Senators Want to Know Why Former FBI Officials Refused to Cooperate With Durham Investigation

U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) want Special Counsel John Durham to explain why former high-level government officials refused to cooperate with his investigation exposing the FBI for its many failures in the bogus Trump-Russia collusion probe. 

Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and Johnson, ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent Durham a letter Tuesday asking why former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and former FBI Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division Peter Strzok declined to fully cooperate.

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Commentary: Abandon the Swamp and Let it Rot

Suppose a document drops in the wilderness and no one is around to hear it. Does it make a sound? I submit that John Durham just tested this Bishop Berkeleyesque query. The special counsel spent four years beavering away in the forests of the deep state and what did he produce? Three hundred pages telling us what, for the most part, we already knew and with the result that exactly nothing, apart from a little hand wringing, will happen. 

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Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Is There Anything the FBI Won’t Do?

The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant – ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech. 

“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the bureau said in a statement. “As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.” 

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Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: In Today’s America, Some Really Are More Equal than Others

That once distinguished the United States from illiberal regimes following the Orwellian mantra “some are more equal than others” was the hallowed American idea of “equal justice under the law.”

The phrase is engraved above the entrance to the United States Supreme Court – an ideal that took centuries to achieve. Yet it is an ancient concept – what the Greeks called isonomia that distinguished classical democratic Athens from its anti-democratic rivals. Isonomia later became enshrined as the central criterion of all Western consensual governments.

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Unpacking the Apparent Trump-Hillary Double Standard: For Her, the FBI Helped Obstruct Its Own Investigation

Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch obtained evidence that a computer contractor working under the direction of Hillary Clinton’s legal team destroyed subpoenaed records that the former secretary of state stored on a private email server she originally kept at her New York home, and then lied to investigators about it. Yet no charges were brought against Clinton, her lawyers, or her paid consultant.

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Commentary: Former Feds Give Justice Department a Bad Name

Andrew Weissmann is one weird dude, to say the least.

Weissmann, an author, law professor, and MSNBC legal analyst, is a prolific user of social media—but rather than post a head shot on his Twitter bio page, Weissmann has a photo of a dog staring down a doll resembling Donald Trump lying face-up on the floor. It’s unclear if the dog is supposed to represent Weissmann, described as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “pit bull” during the Russia election collusion investigation, or it’s just another indication of Weissmann’s insatiable obsession with the 45th president of the United States.

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Commentary: FBI Chief Comey Misled Congress’s ‘Gang of Eight’ over Russiagate, Lisa Page Memo Reveals

The FBI deceived the House, Senate and the Justice Department about the substance and strength of evidence undergirding its counterintelligence investigation of President Trump, according to a recently declassified document and other material.

A seven-page internal FBI memo dated March 8, 2017, shows that “talking points” prepared for then-FBI Director James Comey for his meeting the next day with the congressional leadership were riddled with half-truths, outright falsehoods, and critical omissions. Both the Senate and the House opened investigations and held hearings based in part on the misrepresentations made in those FBI briefings, one of which was held in the Senate that morning and the other in the House later that afternoon. RealClearInvestigations reached out to every member of the leadership, sometimes known as the “Gang of Eight.” Some declined to comment, while others did not respond to queries.

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Commentary: It’s Time to Dismantle the Dysfunctional, Self-Serving, Gluttonous Company Town That Is D.C.

Gertrude Stein famously warned that it was important to know how far to go when going too far.

It pains me to admit that Democrats seem to have a far better sense of all that than do Republicans. Perhaps it’s because Democrats have a visceral appreciation of William Hazlitt’s observation that “those who lack delicacy hold us in their power.” The Democrats, that is to say, long ago became expert at the game of holding their opponents to standards that they themselves violate not just with impunity but with ostentatious glee.

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Poll: Most Republicans Distrust the FBI

For decades, the Federal Bureau of Investigation enjoyed strong support from Republican political leaders and voters. But the agency’s reputation has crashed among its most dependable constituency amid scandal, corruption, and flagrant politicking on behalf of the Democratic Party.

A Rasmussen poll released today shows that 57 percent of Republicans hold an unfavorable view of the FBI; 47 percent of all likely voters surveyed at the end of December view the FBI unfavorably.

As if to prove the bureau has become the jackboots of the national Democratic Party rather than a nonpartisan law enforcement agency, a whopping 63 percent of Democrats have a favorable opinion of the FBI.

