Tag Archives: FBI

Trump’s ‘Keyboard Warriors’ Get the Story While the Legacy Media Ignores #Obamagate, by Thomas J. Farnan

The alternate media started poking holes in Russiagate early and got it right. The mainstream media peddled nonstop lies and got it embarrassingly wrong. They keep ignoring evidence and refuse to ask the hard questions about their own culpability. From Thomas J. Farnan at thenationalpulse.com:

CrowdStrike – the forensic investigation firm hired by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to inspect its computer servers in 2016 – admitted to Congressional investigators as early as 2017 that it had no direct evidence of Russian hacking, recently declassified documents show.

CrowdStrike’s president Shawn Henry testified, “There’s not evidence that [documents and emails] were actually exfiltrated [from the DNC servers]. There’s circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated.”

This was a crucial revelation because the thousand ships of Russiagate launched upon the positive assertion that CrowdStrike had definitely proven a Russian hack

This sworn admission has been hidden from the public for over two years, and subsequent commentary has focused on that singular outrage.

The next deductive step, though, leads to an equally crucial point: Circumstantial evidence of Russian hacking is itself flimsy and collapses when not propped up by a claim of conclusive forensic testing.

THE COVER UP.

On March 19, 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, surrendered his emails to an unknown entity in a “spear phishing” scam. This has been called a “hack,” but it was not.  Instead, it is was the sort of flim-flam hustle that happens to gullible dupes on the internet.

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Get Flynn – Part 2, by Skinny

A detailed examination of the plot to railroad Michael Flynn and depose President Trump. From Skinny at theburningplatform.com:

In part 1 I looked at the background of the Mike Flynn case and why Obama wanted him nailed.  This picks up with the deep state efforts to entrap Flynn.

Mary McCord was the Principal Deputy Assistant General for the National Security Division (NSD).  Its quite the trick.  You combine education, law enforcement, administration, military, and security (not to mention a parenthetical) all in one attorney.  With a title like that, it’s easy to look down one’s nose at someone like Trump.  What’s he like the President-elect or something?  Big deal.

Mary was recruited into the Get Flynn conspiracy by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on January 3rd.  It turns out Mary was a stickler for taking notes but her ability to recall the meaning of those notes is somewhat lacking.  Throughout her July 17, 2017 interview with the Special Counsel’s Office we learn that “McCord could not recall,” or “McCord didn’t recall” the meaning of her notes.  We also learn that McCord learned about the existence of the Logan Act, from Bob Litt, an attorney at the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).  That’s the deep state bureau run at the time by the unintelligent James Clapper.  Anyway, Mary made a note to look it up.  Once she did, she discovered the act was signed into law by John Adams in 1799.  She would also discover that in the laws 217 years of existence no one would ever be convicted of violating it.  No matter, when the President tells you to Get Flynn you get him any way you can.

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The Flynn Puzzle, by the Zman

Why was the huge but groundless legal assault mounted against Michael Flynn? From the Zman at theburningplatform.com:

Imagine you are out and about and you come upon something that is so incongruous, you can’t help but take note of it. Maybe it is a car parked on the roof of an old barn or a cat chasing a horse around a field. The thing itself is not all that interesting, but its improbability or its incongruousness is what gets your attention. How is it possible that a horse is afraid of a cat? Why would someone put a car on a barn? The strangeness of the possible reasons is what draws your attention.

That’s what is happening with the General Flynn case. Originally, it looked like the same old political shenanigans we always see in Washington. The establishment wants a scalp to parade around so they find a patsy to frame for a minor crime. In the case of Flynn, the inner party needed some red meat for their crazies. Over time, it became clear that the FBI had framed him and the careerists in the system were working to prevent that reality from becoming explicit to the public.

At some point, it was too obvious to everyone to maintain the charade, so the information that was being hidden for three years was made public and the DOJ moved to dismiss the case. The people who conspired to frame Flynn were not being charged and the people who systematically concealed information from the courts for three years were not fired. Instead the whole thing would be made to go away. At some point, Flynn would be paid for his trouble and his silence.

