Tag Archives: Christopher Steele

FISA shocker: DOJ official warned Steele dossier was connected to Clinton, might be biased, by John Solomon

Posted on January 18, 2019 | Leave a comment

The FBI knew full well before it applied for the FISA court warrant on Carter Page that its evidentiary basis—the Christopher Steel dossier on Donald Trump—was opposition research funded by the Clinton campaign. From John Solomon at thehill.com:

When the annals of mistakes and abuses in the FBI’s Russia investigation are finally written, Bruce Ohr almost certainly will be the No. 1 witness, according to my sources.

The then-senior Department of Justice (DOJ) official briefed both senior FBI and DOJ officials in summer 2016 about Christopher Steele’s Russia dossier, explicitly cautioning that the British intelligence operative’s work was opposition research connected to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and might be biased.

Ohr’s briefings, in July and August 2016, included the deputy director of the FBI, a top lawyer for then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and a Justice official who later would become the top deputy to special counsel Robert Mueller.

At the time, Ohr was the associate deputy attorney general. Yet his warnings about political bias were pointedly omitted weeks later from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant that the FBI obtained from a federal court, granting it permission to spy on whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to hijack the 2016 presidential election.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Intelligence, Investigations, Politics

Tagged , , , ,

FBI Admits It Used Multiple Spies To Infiltrate Trump Campaign, by Tyler Durden

Posted on October 21, 2018 | Leave a comment

Perhaps the FBI and Department of Justice are hoping that if they just dribble information out slowly enough, nobody will be prosecuted. For those journeying into the weeds of this story, here’s some new ones to pull. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

The Department of Justice admitted in a Friday court filing that the FBI used more than one “Confidential Human Source,” (also known as informants, or spies) to infiltrate the Trump campaign through former adviser Carter Page, reports the Daily Caller.

“The FBI has protected information that would identify the identities of other confidential sources who provided information or intelligence to the FBI” as well as “information provided by those sources,” wrote David M. Hardy, the head of the FBI’s Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS), in court papers submitted Friday.

Hardy and Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys submitted the filings in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for the FBI’s four applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Page. The DOJ released heavily redacted copies of the four FISA warrant applications on June 20, but USA Today reporter Brad Heath has sued for full copies of the documents. –Daily Caller

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Intelligence, Investigations, Politics

Tagged , , , , ,

The Final Truth of Russia-gate, by Justin Raimondo

Posted on October 8, 2018 | 1 comment

The Russiagate hoax has been a multi-national affair. From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com:

The conspiracy to overthrow a sitting US President extends far beyond our own “Deep State.” As I’ve been saying in this space for quite some time, it’s been an international team effort from the beginning. Setting aside the British origins of the obscene “dossier” compiled by “ex”-MI6 agent Christopher Steele, we now have further confirmation of foreign involvement in President Trump’s decision to delay (perhaps indefinitely) the declassification of key Russia-gate documents. While US intelligence officials were expected to oppose the move, “Trump was also swayed by foreign allies, including Britain, in deciding to reverse course, these people said. It wasn’t immediately clear what other governments may have raised concerns to the White House.”

But of course the Washington Post knows perfectly well which other governments would have reason to raise “concerns” to the White House. It’s clear from the public record that the following “allies” have rendered the “Resistance” essential assistance at one time or another:

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Governments, Intelligence, Investigations, Law, Politics

Tagged , , ,

Russian Oligarch And Putin Pal Admits To Collusion, Secret Meetings, by Tyler Durden

Posted on September 2, 2018 | Leave a comment

Spoiler alert: the meetings weren’t with Trump. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a close associate of Vladimir Putin, has gone on record with The Hill‘s John Solomon – admitting to colluding with Americans leading up to the 2016 US election, except it might not be what you’re thinking.

Deripaska, rumored to be Donald Trump’s “back channel” to Putin via the Russian’s former association with Paul Manafort, says he “colluded” with the US Government between 2009 and 2016.

