McClatchy journalists Peter Stone and Greg Gordon are once again attempting to prop-up the most disproven allegation in the Chris Steele/Nellie Ohr dossier about Michael Cohen making a trip to Prague.  They appear to stir this false story approximately every six months.  [See Here]  This iteration is framed around cell-phone tower pings.
Michael Cohen has denied the claim for years.  Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, has clearly denied the claim.  The special counsel has reviewed and walked-away from the claim.  The Washington Post spent months trying to substantiate the claim, and could find no evidence [See Here].  According to WaPo reporter Greg Miller, the CIA and FBI have refuted the claim.  It simply did not happen.

However, that said, the Cohen mistake within the Dossier continues to point toward how the FISA-702 FBI/NSA database was likely exploited by government intelligence ‘contractors’ to extract political opposition research.  Their FISA(16)(17) “about” queries of the database simply returned a result of the wrong Michael Cohen.
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Arguably the biggest story of 2018 is how much we have learned about institutional political corruption within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  With that level of new knowledge in mind, some earlier stories about the DOJ and FBI take on an entirely different light.
Here’s one from late 2016 – You might not know the name Marc Turi but if you are familiar with the Benghazi Brief, or more specifically with Operation Zero Footprint, you’ll likely know the issues.

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Marc Turi was the guy who constructed the covert weapons shipments into Libya to overthrown Mouamar Gaddaffi (2011) and send weapons to the Libyan Transitional National Government supported by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
During the original phase of the Libyan uprising, early February 2011, the first defector from the official Gaddaffi regime was a foreign justice minister named Mustafa Abdel Jalil.
Jalil became the international face of the anti-Gaddaffi elements within the Libyan government. However, Jalil was an extremist Brotherhood member and somewhat of a patsy. When we were outlining his ideology, and the extremists who were behind him, almost no-one was paying attention.
Following Jalil’s moves was ultimately what enabled CTH to construct the Benghazi Brief so accurately – because during the shell game Mustafa Jalil was the pea.
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Representative John Ratcliffe discusses ongoing congressional appropriations battle and his interview last week of James Comey.
Mr. Ratcliffe points out that congressional investigators have taken the inquiry into the DOJ and FBI corruption as far as possible; it is now up to the DOJ to hold those corrupt officials accountable for weaponizing their offices.

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Former FBI Director James Comey appeared December 17th, 2018, for a second round of questions by a joint House committee oversight probe into the DOJ and FBI conduct during the 2016 presidential election and incoming Trump administration.
The Joint House Committee just released the transcript (full pdf below):
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This was just released.  Analysis to follow.

There’s a rather extensive backstory to the Turkish lobbying efforts that involved Michael Flynn.  [BACKSTORY HERE] Much of the Flynn issue was before the election of 2016 {Go Deep} and recent events align exactly as we would expect {Go Deep}. As CTH predicted the day after the original Flynn plea, the Turkish lobbying was used by Mueller as leverage.

It would appear, as CTH has predicted for well over a year, that Flynn brokered a deal with Robert Mueller to admit to misleading statements to the FBI in exchange for Mueller agreeing not to prosecute Flynn for FARA (lobbying) violations.
As CTH warned in November of 2016 Flynn was involved in lobbying efforts on behalf of the Turkish government via Bijan Rafiekian, aka Bijan Kian, 66, of San Juan Capistrano, California, and Kamil Ekim Alptekin, 41, of Istanbul. The financial constructs surrounding the payments to Flynn were sketchy, very sketchy.
In 2016 CTH anticipated this sketchy behavior would come back to bite Flynn and -by extension- could be an issue for the White House if he took a high level position.  None of that had anything whatsoever to do with the fictitious vast Russian conspiracy story.
It is increasingly clear that Mueller used the sketchy financial arrangement between Turkey and Flynn -specifically how Flynn maneuvered the money- as the leverage in the unrelated Russian conspiracy investigation.
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Today there was a much hyped congressional hearing, spearheaded by sub-committee chairman Mark Meadows, into issues surrounding the Clinton Foundation and the possibility of IRS tax avoidance schemes. The backstory is of particular importance because the hearing is being framed by the ‘tick-tock-boom club‘ as something it was not.

