By Lee Smith
RealClearInvestigations.com
 

The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between high-ranking members of the Republican presidential campaign staff and a Russian lawyer with Kremlin ties remains the cornerstone of claims that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election.

A growing body of evidence, however, indicates that the meeting may have been a setup — part of a broad effort to tarnish the Trump campaign involving Hillary Clinton operatives employed by Kremlin-linked figures and Department of Justice officials. This view, that the real collusion may have taken place among those who arranged the meeting rather than the Trump officials who agreed to attend it, is supported by two disparate lines of evidence pulled together for the first time here: newly released records and a pattern of efforts to connect the Trump campaign to Russia.

The first line of evidence includes emails, texts, and memos recently turned over to Congress by the Department of Justice. They show how closely senior Justice Department officials and the Federal Bureau of Investigation worked with employees of Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research firm reportedly paid $1 million by Clinton operatives to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign.

They reveal that then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, the fourth-highest-ranking official at DOJ, coordinated before, during and after the election with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who did work for the Clinton campaign and Russians; and former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who was employed by Simpson

Those emails, which disclose the topics of discussions but not their details, revolve around two business executives: Donald Trump and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate close to President Vladimir Putin. Steele was particularly interested in resolving issues concerning Deripaska's U.S. visa, which was revoked in 2006 because of his suspected ties to organized crime. In another sign of the overlapping strands of this story, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller was running the FBI in 2009, the bureau had asked Deripaska to contribute millions of dollars to help locate former FBI agent Robert Levinson, captured in Iran in 2007 while working for the CIA. Levinson remains missing.

The Ohr-Steele-Simpson correspondence appears to include references to the former British spy’s work for Fusion GPS on Trump’s ties to Russia. Months before the election, Steele wrote Ohr to say that he would be back in Washington soon "on business of mutual interest."

The cozy relationship was bolstered by the fact that the wife of the senior DOJ official, Nellie Ohr, was employed by Fusion GPS.

After Steele was dismissed by the FBI for speaking to the press for an October 31, 2016 report, Bruce Ohr took over the work of relaying Fusion GPS’ opposition research on the Trump campaign directly to the FBI.

The culmination of their combined efforts, the 35-page dossier of unverified Trump/Russia connections, was used by the FBI to secure a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. The Department of Justice did not respond to RealClearInvestigations’ requests for comment, nor did Glenn Simpson's lawyer, Joshua Levy.

The second line of evidence reframing the Trump Tower meeting -- after the Ohr-Steele-Simpson correspondence – was first reported in June by RealClearInvestigations. It shows that, starting in March 2016, FBI confidential sources and other figures associated with Western intelligence services and the Clinton campaign approached the Trump team promising damaging information on Clinton. The Trump Tower meeting appears to have been the most successful of these approaches, since it was the one instance where the Trump campaign signaled it was willing to receive incriminating information on its opponent.

By Sara Carter
SaraCarter.com

There are certainly more than just the anti-Trump text messages sent by former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok that led the second in command at the FBI to fire him. FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich actually overruled a recommendation by the bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) to suspend and demote the former senior agent, and instead, terminated Strzok on Friday.

But, what could have led FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich, to make the decision to overrule OPR? Why didn’t FBI Director Christopher Wray take charge and fire Strzok himself? And more importantly, why would OPR recommend Strzok–who was charged with handling the investigation into alleged collusion between President Trump’s campaign and Russia–only receive a 60-day suspension and demotion?

Strzok’s firing went well beyond texting about Trump

In a statement to SaraACarter.com on Monday, the FBI said: “Mr. Strzok was subject to the standard FBI review and disciplinary process after conduct highlighted in the IG report was referred to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).”

“OPR reviewed the investigative materials, as well as the written and oral responses of Mr. Strzok and his counsel, and issued OPR’s decision,” an FBI spokesperson said. “The Deputy Director, as the senior career FBI official, has the delegated authority to review and modify any disciplinary findings and/or penalty as deemed necessary in the best interest of the FBI.”

