Surprise: it wasn't actually a briefing. //

ODNI Ratcliffe was busy today. He declassified a now-infamous memo that reveals exactly what happened at an August 2016 FBI “briefing” of the Trump campaign. He gave the document to Congress and now we have it to share.

It was written by Joseph Pientka, a character whose name has popped up over and over throughout this saga. While the memo reveals nothing you likely didn’t already suspect, it does verify that the FBI was not actually trying to brief the Trump campaign. Rather, they were trying to elicit evidence for Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation targeting the Trump campaign at the time. //

The attempts to trap Trump began long before he took office, with this briefing being disguised as an attempt to warn the campaign. In reality, they were prodding for dirt they could use to push their investigation forward. Of note is that nothing of note came from the meeting. Trump did not offer evidence he was a Russian stooge, nor did Michael Flynn. It was another dead end, getting them no closer to proving nefarious Russian collusion than they were before.

That’s really why this is so damning for the FBI. This was yet another dead end they refused to pay attention to. Instead, the FBI and its band of corrupt stooges in leadership pressed forward, desperately searching for anything that could be used to stop Trump’s rise.

New information casts even more doubt on the Steele dossier and reveals more wrongdoing on the part of the FBI in the Russia investigation.

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe listens on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 11, 2017, while testifying before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on major threats facing the U.S. President Donald Trump is considering nearly a dozen candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey, choosing from a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) Over at UncoverDC I | <a class="moretext" href="https://www.redstate.com/shipwreckedcrew/2020/06/05/andrew-mccabe-is-a-liar-and-the-media-is-a-willful-collaborator/">Read More »</a>

Declassified Flynn transcripts released on Friday contradict key claims made against Flynn by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

This just adds more weight to show how unfairly targeted he was... //
There was nothing that even remotely invoked the Logan Act. There was absolutely no criminal predicate to justify the interview or position they subsequently took on Flynn. Certainly not compared to the things the Obama officials like John Kerry have done since with Iran. This just adds further that this was all a frame-up to take out Flynn, as well as tar and harm the Trump administration.

No discussion of undermining sanctions, a false claim trotted out by those on the left.

Once again, declassification blows up all the lies spread by Democrats for the last three years.

Prosecutor who recently resigned from Roger Stone case signed court filings omitting evidence of witness cooperation

Undercover Huber @JohnWHuber
· May 24, 2020

CONCLUSION (1/6)

Papadopoulos was charged with §1001 false statements because he got a date wrong about when he met Mifsud, and §1519 destruction/obstruction because he got a new Facebook account (and a new cellphone.)

CONCLUSION (2/6)

Clinesmith appears to have conspired to lie to the FISA court, and destroyed/concealed a federal document under color of authority with an FBI badge, and he hasn't been charged with anything

CONCLUSION (3/6)

That's the very definition of a two tiered system of Justice.

CONCLUSION (4/6)

What's worse is that Clinesmith was part of the same SCO team that prosecuted Papadopoulos for a §1519 obstructive alteration crime he appears to have already committed himself only a month beforehand, while he was "primary FBI Attorney" on Crossfire Hurricane

CONCLUSION (5/6)

Is there a greater prosecutorial malevolence than charging someone with a crime when you surely know that they're innocent of it, and when you also know you've committed that exact same crime yourself? This belongs in an episode of The Shield with Vic Mackey

CONCLUSION (6/6)

US Attorney John Durham and AG Bill Barr now have to decide if they're going to hold anyone accountable for any of this.

And the media need to decide if they’re going to keep pretending none of this happened.

/ENDS

FBI Inspectors Often Go "Trophy Hunting" And Usually Come Back With Who They Were Looking For

The point of all this was politics, not national security.
Well, the mystery is solved, at least if you can believe what the usual sieves — those courageously anonymous “former U.S. officials” — have told their notetakers at the Washington Post. As I surmised in last weekend’s column, Michael Flynn was not “unmasked” in connection with his controversial phone call with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. He was never masked in the first place. The Post reported that on Wednesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the Post is leading the media–Democrat effort to contort the fact that many Republicans were wrong in assuming Flynn had been unmasked prior to his name’s being leaked to the Post in early 2017 into a storyline that those Republicans must have been wrong to claim the leak was illegal. To the contrary, the leak is a felony, regardless of whether an American’s identity should have been concealed. Information collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is classified. The point of classifying information is to keep all of it concealed, not just the names. //

Alas, in this as in so much else throughout the Trump–Russia farce, the Bureau played fast and loose with the rules. When investigators are so inclined, it turns out the privacy vouchsafed by the minimization rules is illusory. FBI officials — if they thought about it at all — figured Flynn need not be masked because they did not see him as an innocent American incidentally caught up in foreign surveillance. They purported to suspect that he was a clandestine agent of Russia. //

Of course, they had no proof of that. And they knew they had no proof. That’s why they never sought a FISA-court warrant targeting Flynn. Doing so would have required showing probable cause that he was an operative of Russia; and as to Flynn, they didn’t even have a fabulist “dossier” to rely on for such a smear. //

We’re being had.

