FBI Acted Like Modern-Day Gestapo
Sputnik – 31.01.2025
US President Donald Trump’s purge of the FBI’s leadership comes as no surprise – the agency has been acting more like a political enforcer than a law enforcement body.
Here are just a few examples of its (mis)conduct:
- August 2022 – The FBI stormed Trump’s Mar-a-Lago to seize classified documents while Biden faced zero consequences for doing the same.
- 2020 – The FBI actively suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story, labeling it “Russian disinformation”, despite knowing it was real.
- August 2024 – FBI agents raided the homes of ex-UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and journalist Dimitri Simes without announcing charges. Their crime? Challenging the official US narrative.
- 2024 – The House Judiciary Committee exposed the FBI for spying on Americans’ private transactions, targeting conservatives rather than criminals.
- 2022 – Congressmen Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson revealed the FBI has been investigating parents critical of their local school boards, using threat tag employed by the agency’s counterterrorism division.
- 2016 – The FBI used the debunked Steele dossier as a pretext to spy on Trump’s election campaign, despite knowing the allegations of Trump-Russia collusion were false.
Trump’s crackdown on the agency was inevitable – the real question is how deep the rot goes.
FBI Is Still Hiding Details of Russiagate, Newly Released Document Shows
By Aaron Maté | RealClearInvestigations | January 6, 2025
As Donald Trump re-enters the White House on a pledge to end national security state overreach, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is still hiding critical details on the Russia conspiracy investigation that engulfed his first term.
In response to a Freedom of Information request filed by RealClearInvestigations in August 2022, the FBI on Dec. 31, more than two years later, released a heavily redacted copy of the document that opened an explosive and unprecedented counterintelligence probe of the sitting president as an agent of the Russian government.
The Electronic Communication, dated May 16, 2017, claimed to have an “articulable factual basis” to suspect that Trump “wittingly or unwittingly” was illegally acting on behalf of Russia, and accordingly posing “threats to the national security of the United States.” The FBI’s “goal,” it added, was “to determine if President Trump is or was directed by, controlled by, and/or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation.” It additionally sought to uncover whether Trump and unnamed “others” obstructed “any associated FBI investigation” – a reference to Crossfire Hurricane, the initial FBI inquiry into the Trump campaign’s suspected cooperation with an alleged Russian interference plot in the 2016 election.
While Crossfire Hurricane, which was formally opened on July 31, 2016, had by that point focused on members of Trump’s orbit, the May 2017 probe was specifically targeted at the president himself during his fourth month in office. The investigation of Trump was undertaken at the behest of then-acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, one week after Trump had fired his former boss and mentor, James B. Comey.
According to the declassified document, McCabe’s decision was approved by FBI Assistant Director Bill Priestap, who had also signed off on the opening of Crossfire Hurricane; and Jim Baker, the FBI general counsel. Baker was a longtime friend of Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, and a key figure in the dissemination of Clinton-funded disinformation to the FBI that falsely tied Trump to Russia. In his FBI role, Baker personally circulated the conspiracy theory, manufactured by “researchers” working with the Clinton campaign, that the Trump campaign and Russia were communicating via a secret server. After leaving the FBI, Baker served as deputy general counsel at Twitter, where he backed the company’s censorship of reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, based on yet another conspiracy theory that the laptop files were Russian disinformation.
FBI via RealClearInestigations
While the declassified document records the FBI’s theory that then-President Trump might be involved in illegal – and potentially treasonous – behavior, the “articulable factual basis” for this suspicion is redacted. Only a few paragraphs of the six-page document have not been withheld.
Along with Crossfire Hurricane, the May 2017 counterintelligence probe was folded into the Special Counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller, who was appointed just one day after the FBI began portraying Trump internally as a possible Russian agent or conspirator. Mueller’s final report “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Asked about his reasoning for opening the probe and related matters, McCabe, who now works as an on-air commentator at CNN, did not respond to RCI’s emailed questions by the time of publication.
Details about the FBI’s motivation can be gleaned, however, from other public disclosures.
According to a January 2019 account in the New York Times, which first revealed the FBI’s decision to investigate Trump, the Steele dossier – a collection of conspiracy theories funded by Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton – was among the “factors” that “fueled the F.B.I.’s concerns.”
Just two days before McCabe opened the May 2017 probe, the FBI, via Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, renewed contact with dossier author Christopher Steele despite having terminated him as a source back in November 2016. As RCI’s Paul Sperry has previously reported, this sudden outreach to Steele right before the opening of a new Trump-Russia conspiracy investigation indicated that the FBI was seeking to re-engage the Clinton-funded British operative to help it build a case against the president for espionage and obstruction of justice. At the time, the FBI was still relying on Steele’s fabrications for its surveillance warrants against Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page. The following month, the FBI filed the last of its four FISA court warrants based on Steele’s material. The Justice Department has since invalidated two of those warrants on the grounds that they were based on “material misstatements.”
