Government Corruption

Durham’s investigation into possible FBI misconduct is now criminal probe, sources say

U.S. Attorney John Durham’s ongoing probe into potential FBI and Justice Department misconduct in the run-up to the 2016 election through the spring of 2017 has transitioned into a full-fledged criminal investigation, two sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News on Thursday night. One source added that DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s upcoming report on alleged FBI surveillance abuses against the Trump campaign will shed light on why Durham’s probe has become a criminal inquiry. Horowitz announced on Thursday his report would be available to the public soon, with “few” redactions. The investigation’s new status means Durham can subpoena witnesses, file charges, and impanel fact-finding grand juries. Fox News reported on Tuesday that Durham’s probe had expanded significantly based on new evidence uncovered during a recent trip to Rome with Attorney General Bill Barr. Barr reportedly told embassy officials in Italy that he “needed a conference room to meet high-level Italian security agents where he could be sure no one was listening in.” A source in the Italian Ministry of Justice told The Daily Beast earlier this month that Barr and Durham were played a taped deposition made by Joseph Mifsud, the professor who allegedly told ex-Trump aide George Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Mifsud reportedly was explaining to investigators in the deposition why people would want to harm him, and why he needed police protection. Papadopoulos has suggested he was connected with Mifsud as part of a setup orchestrated by intelligence agencies. Sources told Fox News that Durham was “very interested” to question former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, an anti-Trump critic who recently dismissed the idea. The New York Times reported Thursday that Durham’s criminal review has prompted some CIA officials to obtain criminal legal counsel in anticipation of being interviewed. Brennan and Clapper were at the helm not only when Mifsud spoke to Papadopoulos, but also when an unverified and largely discredited dossier, written by British ex-spy Christopher Steele and funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, was used to help justify a secret surveillance warrant against former Trump adviser Carter Page in the run-up to the 2016 election. (The Times’ reporting on Thursday, which overtly framed Durham’s probe as politically tainted without evidence, did not mention the Steele dossier at all.) The FBI apparently obscured the fact that the Clinton campaign and DNC funded the dossier in its warrant application, telling the secret court only that the dossier was prepared at the behest of an unidentified presidential campaign. Additionally, in its original FISA application and subsequent renewals, the FBI told the FISA court it “did not believe” Steele was the direct source for a Yahoo News article implicating Page in Russian collusion. Instead, the FBI suggested to the secret court, the September 2016 article by Michael Isikoff was independent corroboration of the dossier. But, London court records showed that contrary to the FBI’s assessments, Steele briefed Yahoo News and other reporters in the fall of 2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS. It has further emerged that Steele had communications with a State Department contact — which were relayed to the FBI — in which Steele claimed the Russians were running a “technical/human operation run out of Moscow targeting the election” and that “payments to those recruited are made out of the Russian Consulate in Miami.” There is no Russian consulate in Miami, a fact the State Department official, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec, emphasized in her notes. And, Steele had suggested his client was “keen” to see his information come to light prior to Election Day. Kavalec forwarded her notes to the FBI and other government officials several days before the FISA warrant was issued for Page. Additionally, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was unable to substantiate other key claims in the dossier, including that the Trump campaign employed hackers in the United States, that there was a compromising recording of the president in a hotel room, and that ex-Trump attorney Michael Cohen flew to Prague to build a conspiracy with hackers. Cohen has denied ever heading to Prague, and no public evidence has contradicted that claim.