Here’s a more plausible explanation of motive. The Obama administration was actively constructing the Trump–Russia collusion narrative. Obama officials saw Putin’s “no retaliation” pose as an opportunity to float the fiction that the Kremlin had cut a sinister deal with Trump to gut Obama’s sanctions as a reward for Russia’s hacking of Democrats during the campaign. Obama officials and the FBI hoped to conceal the Trump–Russia investigation from the incoming Trump administration for as long as possible, and to continue the investigation of Trump’s campaign — remember, by December 29, they had already gotten a FISA warrant based on the representation that Trump’s campaign had conspired with the Kremlin, and they were preparing to reaffirm that claim in order to get a second 90-day warrant (the second of what would eventually be four). //

On close reading, though, our intelligence agencies reserve the discretion to unmask pretty much whenever they wish. For all the talk, talk, talk about privacy, the pamphlet explains:

It's not just because he farted on national television. //

Rep. Eric Swalwell
✔
@RepSwalwell
Slight correction on your tweet: I trust FBI & Director Wray. I don’t trust @ODNIgov Directors @RichardGrenell or @RepRatcliffe. They’re the ones with the shovels burying evidence to protect @realDonaldTrump. https://twitter.com/noahshachtman/status/1263855239628648449 …

Richard Grenell
✔
@RichardGrenell
I’m letting the public see more info. You are the one who worked to hide the information you didn’t like. You listened to multiple people in classified hearings say they had no evidence and yet go on TV and say the opposite. Transparency is now a must! https://twitter.com/repswalwell/status/1263860933081870338 …

Rep. Eric Swalwell
✔
@RepSwalwell
Thanks for showing up on Twitter. You never once came to brief the Intel Committee (First DNI Director who failed to do so). If you have nothing to hide, why don’t you release Flynn’s call with Russia? #ShowUsTheTape https://twitter.com/richardgrenell/status/1263863419071090691 …

Richard Grenell
✔
@RichardGrenell
Those are coming. It’s very important for the public to see ALL of them. For too long the public has been misled. Just compare your committee’s transcripts to your public statements! #troubling https://twitter.com/repswalwell/status/1263865225973030912 …

David EasonMay 15

The crime of lying to the FBI is premised upon the duty to speak truthfully in response to questions posed in the course a legitimate investigation. If the investigation is not legitimate, there is no duty to speak truthfully, hence no prosecutable crime. State power cannot criminalize lies that are immaterial to legitimate state purposes. And if we allow that to occur, there will be no limit to state power.

We do not have to sit here and grouse that "the media" won't cover this. Sure it will. And that's because we're the media too. //

If this were a Republican implicated, it’d be treated as the largest political scandal of the last hundred years.

And so it would. Therefore: Let’s treat it as the largest political scandal of the last hundred years. //

Abusing a term in office to employ the vast intelligence-gathering capabilities of the United States to conduct political surveillance on the opposition party, and then to use the Department of Justice to obstruct and sabotage the opposition party’s incoming elected President is — hello? — not a small thing. This isn’t like sending a team of clumsy goons to break into the other party’s campaign headquarters to plant a few bugs. This is using entire government agencies, and all the awesome tools at their disposal, to collect opposition research and to feed it into their party’s own campaign. And when they lost anyway, to throw sand in the gears of the next Administration. You know, the one The American People had just elected.

They did this. The Democrats did this. The Obama Administration did this. Career Civil Servants did this. This is Watergate on steroids. If we don’t stop it right here, right now, our elections will become mere formalities, as The Other Guys win one term after the other by seemingly miraculous means. //

The danger from what The Democrats — including their fans in the Civil Service — have done here is so obvious, so stark, and so threatening, that not even cats should need to be told which way to run. If we don’t all see the common interest in keeping the government itself from becoming an arm of the opposition political party, we are sure to lose this nation to a group of vicious and corrupt totalitarians who will do anything to gain and to hold power. //

The threat here isn’t from Obama. He’s gone. The threat is from all the nascent Brennans and Comeys who are brewing right now in our Civil Service, and who will do this again if we don’t nail the people who did it this time. //

For instance: how many people know that as early as 2015, before Trump was even nominated, the FBI Counterintelligence Division (that’s Strzok & Co.) were totally abusing the NSA’s database of texts and emails to repeatedly snoop on a group of “U.S. persons,” something that the NSA database is not even supposed to be used for? The FBI people even deputized contractors to conduct queries on their own, with almost no controls on what was done with the information so collected. That is so against the law. What the FBI was doing got so bad that the Director of the NSA ran an audit on them and decided to lock them out of the database. Very few Americans know this was going on. But we do. We know it for a fact.