The FBI re-enlisted Steele despite possessing information that thoroughly discredited him. Five months before it newly sought Steele’s help to investigate the sitting president, the FBI interviewed Igor Danchenko, whom Steele had used as his dossier’s key “sub-source.” In that January 2017 meeting, Danchenko told FBI agents that corroboration for the dossier’s claims was “zero”; that he had “no idea” where claims sourced to him came from; and that the Russia-Trump rumors he passed along to Steele came from alcohol-fueled “word of mouth and hearsay.” The FBI had also been unable to corroborate any of Steele’s incendiary claims.
A previously disclosed document also shows that former CIA Director John Brennan – who insistently advanced the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory – informed then-president Barack Obama in July 2016 that the Clinton campaign was planning to tie Trump to Russia in order to distract attention from the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state. By that point, the Clinton campaign was already paying for the fabricated reports produced by Steele, who made contact with the FBI as early as July 5.
Although the newly declassified document attempts to suggest that the FBI had actionable intelligence to suspect Trump of being a Russian agent, McCabe’s subsequent comments indicate that there was no such evidence on offer. Instead, McCabe has said his counterintelligence probe of Trump was primarily motivated by the president’s firing of Comey. In a February 2019 interview with CBS News, McCabe explained his thinking as follows: “[T]he idea is, if the president committed obstruction of justice, fired the director of the of the FBI to negatively impact or to shut down our investigation of Russia’s malign activity and possibly in support of his campaign, as a counter intelligence investigator you have to ask yourself, ‘Why would a president of the United States do that?’ So all those same sorts of facts cause us to wonder is there an inappropriate relationship, a connection between this president and our most fearsome enemy, the government of Russia.”
McCabe therefore had no evidence that Trump had a “connection” to Russia, and in fact could only “wonder” if there was one. Yet because Trump had fired Comey, whose FBI was already investigating Trump’s campaign for Russia ties and relying on the Clinton-funded Steele dossier in the process, McCabe decided that he had grounds to order an espionage investigation of the commander in chief.
With the official predicate for that May 2017 investigation still redacted by the FBI, McCabe’s public statements offer the only insider window into why it was opened. In all of the investigations related to alleged Russian interference to date, the Justice Department has pointedly avoided the question.
Despite inheriting McCabe’s probe – and debunking claims of a Trump-Russia conspiracy related to the 2016 election – Special Counsel Mueller made no mention of the Trump as Russian agent theory in his final report of March 2019. Without informing the public, the FBI closed down the Trump counterintelligence investigation the following month. The case’s closing Electronic Communication, which has previously been declassified in redacted form, states that the McCabe probe “was transferred to FBI personnel assisting” the Mueller team, and entailed the use of “a variety of investigative techniques.”
An inquiry led by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz of the FBI’s conduct during Crossfire Hurricane also ignored McCabe’s decision to investigate Trump as an agent of Russia. And in a footnote in his final report of May 2023, John Durham – the Special Counsel appointed to launch a sweeping review of the Russia investigation – claimed that McCabe’s May 2017 probe was outside of his purview.
By contrast, when it comes to Crossfire Hurricane, Durham’s report concluded that the FBI did not have a legitimate basis to launch that investigation, repeatedly ignored exculpatory evidence, and buried warnings that Clinton’s campaign was trying to frame Trump as a Russian conspirator.
While the original Trump-Russia investigation has been discredited, the public remains in the dark about why the FBI launched a follow-up counterintelligence probe that targeted Trump while he was newly in the White House – and what ends it took to pursue it.
With Trump set to be inaugurated this month after vowing to clean up the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, the FBI will have a fresh opportunity to break its longstanding secrecy on the decision to investigate the sitting, and newly returning, president as an agent of Russia.
US imposes sanctions on IRGC entity over alleged election interference
Press TV – December 31, 2024
The United States has announced sanctions on an entity it says is affiliated with the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) over its alleged interference in the 2024 US presidential elections.
The designation was announced by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Tuesday and targeted the IRGC subsidiary, which it identified as the Cognitive Design Production Center (CDPC).
A statement on the Treasury’s website claimed the CDPC had planned influence operations since at least 2023 to incite tensions among the US electorate on behalf of the IRGC.