Uh oh!!  Boy are the Dems and their willing accomplices in the dominantly liberal mainstream media losing their minds.  They can’t stand that the shoe is now on the other foot.  Rachel Maddow nearly had a meltdown last night on MSNBC.  The whole Russia so-called “collusion” hoax is unraveling, and those responsible for creating it in an attempt to undue the results of the 2016 election are the ones now being investigated.  Some of them will probably end up going to jail.  Guess we’ll see..  This story is developing..  Sit back and pop some popcorn..  This is gonna be fun to watch!      🙂

Video appears to contradict Warren’s suggestion that school fired her over pregnancy

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., suggested this week that a school principal effectively fired her from a teaching job after she became “visibly pregnant,” but a resurfaced video indicates that wasn’t the actual reason she left the job. “I was married at nineteen and then graduated from college [at the University of Houston] after I’d married,” Warren, then a Harvard Law School professor, said in an interview posted to YouTube in 2008. “My first year post-graduation, I worked — it was in a public school system but I worked with the children with disabilities. I did that for a year, and then that summer I actually didn’t have the education courses, so I was on an ’emergency certificate,’ it was called. “I went back to graduate school and took a couple of courses in education and said, ‘I don’t think this is going to work out for me,'” Warren continued. “I was pregnant with my first baby, so I had a baby and stayed home for a couple of years, and I was really casting about, thinking, ‘What am I going to do?'” By contrast, Warren told an audience at a town hall in Carson City, Nev. Wednesday that she had “loved” working as a special needs teacher. “By the end of the first year, I was visibly pregnant, and the principal did what principals did in those days,” she said. “Wish me luck and hire someone else for the job.” Warren has repeated the story at campaign appearances throughout the summer, each time repeating the “principal did what principals did” line to describe her departure from teaching. The senator’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment to clarify the apparent discrepancy. This isn’t the first time that Warren’s past has raised questions about her credibility. She has been widely criticized for identifying herself as a Native American in legal directories before applying to work at Harvard Law School. Last year, Warren released the results of a DNA test showing she is only between 1/64th and 1/1,024th Native American — and apologized for identifying as Native American on past forms.

Sen. Warren (D-MA) is a pathological liar.  So, this really isn’t anything new.  It’s just par for the course.  But, we wanted to make sure we passed this latest example along…because the dominantly liberal mainstream media sure won’t.

Tucker Carlson: The real reason Obama intel officials don’t want you to know how they spied on Americans

On Tuesday, the Washington Post, our hometown newspaper here in the nation’s capital, published an op-ed by former FBI Director Jim Comey. In the piece, Comey explains that whatever surveillance the Obama Justice Department conducted on the 2016 Trump campaign was entirely justified and within bounds — nothing weird about it at all. Yes, American citizens were monitored electronically without their knowledge, but it wasn’t spying. Of course, it wasn’t “spying.” It was “investigating.” It was done for your own good. And if you don’t like it, you’re unpatriotic and possibly, mentally ill. That’s Comey’s position. What the op-ed did not contain was any evidence at all that what he said is true. Comey is a bitter partisan with a long history of shading the truth. But he suggests you’ve got to trust him anyway. It’s your duty to trust him. Okay, well, here’s another idea. We could see for ourselves exactly what happened in 2016. We could declassify all the relevant information and then make it public. That way, we wouldn’t have to take anyone’s word for what happened — Comey’s word, President Trump’s word, or anyone else’s word. The president has suggested doing just that. The left is outraged by the idea. “Trump has every reason to believe Barr will use his new powers to aid the President’s anti-deep state propaganda efforts,” MSNBC host Chris Hayes said to viewers. “Trump giving Barr unilateral authority over classification is just a huge deal in the world of Intelligence agencies. Barr will be able to override other agencies’ independent classification determinations. And the goal of all this here seems pretty clear. It’s basically to give Sean Hannity material for his television show. So the plan, as it appears now, is essentially a kind of purge of the ideologically suspect members of the intelligence apparatus.” It’s a purge, like Joseph Stalin! Unless we stop the release of this information, people will die! That’s what they’re telling you. Just another day of balanced news coverage on MSNBC. Keep in mind, as you watch and rewatch that clip, that Chris Hayes is not a flack for the CIA. He’s a member of the national press corps. But he isn’t arguing for openness — just the opposite. Hayes is using his position as a public advocate to argue against giving the public more information. These are not military secrets, by the way, or the names of U.S. agents working undercover overseas. The information in question is about how the FBI spied on Americans while investigating crimes that we now know did not occur. So what could possibly be the justification for keeping all of that secret? Really, the only justification would be to protect the intel agencies from embarrassment. That’s what they fear. And that’s exactly why the former director of the CIA, John Brennan, and so many others are anxious to preserve the veil of secrecy. “I think it’s critically important that the counterintelligence professionals continue to carry out their responsibilities and resist these unwarranted and very, very irresponsible efforts to try to undermine what they’re doing,” Brennan said on MSNBC. So John Brennan thinks it’s risky, unwarranted, “very irresponsible” to let American citizens know whether their law enforcement agencies abused their power. That kind of transparency is, again, irresponsible. What if we applied the same standards to John Brennan himself? You know that after leaving the White House, Brennan was allowed to keep his security clearance, and that clearance increased his value as an employee once he entered the private sector. It allowed him, among other things, access to classified information, which he could then selectively leak to his colleagues at MSNBC. So how does giving classified information to John Brennan help American national security? Well, it doesn’t. It helps only John Brennan. Keep in mind, this is a man who has accused his political enemies of treason, a death penalty offense. “This is nothing short of treasonous, because it is a betrayal of the nation,” he said of Trump last year. “He is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Treasonous is defined as a betrayal of trust, as well as aiding and abetting the enemy. And so that was the word that came to my mind.” That was for Trump’s “crime” of holding a press conference with Vladimir Putin last summer in Finland. He was talking with the Russian president. This is not stable behavior. John Brennan is exactly the sort of person who should not have a security clearance.

