Nonstop Media Bias From Russiagate to the Biden-Crime-Family Coverup
By Victor Davis Hanson | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 4, 2023
Joe Biden lied repeatedly when he claimed he knew nothing of his son Hunter’s influence-peddling businesses.
The president further prevaricated that he had no involvement in Hunter’s various shake down schemes.
Yet, the media continued to misinform by serially ignoring these facts.
Had journalists just been honest and independent, then-candidate Joe Biden might have lost a presidential debate and even the 2020 election.
The public would have learned that Hunter’s business associates and his laptop proved Joe was deeply involved in his son’s illicit businesses.
Later, as the evidence from IRS whistleblowers mounted, the White House stonewalled subpoenaed efforts and sought to craft an outrageous plea deal reduction in Hunter’s legal exposure.
Reporters ignored the Ukrainians who claimed Joe Biden himself talked to them about quid pro quo arrangements.
They again discounted Hunter’s laptop that explicitly demonstrated that Hunter was whining that he had handed over large percentages of his income to his father Joe — variously referred to as the Big Guy and a “ten percent” recipient on many deals.
They played dumb about Joe Biden’s use of pseudonyms and alias email accounts to hide thousands of his communications to Hunter and associates.
They attacked the former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who now claims Biden was likely bribed by Ukrainians.
Yet the media can no longer hide the reality that the president of the United States likely took bribes to influence or alter US policy to suit his payers.
Those two crimes — bribery and treason — are specifically delineated in the Constitution as impeachable offenses.
In denial, the media has instead pivoted with hysterical glee over various weaponized prosecutions of former President Donald Trump.
But now, to use a progressive catchphrase, the proverbial “walls are closing in” on Joe Biden.
So will we at last expect the media finally to confront the truth?
Answer — only if Joe Biden’s cognitive and physical health continues to deteriorate geometrically to the point that he can no longer finish his term or run for reelection — and thus becomes expendable.
Such a cynical view of the media is justified given their record of both incompetence and unapologetic deceit.
From 2015 to 2019, we were suffocated 24/7 with lies like “Russian collusion,” “Putin’s puppet,” “election rigging” and the “Steele dossier.”
When all such “evidence” was proven to be a complete fraud cooked up through Hillary Clinton’s stealthy hiring of and collusion with a discredited ex-British spy, a Russian fabulist at the Brookings Institution and a Clinton toady in Moscow, did the media apologize for their untruth?
Was there any media confessional that perhaps Robert Mueller and his leftwing legal team (the giddy media-dubbed “all-stars,” “dream team,” and “hunter killers”) proved a colossal waste of time?
Not at all.
Instead, the media went next right on to “the phone call” and “impeachment.”
The country then wasted another year.
The same biased reporters now claimed that the heroic Andrew Vindman had caught Trump fabricating lies about the Bidens — given Joe Biden was a possible 2020 opponent — to force Ukraine to investigate them or lose American foreign aid.
On that accusation Trump was impeached.
Then the truth emerged that unlike Joe Biden, Trump never threatened to cancel aid, but merely to delay it.
Trump was right that the Bidens were knee deep in Ukrainian bribes and influence peddling.
And that the whistleblower had no first-hand knowledge of the Trump call but was spoon fed a script cooked up by the gadfly Vindman and California Rep. Adam Schiff.
The result was journalistic glee that we impeached a president for crimes that he did not commit but exempted another president, Biden, who had likely committed them.
Then came the next hoax of the Russian fabricated facsimile of Hunter’s laptop.
The FBI later admitted it had verified the authenticity of Hunter’s laptop.
The 2020 Biden campaign along with an ex-CIA head rounded up “51 intelligence authorities” to mislead the country into believing that Russian gremlins in the Kremlin had fabricated a fake laptop.
Ponder that absurd fantasy: Moscow supposedly had created fake nude pictures, fake photos of Hunter’s drug use, and fake email and text messages from Hunter to the other Bidens.
The media preposterously convinced the country that the Russians and by extension Trump had once again sandbagged the Biden campaign.
No apologies followed when the FBI later admitted it had kept the laptop under wraps for more than a year, knew it was authentic, and yet said nothing as the media and former spooks misled the country and warped an election.
Now we are enmeshed in at least four court trials on cooked-up charges that could as easily apply to a host of Democrats as to Trump.
For the last eight years, a discredited media has never expressed remorse for any of the damage they did to the country. And they will not again, when their latest mythological indictments are eventually exposed.
“You Don’t Listen to the Press . . . I’m Telling You”: Post Columnist Strikes Out at Those Questioning Prior False Claims
By Jonathan Turley | September 1, 2023
I recently wrote how the Washington Post issued a statement that declared that the newspaper was “standing by” columnist Philip Bump on his proven false claims on subjects ranging from Lafayette Park to Russian collusion. Bump’s prior claims have not only been conclusively shown to be false but other major media outlets have now rejected those claims. However, the Post claimed this week that they are in fact true in response to one of my earlier columns.
Now, Miranda Devine at the New York Post has written about a meltdown by Bump in a podcast interview with Noam Dworman, owner of New York’s own Comedy Cellar. Dworman had asked Bump to explain some of his claims and Bump offered one of the most vivid examples of the new media and it is chilling. After declaring that “I’m gonna lose my mind,” he stormed out of the interview after refusing to address the contradictions and dubious claims in his prior columns.
Dworman’s podcast interview stands as one of the most revealing and vivid examples of how the media has changed in the age of rage. Bump moves quickly from the conversational to crazed when simply asked about the basis for his claims in the Washington Post.
Dworman was asking about the mounting evidence and contradictions in the Biden corruption scandal. Some of us have said that there is evidence of obvious corruption and influence peddling, but more investigation is needed to establish any basis for impeachment or criminal charges involving President Biden. Bump, however, will have none of it. The Post writer (who demanded investigations of a wide array of Republicans on false stories with little evidence) is vehement that there is nothing to see here . . . and the public just has to take his word for it.
Dworman remains polite and pushes Bump to simply engage him in explaining some of the countervailing evidence. Bump responds “I just I’m gonna lose my mind. I’m gonna lose my mind.”
As the interview shuts down, Dworman asks “is there nothing we can talk about … half the country believes this stuff.”
Bump: “I know, because half the country doesn’t actually dig into the issues.”
Dworman: “Here’s your chance to disabuse people. They don’t read the Washington Post.”
Bump will have nothing of it as Dworman continues to try to get him to explain his controversial writings: “There’s just no point, because all you want to do is you want to have me here as the putative expert so that you can present me with things that have been debunked multiple times that I’ve written about.”
Dworman: “What’s been debunked?”
Bump: “These, these claims. I’ve written about this, this argument about his dad calling him. I’ve written about this. Did you read what I wrote?”
Dworman: “It’s not debunked. Neither of us were there.”
Bump: “Well, I debunked it in the standpoint that I’ve already addressed this and presented the counterarguments to it.”
Of course, Bump has been repeatedly shown to have pushed false claims and then refused to admit to his errors. Moreover, he has repeatedly been criticized for not honestly presenting the counterarguments.
Dworman makes another valiant effort: “I have two issues here. One is Joe Biden’s behavior and one is the issue of the press. The press actually bothers me more than Joe Biden.”
Bump, however, has all but left the building: “Because you don’t listen to the press. I’m sitting here and I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen, and you continue to insist upon things that are, you know, parsing of language. And it’s just, it’s this is why I keep saying it’s silly.” He then says that he is leaving.
Dworman responded “Well, it’s a shame because this is a good conversation.”
Bump: “It’s not a good conversation, because you refuse to listen to what I’m saying to you. You asked me on to present evidence. I keep telling you.”
However, what he “keeps telling” Dworman and the public is to just accept his conclusions and not question his support and analysis.
Bump then walks out with a statement that captures perfectly the new media. He first attacks independent journalist Matt Taibbi and says that he has “an agenda.”
Dworman delivers a haymaker in response and states “You have no agenda.”
That is when Bump delivers his exit line that foreshadowed the Post statement on my column: “I do have an agenda … My agenda is to do my best to try and present accurate information to the public. And I have an institution behind me to hold me to account when I don’t do that, which I think is an important consideration.”
Indeed, the Post would then stand entirely behind Bump and claim that all of his false statements were true. Even when other media have acknowledged that these claims were false, the Post insists that they remain true. Thus, the Post is now saying that the following are true despite findings by inspector generals and special counsels to the contrary: (1) Bill Barr did order the clearing of Lafayette Park for the Trump photo op, (2) Barr also lied when he denied the use of tear gas by federal personnel in Lafayette Park, (3) there was never any spying on the Trump campaign by the FBI, (4) Hunter Biden’s laptop was seeded with Russian disinformation, and (5) the Clinton campaign was not behind false Russian collusion claims. It is all now deemed true by the Post. It appears that, if “Democracy dies in darkness,” journalism more often dies in the light of day.
After all, the problem is not that they are false but that people just “don’t listen to the press. I’m sitting here and I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen.”
Google buries websites of Trump, RFK Jr, Republican challengers
RT | August 26, 2023
Google is suppressing the 2024 campaign websites of all serious challengers to Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden, a report from the Media Research Center claimed on Thursday.
Searching the web for ‘presidential campaign websites’ using Google returned results that did not include a single Republican candidate on the first page the day before the first Republican primary debate of the 2024 season, according to the MRC.
Not even former US President Donald Trump, who is polling neck-and-neck with Biden, appeared in the first few pages of results, the media watchdog observed.
Nor did Democratic challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the chief threat to Biden’s candidacy from within his own party, appear in the results at all, even though a recent poll had him at nearly 20% in a matchup against Biden.
Indeed, the only non-Biden Democrat to feature on the first page was lifestyle guru Marianne Williamson, who has never polled above the low single digits.
However, the websites of prominent Democrats who are not running for president in 2024, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, were more prominently featured at 29th, 12th, and 9th place in the results, respectively.
“Google has erased every threat to Joe Biden,” MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider said on Thursday, recalling how Google had “pulled out all the stops to put Hillary Clinton in the White House” and “has continued to interfere in our elections ever since.”
