#SPYGATE: FBI Official Bill Priestap Testifies That James @Comey Lied to Congress

Some fascinating developments on several fronts as the Spygate story continues to unfold.

As backdrop, there have been a series of leaks of closed-door (but unclassified) testimony before Congress by a variety of DOJ and FBI actors implicated in the Spygate scandal. The most recent, published earlier today, spotlights an interesting claim by former head of counter-intelligence Bill Priestap.

On March 20, 2017, James Comey appeared before Congress in a public hearing. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) asked Comey why he had not briefed Congress on the counterintelligence investigation into alleged "Trump-Russia collusion" during the required quarterly briefings.

CRUSH THE COUP: Break Up the FBI

By Sebastian Gorka

If you’re not the first lady, being alone in the Oval Office with the president of the United States is a rare occurrence. Even visiting heads of state will be accompanied by an interpreter, or an official notetaker, when they meet privately with the most powerful man in the world.

So I will never forget the day, in June 2017, when I found myself in front of the Resolute Desk, with just President Donald Trump in the room with me.

I was there for something that pertained to my job as strategist to the president—if memory serves, it was to discuss our plan to undo the 44th president’s disastrous Iran Deal—when the topic of Russia came up.

Suddenly the president stopped, looked at me, and said: “They will find nothing because there is nothing.”

#SPYGATE’S LISA PAGE: I Can’t Explain Why Hillary Clinton Got Special Treatment During FBI Probe

By Chuck Ross

Lisa Page, a former top attorney at the FBI, told Congress she believed it was neither appropriate nor necessary for two of Hillary Clinton’s aides to accompany the former secretary of state in an interview she gave as part of the email investigation.

“I would agree with you that it is not typically appropriate or operationally necessary to have fact witnesses attend the interview,” Page told lawmakers during a closed-door interview in July 2018, highlights of which were published by The Epoch Times on Friday.

Page was answering questions about the FBI’s handling of the investigation into whether Clinton mishandled classified information by using a private email server while at the State Department. Clinton was interviewed by the FBI as part of the investigation on July 2, 2016, three days before then-FBI Director James Comey announced he would be recommending that Clinton be charged in the case.

RUH ROH: FBI admits using multiple informants, some paid, to illegally target Trump campaign

By Chuck Ross

• The U.S. government revealed Friday that it used multiple informants to obtain information against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
• In court filings, government officials also revealed confidential human sources were paid for their work.
• The FBI relied heavily on an uncorroborated dossier to obtain warrants to spy on Page.

The U.S. government revealed in court filings Friday that the FBI used multiple confidential informants, including some who were paid for their information, as part of its investigation into former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

JUSTICE IS BLIND: Except When It Comes to Robert Mueller’s Partisan Witch-hunt

Writing at The Wall Street Journal, Kimberley A. Strassel offers a powerful critique of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe. The imbalanced treatment, seemingly based upon the political affiliation of the target, is becoming impossible to ignore:

If there is only “one set of rules,” where is Mr. Mueller’s referral of a case against Hillary for America? Federal law requires campaigns to disclose the recipient and purpose of any payments. The Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS to compile a dossier against Mr. Trump, a document that became the basis of the Russia narrative Mr. Mueller now investigates. But the campaign funneled the money to law firm Perkins Coie, which in turn paid Fusion...

...The campaign falsely described the money as payment for “legal services.” The Democratic National Committee did the same. A Perkins Coie spokesperson has claimed that neither the Clinton campaign nor the DNC was aware that Fusion GPS had been hired to conduct the research, and maybe so. But a lot of lawyers here seemed to have been ignoring a clear statute, presumably with the intent of influencing an election.

BOMBSHELL: China Hacked Hillary’s Illegal Email Server Throughout Her Term as Secretary of State

By Richard Pollock

• A Chinese-owned company penetrated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server, according to sources briefed on the matter.
• The company inserted code that forwarded copies of Clinton’s emails to the Chinese company in real time.
• The Intelligence Community Inspector General warned of the problem, but the FBI subsequently failed to act, Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert said during a July hearing.

A Chinese-owned company operating in the Washington, D.C., area hacked Hillary Clinton’s private server throughout her term as secretary of state and obtained nearly all her emails, two sources briefed on the matter told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

#SPYGATE: Unmasking Little Billy Kristol and The Weekly Standard

By Julie Kelly

Barack Obama really owes Bill Kristol—big time.

