By Tom Lifson
AmericanThinker.com

Hold on to your hats.  At last, we are on the verge of getting to the bottom of the weaponization of the nation's top law enforcement and spy agencies to spy on political opponents, and it is far bigger than obtaining bogus FISA Court warrants to spy on Carter Page.  Barack Obama's minions have been spying on his political opponents since before his 2012 re-election, and the entire Russiagate hoax was an effort to cover up that ongoing spying.

As I have stated before, the best sources for understanding the unfolding of the biggest political scandal in American history are D.C. super-lawyers Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, who have an unmatched track record in explaining the events we see in the media and predicting the forthcoming revelations.  I am not in communication with them, but it does appear they have superb sources — which would not be surprising, given their long history as key conservative players at the highest level of the D.C. legal and political circles.

Yesterday, Joe DiGenova made his customary Monday-morning guest appearance on WMAL radio's Mornings on the Mall radio show.  (WMAL is the premier conservative talk station in D.C.).  The 15-minute segment is jam-packed with must-listen insights.  In addition to his revelations about the true nature of the Russiagate hoax, there is another quiet bombshell he dropped — see the end of this blog post for the tantalizing perspective he revealed.  You can listen on the YouTube version here.

Read more here.

By Sara Carter
SaraCarter.com


President Donald Trump directed the intelligence community Thursday to “quickly and fully cooperate” with Department of Justice Attorney General William Barr’s investigation into surveillance activities during the 2016 presidential election, said White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.

In Thursday’s memo Trump ordered the Department of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, Secretary of Energy, Homeland Security, Director of National Intelligence and the director of the CIA to assist Barr in his review of the activities of the agencies during the FBI’s probe into alleged – now debunked – collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“Today, at the request and recommendation of the Attorney General of the United States, President Donald J. Trump directed the intelligence community to quickly and fully cooperate with the Attorney General’s investigation into surveillance activities during the 2016 Presidential election,” said Sanders in a statement released late Thursday. “The Attorney General has also been delegated full and complete authority to declassify information pertaining to this investigation, in accordance with the long established standards for handling classified information.”

“Today’s action will help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last Presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions,” she added.

The review will be expansive, according to the memo and department’s involved. Declassification and downgrading of highly classified material will be involved, as stated in the president’s memo.

Documents expected to be declassified range from possible exculpatory evidence pertaining to short term Trump campaign advisors Carter Page and George Papadopolous.

Lawmakers have been calling on Trump to declassify the documents for more than a year.  Those documents include the DOJ’s Gang of Eight briefing notebook that was presented only to a select group of lawmakers in the Senate and House last summer, who have access to classified material, according to numerous congressional sources.

The third bulk of documents consists of 12 interviews the FBI conducted with DOJ official Bruce Ohr in 2016 regarding his communications with former British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled the anti-Trump unverified dossier. Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for the now embattled research firm Fusion GPS, that was hired by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign to investigate alleged ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Steele was hired by Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, who among others has testified to Congress about his role.

From Trump’s Memo:

With respect to any matter classified under Executive Order 13526 of December 29, 2009 (Classified National Security Information), the Attorney General may, by applying the standard set forth in either section 3.1(a) or section 3.1(d) of Executive Order 13526, declassify, downgrade, or direct the declassification or downgrading of information or intelligence that relates to the Attorney General’s review referred to in section 1 of this memorandum.  Before exercising this authority, the Attorney General should, to the extent he deems it practicable, consult with the head of the originating intelligence community element or department.  This authority is not delegable and applies notwithstanding any other authorization or limitation set forth in Executive Order 13526.

The far-left Democrats are giving up on their collusion narrative and moving to Trump is a crook. There will be lots of vile headlines and anonymously-sourced stories saying Trump’s business dealings were dishonest. It will never end. This is the coup without end. Bill Barr is fighting, not for President Trump as Democrats claim, but for the presidency and the Constitution.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr dismissed left-wing complaints that he’s President Trump’s attorney. In an interview with the WSJ, he said Democrats have repeatedly moved the goal posts, making note of the 20 endless probes in the House. It’s unjust.

“I felt the rules were being changed to hurt Trump, and I thought it was damaging for the presidency over the long haul,” Barr told the Wall Street Journal.

It hurts the President’s ability to deal with very dangerous foreign enemies and domestic ones as well.

It is the presidency, not the president, that he is defending, Barr told The Wall Street Journal during a trip to El Salvador.

Barr says he’s fighting for the presidency because the Democrats’ nonstop obstruction of a sitting president damages the office itself.
 

THE PRESIDENT IS NOT CONGRESS’S ERRAND BOY

Barr emphasized that the executive branch needs to be strong and independent, and not subordinate to partisan legislators who want the president to fail.

“At every grave juncture the presidency has done what it is supposed to do, which is to provide leadership and direction,” he told the Journal. “If you destroy the presidency and make it an errand boy for Congress, we’re going to be a much weaker and more divided nation.”
 

BARR STANDS FOR THE CONSTITUTION, THE RULE OF LAW

In a June 2018 memo to the Justice Department, Barr warned that if Mueller found Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey to be obstruction it “would have potentially disastrous implications, not just for the Presidency, but for the Executive branch as a whole.”

“The Constitution places no such limit on the President’s supervisory authority,” Barr argued.

Barr has also said “spying did occur” by the FBI on the Trump campaign in 2016. He launched a review to determine if that “spying” was “properly predicated” and whether “government officials abused their power and put their thumb on the scale.”

He put a serious US Attorney on it — John Durham.

“Government power was used to spy on American citizens,” Barr told the Journal in the first part of the interview, which was published last week. “I can’t imagine any world where we wouldn’t take a look and make sure that was done properly.”
 

