Evidence Will Probably Never Be Produced in Indictments of ‘Russian Agents’
By Joe Lauria | Consortium News | July 14, 2018
Charges against 12 Russian intelligence agents for allegedly hacking emails from the Democratic Party during the 2016 presidential election were announced by the U.S. Justice Department on Friday at the very moment President Donald Trump was meeting Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle and just days before a summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
A central claim of Russia-gate has been that the Russian government with help from the Trump campaign stole emails from the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign and then gave those emails to WikiLeaks for publication to damage Clinton’s quest for the White House.
Until Friday however, the investigation into the allegations had produced no formal indictment of Russian government interference in the election. Like previous U.S. government accusations against Russia for alleged election meddling, the indictment makes assertions without providing evidence. Under U.S. law, indictments are not considered evidence. And it is highly unlikely that the government will ever have to produce any evidence in court.
Friday’s indictments do not include any charges against Trump campaign members for allegedly colluding with the Russian government to carry out the hacks. That has been at the core of allegations swirling in U.S. media for two years. If the alleged co-conspirators “known” to the DOJ were on the Trump team, the indictments do not say. There is only a hint that “unknown” persons might be.
In announcing the indictments at a press conference Friday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said: “The conspirators corresponded with several Americans during the course of the conspiracy through the internet. There’s no allegation in this indictment that the Americans knew they were corresponding with Russian intelligence officers.”
The indictment alleges that Russian agents, posing as Guccifer 2.0, communicated on Aug. 15, 2016 with “a person who was in regular contact with senior members” of the Trump campaign, mostly like advisor Roger Stone, who has spoken about communicating with Guccifer 2.0. The indictment says Guccifer offered to “help u anyhow,” apparently indicating that Stone did want Guccifer 2.0’s help.
Clinging to ‘Collusion’
The lack of evidence that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia has never stopped Democrats and their media outlets from believing unnamed U.S. intelligence sources for two years about such collusion. “Collusion” is the title of a best-selling book about the supposed Trump-Russia conspiracy to steal the election, but such a charge is not to be found.
The indictment excluding collusion also undermines the so-called Steele dossier, a work of opposition research paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign masquerading as an intelligence document because it was compiled by a former MI6 agent. The memos falsely claimed, it turns out, that Trump’s people started colluding with Russia years before he became a candidate.
But even after Friday’s indictments failed to charge anyone from Trump’s team, the Democratic media continued to insist there was collusion. A New York Times story, headlined, “Trump Invited the Russians to Hack Clinton. Were They Listening?,” said Russia may have absurdly responded to Trump’s call at 10:30 a.m. on July 27, 2016 to hack Clinton’s private email server because it was “on or about” that day that Russia allegedly first made an attempt to hack Clinton’s personal emails, according to the indictment, which makes no connection between the two events.
If Russia is indeed guilty of remotely hacking the emails it would have had no evident need of assistance from anyone on the Trump team, let alone a public call from Trump on national TV to commence the operation.
Instead of Trump operatives, the indictments name 12 Russians, allegedly agents from the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency. The agents “knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other, and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury (collectively the ‘Conspirators’), to gain unauthorized access (to ‘hack’) into the computers of U.S. persons and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, steal documents from those computers, and stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” the 29-page indictment says.
“Starting in at least March 2016, the Conspirators used a variety of means to hack the email accounts of volunteers and employees of the U.S. presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton (the ‘Clinton Campaign’), including the email account of the Clinton Campaign’s chairman,” the indictment says.
Obvious Timing
The timing of the announcement was clearly intended to embarrass Trump as he was meeting the Queen and to undermine his upcoming meeting with Putin on July 16. The indictments may also have been meant to embarrass Russia two days before the World Cup final to be held in Moscow.
Pressure was immediately brought on Trump to cancel the summit in light of the indictments, which may have been the main aim in the timing of their announcement. “Glad-handing with Vladimir Putin on the heels of these indictments would be an insult to our democracy,” Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement less than an hour after the indictments were announced. “President Trump should cancel his meeting with Vladimir Putin until Russia takes demonstrable and transparent steps to prove that they won’t interfere in future elections,” Schumer said.
With no apparent irony, The New York Times reported, “The timing of the indictment … added a jolt of tension to the already freighted atmosphere surrounding Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Putin. It is all but certain to feed into the conspiratorial views held by the president and some of his allies that Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors are determined to undermine Mr. Trump’s designs for a rapprochement with Russia.”
Russia Denies
The Russian government on Friday strongly denied the charges. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry called the indictments “a shameful farce” that was not backed up by any evidence. “Obviously, the goal of this ‘mud-slinging’ is to spoil the atmosphere before the Russian-American summit,” the statement said.
The Ministry added that the 12 named Russians were not agents of the GRU.
“When you dig into this indictment … there are huge problems, starting with how in the world did they identify 12 Russian intelligence officers with the GRU,” said former CIA analyst Larry Johnson in an interview with Consortium News. Johnson pointed out that the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency was not allowed to take part in the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on alleged interference by the GRU. Only hand-picked analysts from the FBI, the NSA and the CIA were involved.
“The experts in the intelligence community on the GRU … is the Defense Intelligence Agency and they were not allowed to clear on that document,” Johnson said.
“When you look at the level of detail about what [the indictment is] claiming, there is no other public source of information on this ,and it was not obtained through U.S. law enforcement submitting warrants and getting affidavits to conduct research in Russia, so it’s clearly intelligence information from the NSA, most likely,” Johnson said.
CrowdStrike’s Role
The indictment makes clear the evidence of an alleged hack of the DNC and DCCC computers did not come from the FBI, which was never given access to the computers by the DNC, but instead from the private firm CrowdStrike, which was hired by the DNC. It is referred to as Company 1 in the indictment.
“Despite the Conspirators’ efforts to hide their activity, beginning in or around May 2016, both the DCCC and DNC became aware that they had been hacked and hired a security company (“Company 1”) to identify the extent of the intrusions,” the indictment says.
The indictment doesn’t mention it, but within a day, CrowdStrike claimed to find Russian “fingerprints” in the metadata of a DNC opposition research document, which had been revealed by DCLeaks, showing Cyrillic letters and the name of the first Soviet intelligence chief. That supposedly implicated Russia in the hack.
CrowdStrike claimed the alleged Russian intelligence operation was extremely sophisticated and skilled in concealing its external penetration of the server. But CrowdStrike’s conclusion about Russian “fingerprints” resulted from clues that would have been left behind by extremely sloppy or amateur hackers–or inserted intentionally to implicate the Russians.
One of CrowdStrike’s founders has ties to the anti-Russian Atlantic Council raising questions of political bias. And the software it used to determine Russia’s alleged involvement in the DNC hack, was later proved to be faulty in a high-profile case in Ukraine, reported by the Voice of America.
The indictment then is based at least partially on evidence produced by an interested private company, rather than the FBI.
Evidence Likely Never to be Seen
Other apparent sources for information in the indictment are intelligence agencies, which normally create hurdles in a criminal prosecution.
“In this indictment there is detail after detail whose only source could be intelligence, yet you don’t use intelligence in documents like this because if these defendants decide to challenge this in court, it opens the U.S. to having to expose sources and methods,” Johnson said.
If the U.S. invoked the states secret privilege so that classified evidence could not be revealed in court a conviction before a civilian jury would be jeopardized.
Such a trial is extremely unlikely however. That makes the indictment essentially a political and not a legal document because it is almost inconceivable that the U.S. government will have to present any evidence in court to back up its charges. This is simply because of the extreme unlikelihood that arrests of Russians living in Russia will ever be made.
In this way it is similar to the indictment earlier this year of the Internet Research Agency of St. Petersburg, Russia, a private click bait company that was alleged to have interfered in the 2016 election by buying social media ads and staging political rallies for both Clinton and Trump. It seemed that no evidence would ever have to back up the indictment because there would never be arrests in the case.
But Special Counsel Robert Mueller was stunned when lawyers for the internet company showed up in Washington demanding discovery in the case. That caused Mueller to scramble and demand a delay in the first hearing, which was rejected by a federal judge. Mueller is now battling to keep so-called sensitive material out of court.
In both the IRA case and Friday’s indictments, the extremely remote possibility of convictions were not what Mueller was apparently after, but rather the public perception of Russia’s guilt resulting from fevered media coverage of what are after all only accusations, presented as though it is established fact. Once that impression is settled into the public consciousness, Mueller’s mission would appear to be accomplished.
For instance, the Times routinely dispenses with the adjective “alleged” and reports the matter as though it is already established fact. It called Friday’s indictments, which are only unproven charges, as “the most detailed accusation by the American government to date of the [not alleged] Russian government’s interference in the 2016 election, and it includes a litany of [not alleged] brazen Russian subterfuge operations meant to foment chaos in the months before Election Day.”
GRU Named as WikiLeak’s Source
The indictment claims that GRU agents, posing as Guccifer 2.0, (who says he is a Romanian hacker) stole the Democratic documents and later emailed them to WikiLeaks, named as “Organization 1.” No charges were brought against WikiLeaks on Friday.
“After failed attempts to transfer the stolen documents starting in late June 2016, on or about July 14, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, sent Organization 1 an email with an attachment titled ‘wk dnc linkl.txt.gpg,’” the indictment says. “The Conspirators explained to Organization 1 that the encrypted file contained instructions on how to access an online archive of stolen DNC documents. On or about July 18, 2016, Organization 1 confirmed it had ‘the 1Gb or so archive’ and would make a release of the stolen documents ‘this week.’”
WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange, who is in exile in the Ecuador embassy in London, has long denied that he got the emails from any government. Instead Assange has suggested that his source was a disgruntled Democratic Party worker, Seth Rich, whose murder on the streets of Washington in July 2016 has never been solved.
On Friday, WikiLeaks did not repeat the denial that a government was its source. Instead it tweeted: “Interesting timing choice by DoJ today (right before Trump-Putin meet), announcing indictments against 12 alleged Russian intelligence officers for allegedly releasing info through DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0.”