There are a lot of these facts. It isn’t just Flynn. It isn’t just Carter Page. It isn’t just FISA. It isn’t just an FBI Director who lied under oath to the Court; or a Director of National Intelligence who lied under oath to Congress; or even a CIA Director who persuaded foreign allies to run sting operations on U.S. citizens for political purposes. It’s all of that, and a lot more. Only a tiny percentage of the public has the vaguest idea how much of it there really is. Things we know for a fact.

And the media know it.

When former president Barack Obama told supporters last week that the Justice Department’s decision to drop the case against former White House National Security Adviser Mike Flynn is a “threat to the rule of law,” he was relying wholly on the fiction, willingly propagated for years by a pliant media, that the Russia-Trump collusion probe launched by his administration was lawful and legitimate.

But of course it wasn’t. A string of recently released documents have confirmed that the entire Russia-Trump investigation, which eventually entrapped Flynn and forced then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself, was an unprecedented abuse of power that amounted to organized effort by the Obama administration to nullify the results of the 2016 presidential election. It was in effect an attempted coup.

If you haven’t picked that up from the news media, it’s not your fault. Instead of grappling with the implications of newly released details about what Obama officials were doing to undermine the incoming Trump administration during the transition, the mainstream media have fixated on Trump’s use of the term “Obamagate,” dismissing it as a conspiracy theory.

...when you don't have facts or law on your side, you just make stuff up and shout //

it does not support the Justice Department’s assertion that the continued prosecution of the case against Mr. Flynn, who pleaded guilty to knowingly making material false statements to the FBI, ‘would not serve the interests of justice.’”

This is her second effort to claim the “materiality” argument for her side — but it is also the second time she has done so without explaining how his answers were material, or how the position of DOJ on the issue is wrong. //

DOJ’s position is clearly articulated — FBI internal documents state that the FBI should not have been investigating Gen. Flynn at the time of his interview.

“No further investigative efforts are warranted.” Those words were written by the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team. In a courtroom that would be called an “Admission”. //

Who was running that investigation? The Crossfire Hurricane team was running it. What did the Crossfire Hurricane team write about the investigation? They wrote as follows:

Following the compilation of the above information , the [CROSSFIRE HURRICANE] team determined that CROSSFIRE RAZOR was no longer a viable candidate as part of the larger CROSSFIRE HURRICANE umbrella case.

Again, that’s not AG Barr, that’s not US Attorney Jensen, that’s not US Attorney Durham – that’s the “Crossfire Hurricane Team” after it spent 5 months investigating General Flynn as part of that investigation. //

Finally, we get to the “Crown Jewel” of obfuscation and misdirection – the completely bogus “Flynn was possibly compromised by his lies” nonsensical claptrap.

How exactly can Gen. Flynn be compromised when both the U.S. and the Russians knew every word said by Gen. Flynn in the conversations? How could Russia “compromise” Gen. Flynn by threatening to reveal information the US government already knew? //

That’s three times she has claimed the interview answers were “material”, but also three times she has failed to explain why and how that was the case. Three strikes and she’s OUT!!!

The DOJ motion goes into great detail as to why they were not material. Is it too much to ask that the folks clutching their pearls over the dismissal to offer up an explanation for why DOJ’s view is wrong??

No wonder they're all nervous...

Federalist Senior Contributor Margot Cleveland joins Ben Domenech on another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour to discuss the corruption that led to the case against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

Cleveland’s work has been instrumental in highlighting the wrongdoings of the Obama Administration’s mistreatment and mishandling of the case against Flynn.

In her latest article, Cleveland explains the importance of the FBI’s memo exonerating Flynn.

“The unsealing of the FBI’s closing memo on the Flynn investigation made two things clear: The FBI had no proper predication for investigating Flynn, and the confidential human source should be investigated for making false statements to the FBI,” Cleveland wrote.

Cleveland and Domenech break down the timeline and corruption behind the Flynn case.

After the documents about the effort to trap him were finally revealed last week, he posted this image:

[Video pans across woods and rests on American flag flying.]

General Flynn
✔
@GenFlynn
My grandson Travis...“and JUSTICE for ALL” ⚖️❤️🙏🇺🇸

by James A. Gagliano
| May 04, 2020 12:45 PM

The time has come to cease affording the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team generous benefit of the doubt. A steady stream of unflattering revelations, beginning with a report by the Justice Department's inspector general into egregious FISA abuses last December, has relentlessly pounded the reputation of my former agency. Now, further irrefutable proof emerges that a small cabal of FBI headquarters decision-makers was hellbent on undoing a presidency.