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Commentary: The FBI Has Lost All Credibility

The Washington, D.C.-based Federal Bureau of Investigation has lost all credibility as a disinterested investigatory agency. Now we learn from a whistleblower that the agency was allegedly investigating moms and dads worried about the teaching of critical race theory in their kids’ schools.

In truth, since 2015, the FBI has been constantly in the news—and mostly in a negative and constitutionally disturbing light.

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Analysis: The Biggest Loser of the Durham Indictments May Be James Comey’s FBI

Special Counsel John Durham’s latest criminal case is as much an indictment of James Comey’s FBI as it is of the primary source of the Steele dossier, whom Durham accuses of repeatedly lying to agents.

The Steele dossier was the central evidence used by the FBI to win four consecutive FISA warrants targeting Trump’s campaign — and in 39 pages of painstaking detail the indictment lays out just how flawed and fake central elements of the dossier were.

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Commentary: Christopher Steele Is a Product of Corrupt FBI

Just as the special counsel’s investigation into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane—the FBI counterintelligence probe launched in the summer of 2016 to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—is showing signs of life, one of the central figures in the hoax is attempting to burnish his sullied image.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos has produced a documentary featuring Christopher Steele, the man responsible for the so-called dossier bearing his name. “Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier,” streamed on Hulu Monday night; promotional clips hinted that, far from a hard-hitting interview exposing Steele for the charlatan he is, Stephanopoulos gave Steele a chance to spin his story ahead of possible new indictments related to John Durham’s inquiry into the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax.

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Commentary: The Left Destroys Everything It Touches

What was the purpose for the insane opposition of the Left between 2017 and 2021? To usher in a planned nihilism, an incompetent chaos, a honed anarchy to wreck the country in less than a year?

No sooner had Donald Trump entered office than scores of House Democrats filed motions for impeachment, apparently for thought crimes that he might, some day, in theory, could possibly commit.

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Investigation: Biden Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Tied to Alleged 2016 Clinton Scheme to Co-Opt the CIA and FBI to Tar Trump

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan figures prominently in a grand jury investigation run by Special Counsel John Durham into an alleged 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign scheme to use both the FBI and CIA to tar Donald Trump as a colluder with Russia, according to people familiar with the criminal probe, which they say has broadened into a conspiracy case.

Sullivan is facing scrutiny, sources say, over potentially false statements he made about his involvement in the effort, which continued after the election and into 2017. As a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton, Sullivan spearheaded what was known inside her campaign as a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin through dubious email-server records provided to the agencies, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: The New Regressive Dark Ages

Once upon a time long ago, we agreed there were certain immutable laws of human nature. These laws were based on facts, reality, and data. 

In other words, we accepted common sense about the way the world worked according to logical and even “scientific” principles. That assumption defined us as “enlightened” rather than Dark Age reductionists and ideological- or myth-driven zealots. 

Not now. “Progressives,” especially the media, are most often regressive, anti-Enlightenment, and intolerant people, who start with a deductive premise and then make the evidence conform to it—or else. 

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FBI Knew DOJ Was Preparing to Fire Comey Long Before Trump Ordered It

Newly declassified FBI memos provide startling new details that undercut the frenzied 2017 effort to investigate Donald Trump for obstruction, revealing the FBI knew Director James Comey’s firing had been conceived by Justice Department leadership long before the president pulled the trigger during a key moment in the Russia probe.

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Sen. Marsha Blackburn Says James Comey Has ‘Memory Issues’ Because He Cannot Recall Details of Crossfire Hurricane Investigation

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) appeared on Fox Business’ Morning with Maria on Thursday and asked how former FBI director Jim Comey and others could have been so oblivious about details on Crossfire Hurricane.

Crossfire Hurricane refers to the FBI investigation of alleged collusion between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign with Russia.

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James Comey Testifies That He’s ‘Proud’ of FBI’s ‘By the Book’Crossfire Hurricane Investigation

Fired FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday testified that he is “proud” of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane (CH) investigation, the manifestly corrupt deep state operation that targeted the Trump campaign in 2016.

Comey appeared remotely before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions about his role in the anti-Trump operation, which included the FBI’s use of fraudulent applications to obtain surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.

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Comey Says He ‘Can’t Imagine’ He’s a Target of Durham Probe

Former FBI Director James Comey said Sunday that he has not had contact with the federal prosecutor investigating the bureau’s probe of the Trump campaign, but that he “can’t imagine” that he’s a target of a criminal inquiry.