In 2009, when Robert Mueller was running the FBI, the agency asked Deripaska to spend $25 million of his own money to bankroll an FBI-supervised operation to rescue a retired FBI agent – Robert Levinson, who was kidnapped in 2007 while working on a 2007 CIA contract in Iran. This in and of itself is more than a bit strange.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Geopolitics, Government, Intelligence, Investigations, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , ,

Russian oligarch, Justice Department and a clear case of collusion, by John Solomon

Posted on August 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

All sorts of threads are coming to light about Russia’s collusion with a political campaign…the Democrats! From John Solomon at thehill.com:

In a 20-month search for evidence of collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, none that is compelling has emerged.

Former FBI Director James Comey told Congress he found none. The U.S. intelligence community has given a similar assessment, though it did prove convincingly that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election through cyber warfare. And, so far, special counsel Robert Mueller has not offered any collusion evidence, though his work continues.

But, for the first time, I can say there is evidence of collusion between Russians and Americans — specifically, the sort that is at the heart of counterintelligence work.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Intelligence, Media, Politics

Tagged , , , , ,

Meadows: “We’ve Learned NEW Information” Suggesting FBI/DOJ Leaked To Press, Used Articles To Obtain FISA Warrants, by Tyler Durden

Posted on August 28, 2018 | Leave a comment

So the FBI leaked information to the press and used the resulting articles to justify FISA warrants. Certainly nothing wrong with that. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) dropped a late-night bombshell on Monday suggesting there’s evidence that the FBI and DOJ rigged their own FISA spy warrants by leaking information to the press, then using the resultant articles to obtain court authorization to surveil targets.

“We’ve learned NEW information suggesting our suspicions are true: FBI/DOJ have previously leaked info to the press, and then used those same press stories as a separate source to justify FISA’s,” tweeted Meadows.

Until now, we’ve known that the creator of the so-called Steele Dossier, former UK spy Christopher Steele, leaked information directly to Yahoo! News journalist Michael Isikoff – whose article became a supporting piece of evidence in the FBI’s FISA warrant application and subsequent renewals for Trump adviser Carter Page.

So while we’ve known that Steele seeded Isikoff with information from his dubious dossier, and that the FBI then used both Steele’s dossier and Isikoff’s Steele-inspired article to game the FISA system, Rep. Mark Meadows now says that the FBI/DOJ directly leaked information to the press, which they then used for the same type of FISA scheme.

Strong evidence was discovered in January suggesting that former FBI employee Lisa Page leaked privileged information to Devlin Barrett, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and now with the Washington Post. Whether any of Barrett’s reporting was subsequently used to obtain a FISA warrant is unknown.

Meanwhile, Rep. Meadows’s Monday night tweet comes hours before twice-demoted DOJ employee Bruce Ohr is set to give closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee. Ohr was caught lying about his involvement with opposition research firm Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson – who employed Steele. Ohr’s CIA-linked wife, Nellie, was also  employed by Fusion as part of the firm’s anti-Trump efforts, and had ongoing communications with the ex-UK spy, Christopher Steele as well.

To continue reading: Meadows: “We’ve Learned NEW Information” Suggesting FBI/DOJ Leaked To Press, Used Articles To Obtain FISA Warrants

Leave a comment

Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Intelligence, Investigations, Media, Politics

Tagged , , ,

Former MI6 spy v WikiLeaks editor: Who really deserves 1st Amendment protection? by Annie Machon

Posted on August 26, 2018 | Leave a comment

Christopher Steele, a British citizen, is protected in the US by the First Amendment, but Julian Assange, a citizen of Ecuador and Australia, is probably not. From Annie Machon at rt.com:

If ‘Dirty Dossier’ author Christopher Steele deserves protection under the 1st Amendment but WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange doesn’t, then the concept of a free press is merely a distant memory.

While it is all too easy to become frustrated and annoyed by what passes for news in the legacy media these days, thisarticle in the Daily Mail did arouse my particular ire earlier this week – and in this instance no particular blame attaches to the newspaper, it is simply reporting some unpalatable facts.

The gist of it is that former British MI6 intelligence officer and current mercenary spy-for-hire, Christopher Steele, author of the discredited ‘Dirty Dossier’ about Donald Trump, has been accorded First Amendment rights in a court case in the USA.