Assange has had all communication with the outside world shut off by the Ecuadorian government two months ago.
Since the indictments were announced, WikiLeaks has not addressed the charge that GRU agents, posing as Guccifer 2.0, were its source. WikiLeaks’ policy is to refuse to disclose any information about its sources. WikiLeaks’ denial that the Russian government gave them the emails could be based on its belief that Guccifer 2.0 was who he said he was, and not what the U.S. indictments allege.
Those indictments claim that the Russian military intelligence agents adopted the personas of both Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks to publish the Democratic Party documents online, before the Russian agents, posing as Guccifer 2.0, allegedly supplied WikiLeaks.
The emails, which the indictment does not say are untrue, damaged the Clinton campaign. They revealed, for instance, that the campaign and the Democratic Party worked to deny the nomination to Clinton’s Democratic Party primary challenger Bernie Sanders.
The indictments also say that the Russian agents purchased the use of a computer server in Arizona, using bitcoin to hide their financial transactions. The Arizona server was used to receive the hacked emails from the servers of the Democratic Party and the chairman of Clinton’s campaign, the indictment alleges. If true it would mean the transfer of the emails within the United States, rather than overseas, presumably to Russia.
Some members of the Veterans’ Intelligence Professionals for Sanity argue that metadata evidence points to a local download from the Democratic computers, in other words a leak, rather than a hack. They write the NSA would have evidence of a hack and, unlike this indictment, could make the evidence public: “Given NSA’s extensive trace capability, we conclude that DNC and HRC servers alleged to have been hacked were, in fact, not hacked. The evidence that should be there is absent; otherwise, it would surely be brought forward, since this could be done without any danger to sources and methods.”
That argument was either ignored or dismissed by Mueller’s team.
The Geopolitical Context
It is not only allies of Trump, as the Times thinks, who believe the timing of the indictments, indeed the entire Russia-gate scandal, is intended to prevent Trump from pursuing detente with nuclear-armed Russia. Trump said of the indictments that, “I think that really hurts our country and it really hurts our relationship with Russia. I think that we would have a chance to have a very good relationship with Russia and a very good chance — a very good relationship with President Putin.”
There certainly appear to be powerful forces in the U.S. that want to stop that.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Wall Street rushed in behind Boris Yeltsin and Russian oligarchs to asset strip virtually the entire country, impoverishing the population. Amid widespread accounts of this grotesque corruption, Washington intervened in Russian politics to help get Yeltsin re-elected in 1996. The political rise of Vladimir Putin after Yeltsin resigned on New Year’s Eve 1999 reversed this course, restoring Russian sovereignty over its economy and politics.
That inflamed American hawks whose desire is to install another Yeltsin-like figure and resume U.S. exploitation of Russia’s vast natural and financial resources. To advance that cause, U.S. presidents have supported the eastward expansion of NATO and have deployed 30,000 troops on Russia’s border.
In 2014, the Obama administration helped orchestrate a coup that toppled the elected government of Ukraine and installed a fiercely anti-Russian regime. The U.S. also undertook the risky policy of aiding jihadists to overthrow a secular Russian ally in Syria. The consequences have brought the world closer to nuclear annihilation than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
In this context, the Democratic Party-led Russia-gate appears to have been used not only to explain away Clinton’s defeat but to stop Trump — possibly via impeachment or by inflicting severe political damage — because he talks about cooperation with Russia.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe .
Strzok Hoisted on His Own Petard
By Ray McGovern | Consortium News | July 13, 2018
If FBI agent Peter Strzok were not so glib, it would have been easier to feel some sympathy for him during his tough grilling at the House oversight hearing on Thursday, even though his wounds are self-inflicted. The wounds, of course, ooze from the content of his own text message exchange with his lover and alleged co-conspirator, Lisa Page.
Strzok was a top FBI counterintelligence official and Page an attorney working for then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. The Attorney General fired McCabe in March and DOJ has criminally referred McCabe to federal prosecutors for lying to Justice Department investigators.
On Thursday members of the House Judiciary and Oversight/Government Reform Committees questioned Strzok for eight hours on how he led the investigations of Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized emails and Donald Trump’s campaign’s ties with Russia, if any.
Strzok did his best to be sincerely slick. Even so, he seemed to feel beleaguered — even ambushed — by the questions of Republicans using his own words against him. “Disingenuous” is the word a Republican Congresswoman used to describe his performance. Nonetheless, he won consistent plaudits from the Democrats. He showed zero regret for the predicament he put himself into, except for regret at his royal screw-up in thinking he and Lisa could “talk about Hillary” (see below) on their FBI cellphones and no one would ever know. One wag has suggested that Strzok may have been surreptitiously texting, when he should have been listening to the briefing on “Cellphone Security 101.”
In any case, the chickens have now come home to roost. Most of those chickens, and Strzok’s predicament in general, are demonstrably the result of his own incompetence. Indeed, Strzok seems the very embodiment of the “Peter Principle.” FBI agents down the line — that is, the non-peter-principle people — are painfully aware of this, and resent the discredit that Strzok and his bosses have brought on the Bureau. Many are reportedly lining up to testify against what has been going on at the top.
It is always necessary at this point to note that the heads of the FBI, CIA, NSA and even the Department of Justice were operating, as former FBI Director James Comey later put it, in an environment “where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump.” Most of them expected to be able to stay in their key positions and were confident they would receive plaudits — not indictments — for the liberties that they, the most senior U.S. law enforcement officials, took with the law. In other words, once the reality that Mrs. Clinton was seen by virtually everyone to be a shoo-in is taken into account, the mind boggles a lot less.
Peter Principle
In a text sent to Page on April 2, 2016, Strzok assured her that it was safe to use official cellphones. Page: “So look, you say we text on that phone when we talk about Hillary because it can’t be traced.” It goes downhill from there for the star-crossed lovers.
Pity Page, who asked for more time to answer a subpoena to testify to the same joint-committee. It is understandable that she would have trusted Strzok on this. After all, he was not only her lover, but also one of the FBI’s top counterintelligence officials.
How could she ever have expected to taste the bitter irony that the above text exchange could be retrieved, find its way to the Department of Justice Inspector General, to Congress, and then to the rest of us, not to mention far more incriminating exchanges.
The ‘Hillary Dispensation’
There were moments of high irony at Thursday’s hearing. For example, under questioning by Darrell Issa (R-CA), Strzok appealed, in essence, for the same kid-gloves treatment that his FBI and DOJ associates afforded Mrs. Clinton during the Strzok-led investigation of her emails.
Issa: Mr. Strozk, you were part of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, that’s correct?
Strzok: Yes.
Issa: And in that investigation, uh, you were part of the decision for her to, uh, and her lawyers, to go through emails that were produced during, uh, you, if you will, during her time as Secretary, go through and determine which ones were Government, and which ones were not, both the classified and unclassified, is that correct?
Strzok: I was not.
Issa: You were not involved at all.
Strzok: That’s correct.
Issa: But you’re aware of it.
Strzok: I.. I’m aware of their statements to us about how they did it.
Issa: And do you think it was ok, uh, for Secretary Clinton to determine what could or couldn’t, uh, uh, qualify for her to turn in under the Federal Records Act?
Strzok: I, I can’t speak to that. That was a decision, my understanding between her and her attorneys, and…
Issa: Ok, but you were aware that in her production she failed to deliver some items that’ve now been ruled were classified, is that correct?
Strzok: I’m aware that we recovered information that was not in the material that she turned over. I don’t know if it was her failure, the failure of the attorneys conducting that sort, or simply because she didn’t have it. I, I don’t know the answer to that question.
Issa: So, I bring up something that came up in the previous round. So far, only you have determined what should be turned over from your private emails, that, or your non-government emails and texts, what should be delivered because it was government in nature. You’ve made that decision.
Strzok: That’s right.
Issa: And it’s your position that nobody else in the way of a government entity should be able to look over your shoulder, so to speak, and make that decision.
Strzok: That, that’s right.
Issa: So you think it’s ok for the target — and you are a target — of an investigation to determine what should be delivered rather than, if you will, the government, right?
Strzok: Sir, I am not aware of any investigation of which I am a target, not aware I’m a target of any investigation.
At this point Issa tells Strzok he is indeed a target of investigation by Congress. More importantly, Issa makes the point that the content of the texts exchanged on the FBI phones contained a mixture of official business and personal matters.
So why, asks Issa, should we not ask you to provide similar texts from your personal exchanges, since there is likely to be a similar mixture of official and personal matters in those texts? Issa suggests they likely “would be similar.”
Strzok asks if, by “similar,” Issa means “commenting on Mr. Trump or Hillary Clinton or anything else political in nature.” Strzok then adds, “I don’t specifically recall but it is probably a safe assumption.”
Uh oh.
Strzok: No Good Options
If Strzok was distracted by texting during the standard briefing on “NSA Capabilities:101,” he may have missed the part about NSA collecting and storing everything that goes over the Internet. That would include, of course, his private text messages with Page on private phones.
There is, admittedly, a very slim chance Strzok is unaware of this. But, given his naiveté about how well protected the texts on his FBI cellphone were, that possibility cannot be ruled out. In any case, given the high stakes involved, there seems a chance he might be tempted to follow Mrs. Clinton’s example with her emails and try to delete or destroy texts that provide additional incriminating evidence — or get someone else to do so.
More probably, after Thursday’s hearing, Strzok will see it as too late for him to try to cash in on the “Hillary Exemption.” Strzok, after all, is not Hillary Clinton. In addition, it has probably long since dawned on him that his FBI and DOJ co-conspirators may well decide to “throw him under the bus,” one of those delicate expressions we use in Washington. In this connection, Strzok will have noted that last month McCabe asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to give him immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony on how senior officials at the FBI and Justice Department handled the investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s private email server.