As of Saturday, the phenomenon appeared to have actually worsened. While Biden’s site was the fourth listed on the search engine and Williamson’s the fifth, Sanders remained at 12th, while Clinton had actually moved up to 13th.
Former Vice President Mike Pence’s site was the highest-ranked Republican in a search run on Saturday morning – though even his page was listed several places behind an Atlantic article informing the casual browser that 1996 Republican candidate and now-deceased former Senator Bob Dole’s campaign website “is still online.”
Kennedy has been widely disparaged by the media establishment and online factcheckers for his work on vaccine safety. He sued Google earlier this month for violating his First Amendment rights, arguing its subsidiary YouTube had blocked his content on orders from the Biden administration.
Trump also sued Google in 2021 for infringing on his free speech after he was deplatformed from YouTube along with most other mainstream social media platforms following the January 6 Capitol riot.
Over a dozen government agencies were found to be issuing content-based censorship orders to social media platforms last year in Missouri v. Biden, leading a judge to issue a restraining order forbidding the administration from contacting the platforms.
Who Is National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Why He Should Debate RFK Jr.
By Rick Sterling | Global Research | June 27, 2023
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is one of the key people driving US foreign policy. He was mentored by Hillary Clinton with regime changes in Honduras, Libya and Syria. He was the link between Nuland and Biden during the 2014 coup in Ukraine. As reported by Seymour Hersh, Sullivan led the planning of the Nord Stream pipelines destruction in September 2022. Sullivan guides or makes many large and small foreign policy decisions. This article will describe Jake Sullivan’s background, what he says, what he has been doing, where the US is headed and why this should be debated.
Background
Jake Sullivan was born in November 1976. He describes his formative years like this:
“I was raised in Minnesota in the 1980s, a child of the later Cold War – of Rocky IV, the Miracle on Ice, and ‘Tear down this wall’. The 90s were my high school and college years. The Soviet Union collapsed. The Iron Curtain disappeared. Germany was reunified. An American-led alliance ended a genocide in Bosnia and prevented one in Kosovo. I went to graduate school in England and gave fiery speeches on the floor of the Oxford Union about how the United States was a force for good in the world.”
Sullivan’s education includes Yale (BA), Oxford (MA) and Yale again (JD). He went quickly from academic studies and legal work to political campaigning and government.
Sullivan made important contacts during his college years at elite institutions. For example, he worked with former Deputy Secretary of State and future Brookings Institution president, Strobe Talbott. After a few years clerking for judges, Sullivan transitioned to a law firm in his hometown of Minneapolis. He soon became chief counsel to Senator Amy Klobuchar who connected him to the rising Senator Hillary Clinton.
Mentored by Hillary
Sullivan became a key adviser to Hillary Clinton in her campaign to be Democratic party nominee in 2008. At age 32, Jake Sullivan became deputy chief of staff and director of policy planning when she became secretary of state. He was her constant companion, travelling with her to 112 countries.
The Clinton/Sullivan foreign policy was soon evident. In Honduras, Clinton clashed with progressive Honduras President Manuel Zelaya over whether to re-admit Cuba to the OAS. Seven weeks later, on June 28, Honduran soldiers invaded the president’s home and kidnapped him out of the country, stopping en route at the US Air Base. The coup was so outrageous that even the US ambassador to Honduras denounced it. This was quickly over-ruled as the Clinton/Sullivan team played semantics games to say it was a coup but not a “military coup.” Thus the Honduran coup regime continued to receive US support. They quickly held a dubious election to make the restoration of President Zelaya “moot”. Clinton is proud of this success in her book “Hard Choices.”
Two years later the target was Libya. With Victoria Nuland as State Department spokesperson, the Clinton/Sullivan team promoted sensational claims of a pending massacre and urged intervention in Libya under the “responsibility to protect.” When the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing a no-fly zone to protect civilians, the US, Qatar and other NATO members distorted that and started air attacks on Libyan government forces. Today, 12 years later, Libya is still in chaos and war. The sensational claims of 2011 were later found to be false.
When the Libyan government was overthrown in Fall 2011, the Clinton/Sullivan State Department and CIA plotted to seize the Libyan weapons arsenal. Weapons were transferred to the Syrian opposition. US Ambassador Stevens and other Americans were killed in an internecine conflict over control of the weapons cache.
Undeterred, Clinton and Sullivan stepped up their attempts to overthrow the Syrian government. They formed a club of western nations and allies called the “Friends of Syria.” The “Friends” divided tasks – who would do what in the campaign to topple the sovereign state. Former policy planner at the Clinton/Sullivan State Department, Ann Marie Slaughter, called for “foreign military intervention.” Sullivan knew they were arming violent sectarian fanatics to overthrow the Syrian government. In an email to Hillary released by Wikileaks, Sullivan noted “AQ is on our side in Syria.”
Biden’s adviser during the 2014 Ukraine Coup
After being Clinton’s policy planner, Sullivan became President Obama’s director of policy planning (Feb 2011 to Feb 2013) then national security adviser to Vice President Biden (Feb 2013 to August 2014).
In his position with Biden, Sullivan had a close-up view of the February 2014 Ukraine coup. He was a key contact between Victoria Nuland, overseeing the coup, and Biden. In the secretly recorded conversation where Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine discuss how to manage the coup, Nuland remarks that Jake Sullivan told her “you need Biden.” Biden gave the “attaboy” and the coup was “midwifed” following a massacre of police AND protesters on the Maidan plaza.
Sullivan must have observed Biden’s use of the vice president’s position for personal family gain. He would have been aware of Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of the Burisima Ukrainian energy company, and the reason Joe Biden demanded that the Ukrainian special prosecutor who was investigating Burisima to be fired. Biden later bragged and joked about this.
In December 2013, at a conference hosted by Chevron Corporation, Victoria Nuland said the US has spent five BILLION dollars to bring “democracy” to Ukraine.
Sullivan helped create Russiagate
Jake Sullivan was a leading member of the 2016 Hillary Clinton team which promoted Russiagate. The false claim that Trump was secretly contacting Russia was promoted initially to distract from negative news about Hillary Clinton and to smear Trump as a puppet of Putin. Both the Mueller and Durham investigations officially discredited the main claims of Russiagate. There was no collusion. The accusations were untrue, and the FBI gave them unjustified credence for political reasons.
Sullivan played a major role in the deception as shown by his “Statement from Jake Sullivan on New Report Exposing Trump’s Secret Line of Communication to Russia.”
Sullivan’s misinformation
Jake Sullivan is a good speaker, persuasive and with a dry sense of humor. At the same time, he can be disingenuous. Some of his statements are false. For example, in June 2017 Jake Sullivan was interviewed by Frontline television program about US foreign policy and especially US-Russia relations. Regarding NATO’s overthrow of the Libyan government, Sullivan says, “Putin came to believe that the United States had taken Russia for a ride in the UN Security Council that authorized the use of force in Libya… He thought he was authorizing a purely defensive mission… Now on the actual language of the resolution, it’s plain as day that Putin was wrong about that.” Contrary to what Sullivan claims, the UN Security Council resolution clearly authorizes a no-fly zone for the protection of civilians, no more. It’s plain as day there was NOT authorization for NATO’s offensive attacks and “regime change.”
Planning the Nord Stream Pipeline destruction
The bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, filled with 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas, was a monstrous environmental disaster. The destruction also caused huge economic damage to Germany and other European countries. It has been a boon for US liquefied natural gas exports which have surged to fill the gap, but at a high price. Many European factories dependent on cheap gas have closed down. Tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs.
Seymour Hersh reported details of How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline. He says, “Biden authorized Jake Sullivan to bring together an interagency group to come up with a plan.” A sabotage plan was prepared and officials in Norway and Denmark included in the plot. The day after the sabotage, Jake Sullivan tweeted
“I spoke to my counterpart Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe of Denmark about the apparent sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines. The U.S. is supporting efforts to investigate and we will continue our work to safeguard Europe’s energy security.”
Ellerman-Kingombe may have been one of the Danes informed in advance of the bombing. He is close to the US military and NATO command.
Since then, the Swedish investigation of Nord Stream bombing has made little progress. Contrary to Sullivan’s promise in the tweet, the US has not supported other efforts to investigate. When Russia proposed an independent international investigation of the Nord Stream sabotage at the UN Security Council, the resolution failed due to lack of support from the US and US allies. Hungary’s foreign minister recently asked,
“How on earth is it possible that someone blows up critical infrastructure on the territory of Europe and no one has a say, no one condemns, no one carries out an investigation?”
Economic Plans devoid of reality
Ten weeks ago Jake Sullivan delivered a major speech on “Renewing American Economic Leadership” at the Brookings Institution. He explains how the Biden administration is pursuing a “modern industrial and innovation strategy.” They are trying to implement a “foreign policy for the middle class” which better integrates domestic and foreign policies. The substance of their plan is to increase investments in semiconductors, clean energy minerals and manufacturing. However the new strategy is very unlikely to achieve the stated goal to “lift up all of America’s people, communities, and industries.” Sullivan’s speech completely ignores the elephant in the room: the costly US Empire including wars and 800 foreign military bases which consume about 60% of the total discretionary budget. Under Biden and Sullivan’s foreign policy, there is no intention to rein in the extremely costly military industrial complex. It is not even mentioned.
US exceptionalism 2.0
In December 2018 Jake Sullivan wrote an essay titled “American Exceptionalism, Reclaimed.” It shows his foundational beliefs and philosophy. He separates himself from the “arrogant brand of exceptionalism” demonstrated by Dick Cheney. He also criticizes the “American first” policies of Donald Trump. Sullivan advocates for “a new American exceptionalism” and “American leadership in the 21st Century.”
Sullivan has a shallow Hollywood understanding of history: “The United States stopped Hitler’s Germany, saved Western Europe from economic ruin, stood firm against the Soviet Union, and supported the spread of democracy worldwide.” He believes “The fact that the major powers have not returned to war with one another since 1945 is a remarkable achievement of American statecraft.”
Jake Sullivan is young in age but his ideas are old. The United States is no longer dominant economically or politically. It is certainly not “indispensable.” More and more countries are objecting to US bullying and defying Washington’s demands. Even key allies such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are ignoring US requests. The trend toward a multipolar world is escalating. Jake Sullivan is trying to reverse the trend but reality and history are working against him. Over the past four or five decades, the US has gone from being an investment, engineering and manufacturing powerhouse to a deficit spending consumer economy waging perpetual war with a bloated military industrial complex.