You might wonder why this article caused me so much spluttering annoyance over my breakfast? Steele’s treatment is in marked contrast to that accorded to WikiLeaks Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Julian Assange, and the hypocrisy is breathtaking. Allow me to expound.

Read more

Protest in support of Assange in London, UK - 31 Jul 2018 © Brais G. Rouco/Global Look PressAssange should be given immunity if US wants him to testify – Rand Paul

Steele is a British intelligence officer of pretty much my vintage. According to what is available publicly, he worked for MI6, the British overseas intelligence gathering agency, for 22 years, serving in Russia in the early ’90s and in Paris at the end of that decade – around the time that MI5 whistleblower, David Shayler, wasimprisoned in that city pending a failed extradition case to the UK. It is probable that Steele would have been monitoring us then.

After being outed as an MI6 officer in 1999 by his former colleague, Richard Tomlinson, he was pretty much desk-bound in London until he resigned in 2009 to set up, in the inimitable way of so many former spooks, a private consultancy that can provide plausibly deniable services to corporations and perhaps their former employers.

Steele established just such a mercenary spy outfit, Orbis Business Intelligence, with another ex-colleague Chris Burrows in 2009. Orbis made its name in exposing corruption at the heart of FIFA in 2015 and was thereafter approached as an out-sourced partner by Fusion GPS – the company initially hired to dig dirt on presidential candidate Trump in 2016 by one of his Republican rivals and which then went on to dig up dirt on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s DNC.

To continue reading: Former MI6 spy v WikiLeaks editor: Who really deserves 1st Amendment protection?

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Politics

Tagged , ,

“Deeply Troubling” – Wall Street Journal Implores “What Was Bruce Ohr Doing?” by Kimberley Strassel

Posted on August 17, 2018 | Leave a comment

The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel continues to ask the questions the rest of the mainstream media would rather ignore. From Strassel via zerohedge.com:

The Wall Street Journal continues to counter  the  liberal mainstream media’s Trump Derangement Syndrome, dropping uncomfortable truth-bombs and refusing to back off its intense pressure to get to the truth and hold those responsible, accountable (in a forum that is hard for the establishment to shrug off as ‘Alt-Right’ or ‘Nazi’ or be ‘punished’ by search- and social-media-giants).

And once again Kimberley Strassel  – who by now has become the focus of social media attacks for her truth-seeking reporting – does it again this morning, as she points out – hours after former CIA Director Brennan threw a tantrum over having his security clearance removed – that while Justice has released some damning documents – particularly on what Bruce Ohr was doing – much of the truth is still classified.

Via The Wall Street Journal,

What Was Bruce Ohr Doing?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department have continued to insist they did nothing wrong in their Trump-Russia investigation. This week should finally bring an end to that claim, given the clear evidence of malfeasance via the use of Bruce Ohr.

Mr. Ohr was until last year associate deputy attorney general.

He began feeding information to the FBI from dossier author Christopher Steele in late 2016 – after the FBI had terminated Mr. Steele as a confidential informant for violating the bureau’s rules. He also collected dirt from Glenn Simpson, cofounder of Fusion GPS, the opposition-research firm that worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and employed Mr. Steele. Altogether, the FBI pumped Mr. Ohr for information at least a dozen times, debriefs that remain in classified 302 forms.

All the while, Mr. Ohr failed to disclose on financial forms that his wife, Nellie, worked alongside Mr. Steele in 2016, getting paid by Mr. Simpson for anti-Trump research. The Justice Department has now turned over Ohr documents to Congress that show how deeply tied up he was with the Clinton crew – with dozens of emails, calls, meetings and notes that describe his interactions and what he collected.

To continue reading: “Deeply Troubling” – Wall Street Journal Implores “What Was Bruce Ohr Doing?”