There is a policy within the IRS that any person can report fraudulent tax filings, or the lack thereof, by any American taxpayer – toward any individual or group that is avoiding the payment of taxes. The IRS has a process to receive “tips” and claims from anyone to their investigative unit.  If the tip ends up in the IRS being able to secure missing tax payments, the tipster can get a percentage reward based on the amount of the taxes the IRS can recover.  The reward percentage is from 10% to 30% of the recovered amount.
Mr. Lawrence W. Doyle and Mr. John Moynihan, are the proprietors of a firm called MDA Analytics.  They are two ‘tipsters’, financial bounty hunters, calling themselves ‘whistle-blowers’, who have researched the Clinton Foundation and informed the IRS that based on their research the foundation owes back taxes.  They duo are hopeful to receive an IRS award based on their estimation of missing tax payments of between $400 million and $2.5 billion. In addition to their patriotic duty, this is the financial motivation behind Mr. Doyle and Mr. Moynihan.
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An interesting legal development (full pdf below) in the aftermath of the mysterious FBI raid on protected FBI whistleblower Nate Cain. [Backstory]  The DOJ wants the details behind the search warrant to remain under seal, and the whistleblower target of that warrant -who was not arrested- is accusing the DOJ-FBI of being a police state:

[Tweet Link – – Daily Caller Story Link]

Something about this entire story is just not adding up.  The whistleblower came forward to the IG with information about how the FBI covered-up for the Clintons during investigations about the Clinton Foundation.  The IG gave the whistleblower protection, confirmed anonymity, and passed on his documentary evidence to the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI).   Then the whistleblower gets raided.
From the outset the DOJ and IG claims don’t match the DOJ and FBI conduct.   Even Senator Chuck Grassley has questions.
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Here’s the transcript (full pdf below) of the December 7th, 2018, deposition of former FBI Director James Comey to the joint house committee headed by Trey Gowdy and Bob Goodlatte:
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(Oversight pdf link – scribd pdf link)

This is breaking.  CTH analysis to follow…

Former FBI Director James Comey gives a brief press conference following his testimony before a joint congressional committee.  Notably, Comey references the importance of saving the ‘institutions’ (and all the corrupt interests within it) above all other aspects.
When the institutions are corrupt; and the officials within the institutions are corrupt; and there is inquiry into the corrupt activity of the officials within the institutions; then retaining the institutions is the priority.  It’s that simple.  If you take down the institution you run the risk of exposing the corruption…. So anyone associated simply demands another coat of paint.

Additionally, Comey seems to infer that the removal of Jeff Sessions is now part of the Mueller/Rosenstein/Democrat approach to frame obstruction against President Trump.  Quite simply, any action by Trump to expose the previously described corruption is viewed as unlawful obstruction.  That’s their plan, and the approach has worked so far.
Comey is scheduled to return for more testimony on December 17th. Transcripts of today’s hearing should be available soon.
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We shared a discussion thread several months ago about how the media are enmeshed within the story of the DOJ and FBI corruption. The media engagements with the parties swirling around the FBI, DOJ and Clinton-Steele Dossier are so pervasive they cannot reasonably report on any aspect of the story without exposing their own duplicity.
As more and more information surfaces about corrupt DOJ and FBI activity, it’s worth remembering the media’s complicit role.  Here’s an updated review for context:

Michael Isikoff highlighted that level of how enmeshed media is with the story in February when he admitted his reporting was being used by the DOJ and FBI to advance the political objectives of the intelligence community. Additionally, FBI investigator Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page were shown in their text messages to be leaking stories from the Clinton Investigation, the Trump investigation and the Mueller investigation to journalists at Politico, The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. –SEE HERE–
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was busted by the Inspector General leaking stories to the media and then lying about it to INSD and IG investigators. FBI Director James Comey admitted to leaking stories to the New York Times, and even hired his friend Andrew Richman (off-the-books), gave him access to FBI and NSA databases, and then leaked information to Richman along with another friend Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare blog.
Lest we forget, the IG report on how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation revealed that dozens of FBI officials were actually taking bribes from the media for information:

IG REPORT – We identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters. Attached to this report as Attachments E and F are two link charts that reflect the volume of communications that we identified between FBI employees and media representatives in April/May and October 2016. We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review.

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