good question, one that most likely hinges on whether Sanders has already been bought off to get out of the race like he was in 2016. If nothing else, his price might suddenly go up.

ORIGINAL POST:

Catherine Herridge issued the following tweet shortly after 2:00 ET today:

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James Clapper

John Brennan

Samantha Power

James Comey, and….

JOE BIDEN

Holy crap.

More later.

That is all.

Today’s news moves at a faster pace than ever. Whatfinger.com is my go-to source for keeping up with all the latest events in real time.

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Grenell and Barr are Setting the Stage for Durham to Act

Today’s Campaign Update (Because the Campaign Never Ends)

Several things coming together yesterday and this morning related to Spygate and the Mike Flynn case, which are parts of the same overarching Obamagate scandal:

First, you have the federal judge in the Flynn case – Emmet Sullivan – still refusing to dismiss the case even though the Department of Justice last week made the decision to withdraw all charges and notify him that it would not prosecute the case going forward. Sullivan took the extraordinary step on Tuesday to not only request more briefings from both the defense and the prosecution, but also made it clear that he plans to accept Amicus briefs (aka, friend of the court briefs) from third parties.

Sullivan cites Washington, DC’s “Civil Rule 7(o) as if it somehow requires him to take this step, since he has obviously already received at least one such brief, and even cites the utterly corrupt judge Amy Berman Jackson as justification for doing so.

Yet, in a different citation earlier in his Minute Order, Sullivan also includes this: “An amicus brief should normally be allowed when a party is not represented competently or is not represented at all, when the amicus has an interest in some other case that may be affected by the decision in the present case… or when the amicus has unique information or perspective that can help the court beyond the help that the lawyers for the parties are able to provide. Otherwise, leave to file an amicus curiae should be denied.”

In other words, there is nothing compelling Sullivan to take this extraordinary step that will extend the government’s heinous abuse of General Flynn – it’s entirely up to his own discretion. He’s doing this because he wants to do it, for reasons that are not yet clear, but that are easy to guess.

Flynn attorney Sidney Powell pointed out yesterday that Sullivan has in the  past repeatedly denied third parties the ability to file such briefs favorable to General Flynn.

Sullivan’s a snake, plain and simple.

Second, DOJ Spokesperson Kerri Kupec appeared on Fox News with Martha MacCallum last night, and had several important and revealing things to say during her segment:

Summary:

The first key point is her reiteration of DOJ’s position that “this case should have never been brought.”

Then there’s this MOAB aimed at FBI Headquarters: “What distinguishes the FBI as a premier law enforcement agency from, say, vs. the secret police, is that they can’t just go around asking American citizens questions just for the sake of asking those questions. There needs to be a specific basis, an articulable basis for asking that question.”

On the unmasking documents that we talked about yesterday, she specifically ties that information to John Durham’s investigation, as we assumed would be the case: “Last week, ODNI provided information related to unmasking, and it’s that list that you’re referencing right now. And as it’s relevant to investigations, John Durham’s investigation specifically, I am sure he will take a look at that. And just to be clear about that, John Durham, in his review of what happened in 2016 and 2017, he’s already looking at this issue of unmasking under his broader review. I can tell you that his team is working diligently to get to the bottom of what happened, because Martha, what happened to candidate Trump and then President Trump was one of the greatest political injustices in American history and should never happen again.”

Here is what we said in yesterday’s piece about those documents:

Of course, as a DOJ spokesperson later clarified, DOJ has no intention of releasing these documents because they are ODNI documents, and the decision about whether or not to make them public rests with Ric Grenell, the Acting Director of National Intelligence.

It was Grenell, if you remember, who famously hand-delivered copies of these documents and perhaps others last Thursday to Attorney General William Barr. Corrupt media outlets like ABC have been assuming Grenell did that because he wanted Barr’s permission to make them public. As a matter of actual reality, though, Grenell delivered them to Barr because those documents are likely  to be very useful evidence in the investigation being mounted by U.S. Attorney John Durham.

Kupec then repeatedly clarifies (because MacCallum is either incredibly dense or was pretending to be so) the fact we pointed out yesterday: That these documents are ODNI documents – meaning they source from the U.S. Intelligence Community, not the FBI or the DOJ.

Think about the implications of that key fact, and what they mean to Obama-era DNI James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan.

Finally, Fox News is breathlessly reporting this morning that Acting DNI Ric Grenell is preparing to release at least some of those documents and name the names of the high Obama officials who were engaged in the thousands of illegal unmaskings of U.S. citizens today or tomorrow.