If McCabe knows FBI history, he is aware that one of his predecessors as acting director, L. Patrick Gray, famously was left to “twist slowly in the wind” per the instructions of President Richard Nixon’s aide John Ehrlichman, when the Senate Judiciary Committee could not get satisfactory answers from Gray.
Nixon had nominated Gray to lead the FBI after J. Edgar Hoover died in May 1972, but he could never get confirmed by the Senate. Worse still, Gray was forced to resign after less than a year as acting FBI director, after he admitted to having destroyed Watergate-related documents.
Predictable Media Spin
The “mainstream media” remain the main obstacle to understanding what is going on behind the scenes. It would be easier to forgive them, were not a full-blown Constitutional crisis brewing the Executive and Legislature branches, as the DOJ and FBI continue to resist Congress’s requests for original documents. Former CIA chief John Brennan is also being given space to indulge in pre-emptive rhetoric that he apparently thinks will help when they get to him.
The New York Times reported Friday that “Peter Strzok … was hauled before the House but came out swinging. … The embattled F.B.I. agent who oversaw the opening of the Russia investigation mounted an aggressive defense of himself and the F.B.I. on Thursday, rejecting accusations that he let his private political views bias his official actions and labeling Republicans’ preoccupation with him ‘another victory notch in Putin’s belt.’”
The Potomac Times (aka The Washington Post) ran similarly laudatory coverage of Strzok — “Strzok testifies amid partisan fury: heated hearing sheds little light as agent fumes at accusations of FBI bias” — and laced its coverage with a defamatory article about Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who led the most aggressive Republican questioning of Strzok.
According to the Times, Jordan is “under withering scrutiny as he faces numerous accusations that he knew or should have known about the alleged sexual misconduct of a doctor who worked with the Ohio State wrestling team when Jordan was an assistant coach there between 1986 and 1995.” The Times goes on to quote House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): “Well, many people say that he did know and by his own standard, he should have known.”
And, sadly, do not look to so-called progressive media for more balanced reporting. For example, Democracy Now! Friday morning chose to highlight Strzok’s tortured explanation of what he really meant when he told Page, “We will stop” Trump. Strzok says the “we” he referred to was “the American population [which] would not elect somebody” who behaves like Trump. The context of that text exchange, however, makes it clear who the “we” is — or was.
Finally, for those with the courage to dissect and explain Strzok’s testimony to neighbors still drinking Russia-gate Kool-Aid, please note that Strzok’s name is easier to say, than to spell. It is pronounced “struck” like “dumbstruck,” or — equally applicable in Strzok’s circumstances — “Moonstruck.” Those watching Thursday’s hearing will have noticed that not all members of the House Judiciary and Oversight/Government Reform Committees had gotten the word on how to pronounce what may now become a household word.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. A former U.S. Army officer and CIA analyst, he has closely watched Washington goings-on like this for five decades. Ray co-created Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
The Two Conflicting Histories of the King Assassination
By Bill Willers | Dissident Voice | July 10, 2018
There are now in the public sphere two totally contradictory narratives of the assassination in 1968 of Martin Luther King, Jr. with each being advanced again and again over the years by respective advocates as if the other did not exist.
Attorney William Pepper, confidant of Martin Luther King, Jr., became convinced in 1978 that James Earl Ray, the officially declared lone gunman, was innocent. Years of investigation led to his 1995 book, Orders to Kill, in which Pepper presented evidence of governmental involvement in the assassination. Three years later, Gerald Posner, already famous for his support for the Warren Commission’s report concerning President Kennedy’s assassination, published Killing the Dream, a defense of the official governmental contention that Ray was the assassin. The King Family also believed Ray innocent, but due to governmental refusal to pursue a criminal trial, there was instead a 1999 civil trial, The King Family vs. Loyd Jowers et al. Jowers, who had admitted having received the rifle actually used in the shooting, was granted immunity to reveal all he knew. All facets of news media boycotted the trial, arguably the de facto “Trial of the Century”.
History A
The trial brought together three decades of accumulated information, much for the first time. James Earl Ray was shown as set up to take blame for the killing. Some Memphis policemen had met in Jim’s Grill, where Jowers worked, while planning the assassination. The fatal shot, rather than fired by Ray from a rooming house, as officially reported, was seen by eyewitnesses to have come from a brushy area across the street from the Lorraine Motel. Police units near the Lorraine were called away prior to the shooting, as were the “Invaders”, a gang being lodged at the Lorraine while coordinating with King on the planned sanitation worker’s strike. Inexplicably, within hours following the assassination the brushy area was cut to the ground by the city. Many witnesses were not interviewed, and those with accounts at odds with the governmental explanation were ignored.
The 30-06 rifle presented as the murder weapon had actually been discovered next to a shop door wrapped in a bedspread ten minutes before the shooting. Moreover, it had not been sighted in so could not have hit at point of aim, and bullets found with it did not match the bullet taken from King’s body. The bathroom from which Ray is supposed to have fired was seen by a witness to be empty at the time of the shooting, and observers saw Ray drive away from the area a quarter hour before the shooting. Jowers, who worked at Jim’s Grill, adjacent to the brushy area, was handed a still smoking rifle after the shot was fired, which rifle he hid until giving it the following day to a collaborator to throw into the Mississippi river.
US Army Intelligence maintained surveillance on King, who had become a problem for the Federal Government through his opposition to the Vietnam War and for his plans for a Poor People’s Campaign aimed at obstructing governmental function. Army photographers, positioned on a roof near the Lorraine, photographed the shooter lowering his rifle and departing the brushy area. There were multiple military snipers as backup shooters if needed. Elements of the military, CIA, FBI, Alabama National Guard, Memphis Police, and the Mafia were identified as components of a carefully organized conspiracy.
The trial ended with the jury unanimous in finding that King had been assassinated not by James Earl Ray but by means of a conspiracy involving Jowers (30%) and “others including governmental agencies” (70%). Although the trial did not make the news, a Washington Post editorial (December 12, 1999, pg B08) stated “The more quickly and completely this jury’s discredited verdict is forgotten, the better”. (Note: That editorial is apparently no longer available in the Post’s online archive). In 2003, Pepper published An Act Of State, a book detailing the court’s findings.
History B
In 2010, writer Hampton Sides published Hellhound On His Trail, like Gerald Posner’s 1998 book an elaboration of the official governmental report portraying James Earl Ray as lone assassin. Sides described movements of King and Ray during days leading up to King’s killing on April 4, 1968 and of the ensuing hunt by the authorities for Ray. In minute-by-minute detail, Sides has Ray, a racist interested in a reported bounty, following King to Memphis and renting a room in a boarding house with a clear view of the balcony outside King’s Lorraine Motel room. With King in view, Ray rests a recently purchased, scoped 30-06 on the bathroom windowsill and fires, mortally wounding King. Ray then wraps rifle and other items in a bedspread, runs from the building and, seeing police within view of his car, ditches the suspicious looking bundle next to a shop door. He then departs and is on the run until his arrest.
Meanwhile, King was hurried to ER at Catholic-run St. Joseph’s hospital, where Drs. Ted Galyon and Rufus Brown attended him. Shortly, others, including various specialists, entered. Ralph Abernathy remained in the room along with Reverend Bernard Lee. At 7:05 PM King was pronounced dead by Dr. Jerome Basso, who closed King’s eyes. The bullet found in King is reported by Sides to be consistent with ammunition purchased by Ray and found with his rifle.
Although Sides claims to have explored all available sources of data, including “court proceedings”, declares that he “drew from a wealth of memoirs written by the King Family”, and lists the King Center in his bibliography, there is mention neither of the 1999 trial nor of William Pepper’s two books, published years earlier than his 2010 book. However, and despite years of media censorship, awareness of both the trial and of Pepper’s books had spread by 2010, so one must conclude that Sides’ omissions were deliberate. The evasion of such a quantity of opposing information is fatal to Hellhound On His Trail as an objective history.
Nevertheless, in 2010, the same year as the release of Hellhound On His Trail, the PBS television program “American Experience” aired Roads to Memphis, a documentary film described as “the entwined stories of assassin James Earl Ray and his target, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” The film, for which Sides was historical consultant, was based on his book and featured commentary by Sides himself, as well as by author Gerald Posner, an established supporter of the official governmental account. As the book, so the film, in that there was no mention of either the trial or of Pepper’s books. Like Hellhound On His Trail, Roads to Memphis serves as forceful support for the Government’s narrative.
2016: Pepper’s Magnum Opus
William Pepper published The Plot To Kill King, a 770-page detailed summation of the Government’s role in the killing with new material gathered since his 2003 book. Here, Pepper traced the long-term strategy to bring both King and Ray to Memphis. Half of the book consists of appendices revealing military, CIA, FBI, Memphis police and Mafia involvement in the assassination and supportive of Ray’s innocence. The claim by attorney Percy Foreman that he had never pressured his client into a rash, untimely guilty plea is shown to be a lie by a letter from Foreman in which he offers Ray money “… contingent upon the plea of guilty and … without any unseemly conduct on your part in court.” There is a photocopy of the letter in the book’s appendix.
Pepper writes, “At Hoover’s request, James [Earl Ray] had been profiled as a potential scapegoat.” Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s deputy at the FBI, and shown by Pepper to be a central figure in the conspiracy, paid a prison official to engineer Ray’s escape from a prison, so that this designated patsy could thereafter be managed by another conspirator, Raul Coelho, who would then guide Ray to Memphis. Tolson distributed cash, some of which apparently made its way to Jesse Jackson. Jackson, along with others within King’s group, is depicted as an informant paid by the FBI to relay information on King. There is also a report that it was Jackson who had King’s room changed from the ground floor of the Lorraine to the more exposed second floor with its open balcony, and who ordered the Invaders away from the Lorraine shortly before the shooting. Pepper claims that evidence indicates the actual shooter to have been Memphis Police sharpshooter Frank Strausser.