Agreed 100%!  Thanks to Tucker Carlson for that spot-on op/ed.  Having spent more than two decades in the intel community myself,  I wholeheartedly agree with Tucker’s assessment.  John Brennan is a self-righteous, partisan, agenda-driven hypocrite who has NO need to retain his clearance, and frankly is an embarrassment to the intel community.  For more of this article, click on the text above.

William Barr confirms expanded Justice Department probe of Russia-Clinton links

Attorney General William P. Barr revealed Wednesday that the Justice Department is looking into the possibility that Russian operatives fed disinformation to the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 presidential election season. Mr. Barr told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the expanded scope of a review into “the activities over the summer of 2016,” which included vehemently anti-Trump FBI senior officials making key decisions on the investigations of Mrs. Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump. One key question is how much the FBI relied on the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, using information gleaned from Russian sources, which helped spur the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. The dossier was funded by payments from the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee that were hidden in campaign finance reports behind payments to a law firm. Republican senators said it’s possible that Mr. Steele’s Russian sources were intentionally feeding him disinformation, which then made it to the highest levels of the FBI. Indeed, former FBI Director James B. Comey’s first personal interaction with Mr. Trump was to brief him on the Steele dossier shortly before his inauguration in January 2017. “That’s the definition of collusion,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chamber’s senior Republican. Mr. Barr said he doesn’t know the answer — yet. “That is one of the areas that I’m reviewing. I’m concerned about it, and I don’t think it’s entirely speculative,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

One word…karma.  What goes around, comes around.  Now the shoe is on the other foot, and AG Barr is rightfully assembling a team to look into how this whole nonsense actually started.  The whole things was based on lies and a brazen abuse of power by the Obama DOJ.  Pop some popcorn and get ready to sit back and watch the fireworks as the heads of Dems explode over this.  They fed America the lie that their duly-elected President was a traitor and a Russian plant.  Now, we know the whole Russian collusion narrative was a hoax; a hoax perpetrated by Dems and their willing accomplices in the dominantly liberal mainstream media.  AG Barr is gonna investigate how it started, and follow the trail wherever it leads.  And corrupt Dems are nervous as heck, which is why they’re disingenuously crying foul.  This is gonna be fun!  For more, click on the text above.   🙂