So, what to make of Kupec’s comments?

First, it’s key to remember that she is a spokesperson, and everything she says in public has been painstakingly vetted up through the entire chain of command at the U.S. Department of Justice, all the way to Barr himself. When Kupec speaks in public, she speaks for the Attorney General and the entire DOJ using very specific and pre-approved language and key messages. She’s not just talking off the top of her head.

Given that, it is extraordinarily significant that she compares what the FBI did to General Flynn to the actions of the “secret police,” a term that most Americans would tie to the Nazi Gestapo or the Soviet KGB. Remember that that analogy is now informed by the findings of Durham’s investigation, which has likely been ongoing since late 2018.

The same is true of Kupec’s out-and-out, unqualified declarative statement that “what happened to candidate Trump and then President Trump was one of the greatest political injustices in American history.”

Then there is the news that Durham has already been looking at the unmasking issue, which one would have naturally assumed since that operation was both a by-product of and an informative element to the Obama Coup Cabal’s illegal domestic spying operation. This is new information that Barr has not been specific about in his numerous interviews on the Durham investigation.

That new information, and the other key points laid out by Kupec in this 6 minute clip indicate that, when you see the names of the unmaskers revealed by Grenell and the DNI documents, it is almost a certainty that those are the names of key targets of the Durham investigation.

Grenell did not just run over to DOJ HQ to meet with Barr last Thursday after working hours for fun. It is highly likely that Grenell personally took those documents over to Barr in order to review them together and to get Barr’s agreement that Durham’s investigation is now at a point that making them public would serve to set the stage for further public action by Durham.

UPDATE: And just like magic in support of that point, CBS News’s Catherine Herridge issued this tweet about 15 minutes after I finalized this post:

Timing is everything in life.

The final key point to remember in all of this is that John Durham is a prosecutor, not a report-writer. The public actions taken by federal prosecutors are: Perp-walks, bookings, indictments and trials.

Of course, it remains possible that Durham is really not doing anything – if you see news that he is only working on a report, you will know that is the case – and it’s all just for show.

But boy, over the last 7 days, it’s been one hell of a show.

That is all.

Today’s news moves at a faster pace than ever. Whatfinger.com is my go-to source for keeping up with all the latest events in real time.

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Reminder: Obama Knew Everything

Today’s Campaign Update (Because the Campaign Never Ends)

Don’t kid yourselves otherwise, folks: Obama knew everything that was happening in his administration. If you think Brennan and Comey and Strzok and McCabe and Priestap and Page and Baker and Rice and Lynch and all the other participants in the FBI/DOJ Coup Cabal just took it upon themselves to a) cover up the Hillary Clinton email scandal, b) attempt to rig the 2016 general election, c) mount an illegal spying effort on members of the Trump campaign, d) continue that illegal spying effort on the Trump transition team, e) defraud the FISA court in the process, f) entrap and frame General Mike Flynn, g) attempt to entrap and frame President Donald Trump himself, and g) invent a false rationale for the appointment of a special counsel whose job was really to mount a coup d’etat on U.S. soil, and hid all of that from Barack Hussein Obama His Own Self, then you are terribly naive and most likely intentionally uninformed.

The key to really understanding Obama’s first-hand knowledge of and almost certain involvement in the planning of all of these things is to understand the real nature of the meeting of January 5, 2017. Amid the previously-withheld documents released over the past ten days, we discover this about that meeting:

“Yates first learned of the December 2016 calls between [LTG Michael] Flynn and [Russian Ambassador to the United States, Sergey] Kislyak on January 5, 2017, while in the Oval Office. Yates, along with then FBI-Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, were at the White House to brief members of the Obama Administration on the classified Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Activities in Recent U.S Elections. President Obama was joined by his National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, and others from the National Security Council,” the document states.

“After the briefing, Obama dismissed the group but asked Yates and Comey to stay behind. Obama started by saying he had ‘learned of the information about Flynn’ and his conversation with Kislyak about sanctions. Obama specified he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information. At that point, Yates had no idea what the President was talking about, but figured it out based on the conversation. Yates recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act, but can’t recall if he specified there was an ‘investigation,'” it continues.

Note how Yates, one of the most reprehensible of all Obama sycophants, is shocked to learn that the POTUS himself somehow knows about the FBI’s efforts to dig up dirt on General Flynn. And remember that this is just a day after Peter Strzok had intervened to reverse the decision that Priestap and McCabe had already made to shut that effort down, which we now know would have been the proper decision. But here we are on January 5, and the thing is still alive and Obama’s discussing the details directly with Comey. That is stunning in and of itself.