Iran has repeatedly rejected accusations it has interfered in elections in other countries, including in the US.
Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations issued a statement in late August to reject such allegations.
“Such allegations are unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing,” said the Mission after the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and several other American intelligence agencies claimed that Iran had been involved in the hacking of the campaigns of Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris.
“As we have previously announced, the Islamic Republic of Iran harbors neither the intention nor the motive to interfere with the US presidential election,” said the statement.
Iranian authorities say that Washington’s policy of imposing numerous sanctions on the country is solely aimed at forcing the country into accepting political and military concessions.
Clintons Open to Possible Preemptive Pardon as Deep State May Abandon Them
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 13.12.2024
Former President Bill Clinton has indicated he is open to discussing a “pre-emptive pardon” for his wife, Hillary Clinton, with outgoing head of state Joe Biden, while maintaining that she has done nothing wrong.
This development was anticipated, according to Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel, who tells Sputnik that Bill Clinton is also likely to seek a pardon for himself and his daughter.
Ortel adds that the proposed pardon could cover a period starting much earlier than Hillary’s 2016 email scandal, which Bill Clinton mentioned on “The View” talk show.
The alleged fraud and pay-to-play activities involving the Clinton Foundation were significant issues, according to Ortel, who has been investigating the charity for many years.
“As in the case of the first Biden family pardon, my view is that a federal pardon for the Clinton family will have to go back, perhaps, to 1992 and continue so long as ‘The Clinton Foundation’ and its affiliates may operate,” Ortel suggests.
Earlier, Biden provided his son with an unusual blanket pardon covering all possible crimes between 2014 and 2024.
The Clintons “have been insiders in a rigged political system at the federal level” since Bill’s first presidential campaign in 1992, Ortel claims.
However, even a federal pre-emptive pardon from Biden “is likely to leave Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton vulnerable to state and foreign prosecutions, along with others,” the analyst believes.
Kash Patel Has Hillary Clinton on His “Government Gangsters” List
Bill Clinton’s readiness to discuss a pre-emptive pardon with President Joe Biden is likely influenced by FBI Director Christopher Wray’s decision to step down and Donald Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel, according to Ortel.
Ortel suggests that Wray is part of the same cabal as former FBI Director James Comey, who allowed Hillary Clinton to escape consequences for her 2016 email scandal.
In contrast, Patel has never been part of the D.C. “swamp” and played a key role in debunking the Trump-Russia collusion allegations, which, based on then-CIA Director John Brennan’s declassified memo, may have been fabricated by Hillary Clinton to divert attention from her email scandal.
According to Ortel, the Department of Justice (DoJ), FBI, and IRS have long covered up the Clintons’ apparent felonies, despite many being evident.
“When the FBI finally spoke with me in December 2018, they focused on my connections with Peter Smith, Jerry Corsi, and Roger Stone, claiming they lacked the scope to investigate why so many in the Obama and Bush administrations might be interested in covering up Clinton Foundation crimes,” Ortel says.
If Patel takes charge of the FBI, he is expected to overhaul the bureau and could investigate the Clintons earnestly, according to Ortel. Reports indicate that Hillary Clinton is on Patel’s “government gangsters” list.
Clintons Have Outlived Their Usefulness to Deep State
The globalist elites and much-discussed US “deep state” may no longer shield the Clintons, as they have outlived their usefulness, Ortel says.
“Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden have outlived their usefulness to rich globalists,” Ortel states.
The election defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris, along with the inability of the Clintons, Obamas, and Bidens to produce a more vibrant and popular presidential candidate, apparently exposed their political bankruptcy.
As a result, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who has long been considered an ally of the Democrats, dismissed the party’s gloom-and-doom warnings and openly signaled in October that a Donald Trump victory would be acceptable for Wall Street.
“Should the Trump administration prioritize prosecuting charity crimes, starting with wealthy donors like Bill Gates and George Soros and wealthy ‘educational public charities,’ whistleblowers and the incoming administration could make America proud by [taking down] the Clinton family and many other charity grifters who, even today, seem arrogantly unrepentant and unbowed,” Ortel concludes.
Trump’s election victory: the schism in the US is deepening, the fight is intensifying
By Veniamin Popov – New Eastern Outlook – November 23, 2024
Following a crushing defeat at the November 5 elections (Democrats are now in the minority in Congress), the US Democratic Party is gradually coming to its senses, consolidating and launching new attacks against the Republicans.