I know it sounds strange to hear me make such an accusation. I’m the guy who long attempted to thread the needle, accounting for honest human frailties, trusting that mistakes should not always be chalked up to malice or sinister intent. Cautious skepticism was a default mindset that served me well across a quarter century as an FBI investigator. That condition failed me here because one thing is clear.

Michael Flynn got railroaded.

Careful examination of fresh facts related to Flynn pleading guilty to Title 18 U.S. Code § 1001 (essentially, lying to a federal agent) provides an eye-popping and clear-cut case of investigative inconsistencies and partisan political bias. At the request of defense attorney Sidney Powell, who is seeking to have the retired lieutenant general’s plea withdrawn, additional evidence related to the Flynn case has recently been released by the prosecution. According to Flynn’s defense team, some uncovered FBI notes illustrate a concerted effort by former FBI Director James Comey's team to set Flynn up. //

The FBI is charged with enforcing federal law. Nowhere in our identified mission and priorities exists a goal to set a perjury trap or, absent evidence of a prosecutable crime, get someone fired. Why even consider this an objective?

To borrow a line from comedian Jeff Foxworthy: If this doesn’t bother you, you might be a party-over-country partisan.

Since the FBI was already in possession of the transcript of Flynn’s telephone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, what exactly was to be gained by the interview? Nothing except the potential to jam him up and get him removed as national security adviser. It was never going to charge him for violations of the Logan Act or the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Even Robert Mueller’s team could have done so. It passed. These laws are seldom, if ever, enforced. Just ask the lobbyists on K Street. //

So Strzok (famously fired for his partisan text exchanges with Page), along with the FBI official who overruled case personnel and ordered that the Flynn case remain open after recommendations that it be closed for lack of any evidence, had his opportunity.

What happened next infuriates me.

The Flynn FD-302 interview notes appear to have been manipulated by Strzok and Page. Pientka was apparently the note taker. Consistent with FBI protocols, Strzok, as a party to the interview, can certainly discuss recollections with Pientka prior to the final document being approved by both. But somehow, Page, the DOJ attorney who was not present at the interview and was not an FBI agent, was involved in the edits. //

The uncomfortable truth is that the cases focusing on Trump (Crossfire Hurricane) and Hillary Clinton (Midyear Exam) were handled inconsistently. The Clinton investigation (which Obama-era Attorney General Loretta Lynch famously suggested be referred to as a "matter," not an investigation) was not handled aggressively or in keeping with the standards of the apolitical ethos of the FBI.

As former Rep. Trey Gowdy sarcastically described the stark differences between the hyperaggressive tactics employed against Flynn and the ludicrous preconditions that the FBI generously conceded to in order to interview Clinton in 2016:
“She had a medium-sized law firm in the room with her. They gave the questions to her lawyer before they interviewed her, and they most assuredly told her there’s a consequence for lying. None of which they did for Michael Flynn.”

The final nail in the coffin of those who pretend political bias did not influence the FBI’s decisions in 2016 and 2017 is a text exchange between Strzok and Page on Feb. 25, 2016, discussing how to approach the Clinton interview:

Page: “One more thing: She might be our next president. The last thing you need us going in there loaded for bear. You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more DOJ than FBI?”

Strzok: “I called Bill and relayed what we discussed. He agrees.”

Compare that to Priestap's quote: “What’s our goal? Truth/Admission or get him to lie, so we can get him fired?”

The contrast is stunning. No plausible explanation exists here other than rank partisan, political bias.

I’ll say it again: Michael Flynn got railroaded.

James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) worked in the FBI for 25 years. He is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John's University. Gagliano is a member of the board of directors of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.

International cooperation at its best, the FBI and FSB working together towards a common end //

One of the areas of my commentary that has aged particularly well has been my assessment of how the FISA process was used to spy upon the Trump campaign and the Trump transition team, how Carter Page was falsely targeted, and how, more likely than not, the Steele Dossier was actually a Russian disinformation product rather than mere opposition research. I’m going to quote at length from my February 2018 post, The Steele Memo Is Much More Likely Russian Dezinformatsiya Than It is Intelligence. Keep in mind this was written at a time when the prevailing wisdom on this site was that if Trump was not actually Hitler he was a Putin stooge and it was just a matter of time until ‘Mueller Time’ took place and drove #OrangeManBad from office. //

The FBI was not duped, they knew they about Steele’s sources and were willing co-conspirators to launder his Russian disinformation to the FISA court.