First, had Kristol and his fellow neoconservatives not pushed for a deadly, prolonged war in Iraq after September 11, there would be no President Obama. The first-term senator’s premature candidacy for president was based largely on his vocal opposition to the Iraq War, which had been supported by his primary opponent, Senator Hillary Clinton.

“Most of you know I opposed this war from the start,” Obama said in his announcement speech in February 2007. “America, it’s time to start bringing our troops home. It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war.”

Second, Kristol’s magazine, The Weekly Standard, just gave political cover to Obama’s most unforgivable scandal: The weaponization of our law enforcement and intelligence apparatus to target Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and violate the constitutional rights of private U.S. citizens.

Fusion GPS Fed False Story About GOP Lawyer to DOJ’s Bruce Ohr That Magically Appeared in Media Reports

By Chuck Ross

• Notes taken by disgraced DOJ official Bruce Ohr show that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson claimed that longtime GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell was concerned about Russian funding for the NRA.
• Mitchell vehemently denies the allegation, which first appeared in a news article published by McClatchy in March.
• Mitchell says Simpson should be prosecuted for making false statements to a federal official.

Veteran GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell suddenly found her name mixed up in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

The first public mention of Mitchell came in a March 13 report released by Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The report listed Mitchell, a partner at the firm Foley & Lardner, as one of the “individuals or groups who were involved in or may have knowledge of third-party political outreach from the Kremlin to the Trump campaign.”

Two days later, McClatchy newspapers cited two anonymous sources who claimed that Mitchell expressed concerns just after the election that Russians had funneled secret cash to the National Rifle Association.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS, INDEED: @NYTimes and @WashingtonPost Censor Latest #Spygate Revelations

Bruce Ohr was once one of the most powerful officials at the Obama Department of Justice. He reported to Sally Yates, who reported to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

His downfall began when he became involved in a brazen attempt to fix -- and, later, overturn -- a presidential election.

While the details have been hazy around Ohr's involvement in the attempted coup, we do know he was demoted and reassigned multiple times. He now appears to be in the DOJ equivalent of Siberia. Why?

Key #Spygate Conspirator -- DOJ’s Bruce Ohr -- to Appear Before Congress Later This Month

By Chuck Ross

The Department of Justice official whose wife worked for dossier firm Fusion GPS and maintained close contact with dossier author Christopher Steele will appear for an interview before members of two congressional committees later in August.

North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, a member of the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee, announced on Twitter that Bruce Ohr will appear on Aug. 28 “to answer why he had 60+ contacts with dossier author, Chris Steele, as far back as January 2016.”

“He owes the American public the full truth,” Meadows said of Ohr, a career Justice Department official.

NEW #SPYGATE REVELATIONS: FBI Paid Christopher Steele; Peter Strzok Obstructed Hillary Probe

By Tyler Durden

In the last 48 hours, the FBI has released two caches of documents through their "FBI Vault" website related to the 2016 US election. One sheds light on the agency's relationship with Christopher Steele, while the other reveals that disgraced agent Peter Strzok waited until after the 2016 election to have Anthony Weiner's laptop analyzed for hacking.

The 71-page release of heavily redacted records concerning former MI6 spy Christopher Steele reveals that he was paid by the agency over an unknown period of time - at least 11 times during 2016, and that Steele was admonished by the agency for unknown reasons in February, 2016.

An example of the heavily redacted forms noting Steele's payments as well as his admonishment:

LIKE A SIEVE: Here is the Exhaustive List of Illegal Leaks by Robert Mueller’s "Very Special" Counsel

The usual suspects of hack media propagandists and Democrats -- but I repeat myself -- have cheerled the meme that the fraudulently composed Mueller investigation has been "leak-free".

Let's set the record straight here, recognizing I will shortly be shadow-banned by Twitter, Facebook, and Match.com.

Mueller reviewing Trump's tweets as part of obstruction investigation: report

Special counsel Robert Mueller is reviewing President Trump’s tweets as he pursues an investigation into whether the president obstructed justice, The New York Times reported Thursday. The Times, citing three people briefed on the matter, reported that Mueller is particularly interested in Trump’s tweets about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

FOUR COINCIDENCES: FISA Abuse and Unanswered Questions About the DNC Server

By Jeff Carlson

I won’t say it started here.

That’s far too simplistic and much had already been done.

But this July 20, 2015 Memorandum on behalf of Sally Yates set the stage for much of what was to come.

The Sally Yates Memorandum that refused Inspector General Oversight of information collected by the DOJ & FBI under Title III.