Mortally wounded, King was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital where, surprisingly, “a large presence” of military intelligence officers had taken positions well before the shot was fired. More surprisingly, the hospital’s head surgeon, Breen Bland, accompanied by two men in suits, entered the hospital room in which King was being attended by medical staff. Bland is quoted as shouting, “Stop working on the nigger and let him die” and then ordering everyone out of the room. Personnel hearing the sound of men clearing their throats lingered behind and reported seeing Bland and his two accomplices spit on King, after which Bland smothered King to death with a pillow (Note: Pepper describes this in a 2017 lecture, here on Vimeo).
2118: PBS Takes a Stand
In the spring of 2018 there were multiple airings on the PBS program “American Experience” of Hampton Sides’ 2010 film Roads to Memphis. This is renewed reinforcement by PBS of the Government’s depiction of James Earl Ray as lone assassin and an excellent illustration of how televised media can function as servant of the State.
Sides’ contention that he drew from memoirs of the King Family as part of his thorough research is at odds with a filmed interview by ABC of the entire King Family. From dialogue, as well as from the youth of the family members, it is clear the interview was pre-1999 Trial (Note: The link indicated is to a 2-hour piece available, at the time of this writing, on YouTube. Start at 1:03 for the 5-minute segment of the King Family interview). In it, Dexter King states, “Evidence I’ve seen or heard will vindicate or exonerate James Earl Ray”. When asked who was behind the assassination, Dexter continues, “I am told that it was part-and-parcel Army Intelligence, CIA, FBI”. When the interviewer says, “This is a staggering idea to carry around”, Dexter answers, with a short derisive laugh, “I think we knew it all along. It’s why we’re not, like, jumping out of our seats, because we’ve known for years.” How on earth could Sides (or Posner) have overlooked such as that?
Although the keepers of the nation’s information gates have striven to bury the results of William Pepper’s four decade quest for the truth of King’s death, millions by now have been exposed to the fact that two opposing explanations of King’s murder continue to exist. Theologian James Douglass, who attended the 1999 trial, later wrote an article in which he stated:
The Memphis trial has opened wide the door to our assassination politics. Anyone who walks through it is faced by an either/or: to declare naked either the empire or oneself.
Bill Willers is an emeritus professor of biology, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He is founder of the Superior Wilderness Action Network and editor of Learning to Listen to the Land, and Unmanaged Landscapes, both from Island Press. He can be contacted at willer@uwosh.edu.
Mainstream Media Admits FBI Groomed Terrorist for 4th of July Attack, Gave Him Supplies
By Rachel Blevins – The Free Thought Project – July 4, 2018
Cleveland, Ohio – An innocent man is now facing terrorism charges after he was caught plotting a bombing at a Fourth of July celebration and then arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The only problem is that the plot was created by undercover FBI agents, who convinced the man to agree to a role in the plan, and then provided him with supplies.
Demetrius Pitts, 48, is now facing criminal charges after conversations with undercover agents led to his arrest. According to the criminal complaint against Pitts, the FBI claimed that its agents reached out to him because he made comments on Facebook that indicated he may be interested in joining al-Qaeda, traveling overseas for training, and then returning to the U.S. to carry out an attack.
While it is not clear what the comments from Pitts—who was reportedly using a Facebook account with a different name—stated exactly, it is clear that there was no indication he actually planned on carrying out a terrorist attack. In fact, a report from NBC News admitted that “there’s no indication that Pitts could have carried off any attack on his own.”
FBI Special Agent in Charge Stephen Anthony justified the contact by insisting that instead of waiting to see if Pitts ever joined al-Qaeda and traveled overseas for training, agents were completely justified in reaching out to Pitt and trying to convince him to carry out an attack now.
“Law enforcement cannot stand by and wait for Mr. Pitts to make a violent attack,” Anthony said.
Pitts agreed to meet an undercover agent in person, and the criminal complaint claimed that the agent secretly recorded their conversations, which revolved around wanting to assassinate President Trump, and planning a terrorist attack in Cleveland. “I’m trying to figure out something that would shake them up on the Fourth of July,” Pitts told the agent.
However, the complaint raises questions about how much Pitts even wanted to be involved with the planned attack, because he simply wanted to “go look at the base of the ground” where it would take place, and he wanted the other “brothers” who the FBI agent claimed were involved, to fulfill all of the other parts of the plan.
“I don’t wanna meet all the Brothers,” Pitts said in one conversation.
“Now what about the detonator guy?” the agent asked.
“Now I don’t even wanna meet him,” Pitts replied. “He has nothing to do with me… The only thing I’m going to be responsible for is going to look at the spot, to scope out the scenery.”
In order to carry out his role, Pitts needed a bus pass to take him downtown and a cellphone to take photos of the places that would be bombing targets—both of which were supplied by the FBI.
Given the fact that he did not provide any of the supplies needed for the attack, he did not want to be the one who carried out the attack, and he simply promised to provide a basic layout of downtown Cleveland, proves that Demetrius Pitts was clearly not the ticking time bomb the FBI claimed he was.
The report claimed that Pitts was sentenced to prison for a robbery in 1989, and he pleaded guilty to theft in 2007. His latest run-in with the law occurred in 2016 when the state of Pennsylvania requested that Pitts be extradited on assault, robbery and theft charges.
Pitts has now been charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization because he agreed to use a cellphone and a bus pass provided by the FBI to take photos of downtown Cleveland.
Diane Stoudemire, Pitts’ aunt, told USA Today that she was shocked by the news and that Pitts has “never been a violent person.”
“He had had some problems with drugs and everything,” Stoudemire said. “He came up without his father, which is my brother, that was killed before Demetrius was born. His mother passed away while Demetrius was in penitentiary, so he’s been having such a hard time.”
This is not the first time the FBI has used its undercover agents to befriend a man online who looks like he may be critical of the U.S. government and sympathetic to terrorist groups in the Middle East, and has convinced him to carry out an attack on U.S. soil—so that the FBI can then heroically arrest the suspect, even if he refused to carry out the attack.
In December, the FBI was credited with stopping a man from carrying out an ISIS-inspired attack after their undercover agents attempted to coerce him into it, but when he refused to carry out the attack, he was still painted as a “terrorist,” and he now faces up to 20 years in prison.
Then in March, a similar incident happened when an FBI informant targeted a mentally ill man who agreed online, to carry out an attack and was arrested as soon as he claimed he would accept supplies from the FBI.
While the FBI appears to have intentionally sought out the men its agents befriended in all three cases, the agency chose to ignore several reports about a suspect who was actually planning an attack.
The FBI received multiple credible reports that Nikolas Cruz was planning to commit mass murder in the months before the Parkland shooting. Less than six weeks before the shooting, someone the FBI described as “a person close to” Cruz reached out to the agency and desperately pleaded for their help. The person reported Cruz’s “gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting.”
Yet the FBI apparently chose to focus on fictitious cases and did nothing to interfere with Cruz’s rampage.
Rachel Blevins is an independent journalist from Texas, who aspires to break the false left/right paradigm in media and politics by pursuing truth and questioning existing narratives. Follow Rachel on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Steemit and Patreon.
Kremlin Unaware of Meeting Between Trump Team, ‘Russian’ Having Dirt on Clinton
Sputnik -June 18, 2018
The Kremlin is not aware of a meeting between former aide from US President Donald Trump’s election headquarters Roger Stone and a man from Russia, who called himself Henry Greenberg and allegedly offered Trump’s team compromising data on his then-rival Hillary Clinton in 2016, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.
“I cannot say anything, I am not aware of this… These nuances are completely unknown to us and we know nothing about the issue,” Peskov told reporters when asked to comment on the publication.
On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that Trump’s election headquarters in 2016 denied Greenberg $2 million for the “dirt” on Clinton. The newspaper confirmed that Greenberg was an FBI informant until 2013, but found no evidence that he continued this activity after 2013.
Stone told the publication that another staffer, Michael Caputo, arranged for him to meet with a certain “Russian,” who offered to pay him $2 million in exchange for compromising material on Clinton. His offer was rejected.
The Washington Post interpreted the refusal of Trump’s staff to pay money for this information as another suspicious “contact with the Russians.” In total, the newspaper counted 11 campaign officials who “contacted the Russians” in some capacity.
Special Counsel Mueller is investigating the alleged connections between Trump and Russia, which are denied both by the Kremlin and the White House. Trump has said in the past that his political enemies had been conducting an investigation against him during the presidential race together with intelligence officials. Trump has called the investigation a “witch hunt.”
A Brief History of the “Kremlin Trolls”
By Scott Humor | The Saker | October 15, 2018
Saint Petersburg, Savushkina, 55 is the most famous office building in the world, thanks to the relentless promotion of the United States government, the CIA, FBI, and by the powers of the entire Western media, financed by Western governments. VOA, NPR, and Svoboda, by the government of the US; the BBC by the government of the UK; CNN by the governments of Saudi Arabia; the DW, by the government of Germany; and so on and so forth. You name it, they all punched time to promote this office building.
To be specific, it’s not even a building, but several adjoined buildings that cover an entire city block, an urban development plan common for Saint Pete’s. That’s why every business here has the address of Savushkina, 55 followed by a building number. You can take a virtual tour around it, to see for yourself. The buildings are shared by several dozens of private businesses, by the local Police department, and by the newsrooms of half a dozen Russia Media sources like the FAN (Federal News Agency), the Neva News (Nevskie Novosti), Political Russia, Kharkov News Agency, publishing Ukrainian news, and others. They all are privately owned and operated and generate over 55 million unique visitors per month. Overall, several thousand people come to this building to work every morning. But you wouldn’t know this by account of Western media. For over two years now, these people are being harassed and collectively branded as “THE KREMLIN TROLLS.”
The building is very popular because it’s located in a quiet historical neighborhood and is in walking distance from a suburban train station. It’s newly renovated offices offer open floor plans with Scandinavian fleur so very appreciated by the news people. In addition, the rent for this building is less than in center city. Which is why Evgeny Zubarev, a former top editor for the RIA NEWS, choose it for his media startup. He took several offices allowing him to manage his growing media giant without wasting time to commute. Now, the FAN newsroom alone employs about 300 journalists.