But even more important here is to remember what is so key about the meeting of the full group that took place before Yates’s revelation. Let’s remember that this is the very meeting about which Susan Rice wrote her infamous “memo to self” in which she attempted to make the meeting and Obama’s conduct in it seem to be completely innocuous and “by the book.” Chuck Ross, then with the Daily Caller, remembered that incident in 2018:

Rice sent the email at 12:15 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2017, her final day in office. In the message, she memorialized a Jan. 5 Oval Office meeting she attended with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

The topic was the ongoing investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion. According to press reports, Comey briefed Obama that day on the unverified Steele dossier.

Grassley and Graham laid out their concerns with the email in a letter sent to Rice last week.

“It strikes us as odd that, among your activities in the final moments on the final day of the Obama administration, you would feel the need to send yourself such an unusual email purporting to document a conversation involving President Obama and his interactions with the FBI regarding the Trump/Russia investigation,” they wrote.

In her email, Rice wrote to herself:

On January 5, following a briefing by [Intelligence Community] leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also present.

She said that Obama began the conversation “by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book.’”

“The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book,” she continued.

Rice also wrote that there was a discussion over whether classified information regarding Russia should be withheld from the incoming Trump administration.

“From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia,” she wrote.

Grassley and Graham noted that the next portion of the email contained classified information and remains redacted. In the next section, Rice wrote: “The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Comey said he would.”

Grassley and Graham, who serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee, say they question whether the Obama team conducted the Trump investigation “by the book.”

[End]

This was a blatantly transparent, last-minute attempt by Rice to try to sanitize this meeting for the public record. There was literally no other reason for her to be engaging in this particular activity on her final day in office.

But immediately following this meeting, the FBI redoubled its efforts to entrap Flynn. Obama also took the action of drastically loosening rules around the sharing of classified information within various departments of the administration, including raw intelligence that was use by his senior people to illegally unmask hundreds of American citizens. This resulted in a flood of leaks to corrupt media outlets intended to damage the incoming Trump Administration.

The great Mollie Hemingway had a really good piece on Friday detailing other despicable actions that flowed out of this January 5 meeting led by Obama His Own Self:

A clearer picture is emerging of the drastic steps that were taken to accomplish Obama’s goal in the following weeks and months. Shortly thereafter, high-level operatives began intensely leaking selective information supporting a supposed Russia-Trump conspiracy theory, the incoming National Security Advisor was ambushed, and the incoming Attorney General was forced to recuse himself from oversight of investigations of President Trump. At each major point in the operation, explosive media leaks were a key strategy in the operation to take down Trump.

Not only was information on Russia not fully shared with the incoming Trump team, as Obama directs, the leaks and ambushes made the transition chaotic, scared quality individuals away from working in the administration, made effective governance almost impossible, and materially damaged national security. When Comey was finally fired on May 9, in part for his duplicitousness regarding his handling of the Russia collusion theory, he orchestrated the launch of a Special Counsel probe that continued his efforts for another two years. That probe ended with Mueller finding no evidence of any American colluding with Russia to steal the 2016 election, much less Trump or anyone connected to him.

An analysis of the timeline from early 2017 shows a clear pattern of behavior from the federal officials running the collusion operation against the Trump campaign. It also shows how essential media leaks were to their strategy to sideline key law enforcement and intelligence officials and cripple the ability of the incoming Trump administration to run the country.

[…]

January 5: Yates, Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper briefed Obama on Russia-related matters in the Oval Office. Biden and Rice also attended. After the Obama briefing, the intelligence chiefs who would be leaving at the end of the term were dismissed and Yates and Comey, who would continue in the Trump administration, were asked to stay. Not only did Obama give his guidance about how to perpetuate the Russia collusion theory investigations, he also talked about Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to both Comey and Yates. Interestingly, Clapper, Comey, and Yates all said that they did not brief Obama about these phone calls. Clapper testified he did not brief Obama on the calls, Yates learned about the calls from Obama himself during that meeting, and Comey also testified he didn’t brief Obama about the calls, even though the intelligence was an FBI product. Rice, who publicly lied but later admitted under oath to her widespread use of unmasked intelligence at the end of the Obama administration, likely briefed Obama on the calls and would have had access to the intelligence. Comey mentions the Logan Act at this meeting.