At the forefront of all this is the editorial board of the New York Times newspaper, which published an article the day after the vote titled ‘America makes a perilous choice’. The main idea is that Americans should clearly understand the threat to the country and its laws posed by the 47th President of the United States, since he prioritises “the accumulation of uncontrolled power and the punishment of his alleged enemies”. Recognising that the elections demonstrated deep dissatisfaction with the status quo, politics and the state of American institutions, the newspaper demands that Democrats unite and resist the destructive figure of Trump: the task now is to vote correctly in the midterm elections of 2026 and in 2028 “to get the country back on the right track”.
On November 14, the same editorial board published a new article ‘Trump’s reckless choices for national leadership’. “Donald Trump has demonstrated his incongruity with the presidency in countless ways, but one of the most obvious is the marginal figures surrounding him, conspiracy theorists and low liars who put loyalty to him above all else”.
The media loyal to the Democratic party have launched a vehement campaign against the candidates named by Trump for posts in his government. They are accused of a variety of sins and the Senate is being urged to reject many of these nominations.
The idea that many troubles and problems await the United States under Trump is being dispersed in various ways, while the ‘red thread’ is the idea that the president-elect is surrounded by incompetent people and that they are simply unworthy to perform state functions.
Famous US columnist David Ignatius noted in the Washington Post that Trump is by nature a destroyer and hopes to overthrow what he imagines to be the ‘deep state’, but American voters did not give him the opportunity to destroy the country’s military and intelligence services. If they approve Trump’s appointees, they will do more to collapse his presidency “than Democrats ever could”. The New York Times called Trump a “threat to global peace and security” on 11/18/2024.
The fight between Republicans and Democrats intensifies
It should be noted that Trump’s supporters are not indifferent. A number of newspapers and TV networks have been charged with disinformation (amounting to $10 billion), calls for an audit at the Department of Defence are growing louder and louder and demands for an investigation of the many miscalculations of the Biden administration are being voiced on television.
The plan for changing power in the US (‘Project 2025’), developed by one of the think tanks supporting Trump, is being criticised sharply. It proposes to enhance the powers of the head of state dramatically, put a number of departments under his direct control (and to abolish the FBI altogether), resolve the issue of illegal migration with an iron fist, expelling all illegal immigrants from the country, and to “make federal bureaucrats more responsible to the democratically elected president and Congress”. The ideological basis for these changes is the struggle for the revival of the ‘Christian foundations’ of American society and the task of increasing church attendance is also highlighted.
In one of his speeches, Trump himself promised to legislate that only two genders, male and female, are officially recognised in the United States.
A number of publications, including Politico, say that Trump’s victory actually means ‘the end of the era of American-style peace’.
Political scientist Daniel Dresner thinks that the election of Trump symbolises the end of ‘American exceptionalism’.
In the Foreign Affairs magazine articles are appearing stating that Republicans should now show a greater commitment to realism and restraint: “If the US political class could agree that the United States has been overzealous in its foreign policy and should adjust its course, it would help to ensure that the country will not repeat the deadly mistakes of the last 20 years, where the US got bogged down in various conflicts”.
Current events clearly indicate that a fierce battle in the ranks of the American elite is being aggravated; the supporters of globalism and aggressive liberalism do not want to give up their positions. Nevertheless, the huge public debt of the United States, which exceeds $36 trillion, should force authorities to have a more adequate approach to military interventions, which “bring limited benefits and impose high costs on the United States”.
Some comments from the countries of the Global South say that the US is apparently awaiting a long internal political struggle, which may limit US activism in the international arena. Along with this, it is suggested that Washington’s policy is unlikely to change overnight. For example, the Turkish Daily Sabah newspaper expressed on November 15 that “the next four years will not be any better”, however, most importantly, they should also not be worse. Trump should adopt a cooperative approach to foreign policy and security that recognises the limitations of the United States.
At the same time, the Egyptian Al Ahram, noting Trump’s pro-Israeli approach to the Middle East, stressed the other day that the newly elected US president recognises that Israel has lost what he called the ‘PR war’ and should therefore soon put an end to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, since the world can no longer tolerate daily bloodshed and preposterous destruction.
Obama and Russiagate: The Untold Story
Part 2 of our series on how Barack Obama undermined U.S. democracy
By Jeff Carlson & Hans Mahncke | TRUTH OVER NEWS | November 15, 2024
One of the least known aspects of the Russiagate affair is the central role that Barack Obama played in it. For years, the focus has been on individuals such as James Comey, Peter Strzok, the infamous dossier author Christopher Steele, and, of course, Hillary Clinton. And those names are indeed central to the plot, with Clinton being the one who devised the nefarious scheme to portray her opponent as a Russian agent. However, there was someone in the background, pulling many strings, who was even more crucial to the entire scheme: the then-sitting president, Barack Obama.