Instead of reforming and rebuilding the US, the national security state expends much of its energy and resources trying to destabilize countries deemed to be “adversaries”.
Conclusion
Previous national security advisers Henry Kissinger and Zbignew Brzezinski were very influential.
Kissinger is famous for wooing China and dividing the communist bloc. Jake Sullivan is now wooing India in hopes of dividing that country from China and the BRICS alliance (Brazil,Russia, India, China, South Africa).
Brzezinski is famous for plotting the Afghanistan trap. By destabilizing Afghanistan with foreign terrorists beginning 1978, the US induced the Soviet Union to send troops to Afghanistan at the Afghan government’s request. The result was the collapse of the progressive Afghan government, the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and 40 years of war and chaos.
On 28 February 2022, just four days after Russian troops entered Ukraine, Jake Sullivan’s mentor, Hillary Clinton, was explicit: “Afghanistan is the model.” It appears the US intentionally escalated the provocations in Ukraine to induce Russia to intervene. The goal is to “weaken Russia.” This explains why the US has spent over $100 billion sending weapons and other support to Ukraine. This explains why the US and UK undermined negotiations which could have ended the conflict early on.
The Americans who oversaw the 2014 coup in Kiev, are the same ones running US foreign policy today: Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan. Prospects for ending the Ukraine war are very poor as long as they are in power.
The Democratic Party constantly emphasizes “democracy” yet there is no debate or discussion over US foreign policy. What kind of “democracy” is this where crucial matters of life and death are not discussed?
Robert F Kennedy Jr is now running in the Democratic Party primary. He has a well informed and critical perspective on US foreign policy including the never ending wars, the intelligence agencies and the conflict in Ukraine.
Jake Sullivan is a skilled debater. Why doesn’t he debate Democratic Party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr over US foreign policy and national security?
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Rick Sterling can be contacted at RSterling1@gmail.com.
Leave Trump Alone (Because It Does Not Matter)
By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | June 26, 2023
The narrative is set. Everything between now and November 2024, absent an actual alien intervention, is filler material.
Trump will ride his narrative to the polls, campaigning even if in hand cuffs and an ankle monitor. He is, he will make clear, the victim of a Democratic plot to weaponize “justice,” dating back to 2016 when Hillary was let off scot-free for her email shenanigans, followed by the FBI’s concocted Russiagate, two impeachments, and now a carousel of indictments. His opponent is Joe Biden, older than Yoda but presenting more like Jar Jar, crooked in cahoots with his scum bag son to hard suck bribe money out of eastern Europe. Sleepy Joe’s narrative is to count on the same FBI going after Trump with both barrels to shuffle its feet investigating him and Hunter through the election, with a final surge under the slogan “Oh who cares, I’m not Trump!” to wrap things up. It’s all a rich tapestry.
The problem is it is compelling; there is a lot of truth underneath the showmanship. There was David Petraeus, Obama’s CIA Director, who leaked secret docs to his girlfriend, and Sandy Berger, Clinton’s NSA Director, who stole secret docs. But it was Hillary who did get away with it all, at the FBI’s discretion (so much for one law for everyone) what Trump has been accused of in Mar-a-Lago. Hillary Clinton maintained an unsecured private email server which processed classified material on a daily basis. Her server held at least 110 known messages containing classified information, including e-mail chains classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level, the highest level of civilian classification. The FBI found classified intelligence improperly stored and transmitted on Clinton’s server “was compromised by unauthorized individuals, to include foreign governments or intelligence services, via cyber intrusion or other means.”
Clinton and her team destroyed tens of thousands of emails, evidence, as well as physical phones and Blackberries which potentially held evidence — obstruction as clear as it comes. She operated the server out of her home kitchen despite the presence of the Secret Service on property who failed to report it. A server in a closet is not as dramatic a visual as boxes of classified stored in a shower room, but justice is supposed to be blind. More recently, what of Mike Pence and Joe Biden, both of whom have escaped indictment so far on similar charges of mishandling classified information. Trump voters know if the FBI is going to take similar fact sets and ignore one while aggressively pursuing another, it is partial and political. No matter which candidate wins and loses, DOJ’s credibility is tanked.
The Stormy Daniels case, and the guilty finding in the Jean Carroll defamation case, reek of politics. Neither case would have seen daylight outside of Democratic hive New York, and neither could have held up outside a partisan justice system that permits it to ignore Jeffrey Epstein’s death in custody or a city in a crime tornado (New York in the past year reduced 52 percent of all felony charges to misdemeanors, opposite of what was done to Trump) while aggressively allowing the system to pursue a decades-old rape case of dubious propriety.
Witch hunt meet Hunter. New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg ran for office on the promise to prosecute Trump. He fulfilled a campaign promise and paid off his George Soros-connected backers. Bragg, in the words of law professor Jonathan Turley, had a “very public, almost Hamlet-like process where he debated whether he could do this bootstrapping theory [bumping misdemeanors up to felonies in the Stormy case.] He stopped it for a while and was pressured to go forward with it. All of that smacks more of politics than prosecutorial discretion.”
Calling it all a witch hunt is just a starting point. The point here is not innocence; it is whether the justice system is going to take fact sets and ignore one while aggressively pursuing another, risking being seen as partial and political. No matter which candidate wins or loses, credibility is tanked.
Still to come (at the least) are whatever judicial actions will emerge from the Special Prosecutor over Trump’s role in January 6, and legal action over the 2020 Georgia vote count (with another Democratic openly anti-Trump prosecutor.) Trump jokes in his stump speech nowadays every time he flies over a Blue State he gets another subpoena. He could easily head into the Republican convention to accept the nomination with multiple convictions and/or indictments on his shoulders. It won’t matter. The justice system is going to take fact sets and ignore some while aggressively pursuing others, partial and political plain as day. No matter which candidate wins, credibility is tanked. It grinds that most of the serious charges against Trump are under the hoary Espionage Act, seen by many as reviving the now-discredited trope Trump was a Russian agent.
Mostly overlooked for now is how much of the apparent evidence against Trump at Mar-a-Lago came from his own attorneys. Attorney-client privilege is recognized as one of the cornerstones of fairness in our system. In the Trump case, the Justice Department used the one major exception to privilege, when the communication is intended to further a criminal or fraudulent act, to compel Trump’s lawyers to give evidence against their own client. Justice asserted Trump lied to his own team about having no more classified documents, and that this constituted a crime of fraud and maybe obstruction, and thus privilege is not available and Trump’s lawyer can be made to testify against his client. The crime or fraud exception to attorney-client privilege itself has a long history, dating back to English common law. In the United States, the crime or fraud exception was first recognized by the Supreme Court in the 1840 case of United States v. Privileged Communications. But Trump’s supporters are unlikely to read deeply into the case law; all they’ll see is what looks like strong-arm tactics by the Department of Justice. No matter which candidate wins and loses, DOJ’s credibility is tanked.
The thing is no one has to work very hard to convince Trump supporters of the truth of what he is saying, that he is the victim. Trump support remained unmoved by the many investigations that plagued his presidency. Even during peak crises, views of him were static. Post-presidency polls continued the trend. Public opinion of Trump remains remarkably stable, despite his unprecedented legal challenges, and about half of Americans do not see his behavior as disqualifying, sharper if you divide along partisan lines. When asked if Trump’s legal troubles would impact their views of him, two-thirds of his supporters said it would not make a difference. That’s a committed bunch. Perhaps just as important, 57 percent of voters, including one-third of Democrats, said the indictment in New York earlier this year was politically motivated.
No one can say who will win in November 2024, but one loser is certain, faith in the rule of law by a large number of Americans. They will leave the polls certain the system was bent to “get” Trump, either saddened by the fall of blind justice or saddened that it did not work and Trump remined a powerful figure with a large movement behind him, either in or out of the Oval Office.
CIA Vet Warns US Intel Agencies ‘Will Do Everything’ to Help Dems in 2024 Race
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 22.06.2023
Former Special Counsel John Durham offered his first public testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday regarding the details of his report into the FBI’s handling of allegations of collusion between ex-President Donald Trump and Russia. The day before, Durham testified behind closed doors to the US House Intelligence Committee.
While it is not completely clear whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation knew from the outset that dug-up “information on Trump” had been paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, there is “no excuse for their having learned that and, nevertheless, proceeded with the investigation,” former CIA station chief Philip Giraldi told Sputnik.
“There might have been personal malice involved in going after Trump, but that has not been clearly demonstrated,” the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest added, referencing the FBI’s investigation into the alleged Trump-Russia “collusion”.
Former Special Counsel John Durham paid his second visit to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to face the House Judiciary Committee over the details of his May report, released after almost a four-year-long investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation codenamed, Crossfire Hurricane. Durham had found that the agency had been “seriously deficient,” relying on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” when probing the 2016 Donald Trump campaign’s alleged ties to “Russia.”
“One has to assume that the Bureau felt it had a great deal invested in maintaining Democratic Party control of the presidency and that there were concerns that Trump would upset the arrangements made under [Barack] Obama,” Giraldi said.
The Durham report had also exposed the Democratic establishment’s anti-Trump narrative, and the role of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in spawning and then pushing the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
During his probe, the special counsel charged and convicted FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted to doctoring an email to state that Trump aide Carter Page had never been a CIA asset (which was not true) in order to push ahead with surveilling the former Trump campaign adviser. Durham also brought charges against Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann and Brookings Institution scholar Igor Danchenko for lying to the FBI. Danchenko has served as the main ‘subsource’ for ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele, the author of the now infamous Steele dossier. It had been funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) through the law firm Perkins Coie, which Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann worked for at the time.
The claims the “dirty” dossier contained were used by the FBI in a series of clandestine preliminary probes against Trump starting from 2016. John Durham, as part of his investigation, found that Steele’s source, Danchenko, when questioned by the FBI was unable to confirm any of the assumptions.
