Clearly, the Awan family repeatedly accessed unauthorized classified data, but the DOJ prosecutors could find no such evidence. It defies logic and common sense

By James A. Lyons, Jr. Admiral, USN (ret)
CanadaFreePress.com

In typical Washington fashion, when there is a major decision made that the “Deep State” wants to go away as quietly as possible, the details are released just before a major holiday. Such was the case with the unbelievable plea deal reached with Imran Awan, a Pakistani-American dual citizen who has been linked to a major spy ring on Capitol Hill. According to an article in the Washington Post on 04 July, 2018, “it’s part of an agreement with prosecutors, Imran Awan pleaded guilty to a relatively minor offense unrelated to his work on Capitol Hill, making a false statement on a loan application.” It went on to state, “the government has uncovered no evidence,” including stealing equipment or illegally accessing or transferring information, prosecutors wrote in an 11-page plea agreement signed on 3 July, 2018. Therefore, everybody gets to “walk free” including the 44 Democratic Representatives who employed the Awan family, even including their main sponsor, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

By John Solomon
TheHill

Multiple reviews of whether FBI agents’ political bias affected the Russia-Trump collusion case remain in their infancy, but investigators already have unearthed troubling internal communications long withheld from public view.

We already know from FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok’s now-infamous text messages with his fellow agent and reported lover, Lisa Page, that Strzok — the man driving that Russia collusion investigation — disdained Donald Trump and expressed willingness to use his law enforcement powers to “stop” the Republican from becoming president.

The question that lingers, unanswered: Did those sentiments affect official actions?

Memos the FBI is now producing to the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general and multiple Senate and House committees offer what sources involved in the production, review or investigation describe to me as “damning” or “troubling” evidence.

They show Strzok and his counterintelligence team rushing in the fall of 2016 to find “derogatory” information from informants or a “pretext” to accelerate the probe and get a surveillance warrant on figures tied to the future president.

One of those figures was Carter Page, an academic and an energy consultant from New York; he was briefly a volunteer foreign policy adviser for the GOP nominee’s campaign and visited Moscow the summer before the election.

The memos show Strzok, Lisa Page and others in counterintelligence monitored news articles in September 2016 that quoted a law enforcement source as saying the FBI was investigating Carter Page’s travel to Moscow.

The FBI team pounced on what it saw as an opportunity as soon as Page wrote a letter to then-FBI Director James Comey complaining about the “completely false” leak.

“At a minimum, the letter provides us a pretext to interview,” Strzok wrote to Lisa Page on Sept. 26, 2016.

Within weeks, that “pretext” — often a synonym for an excuse — had been upsized to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrant, giving the FBI the ability to use some of its most awesome powers to monitor Carter Page and his activities.

To date, the former Trump adviser has been accused of no wrongdoing despite being subjected to nearly a year of surveillance.

Some internal memos detail the pressure being applied by the FBI to DOJ prosecutors to get the warrant on Carter Page buttoned up before Election Day.

In one email exchange with the subject line “Crossfire FISA,” Strzok and Lisa Page discussed talking points to get then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to persuade a high-ranking DOJ official to sign off on the warrant.

“Crossfire Hurricane” was one of the code names for four separate investigations the FBI conducted related to Russia matters in the 2016 election.

“At a minimum, that keeps the hurry the F up pressure on him,” Strzok emailed Page on Oct. 14, 2016, less than four weeks before Election Day.

Four days later the same team was emailing about rushing to get approval for another FISA warrant for another Russia-related investigation code-named “Dragon.”

“Still an expedite?” one of the emails beckoned, as the FBI tried to meet the requirements of a process known as a Woods review before a FISA warrant can be approved by the courts.

“Any idea what time he can have it woods-ed by?” Strzok asked Page. “I know it’s not going to matter because DOJ is going to take the time DOJ wants to take. I just don’t want this waiting on us at all.”

Until all the interviews are completed by Congress and DOJ’s inspector general later this year, we won’t know why counterintelligence agents who normally take a methodical approach to investigation felt so much pressure days before the election on this case.

Were they concerned about losing a chance to gather evidence at a critical moment? Or maybe, as some Republicans long have suspected, they wanted to impact the election?

The agents got the Carter Page warrant in October and, within two weeks, Democrats in Congress such as then-Sen. Harry Reid (Nev.) and some media members were raising questions about the FBI withholding word of a probe that could hurt Trump. FBI agents monitored those reports, too.

The day after Trump’s surprising win on Nov. 9, 2016, the FBI counterintelligence team engaged in a new mission, bluntly described in another string of emails prompted by another news leak.

