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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Over a one-week period, both Donald Trump and former Trump 2016 campaign aide Carter Page saw federal judges dismiss their separate lawsuits alleging improper conduct by the FBI, Hillary Clinton, and others during the Russia collusion investigation.
The dual dismissals on back-to-back Thursdays — one this week, one last week — shine a particularly harsh light on what critics say has become a pattern in the aftermath of the Trump-Russia probe: a lack of accountability.
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Nothing symbolizes the decline of the American republic better than the weaponization of justice that we saw last week when the FBI raided the home of former President Trump.
And nothing better represents the divide that now exists between Democrats and Republicans than the fact that some people still have faith in the FBI.
Aren’t they paying attention? Heck, that’s like a citizen of the old Soviet Union saying they had faith in the KGB – yeah, to crush dissent and lock up opponents of the regime in a Siberian gulag.
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The FBI decision to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser hinged on an unsubstantiated rumor from a Clinton campaign-paid dossier that the Washington Post’s Moscow sources had quickly shot down as “b******t” and “impossible,” according to emails disclosed last week to a D.C. court hearing the criminal case of a Clinton lawyer accused of lying to the FBI.
Though the FBI presumably had access to better sources than the newspaper, agents did little to verify the rumor that Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page had secretly met with sanctioned Kremlin officials in Moscow. Instead, the bureau pounced on the dossier report the day it received it, immediately plugging the rumor into an application under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to wiretap Page as a suspected Russian agent.
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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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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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The Justice Department has informed current and former FBI officials sued by Russia probe target Carter Page that it is unlikely to represent them in the civil case, signaling they will need to get private lawyers, according to new court filings.
At least two defendants — fired FBI Director James Comey and current FBI intelligence analyst Brian Auten — have already hired private counsel and notified the presiding judge in the case of their representation.
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Once-secret reports show the FBI effort to spy on the Trump campaign was far wider than previously disclosed, as agents directed an undercover informant to make secret recordings, pressed for intelligence on numerous GOP figures, and sought to find “anyone in the Trump campaign” with ties to Russia who could acquire dirt “damaging to Hillary Clinton.”
The now-declassified operational handling reports for FBI confidential human source Stefan Halper — codenamed “Mitch” — provide an unprecedented window both into the tactics used by the bureau to probe the Trump campaign and the wide dragnet that was cast to target numerous high-level officials inside the GOP campaign just weeks before Americans chose their next president in the November 2016 election.
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Nine months into a relentless effort to spy on Carter Page with the most awesome surveillance tools the U.S. possesses, the FBI had no proof the former Trump adviser had colluded with Russia to hijack the 2016 election.
In fact, the bureau hid from the FISA court the fact that it knew Page was actually a U.S. asset who had helped the CIA and that in a secret recording with an informant he had denied all the core allegations against him with significant proof.
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Four days before the FBI secured a surveillance warrant against him in fall 2016, Trump campaign adviser Carter Page repeatedly knocked down the key allegations at the heart of the Russia collusion investigation while talking to a government informant who was wearing a wire.
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Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday he plans to make new criminal referrals to the Justice Department following the release of internal FBI messages from the account of Peter Strzok, the top FBI investigator on Crossfire Hurricane.
In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Nunes said the messages, which the Justice Department and FBI declassified earlier this month, should have been provided to Congress years ago when Republicans began investigating whether the FBI abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in order to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
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John Durham, the U.S. attorney investigating aspects of the Trump-Russia probe, has sought notes that former British spy Christopher Steele took during his interviews in 2016 with the FBI regarding a since-debunked dossier he penned that accused the Trump campaign of colluding with the Russian government.
An FBI agent who took part in one of the interviews with Steele told Justice Department investigators that the ex-spy “clearly … wasn’t truthful” regarding his contacts with members of the media.
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Trump was lamenting that the Justice Department was not investigating allegations of voter fraud in various swing states. He brought up an investigation led by U.S. Attorney John Durham into FBI and CIA intelligence-gathering activities related to the Trump campaign in 2016.
Republicans had high hopes for Durham’s investigation when it started in April 2019, but have recently grown frustrated at a lack of public revelations from the probe.
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Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page sued the Justice Department, the FBI and multiple officials involved in Crossfire Hurricane on Friday for $75 million, saying that he was the victim of “unlawful spying” as part of the government’s investigation of the Trump campaign.
Page asserts in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington D.C. on Friday, that investigators violated “his Constitutional and other legal rights in connection with unlawful surveillance and investigation of him by the United States Government.”
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The Justice Department attorney who signed the four surveillance warrant applications against Carter Page says they would not have done had they known of the information withheld by the FBI, according to a letter sent to the Senate this month.
Sen. Lindsey Graham read portions of the letter at the beginning of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with former FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday.
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The FBI’s lead agent on its investigation of Michael Flynn told prosecutors that a confidential source’s allegation about an incident involving the former national security adviser in 2014 was likely false, according to a government document.
Special Agent William Barnett said in an interview with a federal prosecutor on Sept. 17 that the Crossfire Hurricane team obtained the information about Flynn from a confidential human source (CHS) who provided information regarding Carter Page.
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The FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation on the primary source for dossier author Christopher Steele, and considered obtaining a warrant to wiretap him in 2010, according to a document released Thursday.
The FBI was also aware of the information about the source, identified elsewhere as Igor Danchenko, by December 2016, according to the document.
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Former FBI official Peter Strzok defended the bureau’s surveillance of former Trump aide Carter Page in an interview aired Sunday, attributing failures found in a government watchdog report to agents being “overworked.”