‘Acting on Behalf of the Deep State’
As the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign sought to use fabricated information from the Steele dossier to smear Donald Trump and some of his advisors, similar tactics were wielded in the 2020 elections, Philip Giraldi previously underscored. After the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees found that senior Biden campaign officials colluded with the CIA to falsely discredit Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” as “Russian disinformation”, Giraldi pointed out that former acting CIA Director Michael Morell had drafted the notorious letter, titled “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden emails.” It was signed by 51 former intelligence officials including CIA Directors John Brennan, Leon Panetta, and Mike Hayden, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, former Director of National Intelligence and James Clapper. The letter claimed that the data on Hunter’s hard drive “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
“The CIA did not ‘approve’ of the letter from the 51 former national security officials. My understanding is that it was submitted to them because the Agency exercises ‘prepublication review’ over all articles and books written by former undercover officers to block the publication of any national secrets. In this case, as I understand it, they confirmed that the letter contained no classified information. The letter itself was largely the product of collaboration by Tony Blinken and Michael Morell, both Democratic Party loyalists who expected to benefit personally,” Giraldi emphasized.
The 51 ex-spies’ opinion was quickly disseminated by the US mainstream press, while the Hunter Biden laptop story, shedding light on the Biden family’s questionable business dealings, was suppressed by both Big Media and Big Tech.
“Morell, Blinken and associates should have known that they were acting on behalf of the deep state and were in fact damaging US democracy such as it is! When the national security agencies go after candidates it is in fact the death of government of and by the people,” Giraldi remarked.
Ahead of John Durham’s testimony on June 21, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) underscored in his opening statement that the hearing was tasked to provide more “detail and add more color” to the findings of the May report.
“Seven years of attacking Trump is scary enough… What’s more frightening is that any one of us could be next,” Jordan emphasized.
A number of Republicans echoed John Durham’s calls for reforming the FBI, underscoring that the agency, had become “politicized” and “weaponized”, and had carried out a “politically motivated” investigation of Donald Trump.
Looking ahead at the next election cycle, where both Biden and Trump are gearing up to vie for another Oval Office stint, Philip Giraldi concluded:
“For 2024, I expect that the agencies will do everything they can to help Biden or whoever replaces him from the Democratic Party but they will be a lot more careful about how they do it than they were in 2020.”
The Exact Moment That ‘Permanent Washington’ Decided To Send Trump To Prison
Full Transcript:
The Biden Administration arrested Donald Trump this afternoon. They had him arraigned and fingerprinted in a Miami Courthouse, like the accused felon he now technically is.
These were the first steps in a process that is designed to put Donald Trump behind bars for the rest of his life.
Cable news carried every moment of it live “it’s unprecedented” they told us with what looked like shock. But they weren’t shocked they knew this was coming. Everyone who’s paid attention knew it was what just happened was always going to happen.
It’s been inevitable since February 16 2016. that’s the day Donald Trump made a blood enemy of the largest and most powerful organization in human history which would be the federal government.
Despite what you may remember it wasn’t anything that Trump had said about immigration, or trade with China, or rapists from Mexico – those are the stories that dominated the headlines that year – “Trump’s a racist they scream stop him.”
But inside Washington that was just noise none of it really rated identity politics doesn’t mean much to permanent Washington what matters – then and now – is foreign policy the invasions and occupations and proxy wars: the decisions that determine which global populations will thrive and which will die. The policies that come with trillion dollar price tags, the ones that over time have made the counties around DC the richest suburbs in the world.
In Washington that’s what actually matters and it’s obvious when you look carefully. When there’s a debate about anything else for example the debt ceiling, both sides take their assigned positions and they start yelling. But when Congress decides to start a war – no matter how foolish or counterproductive or obviously disconnected from America’s core interests that war may be – when that happens the leaders of both parties automatically jump behind it like circus clowns.
And then they stay there, sometimes for decades. They defend that war relentlessly against all evidence, until somebody finally Rings the all clear Bell and they can begin to admit that actually maybe it wasn’t such a great idea. We meant well but it just didn’t work out the good news is we’ve learned a lot of important lessons.
In the end they usually do say something like that, but only after emotions have cooled and the damning details have begun to fade from collective memory. It’s an apology that’s not actually an apology, much less repentance and it’s years too late to matter in any case.
But until then that’s all you’re getting, until then no dissent is allowed – that’s the first rule of Washington.
But somehow Trump didn’t bother to follow it. He is from out of town so maybe he didn’t know it was a rule or maybe he just didn’t care. Either way, seven and a half years later we can point to the precise moment that permanent Washington decided to send Donald Trump to prison. here it is it’s from the Republican candidates debate in Greenville South Carolina:
“we should have never been in Iraq; we have destabilized the Middle East. They lied, okay. They said there were weapons of mass destruction there were none and they knew there were none there were no weapons of mass destruction.”
We should never have been in Iraq, Trump said. We destabilized the Middle East. Now by the time Trump said that a lot of Republican primary voters were starting to reach the same conclusion; how could they not. But it was the next line that doomed Trump to today’s arrest. “They lied” he said, “there were no weapons of mass destruction” and they knew there were none.
Now when he said that a few in the crowd booed, most just sat there in silenced stunned. Can he say that? Well he said it anyway and by saying that he sealed his fate. That was the one thing you were not allowed to say because it implicated too many people on both sides, which on this topic is really just one side.
Hillary Clinton was guilty of it, but so was Paul Ryan. All of them were guilty; they all knew, they all lied, and to a person they hated Donald Trump for exposing them.
After that it was pretty clear that even if he did get elected president Trump was going to have a very hard time controlling the federal government he was supposed to be in charge of. Most of permanent Washington decided that thwarting Trump was the single most important mission in their lives. Everything depended on it, many of them said so publicly. But others didn’t say so publicly; in fact the stealthier ones took another path – they ran toward Trump not away from him. They sucked up to him, they ingratiated themselves- the man they intuitively understood was susceptible to flattery which Trump is, and they did this in order to subvert his new Administration from the inside.
There were a number of these and you could spot them immediately: they were flatterers. Invariably the ones who flattered Trump the most hated him the most and disagreed the most strongly with his views. You saw them in the hallways of the White House and at press conferences; they were there slobbering over their boss with elaborate self-abasement as if they were addressing a monarch or a God.
It was a scene from the ottoman Court – it was filthy and decadent and it was false. Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, Lindsey Graham in the Congress. They all called Trump a Visionary genius… up until the moment he lost power and then they unsheathed their real agenda – as always the neocon war agenda – and they piled on with maximum Force.
Here’s Mike Pompeo for example on Fox news this morning:
“President Trump had classified documents where he shouldn’t have had them. And then when given the opportunity to return them he chose not to do that for whatever reason… when somebody identifies that you got to turn them in. So that’s just inconsistent with protecting America’s soldiers sailors, airmen and marines… and if the allegations are true some of these were pretty serious important documents… so that’s wrong”
May future historians hoping to unlock the mysteries of late empire Washington study that clip, because it will reveal everything. That very same Mike Pompeo – the one who’s sneering at Donald Trump on TV this morning – that guy served Donald Trump as both CIA director and as Secretary of State. Those are the two most powerful jobs in the federal government and as he worked in those jobs, Pompeo promised – in fact he swore – to support the president’s agenda.
Why? because that’s the way a democracy works: you vote for a candidate in the belief that his appointees will carry out the policies that you voted for. It’s not about the president, it’s about you the voter.
But Pompeo didn’t do that he didn’t even try to do that. In fact he undermined Trump’s often stated commitment to peace and non-intervention abroad at every turn; his every waking hour was devoted to fomenting war in some Far Away foreign country or other. Iran, Syria Russia, North Korea… the list goes on but rather than telling Trump that he disagree with his ideas as a man would, Pompeo toadied up to Trump – a man he despised – in the oiliest, most over-the-top way imaginable.
Ask anyone who worked in that white house at the time who is the appointee most likely to tell Donald Trump on a daily basis that he was handsome, virile, sleek and powerful. “Mike Pompeo” that will be the consensus answer. Those of us who saw firsthand Pompeo’s relentless cow Towing will never forget it – it was indelibly repulsive. No one with self-respect could do something like that, but Mike Pompeo did it effortlessly with relish and Verve. Now this same person is telling Fox News viewers that he fears for the safety of our military, our soldiers “Sailors Airmen and Marines” in the approved phrase, because Donald Trump took some classified documents home and didn’t immediately return them to the National Archives.
What a lie that is: Mike Pompeo knows that’s a lie. He spent his entire life in Washington. Washington is a city where internal memos about Labor Day are classified because everything is classified. Your government has classified more than a billion Federal documents most of them boring and pointless and a danger to no one, and locked them away in secret. You can’t see them because you may be an American citizen, but not really… and therefore you don’t have the necessary clearances to know what’s going on.
And by the way none of this is done in order to make America safer any more than Covid restrictions were designed to keep you healthy. No it’s a caste system that’s the point, and you’re the Untouchable in this hierarchy.
Mike Pompeo knows that, everybody who works in Washington knows that.
How many secret documents do you think Dick Cheney took home with him while he was running the Iraq War? How many did his wife read? She never had a clearance. We’ll never know the answer because there is no chance Dick Cheney will ever be investigated, or his staffers will be told to wear wires in his presence. He will never be indicted for this.
Of course not: Dick Cheney is a neocon Donald Trump is not. Dick Cheney supports war with Russia, Trump does not. That’s the difference: the rest is just a distraction.
The prosecution of Donald Trump is transparently political. He’s literally Joe Biden’s main political opponent. He’s polling over 60 percent among Republican voters right now. So Joe Biden is doing what no president has ever dared to do. He’s using law enforcement to lock up his chief rival: that’s happening right now, and anyone who denies it’s happening is lying to you.
But actually it’s worse than that Trump’s prosecution isn’t just political, it’s ideological. Nobody with Trump’s views is allowed to have power in this country. Criticize our Wars and you’re disqualified, if you keep it up we’ll send you to prison.
That’s the message Washington is sending, not just the Democratic party is sending but both parties are sending.
