Congressman Darryl Issa appears for an interview with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the sketchy Mueller case against Michael Flynn; the likelihood that someone in the administration is going to have to talk to the FISA court about likely DOJ abuse; and the second round of questions for James Comey scheduled for tomorrow.
It is hard to believe this was written a year ago; time flies. However, we are repeating a FISA-702 explanation thread below because as the year has evolved; and understanding FISA-702 process abuse is now the specific focus of Inspector General Michael Horowitz; there is an aspect to the FISA-gate story that must be expanded.
The United States intelligence community, writ large, will likely never allow the structural abuse of the FISA-702 system by the Obama administration to surface. Consider it a third rail of unspoken agreement. A similar motive for the DIA to keep the Flynn file under wraps. However, before going into the complexities of the FISA conundrum, which would also envelop any Horowitz report, it is important to revisit the basics.
We’ll break down the term: “ FISA-702(16)(17) ” into the elements that will help make sense of this story in the future.
Again, to repeat, there are differing FISA rules for use of the NSA or FBI database depending on the originating intelligence compartment.
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Well, well, well. This is likely to be quickly brushed under the proverbial rug. If you have followed the case against SSCI Security Director James Wolfe you will note the original indictment against him outlined, obliquely, how Wolfe took custody of the Carter Page FISA application and then leaked it to his concubine at Buzzfeed Ms. Ali Watkins.
The leak of the FISA application was a rather explosive issue not readily identified when Wolfe’s indictment was first presented (June ’18). It was only possible to connect the dots after the FISA application was released (July ’18) and a comparison on specific dates, times, contacts and chain-of-custody, was possible.
In response to his indictment, Wolfe’s lawyers said they would force Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) members to participate and testify in any trial. This was a rather stunning approach. A few months passed and a plea bargain was struck. Wolfe would plead guilty only to one count of lying to FBI investigators. The charges of the leaking “top secret and classified” intelligence were dropped.
Wolfe was not ultimately charged with leaking the FISA application. We sniffed a quid-pro-quo. We suspected Wolfe was instructed by at least one senator, likely SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner, to leak the information. This would explain Wolfe’s extraordinary defense position – and the DOJ response therein.
Think about it. A gang-of-eight member (Warner), who happened -as a consequence of the jaw dropping implications- to be one of only TWO SSCI members who was notified by the FBI that Wolfe was compromised. The ramifications cannot be overstated.
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U.S. District in Texas, Judge Reed O’Connor (Fort Worth) has agreed with a coalition of 19 states that Obamacare is structurally unconstitutional without an enforced federal mandate that requires individual participation. (full ruling pdf below)
Absent the enforcement of the individual mandate, Judge O’Conner ruled it was impossible for the Obamacare law to remain. Texas and the 19 state coalition successfully argued they’ve been harmed by an increase in the number of people on state-funded insurance rolls.
The plaintiffs argued: when Congress repealed the tax penalty last year for the individual mandate; they eliminated the U.S. Supreme Court’s prior rationale for finding the ACA constitutional in 2012. The Texas judge agreed.
Judge O’Conner found it is clear the individual mandate is the linchpin of the law “without marching through every nook and cranny of the ACA’s 900-plus pages. The court must find the individual mandate inseverable from the ACA,” he said. “To find otherwise would be to introduce an entirely new regulatory scheme never intended by Congress or signed by the president.”
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Joe diGenova appears on Fox News with Tucker Carlson to discuss the case against Michael Flynn and calls out the specifics behind the fraud.
Forget the unmentioned brutally obvious political motives and intents behind the operation against Donald Trump for a moment; and focus on the collective Obama activity as if they actually believed the claims they have since presented…
The counterintelligence investigation into candidate, president-elect, and president Donald Trump was predicated on the Obama’s intelligence community believing that campaign officials were colluding, conspiring and otherwise coordinating to take over the office of the presidency, with help from a foreign government. So why wouldn’t the intelligence services of the United States government conduct wiretaps and full blown surveillance upon that incoming administration?