“I don’t think at all that it’s anything improper. You get people who are overworked, who make mistakes — and don’t get me wrong, inexcusable mistakes,” Strzok said in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning.”
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The Atlanta-based attorney, who represents Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandman, told the Star Newspaper Group he will get justice for his new client, Dr. Carter W. Page in Page’s lawsuit against Yahoo! and the Huffington Post.
“They accused him of being a traitor to the United States of America,” said L. Lincoln “Lin” Wood, who joined Page’s legal team just before the defamation lawsuit was filed in Delaware Superior Court July 27. “I can’t think of a more heinous accusation to make against a man based on zero evidence.”
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Lin Wood, the attorney representing a Kentucky teenager in a number of defamation lawsuits against major media outlets, announced a settlement Friday with the Washington Post. The terms of the agreement between the family of Nicholas Sandmann – the Covington Catholic High School student accused of disrespecting a “native elder” while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat during the January 2019 March for Life – remain secret.
Wood and Sandmann settled a similar lawsuit against CNN earlier this year. Cases still are pending against NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Gannett.
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A former national security advisor to New York City developer Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign told Star Newspapers about his ordeal as he was hounded by Russian Collusion Hoaxers, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and their allies in the mainstream media.
“It was a waking nightmare for several years because of the chain reaction sparked by that opinion column,” said J.D. Gordon, who was also a national security advisor for the 2012 Herman Cain and the 2016 Michael Huckabee presidential campaigns.
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The Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General has a “lack of confidence” in the FBI’s procedures to validate information used to obtain spy warrants on American citizens, the watchdog said in a report released Tuesday.
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found errors in all 29 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant applications that were subject to the review.
The audit is a follow-up to an investigation of the FBI’s surveillance of Carter Page, the former Trump campaign aide.
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Lawyers for the Democratic National Committee claimed in court filings this week that the Steele dossier’s statements regarding Trump campaign aide Carter Page were “substantially true,” a defense that is at odds with the findings of the Justice Department’s inspector general.
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The House has passed legislation to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) by a margin of 278 to 136.
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by Chuck Ross Dossier author Christopher Steele will not cooperate with U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, telling an audience at Oxford University that he believes U.S. investigators have acted in “bad faith.” Steele, a former British spy, said at the Oxford event…
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A federal judge sided with the Trump Justice Department on Tuesday by ruling against the release of classified portions of the FBI’s applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said Sunday that he and other Republicans will begin calling witnesses within weeks for hearings related to Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine, as well as the FBI’s surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
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Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Democratic National Committee and the law firm that commissioned the infamous Steele dossier, and his lawyer suggests there is more litigation to come.
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The attorney general and FBI director will have to approve counterintelligence investigations of future presidential campaigns, Attorney General William Barr said at a press conference Monday.
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FBI Director Christopher Wray told the federal surveillance court in a letter Friday that he “deeply regrets” the bureau’s many errors in the process to obtain surveillance warrants on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
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by Adam Mill One can imagine the unspoken question hanging in the darkness during the January 2017 ride back to the airport. A small gaggle1 of FBI agents had just concluded their long-overdue interview with Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source. The silence must have been deafening. Steele had tried to conceal2 his…
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Rep. Adam Schiff said in an interview aired Friday that he has no sympathy for Carter Page, and that he also has no regrets about writing in a memo released in 2018 that the FBI did not abuse the foreign surveillance process in order to spy on the former Trump campaign aide.
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The top judge on the federal court overseeing surveillance activities accused the FBI on Tuesday of providing false and misleading information about Carter Page in applications to wiretap the former Trump campaign adviser.
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Former top FBI lawyer James Baker: “Sloppiness is completely unacceptable. That is not the way you operate in front of a federal court. I don’t know what word you want to use, it’s terrible, it’s unacceptable, it shouldn’t happen. That is not the way we should be filing matters in front of a federal court.”
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Carter Page said Thursday he is willing to go all the way to the Supreme Court in lawsuits he plans to file against the U.S. government over a Justice Department report released Monday that said the FBI misled federal judges in order to conduct surveillance against the former Trump campaign aide.
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The Justice Department’s watchdog will release a much-anticipated report Monday scrutinizing the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016.
Republicans have eagerly awaited the report, believing it will reveal that the FBI abused the foreign surveillance court process in order to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Democrats hope the report will show that the FBI had a sound basis to investigate the Trump campaign.
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by Chuck Ross Attorney General William Barr says that official statements about the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation “are just not jiving” with information he has learned during his short stint in office. “I assumed I’d get answers when I went in and I have not gotten answers that…
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by Julie Kelly It is the controversial footnote to the most infamous application in American political history: The application submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for approval to wiretap Trump campaign aide Carter Page. And it could lead to the downfall of the Trump-Russia collusion schemers, as it…
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by Robert Romano “I think spying did occur… but the question is whether it was predicated, adequately predicated?” That was Attorney General William Barr testifying before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Science and Justice on April 10, acknowledging that the Trump campaign was spied on by the Obama…
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by Chuck Ross Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday that an inspector general’s investigation into whether the FBI abused the surveillance court process during the Russia probe will be completed by May or June. Barr also told lawmakers during a House Appropriations Committee hearing that he is reviewing how…
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As experts comb through the newly-released, heavily redadcted FISA application to surveil former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, John Hinderaker at PowerLineBlog noticed four key takeaways. First, he notes, the application – which was renewed several times by the Obama-Holder-Lynch Department of Justice – strongly suggests Page is a Russian…
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by Chuck Ross Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was the primary target of a Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSIC) staffer indicted for lying about his contacts with reporters, according to an indictment released on Thursday. James Wolfe, the former director of security for the SSIC panel, was in…
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