In this installment of our series on how Obama undermined U.S. democracy, we take a closer look at his role in both promoting and weaponizing the Russiagate hoax, which fraudulently linked Trump to Russia.
July 28 disclosure
We know from emails released by WikiLeaks that early discussions regarding the Clinton campaign’s dirty trick to associate Trump with Russia—what Clinton called the Swiftboat plan—were in full swing by February 2016. Over the following months, various components of this nefarious project came together. These included the hiring of campaign operatives Fusion GPS, commissioning the dirty dossier from Christopher Steele, and enlisting a group of IT specialists tasked with creating a false data trail linking Putin and Trump. We do not know whether Obama was privy to these early efforts. The earliest documented date we have for Obama’s involvement in the scheme is July 28, 2016. On this day, Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, came to the Oval Office and briefed Obama on Clinton’s Swiftboat project. Thus, we can say with certainty that, at the very latest, it was on this day that Obama became aware that the allegations of Russian collusion were nothing more than a fraudulent scheme concocted by Hillary Clinton.
As president, voters had entrusted Obama with the solemn responsibility of keeping the United States safe and secure. For this reason, Obama had a critical duty on July 28, 2016, to promptly put an end to the fraudulent allegations of collusion with Russia. The nominee of a major political party for president being falsely portrayed as a Russian agent posed numerous national security concerns. The fact that the entire scheme had been orchestrated by his opponent, arguably constituted an even more significant national security threat. In simple terms, of the two individuals who could become president, one was falsely accused of being a Russian agent while the other was the one who had cooked up the scam.
However, consistent with the theme throughout our series on Obama, he opted for treachery instead of truth. He wanted the country to tear itself apart, which is why, instead of telling Clinton to put an end to her devious scheme or, better yet, asking his Justice Department officials to investigate her campaign for creating a national security nightmare, Obama went full steam ahead in helping to perpetuate the hoax. Within 72 hours of the Oval Office meeting, the FBI launched its fraudulent Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump.
No peaceful transfer of power
It was a terrible betrayal of the American public who voted Obama into office, and the situation would only worsen. Over the coming months, the fraudulent Russia collusion investigation intensified. Numerous members of Trump’s campaign team were surveilled and monitored by the FBI. When an FBI analyst raised alarm bells about the fabricated Alfa Bank story—a tale concocted by Clinton’s IT operatives to link Putin to Trump—the analyst was promptly sidelined, and the matter was handed over to more pliant agents. However, it was all to no avail. Clinton lost, and Trump was suddenly the president-elect. At this point, it was once again Obama who intervened to undermine Trump and, consequently, American democracy.
The media incessantly discusses the so-called peaceful transfer of power, lamenting that Trump refused to hand over the reins in January 2021. Leaving aside that this assertion is demonstrably false—he did transfer power and retreated to his Mar-a-Lago estate—it is often overlooked in the debate about the peaceful handover of power that it was Obama who did not peacefully hand over power in 2017. Instead, he weaponized the Russia collusion hoax to undermine the incoming Trump administration. He did so fully aware that it would jeopardize Trump’s presidency, and in many ways, it indeed did. It is remarkable how much Trump accomplished despite the persistent cloud of Russia collusion allegations that loomed over him daily.
The specifics of Obama’s actions are relatively straightforward, yet they are seldom discussed. Immediately after Trump won the election, Obama, in collaboration with the intelligence community, initiated an effort to publish an official report, the Intelligence Community Assessment, that would claim that Trump had only won because of Putin’s help. This strategy served two purposes. First, it absolved Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party of accountability for a humiliating defeat. Second, and far more significantly, it created a huge roadblock for the incoming Trump administration. In addition to the persistent inquiries regarding Trump’s alleged connections to Putin, which hindered the administration’s ability to focus on other matters, Obama understood that his plan would effectively criminalize diplomatic relations with Russia. It was sabotage.
Trump’s hands were tied. He could not engage with Russia without provoking an immediate and loud outcry from Democrats, the intelligence community, and the media. Even something as mundane as meeting the Russian ambassador—an event that would ordinarily never make the news—was immediately portrayed as an act of treason. When Trump met Putin in person, the media had a massive meltdown, even accusing Putin of secretly bugging a soccer ball that had been gifted to Trump’s son, Barron. The hysteria knew no bounds, and this was catastrophic, especially given that all of this was occurring against the backdrop of escalating hostilities in Ukraine and the warming of relations between Russia and China—something that the United States should have done everything possible to prevent.