…

January 6: An ostensibly similar briefing about Russian interference efforts during the 2016 campaign was given to President-elect Trump. After that briefing, Comey privately briefed Trump on the most salacious and absurd “pee tape” allegation in the Christopher Steele dossier, a document the FBI had already used to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page. Comey told Trump he was telling him because CNN was looking for any reason it could find to publish a story about Russia having compromising information on him, and he wanted to warn Trump about it. He did not mention the dossier was completely unverified or that it was the product of a secretly funded operation by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.

January 10: In an amazing coincidence, CNN found the excuse to publish the Russia claims after a high-level Obama intelligence operative leaked that Comey had briefed Trump about the dossier. This selective leak, which was credulously accepted by CNN reporters Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein, may have been the most important step in the operation to harm the incoming Trump administration. The leak of the briefing of Trump was used to legitimize a ridiculous dossier full of allegations the FBI knew to be false that multiple news organizations had previously refused to report on for lack of substantiation, and created a cloud of suspicion over Trump’s campaign and administration by insinuating he was being blackmailed by Russia.

January 12: The next part of the strategy was the explosive leak to David Ignatius of the Washington Post to legitimize the use against Flynn of the Logan Act, a likely unconstitutional 1799 law prohibiting private individuals, not public incoming national security advisors, from discussing foreign policy with foreign governments. Ignatius accepted the leak from the Obama official. He wrote that Flynn had called Kislyak. “What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about ‘disputes’ with the United States. Was its spirit violated?” Flynn’s routine and appropriate phone call became fodder for a developing grand conspiracy theory of Russia collusion. In discussions with investigators, both DOJ’s Mary McCord and Comey conspicuously cite this Ignatius column as somehow meaningful in the approach they would take with Flynn. “Nothing, to my mind, happens until the 13th of January, when David Ignatius publishes a column that contains a reference to communication Michael Flynn had with the Russians. That was on the 13th of January,” Comey said of the column that ran online on January 12. In fact, quite a bit had happened at the FBI prior to that leak, with much conversation about how to utilize the Logan Act against Flynn. And the leak-fueled Ignatius column would later be used by FBI officials to justify an illegal ambush interview of Flynn in the White House.

January 23: Another important criminal leak was given to Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller of the Washington Post, also based on criminal leaks. Their article, headlined “FBI reviewed Flynn’s calls with Russian ambassador but found nothing illicit,” was intended to make Flynn feel safe and put him at ease about the FBI stance on those calls the day before they planned to ambush him in an interview. The article was used to publicize false information when it said, “Although Flynn’s contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were listened to, Flynn himself is not the active target of an investigation, U.S. officials said.” In fact, emails prior to this date confirm Flynn was their prime target. This article was later cited by McCabe as the reason why they were justified in concealing from Flynn the real purpose of their interview. Flynn later asked McCabe if he knew how all the information about his phone calls had been made public and whether it had been leaked. Any potential response from McCabe to Flynn has been redacted from his own notes about the conversation.

[End]

Mollie details much, much more in her piece, which everyone should go read in full. All of these despicable, anti-American actions flowed directly out of that January 5 meeting in the White House.

One big, glaring aspect about that meeting, in addition to directly implicating Obama in all of this, is the fact that Quid Pro Creepy Uncle China Joe Biden was also in attendance that day. That’s right: The presumptive presidential nominee of the Democrat Party also knew about all of this, although his ability to retain that knowledge remains an open question.

I’ve said this for three years now, but it bears repeating again: This is the biggest scandal in American history. We had a sitting President of the United States actively involved in an effort to fix a national election and then to bring down his successor. The truth of this is as plain as the nose on your face, and so horrible that it is sickening to contemplate.

What this means is that everything President Trump has told you about this scandal has been true: There was no Russia collusion in his campaign; Trump Tower was being illegally spied upon by the Obama FBI and other intelligence agencies; Mike Flynn was framed; Roger Stone and Paul Manafort have been unfairly brutalized in Soviet-style show trials led by Obama appointed judges; There was no legal basis for the appointment of a Special Counsel; Jim Comey did indeed attempt to entrap and frame Trump himself; on and on it goes.

And yesterday, when you heard President Trump tell the hosts of Fox and Friends that Obama himself knew about it all and participated in the planning, that was true, too. It all goes back to that meeting of January 5, 2017. That is the fulcrum around which all the myriad aspects of this still-unfolding act of outright treason against America revolves.

That is all.

Today’s news moves at a faster pace than ever. Whatfinger.com is my go-to source for keeping up with all the latest events in real time.