This wasn’t always the case.
At the beginning of 2014, the building was still under construction and renovation, when an anti-Russian government group of hackers called first “The Anonymous International” and latter “Shaltay-B0ltay” fingered it as the “Kremlin trolls’ layer.”
Their wordpress blog is still here. It was last updated on November 2016. Its title states: “Anonymous International. Shaltay Boltay/Press Secretary of the group. Creating reality and giving meaning to words.”
November 7, 2014, Khodorkovsky, who acted as an integral part of the CIA “Kremlin trolls” Project, tweeted the picture of one of the entrances to one of the buildings saying: “Savuchkina 55. New home for bots. ID check system. Not a sign there. I won’t say who took the photo.”
Савушкина 55
Новый домик для ботов. Пропускная система. Ни одной вывески. Чье фото – не скажу. pic.twitter.com/oCVUAvSTW4— Ходорковский Михаил (@mich261213) November 7, 2014
Someone commented by saying
Nov 7 2014. The comment reads: “I live there and pass this building on my way to work. The sign on the building says “For Rent”
@tvjihad @mich261213 Михаил, я каждый день мимо проезжаю на работу. и да, чье фото с вывеской не скажу))) pic.twitter.com/FlTEJJwyTt
— Kirill_V (@Kirill_V1) November 7, 2014
The phone number on the picture 324-56-06 belongs to the commercial real estate company Praktis Consulting & Brokerage that managed the rent of offices.
Midsummer 2014, Evgeny Zubarev with his start up and several hundred journalists moved in, along with the Police department, and a slew of other businesses people. Little did they know what was to come.
***
The best way to get information is to make it up.
Everything what we know now about the so-called “Kremlin trolls from the Internet Research Agency paid by Putin’s favorite chef,” came from one source, a group of CIA spies that used the mascot of Shaltay-Boltay, or Humpty-Dumpty, for their collective online persona.
They were arrested in November 2016 and revealed as the FSB and former FSB officers. One of them even managed a security department for the Kaspersky Lab. They all were people highly skilled and educated in manipulating and creating large online databases, in any online research imagined, and the knowledge of hacking and altering databases, including those that were run by the Russian government. They weren’t poor people. They weren’t there for the money. They were ideologically driven. Their hatred towards Russia and its people was the motive for their actions.
At some point, Gazeta.ru, an online Russophobic publication, suggested that “Shaltai-Boltai was just a distraction meant to confuse everybody.” They themselves were more concise by stating that they were working to change the reality.
Russian authorities, the courts, and the lawyers, refused to call these men hackers. There was a reason for this. They weren’t so much hackers in a classic sense, as in when someone gains access to real information and copies it. This group wasn’t necessarily hacking existing information, but planting information. They were creating files about fake nonexistent companies and employees, files with blurry fake paystubs, memos, emails, phone messages and so on. The fakes looked convincing, but they still were forgeries that could be easy disproved for someone who had access to the real information.
That’s when the hacking took place, when the FSB agents went into government databases and created records of people and companies that didn’t exist.
I think that part of the reasons why some of them got the mild sentences of three years in general security prison, and some were left free, wasn’t just the fact that they agreed to collaborate with the Russian government, but also the fact that they didn’t actually steal information from government officials like Medvedev and his press secretary, Nataliya Timakova, or the owner of the largest in Europe catering business, Evgeny Prigozhin. They made information up and claimed that it was real.
These guys gave a bad name to all hackers, whistleblowers, leakers and spies. Now, journalists presented with some “hacked” and leaked secrets has to think it over, less they end up with an egg on their face like journos from the Fontanka, Vedomosti and Novaya Gazeta in case of the “Kremlin’s trolls.”
If we accept that the Shaltay-Boltay group was working to create and distribute documents they forged, claiming that those files were “hacked,” we would also understand a mysterious statement made by them to BuzzFeed.
“In email correspondence with BuzzFeed, a representative of the group claimed they were “not hackers in the classical sense.”
“We are trying to change reality. Reality has indeed begun to change as a result of the appearance of our information in public,” wrote the representative, whose email account is named Shaltai Boltai, which is the Russian for tragic nursery rhyme hero Humpty Dumpty.”
Bazzfeed also said back in 2014, that “The leak from the Internet Research Agency is the first time specific comments under news articles can be directly traced to a Russian campaign.”
Now, this is a very important grave mark.
Just think about this working scheme: Shaltay-Boltay with a group of anti-government “activists” created the “Internet Research Agency,” they and some “activists” created 470 FaceBook accounts used to post comments that looked unmistakably “trollish.”
After that other, CIA affiliated entities, like the entire Western Media, claimed the “Russian interference in the US election.” Finally, the ODNI published a report lacking any evidence in it.
The link to their report is here, but I don’t recommend you to read it. You will gain as much information by reading this report as you would by chewing on some wet newspaper. Ask my dog for details.
Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
Only three paragraphs are interesting on the page 4:
“Russia used trolls as well as RT as part of its influence efforts to denigrate Secretary Clinton. This effort amplified stories on scandals about Secretary Clinton and the role of WikiLeaks in the election campaign.
The likely financier of the so-called Internet Research Agency of professional trolls located in Saint Petersburg is a close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence.
A journalist who is a leading expert on the Internet Research Agency claimed that some social media accounts that appear to be tied to Russia’s professional trolls—because they previously were devoted to supporting Russian actions in Ukraine—started to advocate for President-elect Trump as early as December 2015.”
In other words, in its report with a subtitle: “Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ODNI, is quoting the Shaltay-Boltay, a group that had been proved to work for the CIA by “creating reality.”
The only reason why they don’t provide us with evidence, with at least one lousy IP address with the Russian trace roots that would convincingly point at the company named the Internet Research Agency, is because this company never existed, it never had any IP addresses assigned to it that would be verifiable via third parties like RIPE network coordination and via online domain tools.
We understand that having hundreds of people working ten to twelve hours a day, as they claimed, posting hundreds messages hourly, would use huge amount of bandwidth. They would need a very fast internet connection with unlimited bandwidth that only a business can get. Inevitably, this internet connection would come with the assigned IP addresses. No internet provider would let this kind of bandwidth hog to create this kind traffic without being forced to separate them from other customers.
One example, a woman with the last name Malcheva filed a lawsuit in court against the companies “Internet Research, LLC” and “TEKA, LLC,” claiming unpaid wages.
The court asked her to produce evidence of her work, and then denied her claim after she produced a photo of a computer with an IP address on its screen as evidence of her employment.
IP Address 109.167.231.85
inetnum: 109.167.231.0 – 109.167.231.255
netname: WESTCALL-NET
descr: S-Peterburg Hotel Corintia Wi-Fi
An IP address that was assigned to a luxury hotel in Saint-Petersburg. A hotel that was awarded multiple international awards for excellence. An immensely popular hotel among discriminating travelers. A very expensive hotel located in the center of a historic city. The woman claimed that she was an “online troll’ working from this location ten hours a day with hundreds of other virtual trolls. The judge didn’t believe her. Would you?
People from the Shaltay-Boltay group weren’t hackers in the proper terms because they worked with and for the CIA. Middle-of the-road and run-of-the-mill intelligence agencies would collect and analyze information for their governments. The CIA invents information, then goes on to manufacture and forge documents in support of their invented information; they then recruit people inside other countries and other governments to claim that they “obtained” this explosive evidence. Being the dirty cops that they are, the CIA doesn’t obtain and secure evidence, but instead they plant fake evidence on their victims.
By this act alone they change our current and past reality, and they change our future. They change our history by forging never existing “proof” of invented myths. They hire and train groups of military men to act as “protesters” around government buildings, while other military men from other countries shoot at unsuspected bystanders whose death allows Washington to claim the sovereign governments’ wrongdoing.
CIA-operated groups arrest and kill government officials or force them to flee, like in Ukraine. They take over a couple of government buildings and declare their victory over a huge country, just like it happened in Russia in 1991 and 1993 and in Ukraine in 2005 and 2014. For some reason, they claim that governments are those people who take over a couple of buildings in one city. When in fact, our countries’ governments are those people whose names we wrote on ballots, regardless of where these people are located. We don’t run around like chickens with our heads cut off electing a new president every time our current president leaves the country.
Going back to the CIA’s Humpty-Dumpty project that came online sometime in 2013. Why would anyone name their enterprise after such predictable failure, you might ask. Because, in the Russian alliteration, Shalti-Boltai means “shake up and brag about it” and not as in its original Carroll’s version of “humping and dumping.”
I went ballistic after someone retweeted me this CNN clip titled “Russia used Pokemon Go to interfere with the US elections.”
I actually listened to the clip itself, in which they brought up the Internet Research Agency” from SP. Knowing full well that the hackers who “leaked” the information about this “Agency” were arrested and successfully charged for treason because they worked for the CIA should prevent the CIA to run fake news about the entities and people they themselves made up. You would think that the matter of the “Kremlin trolls from Saint Petersburg” should be dead and buried after the arrest. The CIA and other 16 intelligence agencies should know better than to use information that is being known now as “discovered’ with their “help.”
Because it’s all fake and we know it.
We also know everything that the CIA touches is fake. Speaking in layman’s term, it’s as if all those middle aged bald guys would start licking their balls while claiming to be in fulfilling relations. If it’s just you, guys, there is no relations. It’s just you. Deal with it!
The American intelligence community cannot claim an existence of threats against America if all fingers in those “threats” are pointing back at the American intelligence community.
By stating that someone interfered with the US election using the Internet Research Agency in SP, is plainly to state that it’s CIA that interfered in the American elections.
—
Let’s just briefly run over the matter, before I tell you what exactly took place.