“We need ALL of their names to scrub, and we should give them ours for the same purpose,” Strzok emailed Page on Nov. 10, 2016, citing a Daily Beast article about some of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s allegedly unsavory ties overseas.

“Andy didn’t get any others,” Page wrote back, apparently indicating McCabe didn’t have names to add to the “scrub.”

“That’s what Bill said,” Strzok wrote back, apparently referring to then-FBI chief of counterintelligence William Priestap. “I suggested we need to exchange our entire lists as we each have potential derogatory CI info the other doesn’t.” CI is short for confidential informants.

It’s an extraordinary exchange, if for no other reason than this: The very day after Trump wins the presidency, some top FBI officials are involved in the sort of gum-shoeing normally reserved for field agents, and their goal is to find derogatory information about someone who had worked for the president-elect.

As the president-elect geared up to take over, the FBI made another move that has captured investigators’ attention: It named an executive with expertise in the FBI’s most sensitive surveillance equipment to be a liaison to the Trump transition.

On its face, that seems odd; technical surveillance nerds aren’t normally the first picks for plum political assignments. Even odder, the FBI counterintelligence team running the Russia-Trump collusion probe seemed to have an interest in the appointment.

These and other documents are still being disseminated to various oversight bodies in Congress, and more revelations are certain to occur.

Yet, now, irrefutable proof exists that agents sought to create pressure to get “derogatory” information and a “pretext” to interview people close to a future president they didn’t like.

Clear evidence also exists that an investigation into still-unproven collusion between a foreign power and a U.S. presidential candidate was driven less by secret information from Moscow and more by politically tainted media leaks.

And that means the dots between expressions of political bias and official actions just got a little more connected.

John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He is The Hill’s executive vice president for video.

By S. Nobel
IndependentSentinal

Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort is in solitary confinement 23 hours a day as if he were the Birdman of Alcatraz or Al Capone.

It is for his “protection” as he awaits trial in Virginia.

Paul Manafort was once respected. He managed campaigns for Republicans Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the shady lawyers he hired are known for violating peoples’ rights to get them to turn state’s evidence. One judge in Manafort’s case has mentioned several times that Robert Mueller is obviously putting the screws to him to get him to turn on President Trump.

Manafort cannot adequately prepare for his trial in confinement. His lawyers are two hours away because the government made sure Manafort was nowhere near them when he was imprisoned.

Manafort was jailed because he spoke with a witness which he is not allowed to do. The rub is Manafort doesn’t know who the witnesses are because the government won’t tell him.

MANAFORT APPEALS

His lawyer Kevin Downing has appealed but the government hit back. Assistant special counsel Scott Meisler wrote the appeal notion should be denied, as Manafort’s actions were “committed through covert corrupt persuasion” and that the terms of his sentence “are common to defendants incarcerated pending trial.”

That is not true that it is “common”. In this country, we don’t imprison white collar, non-violent people, before they are convicted of anything. And we certainly don’t put them in solitary confinement.

Manafort has pleaded not guilty to more than 20 charges in the special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, including tax and bank fraud, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and failure to register as a foreign agent.

Mueller just kept piling on the charges.

Alan Dershowitz called it “obnoxious to our Constitution.”

“He has never been convicted of anything. He is as innocent as you and I,” the Harvard Law School professor said in an interview on MSNBC in mid-June.

“And the idea of locking somebody up before a trial is so obnoxious to our Constitution that every civil libertarian should be up in arms. What they can do if they think that he’s tampering with witnesses is: They can subject him to home arrest, take away his computer … they can have all kinds of restrictions, but the idea of putting somebody in jail before they’ve been convicted is an enactment of civil liberties.”

POLICE STATE USA

It doesn’t matter if Paul Manafort is found guilty. It matters that we have a Constitution and we are not a police state. We might be on the way to becoming a police state if we allow the egregious actions by this Special Counsel to continue. Perhaps you disagree, let us know.

Putting a non-violent, white collar criminal in jail based on accusations seems very wrong. Manafort has been convicted of nothing. He allegedly contacted a witness but the prosecution will not tell Manafort who the witnesses or victims are. His defense says it is impossible to not contact witnesses when he doesn’t know who the witnesses are.

Knowing that the Obama-appointed leftist judge threw him in jail until trial. She has a history of leftist rulings.

Manafort is accused of crimes he allegedly committed in 2006 and 2009. One of the “crimes”, the FARA violation is something half of D.C. lobbyists have done. The alleged crimes were mostly actions he admitted to years ago in an effort to help the government in another case. He said he was promised immunity at the time.