THE HEMMER-BARR INTERVIEW

Bill Barr also interviewed with Fox News’s Bill Hemmer last week and made it clear that a review of the FBI’s handling was needed. There were too many unanswered questions and inadequate answers.

“I’ve noticed one of the talking points these days is, ‘Oh isn’t it a tragedy Barr is losing his reputation,”‘ or, ‘His legacy is being tinged because of his service in this administration,'” Barr told Fox News.

“I don’t think those people are really concerned about my legacy.”

You can watch the full 15-minute interview here:

 

TheConservativeTreehouse.com

Fox News correspondent Bill Hemmer interviewed U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr in El Salvador during a visit to address the crisis on the U.S-Mexico border, MS-13, drug trafficking and human trafficking.

During the interview Bill Hemmer asked about AG Barr’s ongoing review of DOJ and FBI activity during the 2016 election.

 

BARR: “I’ve been trying to get answers to the questions and I’ve found that a lot of the answers have been inadequate and some of the explanations I’ve gotten don’t hang together, in a sense I have more questions today than when I first started.”

HEMMER: “What doesn’t hang together?”

BARR: “Some of the explanations of what occurred.”

HEMMER: “Why does that matter?”

BARR: “People have to find out what the government was doing during that period. If we’re worried about foreign influence, for the very same reason we should be worried about whether government officials abuse their power and put their thumb on the scale.”

 

By Jon Dougherty
TheNationalSentinel.com

In an explosive and revealing interview Tuesday night with Fox News‘ Sean Hannity, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes dropped a couple of bombshells related to the Obama regime’s “Spygate” scandal aimed at taking down President Donald Trump.

— Nunes told Hannity that he and congressional investigators believe that while the “bulk” of the original FISA application was based on the likely uncorroborated “Steele Dossier,” the other portion dealt with the “insurance policy” that former FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page discussed in texts — a policy aimed at keeping Trump out of the White House.

“Remember the talk of the insurance policy?” Nunes said. “We believe that insurance policy is not just about investigating the Trump campaign. We believe it is to ensure that they were able to get the FISA warrant on Carter Page so they could go in and look at all the emails in the campaign.”

That, as Hannity noted, was a way for the Obamaites to “get a back door into the Trump campaign,” for which Nunes agreed, “and even the Trump presidency.”

“It’s horrible what they have done to many Americans,” Nunes continued. But it’s worse than that, he continued.

“We’ve been living for three years with the perverted fantasies of [Fusion GPS founder] Glenn Simpson and the Clinton campaign” regarding the fake Russian collusion narrative, said Nunes. He added that a sizable portion of Americans still believe that narrative is true, despite the fact that special counsel Robert Mueller has ‘officially’ debunked it and no investigation in Congress or the FBI has turned up any evidence that it’s true.

“Those [Americans] have been poisoned,” he said, adding that “at some point” Fusion, the Clinton campaign, and the FBI “became intertwined, and they were working in conjunction on this.”

— Bombshell No. 2: Nunes said the FBI actually has “exculpatory evidence” regarding onetime Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who was indicted by Mueller and convicted of allegedly lying to federal agents.

But the bureau won’t give it up.

“We believe there is information on Papadopoulos that is exculpatory that should be out there,” Nunes said. “It rests at the FBI. We’ve asked for it to be declassified. That’s really all I can say about it. It’s exculpatory evidence.”

Americans of either political party or no political party should be seriously outraged at the manner in which Barack Obama politicized the U.S. intelligence community, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the FISA court to spy on a presidential campaign and for no other reason than the pursuit of raw power — the power to continue governing through Hillary Clinton.

Thank God for President Trump and for lawmakers like Devin Nunes, who continue to pursue this scandal to the bitter end so that Americans still concerned about the future of our republic can vote accordingly.

 

 

Last week’s testimony by Attorney General William Barr confirmed these blunders and bared additional concerns with the probe into Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election.

 

By Margot Cleveland
TheFederalist.com

The release of the special counsel’s report in April exposed several significant missteps Robert Mueller made over the last two years. Last week’s testimony by Attorney General William Barr before the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed these blunders and bared additional concerns with Mueller’s handling of the probe into Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election and President Trump’s supposed collusion and obstruction of justice.

Here are ten.
 

1. Mueller Spent $30 Million But Didn’t Do His Job

The special counsel probe reportedly cost more than $30 million, yet Mueller failed to do his job. Federal regulations expressly provide that at the conclusion of the special counsel’s work he must “provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.”

But in Volume 2 of the special counsel report, which addressed whether Trump obstructed justice, Mueller “determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment” of whether “to initiate or decline a prosecution.” Instead, Mueller passed the prosecutorial buck and spent some 200 pages sliming Trump.
 

(c) Closing documentation.  At the conclusion of the Special Counsel's work, he or she shall provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.
 

During an earlier press conference, Barr stressed that Mueller had flouted his prosecutorial responsibilities by rendering a non-decision: “The very prosecutorial function and all our powers as prosecutors, including the power to convene grand juries and compulsory process that’s involved there, is for one purpose only. It’s to determine yes or no, was alleged conduct criminal or not criminal. That is our responsibility and that’s why we have the tools we have. And we don’t go through this process just to collect information and throw it out to the public.”

Barr reiterated this point during last week’s hearing, again stressing that the special counsel “was appointed to carry out the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the Department.” The attorney general noted that both he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were “surprised” when they first learned Mueller would not make a decision about obstruction, and he called it “irresponsible” to release Mueller’s report without providing such a decision.

The attorney general continued: “The function of the Department of Justice in this arena is to determine whether or not there has been criminal conduct. It’s a binary decision. Is there enough evidence to show a crime and do we believe a crime has been committed? We don’t conduct criminal investigations just to collect information and put it out to the public. We do so to make a decision.”