Like so many Republicans, for example, the supposedly conservative governor of Texas Greg Abbott spent yesterday totally ignoring the destruction of the American justice system. Instead, he signed a highly important bill called the crown act which according to the celebratory tweet Abbott sent commemorating it will “prohibit discrimination based on Textures and hairstyles historically associated with race.” In other words in Texas cornrows are now protected by law, having unapproved views about Ukraine is not.
That’s fine with most elected Republicans: they find Trump tiresome and embarrassing, their donors hate him; they will not be sad if he dies in jail.
But what about voters: what are they learning from this spectacle? Well mostly they’re learning that they have no power at all because nobody cares about them.
But they already knew that. Unlike so many of our elected leaders, they have been to America recently. They know what it looks like. Have you seen it? If you’ve got a few days this summer find out take a road trip and see for yourself Drive 500 miles in any direction and then come home. How are things looking? Well they should look great – the federal government spent six and a half trillion dollars last year. That’s more than any government has ever spent ever. So at the very least you would expect pristine public roads. Oh no that’s not what you see when you drive around this country – there are potholes and Jersey barriers everywhere. Looks like Tegucigalpa before the Chinese decided to rebuild the infrastructure of Honduras. We don’t have China buying our roads so they’re falling apart.
You’d think the people you would pass on your road trip would look happy and prosperous; again this is a very rich country. But a lot of them don’t. Quite a few appear to be strung out on drugs. You see them shuffling by shuttered storefronts in small towns. And you wonder as you see all of this where did all the money go, it’s certainly not here?
Well, it’s in Washington, it’s in Fairfax, in Loudoun counties, and in leafy perfectly manicured Northwest D.C. And of course a huge chunk of it went to Ukraine to Zelenski and his friends. Not because you voted for that; you didn’t vote to give it to them you never would, but because Joe Biden and his many allies from Chuck Schumer to Mitch McConnell to Paul Ryan and every single news anchor on all of Television all of them believe that Ukraine its borders its future its infrastructure are all more important than the town that you live in.
They sincerely think that, and it’s obvious everyone in power thinks that… except for Donald Trump.
Whatever else you say about him, Trump is the one guy with an actual shot of becoming president who dissents from Washington’s long-standing pointless War agenda. And for that that one fact they are trying to take Trump out before you can vote for him and that should upset you more than anything that’s happened in American politics in your lifetime.
Even if you don’t plan to vote for Donald Trump, even if you would die before voting for Donald Trump – which is your right and a lot of good people feel that way – even still, the destruction of our democracy which is the right of Voters to support any candidate they want, even candidates who don’t want war with Russia, the destruction of that should keep you up at night.
Yes, Donald Trump was a flawed man but his sins are minor compared to those of his persecutors.
In this life we don’t get to choose our Martyrs we can only choose our principles… and America’s are at stake.
The Democrats Versus Trump: A Bad Horror Movie?
By Ron Paul | June 12, 2023
The Democrats and Donald Trump reminds me of a bad horror movie, where the hapless protagonists only make the monster stronger with each attempt to eliminate it. So goes the Democrats’ endless attempts to finally rid America of the “scourge” of Donald Trump.
Thanks to the Durham Report we now know they started even before Trump was elected president. Hillary Clinton’s campaign – with the full knowledge of the candidate and the sitting president, Barack Obama – cooked up a “dirty trick” to portray Trump as an agent of Russia in their effort to deny Trump the White House.
When that didn’t work they weaponized the FBI, CIA and the rest of the “deep state” to undermine and hobble his presidency. They spied on Trump and his campaign staff using false information manufactured by the FBI.
When that didn’t work they impeached him under the false charge that he sought foreign assistance for his 2020 re-election bid. This time a spy, in the person of NSC staffer Alexander Vindman, was sent to listen in on Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian president Zelensky and then make all manner of false charges against Trump based on it.
Democrats were furious that Trump was less than enthusiastic about their plans to use Ukraine as a proxy to go to war with Russia. Vindman, though an active-duty US military officer, was of Ukrainian background and was loyal to the country of his origin rather than the country of his citizenship. He also openly defied the military chain-of-command and his commander-in-chief. Trump’s lack of enthusiasm for their “Project Ukraine” infuriated Vindman and he sought his revenge against the US President.
When that didn’t work they impeached Trump again over the false charge that he led an “insurrection” against the US government on January 6, 2021. The more surveillance video we see of this “insurrection,” the more it looks like a false-flag operation cooked up perhaps by Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Washington swamp to finally be rid of Trump. Hundreds of political prisoners have been held in solitary confinement on false accusations that they tried to overthrow the US government.
When that didn’t work and Trump’s re-election numbers looked more and more favorable while Biden’s approval rating continued to linger in the political basement, the Democrats have now indicted him over some classified documents apparently discovered in his residence in Florida.
The boxes and boxes of classified documents discovered at multiple Biden locations have disappeared into the memory hole with the help of the media. Nothing to see here.
Suddenly Donald Trump, who polling suggests would obliterate Joe Biden in a fair US election, faces 100 years in prison! Where else would you see the head of one political party arrest his main political opponent on cooked up charges? A banana republic!
For those of us who love this country, it is truly shocking to see this abuse of power. But there’s one thing these dirty tricksters never seem to understand: the more false evidence and false charges they cook up against Trump, the stronger Trump becomes. With these outrageous and continuous attacks on Trump, the Democratic Party (and plenty of Republicans) has lost all credibility. When this plan fails, and it will, I am afraid to think what they might try next.
Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute
Clinton Foundation Whistleblowers Have Chance to Bust IRS & Expose Hillary’s ‘Pay-to-Play’
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 08.06.2023
Clinton Foundation whistleblowers are due to provide new information to the US Tax Court concerning the IRS’ apparent unwillingness to investigate Bill and Hillary Clinton’s charity. The IRS, FBI, and DoJ have already been under the spotlight over their apparent “preferential treatment” of Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
The Hunter Biden IRS whistleblower case has largely eclipsed another Tax Court development that could have serious consequences for US dynastic political families. Late last month, US Tax Court Judge David Gustafson reinvigorated a years-long whistleblower case concerning the Clinton Foundation, a charity run by Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Two forensic investigators-turned-whistleblowers, John Moynihan and Larry Doyle, filed a lawsuit over the IRS’ apparent unwillingness to look into the charity’s alleged misdeeds.
Despite the IRS commissioner repeatedly trying to trash the case, the judge rejected the agency’s latest motion to dismiss and asked for new arguments by June 30, 2023.
What’s in the Clinton Foundation Whistleblower Case?
The story of the years-long case goes back to August 2017, when Doyle and Moynihan first submitted a whistleblower complaint with the IRS accusing the Clinton Foundation of tax crimes. However, in November 2018 they received a preliminary denial from the revenue service.
Nonetheless, the whistleblowers did not give up. On December 13, 2018, Doyle and Moynihan testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, suggesting that the Clinton Foundation owes the US government between $400 million and $2.5 billion in taxes. According to the forensic investigators, the charity does not operate as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, but acts as nothing short of a foreign agent.
“As such, the foundation should’ve registered under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act). Ultimately, the foundation and its auditors conceded in formal submissions that it did operate as a (foreign) agent, therefore the foundation is not entitled to its 501c3 tax-exempt privileges as outlined in IRS 170 (c)2,” Moynihan stated at the time.
The two whistleblowers told US lawmakers that they had collected approximately 100 exhibits in excess of 6,000 pages, expressing bewilderment at the IRS’ hesitation to investigate the Clinton Foundation case.
Tax Court Judge Busted IRS
Having received the final denial from the IRS to look into the issue in February 2019, Doyle and Moynihan filed a lawsuit with the US Tax Court.
On October 8, 2020 they scored their first victory: Tax Court Judge Gustafson ruled that the IRS’ Whistleblower Office (WBO) had “abused its discretion” in trying to dismiss “specific credible documentation” put forward by Doyle and Moynihan, thereby allowing the case against the Clintons’ charities to proceed.
The judge also raised concerns over the IRS’ handling of the case and detailed mistakes in the filing of specific forms by the IRS Criminal Investigation (CI) division and omissions in its conclusions concerning the Clinton Foundation whistleblowers’ complaint. Judging from the division’s documentation, it remained unclear whether the IRS had used the information provided by the whistleblowers in any investigation into the charity. The judge noted, however, that he had reasons to believe that the IRS had engaged in some investigative activity concerning the Clinton charity in coordination with the FBI.
“Prompted by petitioners’ [Doyle and Moynihan] allegations – explicit and detailed, with names, dates, and locations – the WBO’s email put a single direct question to CI: ‘Can you please confirm that IRS CI is not working with these [whistleblowers] on any investigation with these [target] entities?’ CI’s reply was a non-answer that looks like it may have been a deliberate evasion: ‘The claim was appropriately declined by criminal investigation.’ But was CI ‘working with’ petitioners or not? CI did not say,” Gustafson wrote at the time.
Besides this, in 2018 the CI “had to be asked three times to complete its Form 11369 for this case, giving ‘unacceptable’ responses to the WBO and grousing that it’s ‘somebody else’s job,'” the judge pointed out.
In April 2021, Tax Court Judge Gustafson suggested in his new ruling that the IRS Whistleblower Office had been withholding important information concerning the case: “The [IRS] Whistleblower Office must further investigate to determine whether CI proceeded with an investigation based on petitioners’ information and collected proceeds… It seems clear we should remand the case to the WO so that it can explore this gap,” the judge stated.
Durham Report Sheds New Light on Clinton Foundation Probes
Meanwhile, on October 26, 2021, Moynihan and Doyle announced that they had been approached and interviewed by Special Counsel John Durham, who at the time was investigating the origins and handling of the Trump-Russia probe.
Earlier, on September 24, 2021, The New York Times broke a story that the special counsel had sought information about the FBI’s Clinton Foundation inquiry within the framework of his probe, which was launched in 2019.
Later, in May 2023, Special Counsel Durham revealed in his 306-page final report that the FBI’s Washington, New York, and Little Rock, Ark., field offices had at least four ongoing probes into the Bill and Hillary Clinton charity’s apparent “pay-to-play” schemes during the 2016 election cycle. Still, all four investigations were abruptly closed prior to the 2016 Election Day, with Hillary running as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Durham particularly pointed out that senior FBI and Justice Department officials engaged in slowing down and closing the aforementioned investigations. “Both senior FBI and department officials placed restrictions on how those matters were to be handled such that essentially no investigative activities occurred for months,” the special counsel emphasized.