Secret meeting with journalists
And if all of that wasn’t enough, on January 17, 2017, Obama invited a group of journalists to a secret White House meeting. A 21-page transcript, which was only recently released, reveals that Obama used this meeting to carefully plant the fraudulent Russia collusion narrative in the minds of the attending journalists. He did this despite knowing that the entire situation was a hoax. But Obama ensured that the media perceived things otherwise, providing not only the presidential seal of approval to the Russia collusion hoax but also the impression of confirmation from someone with access to all the relevant secret intelligence. In other words, Obama abused the presidency to ensure that his successor would be burdened with the incessant Russia collusion narrative.
Obama’s central role in promoting the Russia collusion hoax was partially revealed by former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who in 2020 disclosed details of the July 2016 meeting between Obama and Brennan. Other intelligence officials within the Trump administration, including his first Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, had access to the same information as Ratcliffe. However, instead of speaking out, they actively sought to undermine the president they were supposed to serve. Ratcliffe’s recent nomination as CIA Director represents not only a significant step toward reforming the intelligence community but also suggests that accountability for Obama may finally be on the horizon.
FBI and Justice Department Anticipate Shake-Up Following Trump’s Comeback
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 12.11.2024
US Justice Department and FBI employees fear widespread “housecleaning” as Donald Trump’s White House return looms, with agency brass reportedly “stunned” and “shell-shocked,” CNN and The Washington Times have reported.
“Let’s hope the housecleaning starts after Trump’s inauguration. The FBI is in desperate need of a change in leadership, one which restores trust and seeks to end the politicization of the agency,” Techno Fog, a nom de plume for a lawyer, blogger and popular legal observer on X, told Sputnik.
The DoJ and FBI’s reaction appears to be strikingly different from what unfolded after Trump’s first win, with the bureau waging Operation Crossfire Hurricane and Operation Crossfire Razor against the newly-elected president and his aides under the false pretext of “collusion with Russia”.
In 2018, former FBI Director James Comey openly bragged about sending two operatives to interrogate Trump’s national security advisor, Michael Flynn, in violation of White House legal rules.
“Thankfully, 2024 isn’t 2016,” Techno Fog said. “There is less hysteria both in the press and at the FBI. Trump won’t be caught off-guard this time by a secret operation targeting his administration – the illegal wiretaps, the lies to the FISA court – that we saw in Trump’s first term. And FBI leadership, by now, hopefully knows better. [FBI Director Christopher] Wray isn’t perfect, and he has made plenty of mistakes, but he is not as deceitful and prone to abuse his power as former FBI Director James Comey.”
Nonetheless, Wray is rumored to step down prior to Trump’s inauguration, before the housecleaning begins. “Director Wray never truly sought responsibility for the Russiagate fiasco,” the lawyer remarked. “It seems like Wray has to go.”
Similarly, there won’t be the weaponization of the Justice Department that one saw in 2016, the pundit continued.
“Special Counsel Jack Smith’s ‘election interference’ case against Trump, which is pending in Washington, DC, will likely be dismissed,” Techno Fog said. “Last week, after Trump’s election, Smith asked the court to vacate the briefing schedule so that the Department of Justice could ‘determine the appropriate course going forward’ given the DoJ’s policy to not seek continue the criminal case against a president. The court granted that request and vacated the briefing schedule and all deadlines in the pretrial schedule.”
That doesn’t mean, however, that Trump has become immune to deep state interference, according to the lawyer.
“The deep state may push back on parts of Trump’s policies that it finds disagreeable, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Keep an eye on efforts to subvert Trump’s goal of seeking an end to the Ukraine-Russia war and any limitations to Ukraine’s potential membership in NATO,” the pundit concluded.
Evidence is Shaky For Iran’s ‘Trump Assassination Plot’
By Ken Silva | The Libertarian Institute | November 12, 2024
The Justice Department announced on Friday that it uncovered more evidence of an Iranian plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump—but the evidence of such a plot is the word of a criminal in Iran, who told the FBI about the conspiracy over the phone.
The DOJ’s announcement was included in charges against Farhad Shakeri, 51, of Iran; Carlisle Rivera, also known as Pop, 49, of Brooklyn, New York; and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island, New York—who are all accused of plotting to kill a U.S. journalist of Iranian origin.
While Shakeri is one of the defendants, the government’s criminal complaint shows that he appears to have been snitching to the FBI in recent months. According to the charging papers, Shakeri participated in phone interviews with the FBI from Iran on September 30, October 8, October 17, October 28 and November 7—ostensibly trading information in exchange for a sentence reduction for an unidentified individual.