Open post

William Barr Drops Some Bombs In Fox Interview

Today’s Campaign Update (Because the Campaign Never Ends)

This is all good to know. Now, some indictments and perp walks, please? – In his interview aired on The Ingraham Angle last night, William Barr laid down several key markers. During the course of the 7-minute clip below, he endorses President Trump’s firing of corrupt ICIG Michael Atkinson – directly refuting the assessment of his plodding underling, DOJ IG Michael Horowitz – and clarifies that U.S. Attorney John Durham’s role is to prosecute the guilty, not necessarily to write a report.

Unfortunately to many of us, he also endorses the renewal of the FISA law that has been so horribly and systematically abused by the hopelessly corrupt FBI. But even there we find some encouraging news: Rather than repeating his demand for a “clean” renewal of the statute, he talks about putting in some “safeguards” that would work to prevent further abuse. But he does not clarify whether he means those safeguards to be in the statute – which would give them the force of law – or in FBI ‘procedure,’ which would make them nothing more than an inconvenience for corrupt FBI officials to continue to ignore.

Below is the video clip, followed by a transcript:

Transcript:

Ingraham – I believe you urged consideration of the federal inmate population given the coronavirus. Where does that stand now?

Barr – We’re not going to open our prisons and let prisoners go free. Our mission is to protect the public, and we’re not going to do anything that’s contrary to that. Where we find a prisoner who is vulnerable because of their age or medical condition; that has served the substantial part of their sentence; has not been convicted of a sexual assault or a violent crime; does not pose a threat to the community; we are using every tool we have to put them into home confinement, provided we thing home confinement will not be more dangerous than staying where they are. And also, after a quarantine period where we are sure they’re not taking the disease into the public.

Ingraham – You have been criticized recently for focusing on the drug cartels during the Covid virus [plays clip of idiot reporters].

Barr – Well, it might come as a surprise to some of these people that the Justice Department has 115,000 people who are dedicated to protecting the public safety, including preventing narcotics trafficking. And we’re actually able to do more than one thing at a time. And we’re handling different kinds of cases. Maybe fraud isn’t on the top of their mind, but we still police fraud. It’s interesting, because drugs kill 70,000 Americans a year – 70,000 a year. It’s poison, and we have to make sure that during this period the cartels are not taking advantage of the United States and pumping this poison up into the United States.

Ingraham – And the border is getting tougher to penetrate now, and so they’re coming in via boat and navigable waterways.

Barr – Right, and they’re relying more on boats to bring the cocaine up from South America up for further transportation into the United States. So, the Justice Department can do more than one thing at once. I’m amused whenever I see, you know, ‘Barr has intervened in this case, or Barr has done such and such’ at the time of the Covid crisis. Business for the Department of Justice has to continue.

Ingraham – John Brennan has come out, smashing the President’s firing of Inspector General Michael Atkinson, let’s listen:

[Brennan Clip] – By removing Mr. Atkinson, and I think also sending a signal to others, Mr. Trump continues to show his insecurity in terms of trying to stop anybody who was going to expose, again the lawlessness, that I think he not only has allowed to continue, but also that he abets.

Barr – I think the president did the right thing in removing Atkinson. From the vantage point of the Dept. of Justice, he had interpreted his statute; which is a fairly narrow statute that gave him jurisdiction over wrong-doing by intelligence people; and tried to turn it into a commission to explore anything in the government, and immediately report it to congress without letting the executive branch look at it and determine whether there was any problem.  He was told this in a letter from the department of justice, and he is obliged to follow the interpretation of the department of justice, and he ignored it. So I think the President was correct in firing him.

Ingraham – And it’s the second inspector general he’s fired since the beginning of this pandemic. And of course that is used to say: ‘well, the president doesn’t want a watchdog’.

Barr – No, I don’t think that’s true. I think he wants responsible watchdogs.

Ingraham – What can you tell us about the state of John Durham’s investigation? People have been waiting for the, the final report, on what happened with this, what can you tell us?

Barr– Well I think a report y’know, may be, and probably will be, a by-product of his activity; but his primary focus isn’t to prepare a report, he is looking to bring to justice people who were engaged in abuses if he can show that there were criminal violations; and that’s what the focus is on. And, as you know being a lawyer yourself, building these cases – especially the sprawling case we have between us that went on for two or three years here – it takes some time, it takes some time to build the case.

So he’s diligently pursuing it.  My own view is that the evidence shows that we’re not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness, there was something far more troubling here; and we’re going to get to the bottom of it. And if people broke the law, and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted.