—
On September 6, 2017, Alex Stamos, a Chief Security Officer, posted a statement titled “An Update On Information Operations On Facebook”:
“In reviewing the ads buys, we have found approximately $100,000 in ad spending from June of 2015 to May of 2017 — associated with roughly 3,000 ads — that was connected to about 470 inauthentic accounts and Pages in violation of our policies. Our analysis suggests these accounts and Pages were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia.”
To make sure that people including myself won’t find those accounts, the FB deleted them.
“We don’t allow inauthentic accounts on Facebook, and as a result, we have since shut down the accounts and Pages we identified that were still active.”
That’s how it’s done in the US. They destroy all potential evidence while laying heavy blame on Russia. Facebook destroys evidence of “Russians crimes” while public ask them to show those evidences. This means only one thing: the pieces of evidence are pointing at something Facebook wants to protect, which is the CIA.
You see, I am not suggesting that they are lying about those accounts being real or that they “affiliated with Russia,” because, if the Shaltay-Boltay group worked with people from the Soros and Khodorkovky-backed group of human rights lawyers “Team 29,” created in February 2015, then their only task, it seems, was to service the psyop of the “Internet Trolls.” It looks to me like they could also coordinated the work done by those 470 FaceBook accounts while being on the territory of Russia. Considering that, it’s not a complete lie for the FB to say that those accounts were “Russia affiliated” and that they were “likely operated from Russia.”
Facebook also can claim with plausible deniability that they are ignorant of the fact that people behind the Internet Research Agency troll hoax are proved by the Russian court to be affiliated with the CIA, while people who have been acting as the “witnesses” to this Project are lawyers from Team 29, “human rights activists and also journalists from the Norwegian Bonnier AB owned Fontanka, Taiwan-based Novaya Gazeta, and the Latvia-based Meduza; these people are factually proven to be backed by Soros, a CIA financial branch, like a journalist who has received an award from Khodorkovsky.
The entire campaign of blaming Russia in “meddling” is being reported without ANY tangible proof that could be verified by at least two independently existing sources, that’s why we should grab ANY grains of information. That’s why Facebook’s statement that “About one-quarter of these ads were geographically targeted, and of those, more ran in 2015 than 2016″is very important.
Why?
Because, fake business entities known as “the Internet Research Agency,” and “the Internet Research” in the government electronic business registry, they were treated as real companies by the system. Because of their inactivity on all of their bank accounts and because no one ever filed required forms, they were automatically liquidated by the electronic system.
The United Business Registry database in Russia works according to the Federal laws, so after twelve months of inactivity a business is simply liquidated. The Internet Research Agency was liquidated in December 2016 by the government system after it been inactive for twelve month. It’s inactivity implied that the company had no employees, no office, and no bank transactions for at least twelve months! The Internet Research company was liquidated on September 2, 2015 by merging with TEKA company. According to the federal business Registry TEKA was a construction retailer. I wasn’t able to find any indication, like an office, phone number, names of the managers or employees, anything at all that would indicate that this company existed. Just like the Internet Research Agency and the Internet Research, TEKA existed only in the federal registry and nowhere else.
The automatic liquidation in the federal registry for inactivity explains the drop in activity on the accounts run by the Shaltay-Boltay and the others. Oh, yes, they were also hunted and on the run, out of the country. It’s hard to use bank accounts to simulate activities after you have fled the country.
The Team 29, of the human rights lawyers and activists, was created in February 2015. To give to this new company some proof of reality and instant notoriety they immediately filed a lawsuit against the Internet Research company using an activist woman with a Ukrainian last name Ludmila Savchuk (Людмила Савчук) who went and filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming some unpaid wages. Her first lawsuit the judge threw out. Only after the local general prosecutor’s office pressed the judge to take the case, the district court took the case and partially granted the Claimant her claim, but not the “moral damages.” She wanted the money for working for the “troll factory.” In essence, they wanted an official court paper that would say black on white, that there is a “troll factory” that this poor woman worked for. Without reading the file, I don’t know what the judge was thinking, but she might have smelled a rat among those virtual “trolls.”
This took place in August 2015, and by September 2 2015, a fake company named the “Internet Research” was liquidated by merging it, in the Business registry, with another fake entity, TEKA, that was created in spring 2015 as the construction materials retailer.
“Facebook disclosed on Wednesday that it had identified more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads on hot-button issues purchased by a shadowy Russian company linked to the Kremlin.”
“Most of the 3,000 ads did not refer to particular candidates but instead focused on divisive social issues such as race, gay rights, gun control and immigration, according to a post on Facebook by Alex Stamos, the company’s chief security officer. The ads, which ran between June 2015 and May 2017, were linked to some 470 fake accounts and pages the company said it had shut down.”
“Facebook officials said the fake accounts were created by a Russian company called the Internet Research Agency, which is known for using “troll” accounts to post on social media and comment on news websites.”
“The January intelligence report said the “likely financier” of the Internet Research Agency was “a close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence.” The company, profiled by The New York Times Magazine in 2015, is in St. Petersburg and uses its small army of trolls to put out messages supportive of Russian government policy.”
“To date, while news reports have uncovered many meetings and contacts between Trump associates and Russians, there has been no evidence proving collusion in the hacking or other Russian activities.”
“While there is no direct link between the Kremlin and any of these projects—both Surkov and Zubarev say their projects are privately funded—the timing, scale, and coordination of these efforts are suspicious. BuzzFeed was not able to find evidence of direct government funding to the “Internet Research Agency ,” the pro-Kremlin troll outlet operating out of 55 Savushkina, but they did reference a number of sources that revealed some level of involvement.”
—-
In my next study, I will provide you with more links, screenshots and translations. I will demonstrate to you how this story connects to the war on the Middle East and the international war on the Russian population of Ukraine.
—
In conclusion I just want to say that everything the United State touches turns into a warzone. The building on Savushkina, 55 in Saint Petersburg is no exception.
Multiple death threats are being directed at people who work there. Popular and excellent in their quality media outlets operating there have to hide their true location and rent a separate office across the city for their visitors, because people are simply afraid to come in.
Journalists and multiple business employees are threatened online with rape.
Threats to hang the journalists during a “protest meeting” on Oct 1, 2017
At least one case of terror attack on the office building that resulted in arson on October 26, 2016.
On Oct 26, 2016, several men threw bottles of Molotov cocktail in the windows of the Nevskie Novosti (Neva News). Luckily, no one was there but the owner of the Media conglomerate, Evgeny Zubarev, who put out the fire.
All of these, every threat, every simple lie is all on the United State government, its intelligence community, on those traitors, who are in prison now, and those who are still at large.
UPDATE:
A couple of Kaspersky staff members (Stoyanov and Dokuchaev), including the head of computer crime investigations (Stoyanov), were arrested by
Russian FSB on treason charges in January this year. An FSB officer (Sergei Mikhailov) was also arrested. The treason charges suggest they
were acting on behalf of a foreign power. SputnikMaybe the US actions against Kaspersky Labs anti-virus software are an attempt to preempt the consequences of the trial of the Kaspersky and
FSB operatives?
——————
Scott Humor
Director of Research and Development
author of The enemy of the State
Ex-CIA Director John Brennan must testify on ‘spygate’ – Sen. Rand Paul
RT | June 8, 2018
Senator Rand Paul called for former CIA Director John Brennan to testify about whether he received secret information on Trump’s campaign from European or British sources. Paul wants him to testify before Congress under oath.
“BIG question for John Brennan, who has become such a vocal spokesman. Did you receive any secret info on candidate Trump or his campaign from European or British intelligence sources? Brennan should be brought before Congress & made to testify under oath, NOW!” Senator Paul tweeted on Thursday.
Serving as CIA Director under former president Barack Obama, Brennan has been accused by Trump of leading an effort to frame him for colluding with Russia in the runup to the 2016 presidential election. Trump has called Brennan “the genesis of this whole [Russia investigation] debacle.”
Last month, the New York Times and Washington Post revealed that a secretive operation, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, was conducted by the FBI from the summer of 2016. The counterintelligence operation was reportedly launched on the basis of intelligence received from overseas.
Veteran CIA agent and academic Stefan Halper acted as a confidential informant who tried to extract potentially compromising information from George Papadopoulos, Sam Clovis, Carter Page and other members of the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos later pled guilty to making false statements to the FBI.
The FBI’s mandate is to conduct operations inside the US, while the CIA operates overseas. Since Halper met with Trump’s campaign aides in London, Brennan’s critics are curious if the CIA director had a hand in that operation, either on his own initiative or under orders from the Obama administration.
Since leaving the agency, Brennan – once a defender of the CIA’s practices of torture and domestic spying – has become a darling of the liberal #Resistance for his frequent anti-Trump diatribes.
He did agree with the president on one thing, however: the appointment of long-time CIA employee Gina Haspel to lead the agency after Trump’s first spy chief, Mike Pompeo, was reassigned to the State Department. Haspel was the CIA’s station chief in London at the time of Halper’s contacts with Trump’s campaign staff. She testified in her confirmation hearings that the CIA never spied on Trump or received information from British intelligence.
Senator Paul, who voted against Haspel’s confirmation, cast doubt on that testimony in May.
“Gina Haspel is categorically denying that the CIA got info from the British intelligence. And if what I’m saying today is not her opinion, she needs to speak up today and she needs to say ‘did British intelligence give info to John Brennan?'”
Tribute to the Last Honorable US Senator: The Story of Paul Wellstone’s Suspected Assassination
By Joachim Hagopian | Global Research | October 26, 2016
On October 25th, 2002 the last great hero of the common people in the US Senate was very likely murdered by agents of the shadow US crime cabal government otherwise known as the Bush-Cheney regime. His wife and daughter and two pilots also died in the air crash. Paul Wellstone’s story deserves to be retold and Americans need to be reminded that criminals in and out of our government still need to be punished for their unindicted crimes. This article was written as both a tribute to an outstanding American patriot and a reexamination of his probable assassination by criminals still on the loose.