“Given that I know what happened during 2016, which was a bunch of people trying to do the right thing consistent with the law, I’m not worried at all about that investigation of the investigation,” Comey said in an interview Sunday on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

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Comey Said He Had ‘No Indication’ Flynn Colluded with Russia According to Declassified ‘By the Book’ Email

A newly declassified document confirms that the Obama administration was spying on Lt. General Michael Flynn even though the FBI had “no indication” that President Trump’s short-lived national security advisor had been colluding with Russia.

According to the document, disgraced former FBI director James Comey told then-President Obama that he had “no indication thus far that Flynn has passed classified information to Kislyak.”

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Senator Lindsey Graham Sets Vote to Subpoena Comey, Brennan and Dozens More in Oversight of Crossfire Hurricane

The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on June 4 whether to authorize subpoenas for documents and testimony from more than 50 current or former government officials, including James Comey and John Brennan, as part of the panel’s investigation into abuse of the surveillance process during Crossfire Hurricane.

The committee will debate and vote June 4 on whether to issue the subpoenas, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Judiciary panel.

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UNMASKED: Biden, Comey, Brennan, Plus 16 More Obama Insiders Requested the Identity of Michael Flynn

Former Vice President Joe Biden and the directors of the three main U.S. intelligence agencies submitted so-called “unmasking” requests for information about Michael Flynn contained in highly classified intelligence reports, according to documents released Wednesday.

The documents show that an unmasking request was made in Biden’s name on Jan. 12, 2017. Similar requests were made under the names of James Comey, John Brennan and James Clapper, the former directors of the FBI, CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, respectively.

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‘Appalling’ FBI Documents Show Flynn Was Targeted with Perjury Trap

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on Wednesday unsealed eleven pages of FBI emails and handwritten notes that provide further evidence that retired general Michael Flynn was set up for a perjury trap by the senior members of the Bureau.

The new documents are “even more appalling than the Friday production,” said Flynn’s lead  attorney Sidney Powell.

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President Trump ‘Strongly Considering’ Full Pardon for Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he is “strongly considering” a pardon for Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who pleaded guilty in the special counsel’s probe to lying to the FBI.

Trump cited an unspecified report that the FBI and Justice Department “lost” records related to Flynn, a retired Army general.

“How convenient,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “I am strongly considering a Full Pardon!”

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Commentary: A Deep Dive into the Monstrous Lie Behind CrowdStrike and the ‘Russian Hack’

Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 presidential election was predicated largely on the claim Russian intelligence had hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers ahead of the November election. Russia’s guilt is such an article of faith among our political class that a Republican-controlled Congress imposed sanctions on Russia and President Trump signed on, substantially worsening relations with an important and potentially dangerous nation. 

Since those sanctions were imposed, Mueller’s team confirmed the Russian espionage they were meant to punish. Since its publication last year, the Washington establishment has treated the Mueller report almost as a sacred document.

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McCabe’s Leak Denials Cast Suspicion on His Loyal Aide, Lisa Page

Andrew McCabe’s denials to his FBI colleagues that he was behind a media leak related to the Clinton Foundation investigation in October 2016 cast suspicion on his loyal aide, Lisa Page, former FBI Director James Comey said in an interview with the Justice Department’s inspector general.

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Commentary: James Comey Would Spy on the Trump Campaign All Over Again

Another key takeaway from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’ report on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses by the Justice Department, FBI and intelligence agencies against President Donald Trump and his campaign in 2016 is that no attempt was made to corroborate allegations by former British spy Christopher Steele by interviewing his sources until after the allegations were published by Buzzfeed on Jan. 10, 2017 and subsequently discredited.

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EXCLUSIVE Kimberly Guilfoyle Commentary: Horowitz Didn’t Exonerate the FBI – He Eviscerated It

The recent congressional testimony of Justice Department Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz suggests there are only two possible explanations for the botched Russia collusion probe: either the FBI team responsible for the investigation were incompetent or they were corrupt.

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Commentary: The Military-Intelligence Complex

Much has been written about the so-called Resistance of disgruntled Clinton, Obama, and progressive activists who have pledged to stop Donald Trump’s agenda. The choice of the noun “Resistance,” of course, conjures up not mere “opposition,” but is meant to evoke the French “resistance” of World War II – in the melodramatic sense of current loyal progressive patriots doing their best to thwart by almost any means necessary the Nazi-like Trump.