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To Write Off “Obamagate” As Conspiracy Is Ignoring Well-Documented Reality, by Jon Hall

Obama was up to his eyeballs in the conspiracy to depose Trump. From Jon Hall at fmshooter.com:

Between the 2016 election, Donald Trump’s historic upset win, and his inauguration in 2017, Michael Flynn – Trump’s then-National Security adviser – was unmasked nearly 50 times in foreign intelligence.

For comparison – in his entire career, even as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn only requested once to have someone unmasked.

https://twitter.com/WriterJonHall/status/1261438386780409857?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1261438386780409857%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Ffmshooter.com%2Fto-write-off-obamagate-as-conspiracy-is-ignoring-well-documented-reality%2F

The FBI scrutinized and investigated Michael Flynn’s communications with Sergey Kislyak, who was ambassador to Russia and a target of U.S. surveillance.

Usually in foreign intel, any U.S. person is anonymously referred to in intelligence documents – being unmasked, however, means that Flynn was identified in Kislyak’s intercepted communications.

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Turn Out the Lights, Russiagate is Over, by Ray McGovern

It’s long past time to put Russiagate to bed. There never should have been a Russiagate. From Ray McGovern at consortiumnews.com:

The possibility that Trump will not chicken out this time, and rather will challenge the Security State looms large since he felt personally under attack.

Seldom mentioned among the motives behind the persistent drumming on alleged Russian interference was an over-arching need to help the Security State hide their tracks.

The need for a scapegoat to blame for Hillary Clinton’s snatching defeat out of the jaws victory also played a role; as did the need for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT) to keep front and center in the minds of Americans the alleged multifaceted threat coming from an “aggressive” Russia. (Recall that John McCain called the, now disproven, “Russian hacking” of the DNC emails an “act of war.”)

But that was then. This is now.

Though the corporate media is trying to bury it, the Russiagate narrative has in the past few weeks finally collapsed with the revelation that CrowdStrike had no evidence Russia took anything from the DNC servers and that the FBI set a perjury trap for Gen. Michael Flynn. There was already the previous government finding that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia and the indictment of a Russian troll farm that supposedly was destroying American democracy with $100,000 in Facebook ads was dropped after the St. Petersburg defendants sought discovery.

All that’s left is to discover how this all happened.

Attorney General William Barr, and U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom Barr commissioned to investigate this whole sordid mess seem intent on getting to the bottom of it. The possibility that Trump will not chicken out this time, and rather will challenge the Security State looms large since he felt personally under attack.

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Ghost of J. Edgar Haunts Flynn Investigation, by Coleen Rowley

What the FBI did to Michael Flynn demands dismissal of the case. From Coleen Rowley at consortiumnews.com:

In this time of unprecedented political polarization, it’s disappointing but not surprising to see the Justice Department’s recent request to dismiss its prosecution of retired General Michael Flynn causing yet another media firestorm to swirl around Attorney General William Barr.

Obama Administration former officials, like the hyperventilating authors of this New York Times op-ed, “The Appalling Damage of Dropping the Michael Flynn Case,” go so far as to claim that dropping the case “embeds into official U.S. policy a shockingly extremist view of law enforcement as the enemy of the American people.”

In stark contrast, other former FBI agents, myself included, are appalled at Bureau and other “national security” officials’ numerous suspicious departures from standard FBI/Department of Justice policies that have finally been brought to light, marking this most bizarre investigation aimed at “get(ting) Flynn to lie.”

Flynn. (US Defense Dept.)

Flynn was asked to “a friendly chat” with the FBI on Jan. 24, 2017, for which he was told he would not need a lawyer present. The interview was part of the FBI’s Russiagate investigation, a purported scandal that has now all but totally collapsed.

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Obamagate Is Not a Conspiracy Theory, by David Harsanyl

At the very least Barack Obama’s involvement in the Russiagate conspiracy needs thorough investigation. From David Harsanyl at news.yahoo.com:

Those sharing #Obamagate hashtags on Twitter would do best to avoid the hysterics we saw from Russian-collusion believers, but they have no reason to ignore the mounting evidence that suggests the Obama administration engaged in serious corruption.