Minnesota Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone was a man of integrity who was among the few politicians openly and adamantly opposing the Iraq invasion as well as the creation of the US version of Gestapo-land Security. As a fearless populist leader he’d been a constant thorn in the side ever since then President George H. W. Bush responding to the junior senator’s uncomfortable questions at a reception asked, “Who is this chickenshit?”
Years later as the only senator up for reelection who voted against the Iraq War when Democrats held just a one seat edge over the Republicans in the Senate (with one independent caucusing with Democrats), his thorny side made him the #1 GOP target. With the Karl Rove led Republican Party just one seat away from gaining Republican control over the US Senate, Wellstone’s death gave his Republican challenger Norm Coleman the 49-49 split and, as the President of the Senate, Cheney’s tie breaking vote would deliver the GOP 50-49 advantage needed to steamroll yet more tax cuts through for the rich, unending bankers’ wars and a never seen before boom for the military-security industrial complex. Again, motive and means tilt heavily towards assassination. The facts make it more than probable.
A month prior to the November 2002 election Vice President Cheney had arranged a meeting with Wellstone, threatening him with grave consequences should he vote against the preplanned Iraq invasion. A few days later speaking to a group of war veterans, Wellstone publicly recalled Cheney’s threatening words:
“If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota.”
Then just days after that, 11 days prior to the midterm election and a year to the exact day after the deadly anthrax pushed Patriot Act victory, on October 25th Paul Wellstone, his wife and daughter along with three staffers and two pilots all died in an extremely suspicious plane crash.
The FBI was at the crash site within 90 minutes, indicating they’d left their Minneapolis office before the “accident” at about the same time Wellstone’s plane was just taking off that morning, indicating the possibility of pre-knowledge.
“The authors note that it would’ve taken agents at least three hours to reach the swampy and remote crash site. How they got there from the Twin Cities so quickly remains a mystery.”
Additionally, the NTSB as the national agency that normally takes the lead role investigating all US plane crashes suddenly wasn’t. The FBI moved in ahead immediately proclaiming just another bad weather accident. Yet all on the ground witnesses and reports disagree, from pilots landing at the destination airport just two hours prior to the Wellstone flight to the airport manager who less than an hour after the crash was himself flying over the crash site. The plane considered a Rolls Royce among small planes was in tiptop shape and the two pilots steeped in skilled experience.
As the feds’ rogue cops for go-to cover-ups, as in 9/11 and the anthrax attacks the year before, and the 1993 World Trade Center and 1995 Oklahoma City bombings, the FBI has a long shady history of leaving its corrupt dirty fingerprints all over these well documented false flag, history changing events.
A couple of brave Democratic House members anonymously stated that they believe Wellstone was murdered. In one Congressman’s words:
I don’t think there’s anyone on the Hill who doesn’t suspect it. It’s too convenient, too coincidental, too damn obvious. My guess is that some of the less courageous members of the party are thinking about becoming Republicans right now.
An unnamed CIA source admitted:
“Having played ball (and still playing in some respects) with this current crop of reinvigorated old white men, these clowns are nobody to screw around with. There will be a few more strategic accidents. You can be certain of that.”
A number of other Democratic politicians at a 2 to 1 margin to Republicans have also incurred mysterious deaths holding “unpopular” views just ahead of hotly contested elections. Two years earlier while traveling in Colombia Senator Wellstone had already experienced one known attempt on his life when a bomb planted en route from the airport was discovered.
As a longtime critic of the CIA and covert operations, Wellstone was targeted for assassination in both Colombia and in Minnesota by the masters of mayhem, murder and deceitful cover-ups – the FBI/CIA Criminals-In-Action at the behest of mastermind Cheney.
So far in our two-tiered justice system, murder pays off for those high up on the psychopath food chain like Cheney, the Bushes and Clintons. Renowned investigative reporter Seymour Hersh exposed Cheney’s “executive assassination ring.” Cheney used the CIA as well as the military Joint Special Operations Command as his personal army of hitmen reporting directly to him. (see video below)
If the neocons can live with themselves for murdering 3000 Americans on 9/11, they certainly never lose sleep over a few more targeted eliminations that include the genocidal 4 million Muslim bloodbath caused by the Bush crime family wars.
Mintpress, August 18, 2015
The heavy-handed Bush-Cheney push for Iraq War and a DHS congressional vote prior to their 2003 invasion cast enormous high stakes in the Senate. Then add the known history of contempt from former CIA director Bush, the Cheney threat just days prior to Wellstone’s death, a slew of brazenly contradictory crash site anomalies, and the exposed murderous means used to pass the Patriot Act and the 9/11 false flag tragedy the year prior, all of this circumstantial evidence taken together strongly points to yet more diabolical skullduggery perpetrated by Skull & Bones criminals against humanity.
The neocons grabbed the Hegelian solution they needed for waging unlimited war in the name of terrorism anywhere in the world while simultaneously at home merging FEMA into their newly created Homeland Security tasked with stripping away the rest of America’s constitutional liberties in the name of “national security.” In its first dozen years alone, deep state’s gluttonously monolithic DHS cancer has metastasized into the third largest federal department boasting near a quarter million full-time employees. By hook, crook and murder the Cheney-Bush gang in 2003 got what they’d been wanting and plotting for years, two concurrent never-ending wars in the Middle East and the monstrous apparatus Homeland Security whose purpose is making war against the American people. Sadly the rest of the Western vassal nations play follow the leader.
If examined according to the Hegelian Dialectic of 1) problem, 2) reaction and 3) solution, a draconian formula used by deep state to manufacture increased authoritarian control over the US populace, Paul Wellstone’s death can easily be explained.
More than any other single member of Congress, the Minnesota senator posed a serious threat as the major opposition leader standing in the way of war criminals Bush and Cheney’s Iraq invasion as well as their formation of the Department of Homeland Security, two preplanned agendas rooted in the neocon think tank the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Prior to their stealing the 2000 election and their PNAC’s “Pearl Harbor” event they created called 9/11, their regime had already called for attacking Iraq for regime change and erection of the DHS cancer. The Bush-Cheney reaction to their problem Paul Wellstone was to assassinate him making it appear as an accident.
By murder once Wellstone was out of the way, the neocons’ solution sent a loud and clear message of intimidation and a death threat in order to effectively silence any other potential Congressional opponents to the war in Iraq. Wellstone’s elimination paved the way for the war criminals’ successful campaign to win national support for the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq. That said, the month before the invasion on February 15th, 10-15 million people around the world in over 600 cities assembled in massive protest against the US intervention, the biggest one day antiwar demonstration in history. But unfortunately once the US military occupation began, the antiwar movement gradually fizzled out.
And the PNAC (members of PNAC project, image left) calling for regime change in seven sovereign nations including Iraq within five years was underway. The predatory rape and pillaging of Iraq as the world’s second largest oil producer was justified by lies of Saddam’s non-existent WMD’s and ties to terrorism. Sadly the neocons who are still at the helm wreaking havoc in 2016 were able to implement an enormous new Department of Homeland Security monstrosity masquerading as public “safeguard” against terrorism. So without Wellstone and with virtually no further opposition in Congress, the neocons created their multibillion dollar security state apparatchik promoting and enforcing draconian counterterrorism laws leading to increasing centralized authoritarian government control that is ushering in their New World Order.
This tried and true Hegelian strategy has also been regularly utilized to further identify deep state obstacles as problems based on perceived neocons’ threats to US global unipolar hegemony.
American Empire’s relentless efforts to isolate, weaken and target for global war designated international enemies Russia, China and Iran through propagandized demonization and orchestrating fake crises illustrate yet more examples of the Hegelian Dialectic in action. And just as the US crime cabal was successful in eliminating Wellstone as their New World Order threat, for decades the crime cabal government has been planning its war against identified American dissenters as enemies of the state who object to its heavy-handed tyranny.
Paul Wellstone’s courageous opposition to the powerful Washington establishment’s evil cost him and his family’s life. Since we Americans are now in the same crosshairs of the same still entrenched shadow assassins, it’s time to make their arrests for treason and mass murder prior to our own death and destruction.
As an independent journalist focusing on geopolitics, international relations, globalization and US Empire imperialism for over four years, Joachim has written hundreds of articles published on numerous alternative news sites, foremost among them Global Research, Sott.net and LewRockwell.com. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.com.
Joachim is currently writing the A-Z encyclopedia exposing the global pedophilia epidemic entitled Pedophilia& Empire: Satan, Sodomy & the Deep State. The book can be read for free on Joachim’s blog site at or http://tinyurl.com/pedoempire. Many of the first sixteen chapters selling for .99 each since last fall on Amazon Kindle remain in the top 10 in both politics and child advocacy categories. With less than a quarter of the book to go, for those wishing to help complete this all-important project exposing the pedo-crime cabal sooner than later, donations are welcomed at paypal.me/AuthorJH
Can the President Lawfully Investigate His Investigators?
By Andrew Napolitano • Unz Review • May 24, 2018
This past weekend, President Donald Trump suggested that his presidential campaign may have been the victim of spies or moles who were FBI informants or undercover agents. He demanded an investigation to get to the bottom of the matter.
At the same time that the president was fuming over this, Republican congressional leaders were fuming about the reluctance of senior officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI to turn over documents that might reveal political origins of the current criminal investigation of the president by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Can the president intercede in a federal criminal investigation of which he himself is a subject? Can Congress intercede in a DOJ criminal investigation? Here is the back story.
Mueller was named special counsel so he could investigate serious and demonstrable evidence of Russian government interference in the 2016 presidential election. Because the Trump campaign met with Russian intelligence officials offering campaign assistance, implicit in that investigation is an inquiry into whether the Trump campaign invited foreign interference and agreed to accept or facilitate it.
Mueller is seeking to determine whether there was an agreement between the Trump campaign and any foreign person, entity or government to receive anything of value for the campaign. Such an agreement plus a material step in furtherance of it taken by any of those who joined the agreement would itself constitute the crime of conspiracy, even if the agreed-upon thing of value never arrived.