The John Brennan CIA presented a classified electronic communication, “ec”, origination memo (we are not allowed to see) to ODNI (Clapper) and FBI (Comey); who then opened a full-blown counterintelligence operation against officials within the Trump campaign.
We know this operation was political, but again, ignore that aspect and just look at the issues, details and activity while accepting -at face value- their demonstrably dubious claims.
Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn provided the opening for operational surveillance of the Trump team. We can argue about how they were framed in that regard; however, it is factual that FISA-Title-One surveillance is all encompassing.
The target is validated and defined by the FBI as “an agent of a foreign government”. This legal distinction permits full surveillance: electronic, physical, the works. Everything is on the table, no limits or boundaries.
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The curious case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn gets even more curious as Robert Mueller doesn’t deliver the FBI notes (FD-302) from the January 2017 interview of Flynn, as requested by Judge Emmet Sullivan, and instead submits notes from an internal July 19th, 2017, interview with FBI agent Peter Strzok.
The filing by the special counsel team (full pdf below) is a must read.
The special counsel begins their filing by criticizing the approach taken by the Flynn defense in the defense sentencing memo; and attempts to validate/justify their charges against the accused. The details in their response to the judge’s request tell quite a story.
The attachments are very interesting. They begin with notes by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe outlining the contacts with Michael Flynn prior to the FBI interview on January 24, 2017. McCabe did not inform main justice, Sally Yates, until after FBI agents were dispatched. The documents reveal Yates was not happy with McCabe’s decision.
FBI agent Peter Strzok and agent Joe Pientka were sent to the White House to interview Flynn only a few minutes after McCabe called Flynn. There was obviously a plan in place.
From the second attachment we discover that agent Strzok did all the questioning and agent Pientka took all the notes (screen-grab below). Those FD-302 interview notes, written by Pientka on January 24th, 2017, are part of the what Judge Sullivan ordered to be submitted. However, those notes are not included in the responsive Mueller filing.
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Tick-tock-bombshell club member John Solomon drops an explosive statement on Sean Hannity. Oddly, there’s a factual part of his statement CTH agrees with; and a structural part of the background that is almost certain never to reach sunlight. First, the substance:
(Transcript) […] “In May of 2017 there was a document identified to a small number of people in the United States government. It’s in the possession of the Defense Intelligence Agency. For eighteen months there’s been an effort to resist declassifying that document; I know that that document contains extraordinary exculpatory information about General Flynn. I don’t believe the president has ever been told about the existence of this document. One lawmaker discovered it, but was thwarted by the Defense Intelligence Agency in his efforts to disclose it. I think we should all ask for that declassification; get that out; it may enlighten the judge; it will certainly enlighten the American public.”
From the time-frame disclosed we can reasonably infer what this document is; at least what background surrounds it.
♦“In May of 2017”… The document is likely part of an intelligence product that was produced for President Obama’s Daily Briefing (PDB), and contains unmasking information (likely done by Susan Rice) on Michael Flynn as a surveillance target.
♦“One Lawmaker discovered it”… You might remember way back in March 2017 when HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes was taken to the White House SCIF by then white house official Ezra Cohen-Watnick; and that began a series of cascading events.
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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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The DOJ Office of Inspector General has filed a 35-page report (full pdf below) outlining the issues with recovery of text messages from devices belonging to FBI attorney Lisa Page and FBI agent Peter Strzok.
Page and Strzok transferred to the special counsel team when Robert Mueller took over the counterintelligence investigation, ie. “muh Russia”. Within the report the IG notes that after the special counsels office was notified of the biased text messaging identified by Strzok and Page; and after Mueller removed them from the investigative team; the phones issued to Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok were reset removing any communication during their time on the special counsel team from discovery. Here’s the pertinent part:
The full IG report is below.
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