Former U.S. Attorney Sidney Powell said it is all orchestrated to get Manafort to turn on Trump even if he needs to make up something. She said the Mueller people are trying to shut down all opportunities for Manafort to prepare a defense. Her book License to Lie deals with the corruption in the DoJ prior to this case. Many in the book are the same shady characters on Mueller’s team.

Sharyl Attkisson

It’s easy to find timelines that detail Trump-Russia collusion developments. Here are links to two of them I recommend:

Politifact Russia-Trump timeline

Washington Post Russia-Trump timeline

On the other side, evidence has emerged in the past year that makes it clear there were organized efforts to collude against candidate Donald Trump–and then President Trump. For example:

• Anti-Russian Ukrainians allegedly helped coordinate and execute a campaign against Trump in partnership with the Democratic National Committee and news reporters.
• A Yemen-born ex-British spy reportedly delivered political opposition research against Trump to reporters, Sen. John McCain, and the FBI; the latter of which used the material–in part–to obtain wiretaps against one or more Trump-related associates.
• There were orchestrated leaks of anti-Trump information and allegations to the press, including by ex-FBI Director James Comey.
• The U.S. intel community allegedly engaged in questionable surveillance practices and politially-motivated “unmaskings” of U.S. citizens, including Trump officials.
• Alleged conflicts of interests have surfaced regarding FBI officials who cleared Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information and who investigated Trump’s alleged Russia ties.

But it’s not so easy to find a timeline pertinent to the investigations into these events.

Here’s a work in progress.

Republican lawmaker tells Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray that America is being 'torn apart' by the investigation during a House hearing on anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok.  Tells Rosenstein to "Finish It The Hell Up!!

 

If the video won't play please report the problem by clicking here.

 

Republican accuses the deputy attorney general of 'hiding' documents related to the Russia investigation during a House hearing on the oversight of the FBI and DOJ during the 2016 election.

 

The American Spectator

The other night MSNBC ran a fawning documentary about James Comey. It was full of howlers about the unfathomable depths of his “integrity.” None of the clips age well, but one in particular captured the utter lunacy of Comey serving as Mueller’s presumed chief witness — a clip in which Comey accuses Trump of “lies, plain and simple” for describing the FBI as “poorly led” and in “disarray.” Here is a former FBI director categorizing Trump’s opinion, and a manifestly correct one at that, as “lies.”

That’s the fatuous, un-rigorous level on which Mueller’s probe is proceeding. His forthcoming report will consist largely of his close friend’s hyperventilating grievances against Trump, as if the wounded ego of one of the worst FBI directors in American history, an FBI director the Justice Department’s Inspector General has found to be unprofessional and reckless, counts as a “constitutional crisis.”

The Mueller probe is like a Soviet show trial revolving around the hurt feelings of a pampered commissar. Comey was practically in tears as he recalled those “lies, plain and simple.” But Mueller has an even bigger problem than just the silliness of Comey’s complaints, which is Comey’s utter lack of credibility: How do you build an obstruction-of-justice case on a witness who is himself under Department of Justice investigation for improprieties?

That came out in the Congressional hearings this week with Inspector General Michael Horowitz. On Monday, Horowitz informed the senators that he is looking at Comey’s mishandling of classified information — a subject Comey with his inimitable presumption had dismissed as too “frivolous” for anyone to investigate.

The roots of Mueller’s tree are hopelessly poisoned — from a former FBI director whose word and behavior no one can seriously trust (yet it was his complaint that led to Mueller’s appointment) to a staff, both past and present, shot through with anti-Trump bias. How can anyone take the conclusion of a probe seriously if that probe should never have been started in the first place? Were this a real trial rather than a show trial, the judge would have ended it a long time ago.

Mueller, according to his mandate, is supposed to be completing a counterintelligence investigation launched by Peter Strzok, the most abominably anti-Trump partisan FBI official imaginable. That fact alone discredits it. Imagine a judge telling a jury to decide the fate of the accused based on an investigation started by one of his fiercest enemies. In Mueller’s case, the circumstances are even worse than that: he not only inherited Strzok’s poisoned work but added Strzok to his team and would have kept him on it until the end of the probe had Horowitz not revealed Strzok’s anti-Trump texts. Strzok, as he explained to his mistress, had joined the team in the hopes of inducing the impeachment of Trump. Strzok described the Mueller probe as “unfinished business.”

Chairman Devin Nunes discusses the Inspector General Report with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures.

 

The DOJ inspector general issues a report critical of how the FBI conducted the Clinton email investigation; House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy responds on 'Fox News Sunday.' Chris Wallace.