In the course of examining evidence for the existence of this alleged conspiracy — which Trump has forcefully denied many times — Mueller’s prosecutors and FBI agents have come upon evidence of other crimes. They have obtained 19 indictments — some for financial crimes, some for lying to FBI agents and some for foreign interference in the election — and four guilty pleas for lying, in which those who pleaded guilty agreed to assist the government.
Nine of the indictments are against Russian intelligence agents, whom the president himself promptly sanctioned by barring their travel here and their use of American banks and commercial enterprises, even though he has called Mueller’s investigation a witch hunt.
Mueller has also come upon evidence of obstruction of justice by the president while in office and financial crimes prior to entering office, all of which Trump has denied. Obstruction of justice consists of interfering with a judicial proceeding — such as a grand jury’s hearing evidence — for a corrupt purpose.
Thus, if Trump fired FBI Director James Comey because he didn’t trust him or because he wanted his own person in that job, that was his presidential prerogative, but Trump’s purpose was corrupt if he fired Comey because Comey would not deny that the president was the subject of a criminal investigation — a basis for firing surprisingly offered publicly by one of the president’s own lawyers.
The potential financial crimes appear to be in the areas of bank fraud — making material misrepresentations to banks to obtain loans — and money laundering, or the passage of ill-gotten gains through numerous bank accounts so as to make the gains appear lawful. These, too, Trump has denied.
It seems that the deeper Mueller and his team dig the more they find. As lawyers and as federal prosecutors, Mueller’s team members have ethical obligations to uncover whatever evidence of crime they come upon and, when professionally feasible and legally appropriate, either prosecute or pass the evidence on to other federal prosecutors, as they did in the case of evidence of fraud against Michael Cohen, a former confidant and lawyer for Trump before he was president.
Now, back to Trump’s eruption about FBI spies or moles.
The president cannot interfere with criminal investigations against himself without running the risk of additional charges of obstruction of justice — interference with a judicial process (the gathering of evidence and its presentation to a grand jury) for a corrupt purpose (impeding his own prosecution or impeachment). Nor can members of Congress see whatever they want in the midst of a criminal investigation, particularly if they might share whatever they see with the person being investigated.
Prosecutors have a privilege to keep their files secret until they reach the time that the law provides for them to go public. Because Mueller is faced with the legal equivalent of assembling a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, he is not yet ready to show his cards. If his cards contain materials from confidential sources — people whose identities he promised not to reveal — or if his cards contain evidence he presented to a grand jury, he may not lawfully reveal what he has until it is time to exonerate the president, indict him or present a report to Mueller’s DOJ superiors that is intended for the House of Representatives.
Can the president investigate his investigators?
Yes — but not until the investigation of him is completed. That’s because no one can fruitfully examine the legitimacy of the origins of the case against Trump without knowing the evidence and the charges. Trump’s allegations are of extreme scandal — the use of FBI assets by the Obama administration to impede his presidential campaign. Yet if he is exonerated, those allegations will lose their sting. If he is charged with crimes or impeachable offenses that do not have their origins in politically charged spying, then his allegations will be moot.
But if he were to force the DOJ to turn over raw investigative files now to politicians who want to help him, he might very well be impeding the criminal case against him. That would be profoundly threatening to the rule of law, for it provides that no man can be the prosecutor or the judge in his own case. Even Trump’s lawyers acknowledge that he could not lawfully do that.
Copyright 2018 Andrew P. Napolitano. Distributed by Creators.com.
Trump takes ‘Criminal Deep State’ to task amid claims FBI spied on his campaign
By Robert Bridge | RT | May 24, 2018
Hounded by claims of ‘Russian collusion’ for most of his presidency, Trump is now calling out the Obama administration over claims it had the FBI spying on his campaign. Can the Republican leader turn the tables on his accusers?
In a series of rapid-fire Tweets, Trump called upon the Justice Department to investigate claims that the FBI infiltrated his campaign for political purposes, possibly at the direct order of former president, Barack Obama.
“I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”
Needless to say, those are Watergate-level allegations, and it seems Trump may even possess the one thing the Mueller investigation has conspicuously lacked to date: hard-core evidence.
This month, it was revealed that Professor Stefan Halper, a foreign policy scholar at Cambridge University until 2015, was serving as an FBI mole inside of the Trump campaign.
The operation, started in July 2016 and codenamed ‘Crossfire Hurricane’, is a stunning revelation because for the last two years the FBI denied it was spying on the Trump campaign. Now there is the obvious question as to why the federal agency had infiltrated the Trump team in the first place. Was it simply to find evidence of ‘Russian collusion,’ or, as Trump has suggested, was it politically motivated?
Aside from the high creep factor of academics moonlighting as actual spies, Halper allegedly arranged meetings with campaign advisers Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and Sam Clovis in an apparent effort to build the case for Russia collusion, the Washington Post reported.
As one example of his covert work, Halper reportedly “reached out to George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign-policy adviser for the campaign, inviting him to London to work on a research paper.”
Those efforts to dig up dirt on Trump, however, failed to give Robert Mueller his much-anticipated ‘gotcha!’ moment. Indeed, from Paul Manafort (indicted for corruption in Ukraine) to Stormy Daniels (former American porn star) to Evgeny Freidman (New York ‘taxi king’ and tax cheat), and every other shady character in between, Mueller has failed to make anything more than a tenuous connection to Russia.
Now, combine this ‘nothing burger’ with the debunked claims put forth in the Clinton-funded ‘Steele dossier,’ complete with “golden showers” in Moscow, and you have a very good case to “wrap up” the investigation, as Vice President Mike Pence recommended.
Here is why the Trump administration believes they have finally got the deep state blocked in with the latest findings: the FBI and DOJ must have known that there was zero evidence of Russian collusion since their mole (or moles) would have revealed that information long ago. At the same time, Halper is said to have begun his covert activities inside of the Trump campaign before Crossfire Hurricane began, which also complicates matters for the Democrats.
Thus, the entire Mueller investigation, Republicans argue, has been an elaborate farce, designed to tarnish Trump and the Republican Party in the run-up to the monumental midterm elections. Trump is already claiming that the tables have been turned on the Mueller investigation and the deep state.
“Look how things have turned around on the Criminal Deep State. They go after Phony Collusion with Russia, a made up Scam, and end up getting caught in a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before! What goes around, comes around!” he tweeted triumphantly Wednesday morning.
Naturally, Trump’s announcement triggered howls of pain from the Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) accused the White House on Tuesday of putting “extraordinary, unusual and inappropriate pressure on the Department of Justice and the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.”
Schumer then lashed out at House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who subpoenaed the DOJ for all documents related to the FBI informant earlier this month.
“A man like Devin Nunes, who, I hear privately from my Republican colleagues — they think he’s off the deep end,” he said in a personal affront.
That’s right. Schumer thinks it is Nunes who is “off the deep end” because the Republicans have a solid case for proving high-level political manipulation inside of the Trump campaign. The Senator doth protest too much, methinks. Meanwhile, members of the political right have suggested that Barack Obama, who was the Commander-in-Chief at the time of Trump’s campaign being infiltrated, should be forced to explain what prompted such a decision.
“If he doesn’t know, then it would seem a public explanation is also in order — about his management, and about just how far the ‘deep state’ went without specific presidential approval,” argued James Freeman, assistant editor of the Wall Street Journal.
On Thursday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy will meet with DOJ officials, who are expected to turn over documents detailing the federal intrusion of the Trump campaign.
I reached out to Lionel, legal analyst at lionelmedia.com and regular RT commentator, for some insight into Trump’s chances for emerging successful as he attempts to gain information from the Department of Justice and FBI.
First, there is the composition of the DOJ, which Lionel described, as only Lionel can, as a “Lernaean Hydra with many facets, divisions, jurisdictions and levels of loyalty.”
“There are lifetime, career prosecutors and agents not necessarily committed to an administration or party and there are the targeted, viz. the politically corrupt, biased, partisan and ‘Deep State’ swamp critters whom President Trump has so affectionately titled,” he explained.
Lionel says “the plot now thickens” as Attorney General Jeff Sessions tapped US Attorney John Huber, a Republican from the red state of Utah, to investigate all matters and issues the Republicans have been demanding.
“Huber is a federal prosecutor with plenary powers to empanel grand juries, obtain indictments and secure results that make those of a Special Prosecutor pale by comparison,” he explained. “Sessions has further ordered Huber to work in coordination with DOJ Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz and his staff of 470 that dwarfs any of that of a Special Prosecutor.”
“Moreover, the fact that this [US Attorney] is based in Utah means that he’s far from the fetid swamp that is Washington DC. Far from a potential grand jury pool that is anti-Trump, anti-Sessions and (ahem) anti-justice. The move tactically was brilliant.”
As far as the investigation against Trump, which just entered its second year, “Mueller’s status is an unconstitutional hybrid that normally would require Senate confirmation,” the legal analyst explained via email.
“The good news (or bad news, depending on one’s vantage) is that with a Huber-Horowitz team in place, Mueller’s outgunned, outmatched and outmanned.” In short, with the Huber-Horowitz team in place in distant Utah, this means “checkmate” for team Trump, Lionel believes.
Whether or not that prediction comes true, it will be very interesting to see what move the Democrats and the Mueller investigation makes next, because the available spaces on this chessboard of extremely high stakes are diminishing at a breathtaking pace.
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. Former Editor-in-Chief of The Moscow News, he is author of the book, ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ released in 2013.
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Clash of Civilization, Iran Part II
By Jamal Kanj – Intifada-Palestine.com – January 14, 2011
Israel’s survival kit is: perpetuate conflict, insecurity to rationalize collective hate and finally playing victim.
Devoid of conflict, Israel implodes internally; without hate, Zionism loses its justification; and playing eternal victim to continue blackmailing the West. Absence of this holy trinity, Israel ceases to exist. … continue
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