Mueller Team Under the Microscope

By Debra Heine

House Republicans are prepared to send criminal referrals to the Justice Department alleging that some of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors purposefully misled the courts and Congress.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told investigative journalist John Solomon that his team found glaring evidence of deception while scouring documents recently released by the FBI, including witness reports known as 302s.

“We’re now going through these 302s, and we’re going to be making criminal referrals on the Mueller dossier team, the people that put this Mueller report together,” Nunes said during an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast.

UNDER THE BUS: FBI Agent Faulted In FISA Report For ‘Significant’ Errors Has Finally Been Identified

By Chuck Ross

An FBI agent faulted for some of the most significant problems laid out in the Justice Department’s inspector general report on FISA abuse against a Trump campaign associate has been identified.

The New York Times, citing people familiar with the FBI’s Russia probe, identified Stephen A. Somma, a counterintelligence investigator who works out of the bureau’s New York field office, as “Case Agent 1” from the inspector general’s (IG) report.

The IG blasted the FBI for its handling of information used to obtain four surveillance orders against Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide.

“Case Agent 1” is singled in the report as being “primarily responsible for some of the most significant errors and omissions in the FISA applications.”

DOJ: At Least Two of FBI’s Four FISA Warrants ‘WERE NOT VALID’

By Debra Heine

In a December letter to the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Justice Department officially determined that at least half of the secret surveillance applications the FBI sought to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page were illegal.

FISA FOLLIES: "I Got This, Beyatch!" Edition

By Biff Spackle, Cub Reporter

"YOU’RE FIRED, MR. WRAY": FBI Director Christopher Wray Is Part of the Problem

By Julie Kelly

The nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency is in shambles. Following a series of internal investigations, in addition to extensive reporting on the misconduct of former top officials, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is suffering a crisis in confidence from the very people it has a sworn duty to protect: the American public.

Considering its behavior over the past four years, one could be forgiven for thinking that the FBI exists only to serve the interests of the political aristocracy. From the Clinton email server cover-up to the unfounded counterintelligence probe into four Americans working for the Trump presidential campaign and the corruption of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the FBI has exploited its power to defend partisan allies and punish foes.

NEW LAWSUIT: Rod Rosenstein Led Hacking and Spying Effort Against Sharyl Attkisson

By Debra Heine

In a federal lawsuit filed this week, Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein has been implicated in yet another improper government spy operation.

In the new complaint, Attkisson v. Rosenstein et.al., investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson names former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein and four other Justice Department officials as the government agents who of illegally survielled her electronic devices.

According to the complaint—filed in United States District Court in Baltimore, Maryland—Rosenstein led “a multi-agency task force in Baltimore that conducted surveillance of the Attkissons’ computer systems” and “used USPS IP addresses on other occasions to conduct operations.”

AG BARR: @Comey is a Liar

Just thought you'd want to see this.

Barr accusing Comey of lying. This is not over by a long way. pic.twitter.com/5gm7OLhSAQ

— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) December 19, 2019

With that said, I'll reserve judgment until people start getting charged with the actual crimes they committed. Americans are right to be leery of our system of justice. Hillary Clinton destroyed 33,000 emails that were under Congressional subpoena and isn't serving time. Gen. Michael Flynn is about to be sentenced for "lying" to the FBI. Meanwhile, coup plotters are on CNN, opining on impeachment (hat tip: BadBlue Uncensored News).

DEVIN NUNES ON THE FISA COURT: Shut It Down. Shut It All Down.

By Debra Heine

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is ringing alarm bells about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [FISC], saying that it is culpable, along with the FBI, for the improper wiretapping of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, and needs to be dismantled.

Nunes, the ranking Republican member on the House Intelligence Committee, joined Fox News’ Martha MacCallum Tuesday evening to discuss the FISA court’s tardy rebuke of the FBI’s handling of its surveillance-application process, and for the second time this week, he called for the secret court to be shut down.

In a four page order (PDF) Tuesday, the court’s presiding judge Rosemary M. Collyer gave the bureau until Jan. 10 to come up with solutions, a week after Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz issued his scathing report detailing the FBI and DOJ’s misconduct during the Trump–Russia investigation.

GENIUS: Peter Strzok and the Coup Crew Didn't Know Christopher Steele was Working for a Russian

By Chuck Ross, Daily Caller News Foundation

• FBI agents who investigated the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia did not know at the time that dossier author Christopher Steele was working for a Russian oligarch.
• FBI and Justice Department officials told the DOJ inspector general that the information was significant to Crossfire Hurricane, the name of the Trump-Russia probe.
• Steele worked for lawyers for Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire aluminum magnate.
• Stuart Evans, a DOJ attorney, told the IG that government officials would have “wanted to dive into” the Steele-Deripaska links had they known about it during the investigation. 

The FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team turned over every rock to find out whether members of the Trump campaign were working with Russians in 2016, but failed to discover that Christopher Steele, the FBI’s primary source for claims of a Trump-Russia conspiracy, was himself working for a Russian oligarch, according to the Justice Department inspector general’s report.

DOJ Response to Peter Strzok Opens a Whole Can of Whoop-Ass on Comey, McCabe and the Lovers

After his firing, disgraced former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok filed a complaint with the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) asserting that his proposed termination was unwarranted.

In a recently released response dated August 8, 2018, OPR assistant director Candice M. Will outlined all of the facts underpinning Strzok's termination. Among the findings, Strzok was found to have:

• Engaged in "unprofessional conduct";
• Committed security violations related to the use of personal email for FBI business;
• Committed misconduct regarding a judical proceeding by failing to investigate obvious leads in the Clinton email scandal

The OPR's 27-page response contains several interesting revelations, few of which have been publicized thanks to our Democrat Party media, which has spent three solid years trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election.

A REMINDER OF THE REAL SCANDAL: Here are the FISA Court Documents Revealing How the Obama-Comey FBI abused surveillance powers

Lest we forget, one of Barack Obama's dozens of scandals historic firsts was turning the FBI into a massive political surveillance operation. That's not my subjective spin, that's the written opinion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

In a little-publicized opinion issued on April 26, 2017, FISC Judge Rosemary Collyer scalded Obama-era intelligence agencies for rampant abuse of NSA databases.

These agencies, including the FBI, routinely accessed the communications (emails, texts, etc.) of American citizens. Nearly 90 percent of all such queries were deemed violations of various laws, starting with the Fourth Amendment prohibiting illegal searches.

And no one, to my knowledge, has ever been held accountable.

Below are the key paragraphs describing the scope of the abuse.

YOU’LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE, COPPER! Andrew McCabe Says He Won’t Take a Plea Deal

By Chuck Ross

A defiant Andrew McCabe said Tuesday he will not “under any circumstances” accept a plea deal if indicted for lying about leaks to the press.

Federal prosecutors in Virginia are pushing for charges against McCabe, a former FBI deputy director, for allegedly making false statements to the FBI and Justice Department’s office of the inspector general (OIG) regarding his authorization of a leak to the media in October 2016.

“Will you take a deal in order to go on with the rest of your life if there is no big criminal attachment — you don’t have to do any time or anything like that?” CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked McCabe in an interview.

“Absolutely not, under any circumstances,” said McCabe, who joined CNN as an analyst Aug. 23.

“No deal?” Cuomo asked.

“Absolutely not, under any circumstances,” McCabe repeated.

What to Expect When You're Expecting FISA Abuse

By Charles Lipson

Now that James Comey’s corruption of the FBI has been exposed, the country awaits the next report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz. This one will deal with government misrepresentations to the special court that grants secret surveillance warrants on foreign agents in the United States.

To launch a counter-intelligence investigation on an American citizen, like Carter Page, the Department of Justice applies to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. All warrants require accuracy and integrity, but those to the FISA court should meet an even-higher standard. Why? Because, unlike criminal warrants, FISA warrants remain hidden. The goal is to “spy on spies,” not haul them into court, so the application will remain secret, never challenged by a defense attorney at trial.

ATTORNEY GENERAL BARR: ‘Small Group at the Top’ Directed ‘Bogus’ Russia Collusion Probe

By Julie Kelly

In a wide-ranging interview Friday on “CBS This Morning,” Attorney General William Barr once again expressed his concerns about the mishandling of the FBI investigation into the Trump presidential campaign in 2016.

Without naming names, Barr hinted that former top officials may have abused their power by violating department protocols to launch an unprecedented counterintelligence probe into a political rival.

“These counter-intelligence activities that were directed at the Trump Campaign were not done in the normal course and not through the normal procedures as a far as I can tell,” Barr told CBS News’ legal analyst Jan Crawford. “And a lot of the people who were involved are no longer there.”

Barr added that the questionable activities were “undertaken by a small group at the top,” not rank-and-file FBI agents.

This would refer to former FBI Director James Comey and his high-level deputies including Andrew McCabe, James Baker, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok.

A #SPYGATE WARNING: How the Leaders of the Coup Could Escape Justice

By Thomas J. Farnan

The Russian collusion conspirators spend a lot of time in public seemingly unconcerned they will go to jail. That tells me they know something we don’t.