Remember Solyndra? Loss of taxpayer millions now seems forgotten, expert says

It’s been exactly ten years since the Solyndra solar power company accepted a loan of half a billion taxpayer dollars that would never be repaid. Now one industry expert says he’s not sure any lessons have been learned in the years since. On March 20, 2009, then-Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced Solyndra would be the recipient of a $535 million loan from his department under the Obama administration’s revamped loan guarantee program. Solyndra used the money, along with hundreds-of-millions more from private investors, to build a new facility where it would be mass-producing its easy-to-install cylindrical solar “panels.” The whole thing lasted about two years. The ill-fated energy company had initially asked President George Bush for cash under the loan guarantee program, which was created to help companies working with clean energy technologies that might be considered too risky for private investors. But it wasn’t until President Obama launched his sweeping stimulus spending plan that Solyndra’s application was approved, launching the California company to poster-child status despite what were apparently growing concerns about its long-term (and even short-term) viability. Those concerns were reportedly being relayed to the White House in the run-up to President Obama’s highly publicized visit to Solyndra headquarters, which was scheduled just six months before the 2010 midterm elections. Congressional investigators later uncovered information indicating that Solyndra was planning on laying off some of its employees ahead of the midterms, but waited due to pressure from the White House. By the end of August 2011, little more than a year after hosting a presidential visit, Solyndra had filed for bankruptcy. And the writing was on the wall much earlier. In Feburary 2011, the Department of Energy had restructured its loan and included terms that guaranteed private investors would be repaid before the government in the event the company went under. Adding to the anger among Republicans over what was perceived as a politically-charged loan process was the fact that one of the private investors backing Solyndra was a well-known Obama fundraising bundler, George Kaiser. A little more than a week after the company announced it was going bankrupt, the FBI conducted a surprise raid and agents were seen carrying crates upon crates from Solyndra HQ in Fremont, Calif. A 2015 Inspector General report found that Solyndra had over-inflated the value of some of its contracts, with some clients apparently receiving goods at a discount despite indications they would be paying full price. Some of the clients they had been counting on wound up bailing due to the availability of much cheaper technologies from China. Either way, the IG report indicates that “the investigative record suggests that the actions of certain Solyndra officials were, at best, reckless and irresponsible or, at worst, an orchestrated effort to knowingly and intentionally deceive and mislead the Department.” The IG admits that there were signs the government might have missed some obvious red flags, while critics have argued those red flags were more likely overlooked intentionally. The loan guarantee program that helped Solyndra get off the ground, however briefly, still exists today, and taxpayer dollars are still being shelled out to energy companies of all types. The solar industry itself also doesn’t seem to have suffered much, with a recent industry report predicting the number of installed solar projects would more than double by 2021. Tom Pyle, an energy industry expert who led the Trump presidential transition team on energy, says the program’s ongoing existence despite the lessons learned from the Solyndra debacle shows that government has no business backing private energy companies, whether they’re solar or not. “Even though President Trump has submitted very responsible budgets, including eliminating the loan program, Congress continues to fund it… even more generously,” Pyle said. And when he considers the prospects of our energy future under proposals like the Green New Deal, Pyle says the lack of knowledge becomes all the more obvious. “The bottom line is the Green New Dealers want to impose massive government control of our energy resources, and infuse billions of our taxpayer dollars into doubling down on the Solyndras and those projects,” Pyle says. “So there aren’t lessons being learned here, they’re going the opposite way.”