Leave a comment

Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Intelligence, Investigations, Media, Politics

Tagged , ,

The Neocon Full Court Press For War is Here, by Tom Luongo

Posted on March 15, 2018 | 1 comment

Out of defeat and desperation, the neocons press for war. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:

The events of the past two weeks have been stunning.   Since Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled new ‘doomsday’ weapon systems at his State of the Union address, the West has gone completely bonkers.

In the words of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, ““I simply don’t have any normal terms left to describe all this,”

With the U.K. expelling Russian diplomats over the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury last week, the push to isolate Russia and create conditions for a World War is here.

The questions are Who is behind this?  And Why?

Theresa May’s response is a joke.  This is a woman who can’t stand up to EU shakedown artists over the mildest of disagreements in Brexit talks but can grandstand to high heaven over an incident with no evidence of Russian action.

This situation is straight out of the neoconservative play book, creating a horrific incident and rushing a government into a confrontation and major policy decision.

And these are happening all over the world right now.

Covering Fire

If you look at the circumstances of Skripal’s associations in light of the collapsing Russia-Gate story in the U.S., the Who?  becomes obvious.  As Moon of Alabama first pointed out, Skripal was an associate of both Pablo Miller and Christopher Steele, both former MI-6 agents working for Orbis Business Intelligence.

What motive would the Russians have for taking out Skripal in such a sloppy manner on the eve of Presidential elections?

They wouldn’t.   In the same way that the Assad government had everything to lose last April over the chemical weapons attack at Khan Sheikoun, Russia has nothing to gain by killing Skripal and his daughter today.

But, if Skripal was in the position to corroborate the worst fears about the Dossier, then it makes sense to ties up loose ends.

This is a false flag.  It’s far more plausible than the drivel Theresa May peddled to Parliament.

Anyone with three brain cells to rub together knows this in their heart of hearts.  So, why play coy?

Answer these questions.  Where is Christopher Steele?  Why hasn’t he testified?  If he refuses, why isn’t he being hounded by the media to answer questions about his Trump Dossier?

Now ask the more salient question, who benefits from this?  Not Russia.  Not the U.K. people.  Not Europe.

To continue: The Neocon Full Court Press For War is Here

1 Comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Media

Tagged , ,

Does Mueller Indictment Mean Clinton Campaign Can Be Indicted for Chris Steele? by Robert Barnes

Posted on February 17, 2018 | 1 comment

This article is repetitive, perhaps annoyingly so, but the author makes a very good point. From Robert Barnes at lawandcrime.com:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted foreign citizens for trying to influence the American public about an election because those citizens did not register as a foreign agent nor record their financial expenditures to the Federal Elections Commission. By that theory, when will Mueller indict Christopher Steele, FusionGPS, PerkinsCoie, the DNC and the Clinton Campaign? Mueller’s indictment against 13 Russian trolls claimed their social media political activity was criminal because: they were foreign citizens; they tried to influence an election; and they neither registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act nor reported their funding to the Federal Elections Commission.

First, if Mueller’s theory is correct, three things make Steele a criminal: first, he is a foreign citizen; second, he tried to influence an election, which he received payments to do (including from the FBI itself); and third, he neither registered as a foreign agent nor listed his receipts and expenditures to the Federal Election Commission. Also, according to the FBI, along the way, Steele lied…a lot, while the dossier he disseminated contained its own lies based on bought-and-paid for smears from foreign sources reliant on rumors and innuendo.

Second, if Mueller’s theory is correct, three things make FusionGPS a criminal co-conspirator: it knew Steele was a foreign citizen; it knew, and paid, Steele to influence an election; and it knew, and facilitated, Steele neither registering as a foreign agent nor reporting his funding from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to the Federal Election Commission.

Third, if Mueller’s theory is correct, then three things make PerkinsCoie a potential target: it knew Steele was a foreign citizen; it knew, and paid, Steele to influence an election; and it knew, and facilitated, Steele neither registering as a foreign agent nor reporting his funding from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to the Federal Election Commission, by disguising its receipt of payments from the Clinton campaign as a “legal expense.”

To continue reading: Does Mueller Indictment Mean Clinton Campaign Can Be Indicted for Chris Steele?

1 Comment

Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Investigations

Tagged , , ,