UN-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE: FBI’s Strzok Was Told a Foreign Power Hacked All of Clinton’s Emails and Did... Nothing

By Luke Rosiak

A member of the House Committee on the Judiciary said during a hearing Thursday that a government watchdog found that nearly all of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails were sent to a foreign entity and that the FBI didn’t follow-up on that finding.

The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) found an “anomaly on Hillary Clinton’s emails going through their private server, and when they had done the forensic analysis, they found that her emails, every single one except four, over 30,000, were going to an address that was not on the distribution list,” Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas said during a hearing with FBI official Peter Strzok.

“It was going to an unauthorized source that was a foreign entity unrelated to Russia,” he added.

Gohmert said the ICIG investigator, Frank Rucker, presented the findings to Strzok, but that the FBI official did not do anything with the information.

#SHUTITDOWN: Mueller "Pit Bull" Weissman arranged meeting with AP reporters to discuss Manafort probe

By Chuck Ross

Justice Department documents released on Friday confirm that the DOJ attorney known as Robert Mueller’s “pit bull” arranged a meeting with journalists in April 2017 to discuss an investigation into Paul Manafort.

The documents show that Andrew Weissmann arranged a meeting with DOJ and FBI officials and four Associated Press reporters on April 11, 2017, just over a month before Mueller was appointed special counsel.

Manafort’s lawyers obtained the documents on June 29 and revealed them in a briefing filed in federal court in Virginia. The attorneys are pushing for a hearing into what they say are possible leaks of secret grand jury information, false information and potentially classified materials from the meeting.

“The meeting raises serious concerns about whether a violation of grand jury secrecy occurred,” a lawyer for Manafort, Kevin Downing, wrote in a motion requesting a hearing. “Based on the FBI’s own notes of the meeting, it is beyond question that a hearing is warranted.”

The men and women who went after Trump didn’t just cheat on their partners, they cheated on America

By Daniel Greenfield

At the heart of the effort to bring down President Trump were two affairs. Unlike the bizarre lies about Moscow hotel rooms and prostitutes in the Steele dossier that was used by the Clinton campaign and its allies to smear President Trump and generate an investigation against him, these affairs truly took place.

And they didn’t just expose the malfeasance of four people, but of a corrupt political culture.

The affairs between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page in the FBI, and between Senate Intelligence Committee security director James Wolfe and New York Times reporter Ali Watkins, did more than betray the spouses of Strzok, Page and Wolfe. They also betrayed the duties of the two men and two women.

15 Photos of Obama’s Illegal Alien Child Detainees That Legacy Media Won’t Show You

Democrats aren't just manufacturing photos of fake news. They're now resorting to using photos of Obama-era immigration policies -- including separating children from adults -- and claiming they're President Trump's.

EXPECTATION-SETTING: Who is DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz?

By Jeff Carlson

500 employees. A $100 million budget. 1.2 million documents in the Inspector General’s possession. For delivery to the House Judiciary Committee by January 15, 2018.

I have been discussing the Inspector General’s Investigation for a bit now. See: here, here and here.

But exactly who is the Inspector General?

THE KEY #SPYGATE QUESTION: Who Tasked Agent Halper With Infiltrating the Trump Campaign?

By Chuck Ross

• There is a debate over whether former Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, who kept tabs on three Trump campaign advisers, was an FBI informant or a spy.
• One of the key questions to the debate is: Who tasked Halper with contacting Trump campaign advisers Carter Page, Sam Clovis, and George Papadopoulos?
• Carter Page holds the key to many questions surrounding Halper.

A battle of semantics has dominated the revelation that the FBI used a Cambridge professor named Stefan Halper to keep tabs on three Trump campaign advisers. The argument is over whether Halper was a mere FBI informant or a spy, as President Trump has asserted.

But the debate has overshadowed more important questions about Halper’s role in “Crossfire Hurricane,” the code name for the FBI’s investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

This is the Way the World Ends

By Victor Davis Hanson

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
― T.S. Eliot

One strange trait of the die hard NeverTrump Republicans and progressives is their charge that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy. Trump, as is his wont, says a lot of outrageous and weird things. But it is hard in his 16 months of rule to find any proof that Trump has subverted the rule of law.

Most of the furor is over what we are told what Trump might do, or what Trump has said, or which unsavory character in Europe likes Trump. These could be legitimate worries if they were followed by Trump’s anti-democratic concrete subversions. But so far, we have not seen them. And there has certainly been nothing yet in this administration comparable to the Obama-era efforts to curb civil liberties.