Agreed 100%

Federal judge orders Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes to answer written Benghazi questions in Clinton email lawsuit

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that former national security adviser Susan Rice and former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes must answer written questions about the State Department’s response to the deadly 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, as part of an ongoing legal battle over whether Hillary Clinton sought to deliberately evade public record laws by using a private email server while secretary of state. U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth denied a request by the conservative group Judicial Watch to make Rice and Rhodes sit for depositions, but agreed to have them answer written questions. He also agreed to Judicial Watch’s request to depose the State Department about the preparation of talking points for Rice, then President Barack Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, ahead of appearances on political talk shows the Sunday following the attack. That deposition is part of Judicial Watch’s inquiry into whether the State Department acted in bad faith by not telling a court for months that they had asked in mid-2014 for missing emails to be returned. Rice initially claimed on several talk shows that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was triggered by protests over an anti-Islam video. The attack resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. “Rice’s talking points and State’s understanding of the attack play an unavoidably central role in this case,” Lamberth wrote in a 16-page order. Lamberth added that “State’s role in the [talking] points’ content and development could shed light on Clinton’s motives for shielding her emails from [Freedom of Information Act] requesters or on State’s reluctance to search her emails.” Lamberth also allowed Judicial Watch to seek written answers from Bill Priestap, the former assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. Priestap, who supervised the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server, retired from government service at the end of last year. “In a major victory for accountability, Judge Lamberth today authorized Judicial Watch to take discovery on whether the Clinton email system evaded FOIA and whether the Benghazi scandal was one reason for keeping Mrs. Clinton’s email secret,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Today, Judicial Watch issued document requests and other discovery to the State Department about the Clinton email scandal. Next up, we will begin questioning key witnesses under oath.” The judge’s order amounts to approval of a discovery plan he ordered last month. In that ruling, Lamberth wrote that Clinton’s use of a private email account was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency” and said the response of the State and Justice Departments “smacks of outrageous misconduct.” As part of the discovery, Judicial Watch can depose Jacob Sullivan, Clinton’s former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, and Justin Cooper, a longtime Bill Clinton aide who helped arrange the setup of Hillary Clinton’s private email address and server. Judicial Watch said the discovery period will conclude within 120 days. A post-discovery hearing will then be held to determine whether additional witnesses, including Clinton and her former Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, may be deposed.

Drip drip drip…  With each new day, we continue to learn more about Susan Rice’s and Hillary’s lies to we-the-people as they tried to cover up their poor decisions and incompetence that led to the tragedy in Benghazi.  Ben Rhodes was just a Dem political hack, a “useful idiot,” who just repeated the talking point lie that the riots were a result of a reaction to an online video (that nobody saw).  Kudos to Judicial Watch for pushing this issue and using the courts to get answers we should have had years ago.

Former top FBI lawyer James Baker subject of criminal media leak probe, transcript reveals

The former top lawyer at the FBI has been under federal investigation for leaking to the media, a letter from House Republicans revealed Tuesday. The letter from GOP Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows cited the transcript of a congressional interview with former General Counsel James Baker and his lawyer last fall, where the probe conducted by seasoned U.S. Attorney John Durham was confirmed. “You may or may not know, [Baker has] been the subject of a leak investigation … a criminal leak investigation that’s still active at the Justice Department,” lawyer Daniel Levin told lawmakers, as he pushed back on questions about his client’s conversations with reporters. Jordan and Meadows’ letter was sent to Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, and requested additional information about the probe later this month. “As we continue our oversight and investigative work, we felt it prudent to write to you seeking an update. Without being apprised of the contours of your leak investigation and Baker’s role, we run the risk of inadvertently interfering with your prosecutorial plans,” they wrote. The transcript of the closed-door interview and the letter do not include details explaining why the investigation is being led out of the Connecticut office. The status of the investigation is not publicly known. But the disclosure marks the latest confirmation of a leak investigation involving FBI figures who have since left the bureau. Last year, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe saw his leak case referred to the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. McCabe was fired for lying to federal investigators about his role in a media leak regarding the Clinton Foundation on the eve of the 2016 presidential election. The letter from the GOP lawmakers cited other concerns that arose as part of their own investigation when Republicans controlled the House: “The Committees learned that in some instances, high-ranking DOJ and FBI officials, including the FBI General Counsel James Baker and DOJ Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, took the self-described ‘unusual’ step of inserting themselves into the evidentiary chain of custody.”

More corruption uncovered at the top of the FBI..  Not good..