Durham Report and Hunter Biden IRS Whistleblower Case May Help
Judge Gustafson’s May 30 ruling gives an opportunity to Doyle and Moynihan to incorporate Durham’s allegations in their forthcoming court filings, which they should submit no later than June 30, as per Just the News, a US independent media outlet founded by award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon.
In addition, a specific recent ruling in a Tax Court case titled Berenblatt vs. IRS Commission could also come in handy for the Clinton Foundation whistleblowers, the media outlet noted.
“Whistleblowers may be granted limited discovery if they make a significant showing that there is material in the IRS’s possession indicative of bad faith on the IRS’s part in connection with the case or of an incomplete administrative record compiled by the IRS,” the ruling stated concerning the Berenblatt vs. IRS Commission.
The IRS’ lax handling of the Doyle and Moynihan complaint, as well as the agency’s ambiguous conduct and apparent unwillingness to look into the Clinton Foundation appear especially suspicious in light of the FBI’s closure of a whopping four probes into the charity.
Previously, similarly controversial behavior by IRS, FBI, and DoJ officials was exposed by Hunter Biden IRS whistleblowers.
On May 26, 2023, IRS supervisory criminal investigator Gary Shapley appeared before the US House Ways and Means Committee and provided seven bombshell documents totaling 23 pages to confirm his claims regarding the apparent “preferential treatment” of Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden. The documents presented by the agent indicated that starting from at least 2020, DoJ officials made repeated attempts to thwart his investigation.
Shapley blew the whistle in April. After that, the IRS veteran and his 12 subordinates were expelled from the probe at the request of the DoJ. What’s more, one of Shapley’s subordinates, who asked his seniors about the rationale behind booting the team out, was threatened and silenced by IRS officials.
What Will Happen to Clinton Foundation if Doyle and Moynihan Win?
Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel has been conducting a separate private investigation into the Clinton Foundation for the last several years. Ortel is an old hand in exposing potential financial fraud: he was the first to raise a red flag about General Electric (GE) shortly before the company’s stock crashed in 2008.
In an interviews with Sputnik, the Wall Street analyst repeatedly drew attention to the FBI, DoJ, and IRS’ failures to see obvious discrepancies in the Clinton Foundation’s operations and financial documentation. Per Ortel, the charity’s case remains the largest unprosecuted fraud ever.
Separately, the analyst referred to the US mainstream media’s unwillingness to touch upon the matter, too. The US mainstream press either silences or ridicules attempts to investigate the Clinton Foundation’s apparent “pay-to-play” schemes much in the same vein as it tried to trash the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” story.
“The judge [Gustafson] and his staff likely have extensive evidence indicating that the entity originally known as ‘The William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation’ and subsequently operating under many other names is not validly authorized by the IRS or by any other government to conduct charitable activities as a nonprofit organization,” Ortel told Sputnik.
“Nonetheless, Bill Clinton and his associates have solicited more than $2 billion in the guise of charity but have failed to account for its financial results in the manner required by applicable laws and regulations.”
“Because Bill Clinton also is active politically and pursuing personal profit, there is great suspicion that the Clinton Foundation Charity Network is the core of an illegal conspiracy where donors seeking political favors from Clinton and his globalist allies exchange contributions for favors inside America and around the world. The Clinton approach and past failures by many governments to purge charity fraud and political corruption from the system likely inspired the Biden family to follow the Clinton script. Who knows how many other politicians will milk supposed charities for personal and political gain?” the Wall Street analyst pointed out.
If Doyle and Moynihan win their case in the US Tax Court and subsequent IRS/FBI investigations into the Clinton Foundation are conducted in good faith, it is likely that the alleged fraud and pay-to-play schemes would be proven, according to the analyst.
He believes that the Clinton Foundation should be placed in conservatorship and run by a nonpartisan group of Trustees, who would then be charged with constructing accurate records from October 23, 1997 to present.
“This course may not be possible because there are major defects in the known public record calling into question whether ‘The William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation’ actually existed after April 25, 2005 when Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws were defectively amended,” Ortel continued. “In a worst case scenario for the Clinton family and for ‘Trustees,’ all ‘revenues’ of ‘The Clinton Foundation’ would become taxable personal income to the co-conspirators while some expenses might be tax deductible. On top of this financial burden, fines and penalties and interest might also be assessed.”
“Not only should the FBI investigate the Clinton Foundation fraud conspiracy, but appropriate government authorities must investigate why current and former presidents who illegally abuse public charities are insulated and protected from prosecution and then discipline all bad actors involved forcefully and publicly,” the Wall Street analyst concluded.
THE DURHAM REPORT, THE SPYGATE AND THE INEXTRICABLE TIE WITH THE ITALIAN DEEP STATE
By Cesare Sacchetti | The Eye Of The Needle | June 2, 2023
Fraud and treason. These are the first two words that come up to our mind when we read the Durham report.
In the report written by the special prosecutor appointed in 2019 by the then AG William Barr is narrated the plot to overthrow the Trump presidency.
When President Trump claims that this was the most subversive plot in the history of America, he’s certainly right.
An institution like the FBI, which was supposed to guard the regularity of the election, was the one who instead conspired to frame one of the candidates.
After the publication of the Durham report, the image of the FBI is definitely tainted.
And the most outrageous thing that shows how the FBI is a politicized institution is the fact that the latter acted on the orders of Hillary Clinton.
At page 98 of the report, we find the beginning of this conspiracy against Donald Trump.
Everything dates back to April 2016 when a legal firm that was working for the Clinton campaign was assigned a specific task.
Find, or better cook up, dirt to discredit Donald Trump. The legal firm hired Perkins Coie, a Washington based investigative agency.
Perkins Coie was tasked to find compromising information about Donald Trump in order to show that the Republican candidate was a sort of “Putin’s agent”.
This is the birth of the infamous Steele’s dossier named after his creator, Christopher Steele. Christopher Steele was a former agent of the British secret services, which apparently did not want to do anything with him.
Steel wrote a bogus dossier where he claims that Trump had intercourse in a Moscow hotel with Russian prostitutes whom were asked also to pee on the bed where Obama had supposedly slept years before.
This is the kind of outlandish garbage that was put into the dossier and this shows us, once again, the stunning proportions of this farce.
However, this “material” was the basis that allowed the FBI to launch the infamous Crossfire Hurricane probe.
Crossfire Hurricane is the beginning of the investigation where Trump was suspected of “Russian collusion”.
After the probe started, the FBI illegally wiretapped Carter Page, Trump’s former foreign consultant, and Paul Manafort, former director of Trump’s campaign.
And the Special Prosecutor is very clear in pointing out how their surveillance would have not been authorized without the Steele report.
The FBI and the intelligence community failed to do the proper due diligence of this information and the report, at page 96 of his report, points out this as well.
Durham writes that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
Evidence against Trump could not be founded because it was simply not there. And the institutions that were supposed to check Steele’s claims basically took his allegations at face value.
However, Crossfire Hurricane was launched also through the involvement of a foreign actor, which is Italy in this case.
In May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a former Trump consultant made some incautious revelations to Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat close to the Clintons.
Papadopoulos said to Downer that he had received some compromising information about Hillary Clinton from Joseph Mifsud when he had met him in Italy two months before.
Joseph Mifsud is an enigmatic character. He is a Maltese professor at the Link Campus University in Rome, which is a university known to be quite close to the Anglosphere environment.
Actually, Papadopoulos took the bait of Mifsud who is close to the American Democratic party as well.
The Maltese professor has disappeared ever since. Some sources claim that the Italian secret service are hiding him because of his crucial role in the conspiracy against Trump.
However, we will come back later on the role played by the Italian deep state.
Now we must go back to Crossfire Hurricane.
Obama green lighted Spygate
Once the investigation against Trump was launched, President Obama was immediately informed about it.
In the summer of 2016 the word was spread in the intelligence community about the “Clinton Intelligence plan”.
Obama was briefed by then CIA director, Joseph Brennan, who said to the President how the Clinton campaign was working to frame Trump by falsely associating him with the Russian government.
Obama did not stop the plot nor he tried to halt the illegal FBI investigation. On the contrary, he gave a green light to it.
The conspiracy against Donald Trump had the blessing of Barack Obama who chose to help Hillary Clinton in her plan.
Some months later after this summit, in October, former Italian PM, Matteo Renzi, paid a visit to Obama in the White House.
In that period, Renzi was busy in supporting his failed Yes referendum campaign to reform the Italian constitution and he was also seeking endorsements from international relevant figures, like Obama.
Obama backed Renzi’s constitutional reform with a public statement that it clearly looked a meddling into Italy’s political affairs.
However, according to Papadopoulos, when Obama hosted Renzi at the White House asked him to play a part in the conspiracy against Donald Trump.
And here we have to meet new characters, who are the Occhioneros siblings, Giulio and Francesca Maria.
In that period, the Occhioneros were accused of illegal espionage against Italian institutional figures. The probe launched by the DA of Rome is called “EyePyramid” and it floods the pages of the Italian media.
The two were arrested and they later started denouncing a plot against them.
Giulio Occhionero is a nuclear engineer with advanced IT skills. He wrote to the then US Ambassador, Lewis Eisenberg, and to the US Congress.
Mr. Occhionero in his letters reveals the plot of the Italian authorities against him. According to him, his servers were hacked by the Italian postal police along with their respective IT division, the CNPAIC.
The goal of this operation was to plant some of Clinton’s email on the servers of his firm in the United States and then trying to associate these emails to Trump because of Occhionero’s relations with the Republican party.
So Occhionero in this story played the role of the classical patsy, chosen to frame someone else.
If his version is correct, the plot against Trump proceeded on two parallel ways: on the one hand, there was the American side of the FBI that was illegally spying on Trump campaign; on the other, there were the Italian authorities that were acting jointly with the US institutions to associate Trump with the Russian government.
In the first months of the conspiracy, we find tangible trace of this collaboration between the US and Italian authorities.