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Commentary: No, James Comey, America Doesn’t Want Your Help

America is a dangerously divided nation. Democrats, unable to accept the results of a presidential election three years ago, would now undo the constitutional expression of American voters by pushing a half-cocked impeachment inquiry. Democratic presidential candidates offer outlandish ideas such as free healthcare to illegal immigrants and subsidized gender reassignment surgery for inmates while Democratic voters fret their field of candidates is too old, too left-wing, and too sluggish to oust Donald Trump in 2020.

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Commentary: The Case for Prosecuting Comey and Brennan

by Adam Mill   Twenty-five years ago, the Arnold Schwarzenegger action hit “True Lies” depicted a jealous husband abusing his access to powerful tools intended to fight terrorism to discover whether his wife was having an affair. The character played by Tom Arnold lamely warns Schwarzenegger’s Harry Tasker that using…

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Trey Gowdy Offers Tip to Republicans: ‘Look for Emails Between Brennan and Comey’

by Chuck Ross   Former South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy offered up a tip Monday night for congressional investigators probing the Obama administration’s handling of the Trump-Russia investigation. “So whoever’s investigating this, tell them to look for emails between Brennan and Comey in December 2016,” Gowdy said in an interview…

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Comey Says Strzok Damaged FBI’s Reputation, Undermined Trump-Russia Probe

by Chuck Ross   Former FBI Director James Comey acknowledged Thursday that former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page damaged the bureau’s reputation and possibly undermined the Trump-Russia investigation by exchanging text messages bashing President Donald Trump. “So do you acknowledge that this whole episode with Strzok and Page,…

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Commentary: The Fright of James Comey

by Victor Davis Hanson   In a recent op-ed, fired FBI Director James Comey was back again preaching to the nation about the dangers of Donald Trump and his capacity to corrupt any top-ranking federal official of lower character than Comey’s own. Comey seems to have become utterly unhinged by Donald…

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Commentary: The Eternal Conflict of the Progressive Mind

by Victor Davis Hanson   One of the strangest things about the series of psychodramas that surround the ongoing effort to remove President Trump before the 2020 election is progressive schizophrenia. In teenage fashion, one moment a player in the Trump removal intrigue is deemed by the media-progressive nexus a…

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Commentary: The Tables Turn in Russian Collusion Hunt

by Victor Davis Hanson   The irony of the entire Russian collusion hoax is that accusers who cried the loudest about leaking, collusion, lying, and obstruction are themselves soon very likely to be accused of just those crimes. Now that Robert Mueller’s 674-day, $30 million investigation is over and has…

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James Comey in Op-Ed Says He Doesn’t Care What Investigation Uncovers

by Chuck Ross   James Comey claimed in an op-ed Thursday that he does not care one way or the other whether special counsel Robert Mueller finds evidence that President Donald Trump conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election or obstructed the FBI’s collusion probe. But the claim, which…

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Commentary: A Tight and Tangled ‘Collusion’ Web

by Roger Kimball   Most people reading this will know Sir Walter Scott’s famous couplet (from the narrative poem Marmion): Oh, what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive! Less well known, but undeservedly so, is the excellent completing couplet by J. R. Pope, published under the…

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Commentary: The Greatest Constitutional Crisis Since the Civil War

by Conrad Black   The most immense and dangerous public scandal in American history is finally cracking open like a ripe pomegranate. The broad swath of the Trump-hating media that has participated in what has amounted to an unconstitutional attempt to overthrow the government are reduced to reporting the events…

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Commentary: The Real Reason Democrats Have Postponed Barr’s Confirmation Is All About ‘Russia’

by Julie Kelly   After what seemed to be a done deal following a relatively smooth public hearing last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee now has delayed until February 7 the vote to confirm William Barr, President Trump’s nominee for attorney general. The reason, according to news reports, is lingering concerns…

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Commentary: Democrat Excess Leads to New and Improved Trump in 2019

by Jeffrey A. Rendall   Predictions. It’s what New Year’s is all about. It goes without saying that 2018 was full of surprises. Heading into this year Republican majorities in both houses of Congress had just passed a massive reorganization of the federal tax code, including a sizeable tax cut…

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Commentary: The President’s Enemies and Their Confected Drama

Drain the Swamp, Donald Trump

by Conrad Black   It is astonishing to see the ferocity, and breathless, stertorous rage of the Trump-hating media over Michael Cohen’s flip. Because the whole issue is such nonsense, it is also reassuring to see Trump’s enemies place their heads on the block with such determination, beseeching by their…

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