Democrats and their allies, who like to pretend that President Obama’s only scandalous act was wearing a tan suit, are going spend the next few months gaslighting the public by focusing on the most feverish accusations against Obama. But the fact is that we already have more compelling evidence that the Obama administration engaged in misconduct than we ever did for opening the Russian-collusion investigation.

It is not conspiracy-mongering to note that the investigation into Trump was predicated on an opposition-research document filled with fabulism and, most likely, Russian disinformation. We know the DOJ withheld contradictory evidence when it began spying on those in Trump’s orbit. We have proof that many of the relevant FISA-warrant applications — almost every one of them, actually — were based on “fabricated” evidence or riddled with errors. We know that members of the Obama administration, who had no genuine role in counterintelligence operations, repeatedly unmaskedTrump’s allies. And we now know that, despite a dearth of evidence, the FBI railroaded Michael Flynn into a guilty plea so it could keep the investigation going.

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Had Enough? by James Howard Kunstler

Imagine being charged with perjury because you pleaded guilty but were really innocent and you changed your plea. Welcome to Michael Flynn’s Alice-in-Wonderland case and judge. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

In this springtime of the corona virus, Fridays creep around like hooded sentinels of dread as America faces another weekend of social emptiness and vanishing prospects. The bars have opened back up in some quarters of the country, sure, but who has the spare cash to pay for three margaritas at ten bucks a pop? Anyway, who expects the government hand-outs to go on forever? And if they did, as in current Democratic Party theory, what kind of country would we be, and what kind of people?

Fridays are also the days when things drop ominously: stock indexes, releases of shocking information, indictments coming down. Which brings me to the recent antics of Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. What sort of mischief has this cheeky fellow cooked up in the drawn-out case of General Flynn? Why, to draw it out months further by demurring to grant the DOJ’s motion to dismiss and to take over its role as prosecutor, which is not exactly consistent with American workings of jurisprudence.

Last weekend, in a well-leaked conference call, it appears, Judge Sullivan took marching orders from former President Obama who suggested snaring General Flynn on a perjury rap for withdrawing his guilty plea, and whaddaya know, the stratagem laid itself out this past week like a fully-crafted macramé, all the little tufts and knots neatly in place ­— thanks to the busy little fingers of Lawfare attorneys burning the midnight oil all week to get the thing hoisted up on the wall. The tortured logic of the scheme was really something to behold: by withdrawing a guilty plea Flynn had entered under oath, he would be guilty of lying to the court about being guilty in the first place, and therefore had perjured himself. Imagine the interior of the legal minds responsible for that: dank chambers of rot crawling with centipedes and mealybugs of subterfuge.

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New Documents From the Sham Prosecution of Gen. Michael Flynn Also Reveal Broad Corruption in the Russiagate Investigations, by Glen Greenwald

There’s never just one cockroach, and the cockroaches are scurrying now. From Glen Greenwald at theintercept.com:

GEN. MICHAEL FLYNN, President Obama’s former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty on December 1, 2017, to a single count of lying to the FBI about two conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak while Flynn served as a Trump transition team official (Flynn was never charged for any matters relating to his relationship with the Turkish government). As part of the plea deal, special counsel Robert Mueller recommended no jail time for Flynn, and the plea agreement also seemingly put an end to threats from the Mueller team to prosecute Flynn’s son.

Last Thursday, the Justice Department filed a motion seeking to dismiss the prosecution of Flynn based, in part, on newly discovered documents revealing that the conduct of the FBI, under the leadership of Director James Comey and his now-disgraced Deputy Andrew McCabe (who himself was forced to leave the Bureau after being caught lying to agents), was improper and motivated by corrupt objectives. That motion prompted histrionic howls of outrage from the same political officials and their media allies who have spent the last three years pushing maximalist Russiagate conspiracy theories.

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“Collusion against Trump” timeline, by Sharyl Attkisson

For all those who’ve followed this story since before Trump took office, here’s a comprehensive timeline of the entire sordid effort to depose Trump. From Sharyl Attkisson at sharylattkisson.com:

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 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.

Related: Obama Era Surveillance Timeline

Here’s a work in progress.

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