Every day it gets closer to proving collusion between Russia and team Obama, not Trump.

We've been told that Mueller and Comey are model public servants, the presumption being they represent a "good model."  In reality THEY ARE ANYTHING BUT!  Unfortunately they represent the worst of the worst Swamp Creature public servant model.

Jay Sekulow: "To allow questioning to go on with regard to decisions you make as President, it's not only absurd and outrageous, it makes no sense under the way our government is set up."

TheNationalSentinal.com

Closing In: A group of House Republicans has been working night and day to expose the Spygate scandal which continues to unfold before our very eyes.

They’ve been thwarted at every turn along the way, but for the past year-and-a-half, they have nevertheless continued to pursue every angle, every clue, and every fact in their attempt to run down all the details of what has become the biggest political scandal in our country’s history. (Related: Sign up for our daily email newsletter and receive our new report “The Spygate Files” for FREE).

We already know many of the names involved — Peter Stzrok, James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, Sally Yates, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe. But one person whose name that has only briefly been mentioned — Bruce Ohr — is about to receive a lot more attention from House Republicans

Writing in The Hill, John Solomon noted:

Hundreds of pages of previously unreported emails and memos provide the clearest evidence yet that a research firm, hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to find dirt on and defeat Donald Trump, worked early and often with the FBI, a Department of Justice (DOJ) official and the intelligence community during the 2016 presidential election and the early days of Trump’s presidency.

Fusion GPS’s work and its involvement with several FBI officials have been well reported.

But a close review of these new documents shows just how closely Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, who reported to Obama-era Deputy AG Sally Yates, maintained contact with Fusion — and, in particular, its primary source, former British spy Christopher Steele — before, during and after the election.

By Cristina Laila
TheGatewayPundit.com

Look for President Trump to declassify the June 2017 Carter Page FISA renewal this month, says investigative reporter, Paul Sperry.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and then-Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe both signed off on the June 2017 Carter Page FISA renewal–things could get interesting!

Screenshot of Rosenstein’s signature on June 2017 FISA renewal app:
 

Thanks to Judicial Watch, the Carter Page FISA docs were released a couple weeks ago after the watchdog filed a FOIA lawsuit.

Although the documents were dishonestly and heavily redacted, they confirm the FBI and DOJ misled the FISA courts.

GOP lawmakers such as Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) called for the FISA docs to be declassified.

President Trump tweeted about the Carter Page FISA docs shortly after they were released to the public, slamming Crooked Hillary and called for the discredited Mueller witch hunt to be shut down.

By J.E. Dyer
LibertyUnyielding.com

There may be some confusion out there as to why Peter Strzok was so insistent on keeping the declassification authority from his previous office at the FBI when he joined the team for Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation.

Judicial Watch has obtained emails between Strzok and his former chain of supervisors, in July 2017, discussing the authorities Strzok wanted to retain from his previous FBI position as Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division.  Strzok wanted to keep those authorities while he was working for Mueller.  The declassification authority isn’t the only interesting one, but it’s getting the most media attention.

Here is the passage from Strzok’s 13 July 2017 email:

Broadly, I need to be able to act at least in the capacity of my old CD DAD job – approve NSLs, conduct [redacted] declassify information, [redacted] agent travel, requisitions, etc.  Of those, the most problematic and one of the most essential is declassification authority. As I understand it, declassification authorities are billet-limited by Division and position, and they are provided by DOJ, not by the FBI. CD has three. I understand the need to fill my position within CD, but I’d respectfully request based on mission need that I keep the authorities from my old job.

Former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova blasted Robert Mueller's top prosecutor for using fear-based tactics to "coerce" Paul Manafort into testifying negatively about President Donald Trump.

Judicial Watch Director of Investigations Chris Farrell on how FBI official Peter Strzok requested that he retain his security clearance after being added to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.