Here’s what I think it is.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Russian "Collusion’s" Greatest Hits

By Victor Davis Hanson

The Case for Trump, by Victor Davis Hanson

From late 2015 until April 2019, the media, the Left, and the Obama administrative state hierarchy warned us nonstop that candidate, president-elect, and inaugurated President Trump “colluded” with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton, to assemble a suspect cabinet, and to rule in treasonous fashion in the interests of Vladimir Putin. The former head of the CIA and the director of national intelligence were birthed as permanent analysts at MSNBC and CNN to sermonize—with wink-and-nod assurances that their past billets and security clearances substantiated their authority—that the treasonous Trump would likely be impeached, indicted, or quit.

A mostly progressive team of lawyers, with an unlimited budget, no restrictions on time, and with enormous legal powers found all of that to be a lie.

Unable to find Trump likely guilty of either collusion or obstruction of investigating the non-crime of collusion, they instead salted their report with innuendo and rumor of what the enraged Trump was supposedly thinking about, raging about, and talking about among his closest confidants, including the insurrectionary statement of his press secretary who allegedly sinned by exaggerating the extent of FBI rank and file unhappiness over the firing of James Comey.

All that was a long, slow distraction over real culpability on the part of a number of our supposed best and brightest. And here are some of their most absurd moments from the Orwellian hunt for collusion.

Untangling the ‘Collusion’ Web

By Roger Kimball

Most people reading this will know Sir Walter Scott’s famous couplet (from the narrative poem Marmion):

Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive!

Less well known, but undeservedly so, is the excellent completing couplet by J. R. Pope, published under the sly title “A Word of Encouragement”:

But when we’ve practiced for a while,
How vastly we improve our style!

Indeed. You really have to give it to the suits in Barack Obama’s intelligence services and Department of Justice (many of whom, of course, are still strutting about in Donald Trump’s administration). It was quite a web they wove, and tangled with complexity. Yet their prodigious practice also made it nearly impenetrable to anyone not inside their charmed circle.

AT LAST: Real Evidence of Russian Collusion Emerges

For those looking for evidence -- hard evidence -- of actual Russian collusion, look no further than The Hill's John Solomon's reporting. About a week ago, he published a summary of dealings between members of the Obama administration and Russian state actors entitled "The case for Russia collusion … against the Democrats".

The executive summary represents a stunningly underreported scandal:

THE #SPYGATE COUP: 6 Questions Adam Schiff Must Answer Under Oath

By GOPleader

As the Senate Intelligence Committee nears the end of its years-long investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia, NBC News reported Tuesday that after interviewing over 200 witnesses from multiple countries and reviewing over 300,000 documents, the committee has “uncovered no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.”

The Senate’s findings are consistent with its House Intelligence Committee counterpart, whose members announced last year that they too found no evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Undeterred by these bicameral and bipartisan findings, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff and other House Democrats are planning to aggressively expand their probe of the president in an investigation that is sure to, according to Axios, “include multiple committees and dramatic public hearings, and could last into 2020.”

Before the Chairman commits to such a partisan agenda, this is an appropriate time to discuss a recently-surfaced issue involving Chairman Schiff and a witness of an open congressional investigation.

SCALDING: Mueller Attack Dog Andrew Weissmann Exposed by Mark Levin and Former U.S. Attorney Sidney Powell

Via Life, Liberty & Levin:

Licensed to Lie, by Sidney Powell. The true story of the strong-arm, illegal, and unethical tactics used by headline-grabbing federal prosecutors in their narcissistic pursuit of power.

MARK LEVIN: Hello America, I'm Mark Levin. This is "Life, Liberty & Levin." We have a great guest, Sidney Powell. How are you, my friend?

SIDNEY POWELL: Great, thank you. It's an honor to be here.

LEVIN: My honor. Former Federal prosecutor. You were in fact --- this is quite remarkable. You worked at the Department of Justice for 10 years. You worked in three Federal districts under nine different United States attorneys. It's not that you changed, it's that they changed over the course of time when a new administration comes in or what have you. And these U.S. attorneys were appointed by Presidents of both parties.

POWELL: Exactly.

LEVIN: And you also have been counsel, lead counsel, in more than 500 Federal appeals, 350 of them as the Assistant United States Attorney and Appellate Section Chief in the Western and Northern districts of Texas. I just want our audience to know how significant that is, how impressive that is because there's a lot of brilliant Assistant United States Attorneys out there, and you were one of them.

POWELL: Thank you.

LEVIN: And I want to take a very, very close look at Robert Mueller's office. A lot of people focus on Robert Mueller and they should, but this fun galleon there, my word is the number two guy who Mueller relies on for everything, Andrew Weissmann.

So let's focus a little bit on Andrew Weissmann, so the American people know who he is, and knows who really is the - in many cases, the Wizard of Oz, tell us about Andrew Weissmann.

POWELL: Well, I've called Mr. Weissmann, the poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct because Mueller had a role in handpicking him for Head of the Enron Task Force and appointing him to that position.

LEVIN: And what was Mueller at the time?