Ingraham – The president is very frustrated, I think you obviously know that. About Andrew McCabe, he believes that people like McCabe and others just were able to basically flout the laws, and so far with impunity.

Barr – I think the president has every right to be frustrated, because I think what happened to him was one of the greatest travesties in American history.  Without any basis, they started this investigation of his campaign; and even more concerning actually, is what happened after the campaign; a whole pattern of events while he was President, to sabotage the presidency. And I think that, or at least had the effect of sabotaging the presidency.

Ingraham – Will FISA abuses be prevented going forward given what happened here where FISA judges were not given critical pieces of information; material facts about evidence that informed the governments’ okaying of surveillance on American citizens.

Barr – You know I think it’s possible to put in a regime that will make it very hard, either to willfully circumvent FISA, or to do so sloppily without due regard for the rights of the American person involved. And also to make it very clear that any misconduct will be discovered and discovered fairly promptly.  So I do think we can put in safeguards that will enable us to go forward with this important tool. I think it’s very sad, and the people who abused FISA have a lot to answer for. Because this was an important tool to protect the American people, they abused it, they undercut public confidence in FISA but also the FBI as an institution. And we have to rebuild that.

[End]

So, there you have it. You can interpret it any way you want, and I know most of you will. But in doing so, you should think about why Barr felt the need to give this particular interview at this particular time? He isn’t under any real scrutiny from the corrupt news media right now, or under any cloud of controversy.

Thus, the timing of this interview is quite interesting, as well as the content. It indicates to me that Barr wanted to use this interview to send some very specific messages to some very specific people, including John Brennan. Otherwise, what reason would there have been to do it?

Think about it.

That is all.

Today’s news moves at a faster pace than ever. Whatfinger.com is my go-to source for keeping up with all the latest events in real time.

Open post

This Will Drive the Deep State Nuts: Trump Preparing for a Major House-Cleaning

Today’s Campaign Update, Part II (Because the Campaign Never Ends)

Yesterday’s Campaign Update focused on the efforts by Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Ric Grenell to identify and get rid of the bad actors remaining embeded within the Intelligence Community (IC), and the panic that is creating in the Deep State and its corrupt media hacks at the New York Times.

Today, Jonathan Swan – who is actually a pretty solid working journalist – at Axios has a report that will drive the Brennans, Comeys and Clappers of the world even crazier: It turns out that President Trump has assigned people within his body of trusted advisors to spend the last year-and-a-half compiling lists of disloyal government officials, along with names of Trump supporters who are qualified and willing to replace them.

As reported by Swan:

The Trump White House and its allies, over the past 18 months, assembled detailed lists of disloyal government officials to oust — and trusted pro-Trump people to replace them — according to more than a dozen sources familiar with the effort who spoke to Axios.

Driving the news: By the time President Trump instructed his 29-year-old former body man and new head of presidential personnel to rid his government of anti-Trump officials, he’d gathered reams of material to support his suspicions.

  • While Trump’s distrust has only intensified since his impeachment and acquittal, he has long been on the hunt for “bad people” inside the White House and U.S. government, and fresh “pro-Trump” options. Outside advisers have been happy to oblige.

Oh, man, heads must be exploding at the Times, the Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC over this one. And can you imagine the nervous breakdowns taking place all over the offices of the CIA, FBI, DOJ and State Department?

Perhaps the best part of Swan’s piece is his concluding paragraph:

The bottom line: As the New York Times’ Peter Baker wrote on Saturday, “in some of the most critical corners of the Trump administration, officials show up for work now never entirely sure who will be there by the end of the evening — themselves included.”

Good. Great. Fantastic. This is three years overdue, a house-cleaning the President has been counseled to forego due to political factors and the interminable coup d’etat effort against him led by Rod Rosenstein, Robert Mueller, Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi.

Now that the idiotic impeachment scam has run its course, President Trump – according to Swan – feels liberated, free to finally rid his administration of seditious Obama/Bush/Clinton holdovers and put his own people into key positions. In every previous presidential administration in our history, this kind of house-cleaning was considered to be standard operating procedure. But due to the efforts of the Deep State and its corrupt media toadies, it has taken three long years enduring constant leaks, subversions and betrayals for this President to feel free to finally do what he was elected to do.

Man, this is going to be some fun.

That is all.

Today’s news moves at a faster pace than ever. Whatfinger.com is my go-to source for keeping up with all the latest events in real time.

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