In one of those interviews, Shakeri—who was deported from the United States in 2008 after serving fourteen years in prison for robbery—told the FBI that an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps official was pushing him to assassinate Trump. The IRGC official is unidentified but appears to be known to the U.S. government.
“According to SHAKERI, in approximately mid-to-late September 2024, IRGC Official-I asked SHAKERI to put aside his other efforts on behalf of the IRGC and focus on surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating, former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump (‘Victim-4’ herein),” the criminal complaint said.
It continues:
“SHAKERI indicated to IRGC Official-I that this would cost a ‘huge’ amount of money. In response, IRGC Official-I said that ‘we have already spent a lot of money…[s]o the money’s not an issue,’ which SHAKERI understood to mean that the IRGC previously had spent a significant sum of money on efforts to murder Victim-4 and was willing to continue spending a lot of money in its attempt to procure Victim-4’s assassination.”
Shakeri further told the FBI that the IRGC official told him on October 7 that he had to provide a plan to kill Trump within seven days. Shakeri said he was unable to do so, and so Iran has paused its plans to kill Trump until after he loses the election—which would have made it easier to kill him.
“During the interview, SHAKERI claimed to the FBI that he did not intend to propose a plan to murder Victim-4 within the timeframe set by IRGC Official-I,” the charging papers added.
The FBI admitted in the charging papers that Shakeri is a liar, but said his claims about Trump “appear to be truthful.”
Shakeri, Rivera, and Loadholt have all been charged with murder-for-hire, which carries a maximum penalty of ten years in prison; conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, which carries a maximum penalty of ten years in prison; and money laundering conspiracy, which carries a maximum penalty of twenty years in prison.
The DOJ said that at Shakeri’s instruction, Loadholt and Rivera have spent months surveilling a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin residing in the U.S.—likely, based on the description, Masih Alinejad, who has been an outspoken critic of Iran’s government.
Rivera and Loadholt were arrested in the New York area.
The DOJ’s charges against Shakeri, Rivera, and Loadholt mark the latest allegation of an Iranian conspiracy to assassinate Trump.
On July 12—the day before the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania—the FBI arrested a Pakistani man with Iranian ties named Asif Merchant, who was trying to hire hitmen to kill Trump.
The hitmen turned out to be undercover FBI agents, and the whole case appears to be a highly controlled sting operation. While the DOJ claims Merchant has connections to the Iranian government, leaked FBI records show that he had to have his family wire him $5,000 from Pakistan to pay the “hitmen.”
The Merchant case looks similar to the supposed 2022 Iran plot to kill former national security adviser John Bolton. In that case, the FBI claimed that a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tried assassinating Bolton, but the Iranian was never confirmed to be an IRGC-QF member, and the “assassin” he was trying to hire was an FBI informant.
Iran denies plotting to kill Trump
RT | November 9, 2024
Iran has denied US accusations that it attempted to orchestrate a plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump before the November election. It has dismissed the allegations as a hoax orchestrated by pro-Israel actors in a bid to exacerbate tensions between Washington and Tehran.
On Friday, the US Department of Justice claimed that Iranian officials had asked a man named Farhad Shakeri to “provide a plan” to kill Trump, adding that he was also tasked with carrying out assassinations of US and Israeli citizens inside the US. Shakeri was described as an Afghan national residing in Tehran after being deported from the US in 2008 following a lengthy prison sentence for robbery.
The indictment also implicated two American citizens, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, who were accused of helping Tehran track a US citizen of Iranian origin. “The charges announced today expose Iran’s continued brazen attempts to target US citizens, including President-elect Donald Trump, other government leaders and dissidents who criticize the regime in Tehran,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.
On Saturday, the spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baghaei, categorically rejected the accusations, calling them “completely baseless.” “Such claims at this juncture [are] a malicious conspiracy orchestrated by Zionist and anti-Iranian circles, aimed at further complicating the issues between the US and Iran,” he added.
Baghaei also recalled that Iran had denied similar “false” allegations in the past. He was apparently referring to an indictment by the US Department of Justice from August in which a Pakistani national was accused of being sent to the US by Iran to carry out murders. One of the planned attacks was allegedly aimed at Trump.
Trump was the target of two assassination attempts this year prior to the election. The first one occurred in July when Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on him at a Pennsylvania rally, with one bullet grazing Trump’s ear. The would-be assassin was killed on the spot by the Secret Service.
The second incident took place in September, when a suspect identified as Ryan Wesley Routh allegedly tried to assassinate Trump at his Florida golf course but was intercepted by security.
Government Agents Try to Stir Up Fear of Russian Election Interference a Third Presidential Election in a Row
By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | November 1, 2024
For a third United States presidential election in a row, US agents are out warning of Russian election interference.