In April 2016, Kieran Ramsey, former legal attaché of the US embassy, wrote a letter to Nunzia Ciardi, director of the Italian postal police.
Ramsey’s letter to the Italian postal police
Ciardi is an interesting character because her name surfaced in the Italian mainstream media in 2021 when she was interviewed about the surveillance of the “no vax” activists.
It is still not clear to this day what was the extent of this surveillance and who authorized it considering the fact that the “no vax” activists were not committing any crime.
However, Ramsey wrote to Ciardi and he thanked her for the collaboration of her office in identifying the location of Occhionero’s emails.
It was April and Occhionero was still not investigated by the DA of Rome. Nevertheless, his name was in an official letter signed by the legal attaché of the American embassy and addressed to the Italian authorities.
The Italian engineer thinks that the kind of cybernetic attack that was enforced against his servers could not be operated without an ISP, Internet Service Provider, TIM, in this case.
And only a government could force to participate an ISP in this kind of hacking operation.
This also explains the visit paid by William Barr in Rome. Barr came to Italy to investigate Italy’s role in the Spygate case.
And here we can see once again the deep tie between the American and the Italian deep state. A “special relationship” that dates back to 1945 when after the loss of WW2, Italy has been living in a condition of limited sovereignity.
Italy has not been enjoying an autonomous foreign policy like the other countries who joined NATO. Italy’s foreign policy was mostly dictated by Washington and when Rome did not want to comply was threatened and harassed like what happened to former Italy’s PM, Aldo Moro, who was warned by Henry Kissinger to halt his policy.
Therefore, the Italian deep state finds itself in a condition of subordination to Washington. US governments used Italy as a strategic platform to keep up the old unipolar order of the past century.
This probably explains why Washington chose Italy to carry out its subversive plans against Trump. The Italian deep state is a sort of rogue agent, or just muscle for the US side to use in these kinds of “tricky” situations.
This also explains why Italy, once again, played a fundamental role in another subversive plot against Trump whose name is “Italygate”, which we exposed in this blog in December 2020.
After all, the Italian establishment can rule Italy only with the protection of the Washington guarantor and it must execute the orders of the latter.
When Trump stepped into the political arena, both sides saw a lethal treat. Trump had no interest in pursuing that relationship with the Italian establishment.
His mission was to free America from the rule of the Washington lobbies, which had been controlling Italy for decades.
Trump ended this axis. He severed the umbilical cord that tied the Italian deep state to the American one.
This is why the Durham report closed a cycle. A cycle where the walls were closed in on those who committed treason against the President of the United States.
Although the report does not explicitly mention Italy’s role, Trump has probably the proof about the involvement of everyone in this coup d’état. And this not only haunts the nights of the several people in Washington.
It haunts the nights of several people in Rome too.
The Final Durham Report: Democracy’s Horror Show
By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | May 26, 2023
Hillary knew. She knew her campaign paid for Russian disinformation (including the alleged pee tape accusations) to be washed through a report by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. She knew the information was false but could potentially allow her to win the election. Hillary lied to the FBI about all this, and lied to the American public. Such was her appetite.
The FBI knew. They knew none of the information in the Steele Report could be corroborated, and they knew most of it was false. They turned a blind eye, purposefully and with the intent to defeat Donald Trump in the 2016 election, to basic investigative and tradecraft rules to use the corrupt information to surveil the Trump campaign via the FISA court. When Trump won the election anyway, the FBI continued to use this information to assault the loyalty and viability of President Trump and ultimately tried to use the information via the Robert Mueller investigation to impeach or indict Trump.
Only one person went to jail for all this, a minor player named Kevin Clinesmith for provided false info to the FISA court. No changes are planned for the FBI. No charges are to be brought against Hillary Clinton. The Deep State came within an eyelash of bringing down an unwanted president as surely as they are believed to have done in Dallas ’63. Words were the weapon this time, not bullets.
These are the conclusions of the final Durham Report released last week. The report was written by former Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was chosen in 2019 to examine the FBI probe known as “Operation Crossfire Hurricane.” Durham provides the only comprehensive review of what came to be called Russiagate, and shows how close to the edge our democracy came to falling into the abyss at the hands of the Deep State. It all sounds dramatic, as those terms have been bandied about so often and in so many contexts they may have lost some of their meaning. But make no mistake about it — the FBI tried to shape the 2016 election and failing, tried to run Trump out of office. If you thought the “Hunter Biden Letter,” the one signed by dozens of intelligence professionals calling the Biden Diaries potential Russian disinformation was just wrong, you should find the conclusions of the Durham report a horror show.
There was nothing true in the Steele Report, for example, this key paragraph: “Speaking in confidence to a compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald TRUMP, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and the Russian leadership. This was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate’s campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT, who was using foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries. The two sides had a mutual interest in defeating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, whom President PUTIN apparently both hated and feared.”
The FBI had no intelligence about Trump or others associated with the Trump campaign being in contact with Russian intelligence beyond Steele. Despite being unvetted and uncorroborated and coming from a single source with direct political ties to Trump’s opponent, the FBI used such accusations to justify a full-spectrum surveillance operation against the Trump campaign, the first known such operation in American history. The FBI omitted the fact from its FISA application that Carter Page was in fact not a Russian agent but a paid source for the CIA who had been vetted by the Agency as loyal and reliable. They just lied and even when the lie could not be ignored the FBI lied more times to keep the surveillance application alive before the FISA court.
Durham found investigators “ignored exculpatory evidence, put too much stock in information provided by Trump’s political opponents, and carried out surveillance without genuinely believing there was probable cause to do so.” “Throughout the duration of Crossfire Hurricane, facts and circumstances that were inconsistent with the premise that Trump and/or persons associated with the Trump campaign were involved in a collusive or conspiratorial relationship with the Russian government were ignored or simply assessed away,” Durham wrote. The FBI acted “without appropriate objectivity or restraint in pursuing allegations of collusion or conspiracy between a U.S. political campaign and a foreign power.”
It could not be more clear. The FBI knew what it was doing was wrong and did it anyway because the ends, defeating Trump, appeared to justify the means. No surprise, that has been the slogan behind every democratic election U.S. intelligence agencies have overthrown overseas, so why not follow the same logic when the tools of war came home to attempt to drive the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton.
We now know that almost all of the disinformation in the Steele Report came from one man, Igor Danchenko (whom the FBI had until 2011 investigated as a Russian spy.) Danchenko also fed disinfo to a Clinton supporter and registered foreign agent for Russia, Charles Dolan (who was known to but never interviewed by the FBI) to pass on the Steele to further obscure its origin. But according to the Durham report “The failure to identify the primary sub-source [Danchenko] early in the investigation’s pursuit of FISA authority prevented the FBI from properly examining the possibility that some or much of the non-open source information contained in Steele’s reporting was Russian disinformation (that wittingly or unwittingly was passed along to Steele), or that the reporting was otherwise not credible.”
Everyone knew. The Durham Report confirms on August 3, 2016, the Russiagate allegations were briefed to President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and FBI Director James Comey by CIA Director John Brennan at an Oval Office meeting. None of the men briefed, and none of the agencies involved, did anything to intercede in the FBI’s efforts alongside the Clinton Campaign to manufacture collusion between Trump and Russia. Indeed, everyone allowed the falsehoods to linger into the Mueller Report and when that document concluded publicly there was no collusion between Trump and the Kremlin, pivot the same pile of falsehoods to claim Trump somehow obstructed an investigation which actually exonerated him, concluding without indictment as it did.
As for the FBI, the Durham report brutally tells us “the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law.” That they “displayed, at best, a cavalier attitude towards accuracy and completeness.” That the Bureau “disregarded significant exculpatory information that should have prompted investigative restraint and re-examination… there were clear opportunities to have avoided the mistakes and to have prevented the damage resulting from their embrace of seriously flawed information that they failed to analyze and assess properly.” And that “senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities.” That “important aspects of the Crossfire Hurricane matter were seriously deficient.” The Report concludes “although recognizing that in hindsight much is clearer, much of this also seems to have been clear at the time.” As for recommendations, the Report states “more training sessions would likely prove to be a fruitless exercise if the FBI’s guiding principles of Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity are not engrained in the hearts and minds of those sworn to meet the FBI’s mission of “Protect[ing]the American People and Uphold[ing] the Constitution of the United States.”
Without the help of the FBI Russiagate would have been nothing but a flimsy Clinton campaign scam. Thus the Durham Report offers one over-arching implied conclusion: Be skeptical of the FBI and watch accusations of collusion and foreign interference closely around the 2024 election. Treason is indeed a twisty path.
Durham Blasts the FBI, But Ignores the Role of Russiagate Ringleader, John Brennan
BY MIKE WHITNEY • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 30, 2023
The Durham Report fails to identify the ringleader of the Russiagate fiasco, John Brennan. It was Brennan who first reported “contacts… between Russian officials and persons in the Trump campaign”. It was also Brennan who initially referred the case to the FBI. It was also Brennan who “hand-picked” the analysts who cobbled together the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which said that Putin was trying to swing the election in Trump’s favor. And, it was also Brennan who hijacked the “Trump-Russia-meme” from the Hillary campaign in order to prosecute his war on Trump. At every turn, Brennan was there, massaging the intelligence, pulling the strings, and micromanaging the entire operation from behind the scenes. So, while it might seem like the FBI was ‘leading the Russiagate charge’, it was actually Brennan who was calling the shots. This is from an article by Aaron Mate:
“…it is clear that Brennan’s role in propagating the collusion narrative went far beyond his work on the ICA. (Intelligence Community Assessment) A close review of facts that have slowly come to light reveals that he was a central architect and promoter of the conspiracy theory from its inception... Brennan stands apart for the outsized role he played in generating and spreading the (collusion) false narrative.” The Brennan Dossier: All About a Prime Mover of Russiagate, Aaron Mate, Real Clear Investigations
Mate is right, Brennan was “central architect and promoter” of the Russiagate fraud. The alleged Trump-Russia connection may have started with the Hillary campaign, but it was Brennan who transformed it into an expansive domestic counterintelligence operation aimed at regime change. That was Brennan’s doing; he was the backroom puppetmaster overseeing the action and guiding the project towards its final conclusion. What the Durham Report confirms, is that the plan was put into motion sometime after Brennan’s Oval Office meeting with Barack Obama in July, 2016. Check out this clip from an article by Lee Smith:
The only genuine piece of Russian intelligence that US spy services ever received about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia was intelligence that Russia knew Hillary Clinton backed a 2016 campaign plan to smear Trump as a Russian agent.