In the previous two elections the warnings were spurious. Still, the government agents succeeded in raising worry in people’s minds regarding candidate Donald Trump. And they suppressed consideration of information damaging to Trump’s opponents, including through indicating the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop were “Russian disinformation.”
This election, the government agents are at it again. Their latest spurt of relating supposed Russian election interference arrived in a Friday joint statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). This joint statement is one among a series of updates concerning what the press release calls “Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and stoke divisions among Americans.”
Yeah, whatever, guys. Have you ever read the story about the boy who cried wolf?
FBI ran ‘honeypot’ operation on 2016 Trump campaign – whistleblower
RT | October 30, 2024
Former FBI Director James Comey personally ordered “honeypot” spies to infiltrate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, according to an agency whistleblower. The off-the-books operation was described by the agency insider as a “fishing expedition” to find wrongdoing among Trump’s team.
The operation was “personally directed” by Comey and launched in June 2015 without any case file being created in the FBI’s database, according to a whistleblower report handed to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and seen by the Washington Times.
At the time, Trump had just announced his first presidential campaign and neither he nor anyone on his campaign team was suspected of any crimes. Nevertheless, Comey ordered two “honeypot” agents to infiltrate Trump’s team on the campaign trail with the aim of extracting damning information from adviser George Papadopoulos, the report claimed.
A “honeypot” agent refers to an attractive woman who uses a sexual or romantic relationship to gather intelligence from a target.
Comey’s operation took place a year before the FBI’s ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged contacts with Russia, which later morphed into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year ‘Russiagate’ probe. According to the whistleblower, the honeypot operation was kept “off the books” to conceal it from the US Justice Department’s inspector general, who later determined that Comey knowingly lied when submitting evidence to obtain a warrant to surveil Trump’s campaign.
Papadopoulos was eventually questioned by the FBI and in 2017 pled guilty to making false statements to agents regarding his alleged contacts with Russia the year before. He served 12 days in federal prison in 2018, and has claimed ever since that he was entrapped by FBI agents posing as Russians with damaging information on Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.
He complained about sloppy FBI agents “dropping information in my lap that I did not want regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails in the hands of the Russians” during the Crossfire Hurricane probe, and claimed to have been targeted by at least one “honeypot” beforehand. However, Papadopoulos thought that the woman was working for the CIA and “affiliated with Turkish intelligence,” he said in 2019.
The operation was canceled when a newspaper obtained a photograph of one of the agents and was about to publish it, the whistleblower claimed. The FBI allegedly contacted the newspaper claiming that the woman in question was an informant, and not an agent, and would be killed if the photo was released, successfully preventing its publication. One of the agents was then allegedly transferred to the CIA so she would not be available as a potential witness.
“The FBI employee personally observed one or more employees in the FBI being directed to never discuss the operation with anyone ever again, which included talking with other people involved in the operation,” the report states.
The Judiciary Committee told the Washington Times that it “plans to look into” the report. Trump fired Comey in 2017, describing him as a “liar” and a “slimeball.”
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History and Biblical Scholarship: Al-Quds Is Not Jerusalem
By Dr. Elias Akleh | Global Research | July 3, 2018
The Zionist Israeli state calls on the Old Testament/Torah as a historical document to prove its legality to “re-claim” Palestine; their god’s promised land. To assert this legality and the myth of the promised land Zionist Organization, since its establishment, had recruited the science of archaeology, employing western Christian biblical archaeologists, to provide the required “historic” proof of the right of the Jews; alleged modern Israelites, to Palestine. This became very critical after Julius Wellhausen; the biblical scholar and Professor Ordinarius of Theology and head of the German School of Biblical Criticism, published his 1883 book “Geschichte Israels”, later titled as “Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels” claiming that the Old Testament/Torah stories were invented during the Babylonian exile to serve certain theological and political purposes.
American biblical scholars and archaeologists, such as William Fox Albright, were recruited to refute Wellhausen’s claims. Albright was endorsed by covertly Zionist financed Biblical Colloquium; a scholarly society devoted to the analysis and discussions of biblical matters, and the preparations, publication, and distribution of biblical literature to brainwash readers and students with a specific theological ideology. Albright, as well as other biblical archaeologists like him, was also honored (bribed) by the American Friends of the Israel Exploration Society. His writings; such as “Why the Near East Needs the Jews”, are flagrant racist Zionist propaganda ignoring the vast archaeological history of the indigenous Palestinians while emphasizing the fake unproven Israelites’ narrative in Palestine. … continue
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