According to John Durham’s 300-page report, the information reached the CIA in late July 2016. Brennan told Durham that on August 3 he briefed President Barack Obama at the White House on what the special counsel refers to as the Clinton Plan intelligence. Others in attendance at the meeting were Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey.” The Durham Coverup, Lee Smith
So, now we know that Brennan told Obama, Biden, Lynch and Comey that the Russia-Trump nonsense was part of a smear campaign cooked up by the Hillary campaign to divert attention from her email problems. We also know that Brennan conducted the briefing on August 3, 2016.
So, if Brennan knew that the Russia-Trump claims were false back in July, then how do we explain the fact that Brennan went ahead and published a damning Intelligence agency report 5 months later strongly suggesting a link between Trump and the Kremlin?
Here’s a brief excerpt from Brennan’s Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which was released on January 6, 2017 and which clearly states the opposite of what Brennan told Obama five months earlier:
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump..…
Further, a body of reporting, to include different intelligence disciplines, open source reporting on Russian leadership policy preferences, and Russian media content, showed that Moscow sought to denigrate Secretary Clinton.
The ICA relies on public Russian leadership commentary, Russian state media reports, public examples of where Russian interests would have aligned with candidates’ policy statements, and a body of intelligence reporting to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for Trump. The 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA)
Let’s summarize the findings in the report:
- Vladimir Putin was directly involved in the US 2016 presidential election
- Putin’s goal was to “denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability
- Putin and the Russian government supported Donald Trump
Brennan knew that none of this was true because , as we said earlier, he had already told Obama that the Russia-Trump smear was part of a “dirty tricks” operation generated by the Hillary campaign.
So, why would Brennan use Hillary’s spurious allegations against Trump when the election was already over? What did he hope to gain?
Three things:
- To call-into-question the results of the election thereby undermining Trump’s legitimacy as president
- To derail Trump’s political and foreign policy agenda
- (Most important) To build a case against Trump that could be used in impeachment proceedings.
This was an attempt to depose the president of the United States. There can be no doubt about that. Why else would a man in Brennan’s position try to frame Trump as a Russian agent?
To remove him from office, that’s why. And there’s more, too. Here’s what Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee during his testimony in 2017:
“I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind about whether Russia was able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.”
We know now that Brennan had no “information or intelligence” that revealed contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia because there weren’t any. He lied. More importantly, Brennan delivered this testimony more than a year after he had told Obama that he knew the Trump-Russia theory was ‘Opposition Research’ concocted for the Hillary campaign. So, he knew what he was saying was false, but he said it anyway. In short, he lied to Congress which is a felony.
Check out this ‘smoking gun’ excerpt from page 86 of the Durham Report. According to the report, the CIA sent a Referral Memo to the FBI on September 7, 2016, in which they stated the following:
An exchange … discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server..…
The Office did not identify any further actions that the CIA or FBI took in response to this intelligence product as it related to the Clinton Plan intelligence. The Durham Report, Page 86
They knew. They all knew.
Durham merely confirmed what independent analysts have been saying from the start, that both the CIA and the FBI knew that the Trump-Russia allegation was a fraud from the get-go. But they decided to use it anyway in order to scupper Trump’s political agenda and pave the way for his impeachment. Isn’t that what we typically call a “regime change” operation?
It is. Here’s more background from an article by Stephen Cohen at The Nation :
In testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in May 2017, John Brennan, formerly Obama’s head of the CIA, strongly suggested that he and his agency were the first, as The Washington Post put it at the time, “in triggering an FBI probe.” Certainly both the Post and The New York Times interpreted his remarks in this way. Equally certain, Brennan played a central role in promoting the Russiagate narrative thereafter, briefing members of Congress privately and giving President Obama himself a top-secret envelope in early August 2016 that almost certainly contained Steele’s dossier…..
In short, if these reports and Brennan’s own testimony are to be believed, he, not the FBI, was the instigator and godfather of Russiagate.” “Russiagate or Intelgate?”, Stephen Cohen, The Nation
There it is in black and white; it all began with Brennan. Brennan is the “godfather of Russiagate” just as Cohen says.
Here’s more from Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton at artvoice.com :
“Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid reportedly believed then-Obama CIA Director Brennan was feeding him information about alleged links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in order to make public accusations:
According to ‘Russian Roulette,’ by Yahoo! News chief investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff and David Corn… Brennan contacted Reid on Aug. 25, 2016, to brief him on the state of Russia’s interference in the presidential campaign. Brennan briefed other members of the so-called Gang of Eight, but Reid is the only who took direct action.
Two days after the briefing, Reid wrote a letter to then-FBI Director James Comey asserting that ‘evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign continues to mount.’ Reid called on Comey to investigate the links ‘thoroughly and in a timely fashion.’
Reid saw Brennan’s outreach as ‘a sign of urgency,’ Isikoff and Corn wrote in the book. ‘Reid also had the impression that Brennan had an ulterior motive. He concluded the CIA chief believed the public needed to know about the Russian operation, including the information about the possible links to the Trump campaign.’
According to the book, Brennan told Reid that the intelligence community had determined that the Russian government was behind the hack and leak of Democratic emails and that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind it. Brennan also told Reid that there was evidence that Russian operatives were attempting to tamper with election results. Indeed, on August 27, 2016, Reid wrote a letter to Comey accusing President Trump’s campaign of colluding with the Russian government.” “The John Brennan-Harry Reid Collusion to ‘Get Trump’”, artvoice.com
Comey didn’t want to go along with the charade, but what choice did he have, after all, didn’t he open an investigation into Hillary’s emails 11 days before the November balloting which cost Clinton the election?
He did, which means they probably had him over a barrel. Either he did what they said, or he’d be driven from office in disgrace. Of course, I’m speculating here, but I find it hard to believe that an old-school bureaucrat like Comey suddenly decided to throw caution to the wind and agree to go along with a hairbrained scheme to frame the president of the United States as a Russian agent. That’s just too wacky to believe. I think it’s much more likely that he simply caved-in to the pressure he was getting from Brennan.
In any event, it’s clear that Brennan whipped Reid into a frenzy which prompted the credulous senator to urge Comey to open an investigation into Trump’s (fabricated) links to the Kremlin. The Durham Report confirms that the FBI opened the probe without sufficient hard evidence, but the report does not clarify the role that Brennan played in putting the wheels in motion. This is from an article at The Hill :
(Attorney General Bill) Barr will want to zero in on a particular area of concern: the use by the FBI of confidential human sources, whether its own or those offered up by the then-CIA director. …
… the cast of characters leveraged by the FBI against the Trump campaign all appear to have their genesis as CIA sources (“assets,” in agency vernacular) shared at times with the FBI. From Stefan Halper and possibly Joseph Mifsud, to Christopher Steele, to Carter Page himself, and now a mysterious “government investigator” posing as Halper’s assistant and cited in The New York Times article, legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more than an FBI counterintelligence case.” “James Comey is in trouble and he knows it”, The Hill
Repeat: “legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more than an FBI counterintelligence case.”
So, The Hill has arrived at the same conclusion that we have, that Comey was merely a pawn in Brennan’s sprawling regime change operation. In fact, according to former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi, Brennan’s tentacles may have extended all the way to the FISA courts that improperly issued the warrants to spy on members of the Trump campaign. Take a look:
“Brennan was the key to the operation because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court refused to approve several requests by the FBI to initiate taps on Trump associates and Trump Tower as there was no probable cause to do so but the British and other European intelligence services were legally able to intercept communications linked to American sources. Brennan was able to use his connections with those foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, to make it look like the concerns about Trump were coming from friendly and allied countries and therefore had to be responded to as part of routine intelligence sharing. As a result, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Gen. Michael Flynn were all wiretapped. And likely there were others. This all happened during the primaries and after Trump became the GOP nominee.” “The Conspiracy Against Trump”, Philip Giraldi, Unz Review
Giraldi’s piece makes Brennan look like the ultimate “fixer”. If you needed warrants, he’d get you warrants. If you needed spies, he’d get you spies. If you needed something planted in the media, or someone to start a rumor, or maybe even an “official-sounding” document that’s been dolled-up to look like ‘the consensus view of the entire US Intelligence Community’; he could do that too. He could do it all because he’s a virtuoso spymaster who knew the system from the ground-up. He understood how all the levers worked and which buttons to push to get things done. He also knew how easy it is to bamboozle the American people who trust whatever spurious accusations they read in the media or hear on the cable news channels. He had a keen grasp of that.
Brennan is the consummate uber-spook, a deft and capable professional who conducts his business mainly in the shadows and whose influence on events is never entirely known. That’s why I think Brennan played the key role in the Russiagate scam, because he’s a man of many talents who would not be opposed to using his power to advance his own leftist agenda by crushing a political rival that he viscerally despised.
THE DURHAM WHITEWASH
And, that’s my problem with the Durham Report, because even though it is a powerful indictment of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, it fails in its most important task, which is to identify the architect and ringleader of the Russiagate hoax. The report doesn’t do that, instead, it diverts attention away from the prime suspect to the footsoldiers who merely implemented his battleplan. That’s not just a bad outcome. That’s a whitewash.
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Is Israel Uniquely Evil?
By Irfan Chowdhury | Palestine Chronicle | July 18, 2020
… Israel has been carrying out the longest-running military occupation in modern history and the longest-running siege in modern history. These two facts alone render Israel unique in terms of the scope of its brutality and criminality.
There are other respects in which Israel stands out from other countries in its use of terror and violence; for example, it is one of the most aggressive countries in the world, having waged wars of aggression against Lebanon in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996 and 2006, and against Gaza in 2004, 2006, 2008/9, 2012 and 2014, killing huge numbers of civilians in the process (all while issuing threats and carrying out various covert attacks against Iran, which are all in violation of the UN Charter). … continue
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