Well this is troubling on many levels.  According to a responsive filing from the FISA Court (full pdf below), there wasn’t any hearing on the sketchy FISA application submitted by the DOJ/FBI to conduct FISA Title-1 surveillance on Carter Page.
Even more disturbing, according to the secret court, it is customary to just accept and review the FISA applications as presented without judicial inquiry into the content.

(link to pdf)

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today announced that in response to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the Justice Department (DOJ) admitted in a court filing last night that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held no hearings on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) spy warrant applications targeting Carter Page, a former Trump campaign part-time advisor who was the subject of four controversial FISA warrants.  (read more)

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Thankfully, it looks like lawful common sense has interceded…

New Mexico – The FBI on Friday announced that it has arrested all five of the New Mexico compound suspects, just days after multiple charges were dropped against those involved. The suspects were charged with violating federal firearms and conspiracy laws.

The announcement comes as local prosecutors dropped charges in the death of a 3-year-old boy at the property. Taos County District Attorney Donald Gallegos said Friday his office will now seek grand jury indictments involving the death. Gallegos said seeking indictments will allow more time to gather evidence.

“The defendants, Jany Leveille, 35, a Haitian national illegally present in the United States, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 40, Hujrah Wahhaj, 37, Subhanah Wahhaj, 35, and Lucas Morton, 40, are charged in a criminal complaint that was filed earlier today in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico,” the bureau said in a statement.
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There’s an Associated Press report published today presenting a ridiculously slanted version of the Bruce Ohr testimony from the perspective of two leaking democrat congressional staffers who were present. However, if you fly passed the nonsense narrative engineering, and go way down in the article you might note this (emphasis mine):

[…] One of the meetings he recounted was a Washington breakfast attended by Steele, a Steele associate and Ohr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, who worked for the political research firm, Fusion GPS, that hired Steele, attended at least part of it.
[…] That breakfast took place amid ongoing FBI concerns about Russian election interference and possible communication with Trump associates.
[…] That revelation prompted the FBI to open the counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, one day after the breakfast but based on entirely different information.  (link)

Breakfast with “a Steele associate” on July 30th, 2016.
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It will be very interesting when the joint committee releases the transcript from Lisa Page and Bruce Ohr.   In another article containing information from Bruce Ohr’s closed-door testimony we highlight two key points (emphasis mine):

Kim Strassell – […] Congressional sources tell me that Mr. Ohr revealed Tuesday that he verbally warned the FBI that its source had a credibility problem, alerting the bureau to Mr. Steele’s leanings and motives. He also informed the bureau that Mrs. Ohr was working for Fusion and contributing to the dossier project.

The admission that Nellie Ohr was contributing to the dossier is a really important specific point.  We always suspected some of the dossier content was attributable to Mrs. Ohr, this confirms that suspicion.
Additionally, on the day before Mr. Ohr testified to congress, embarrassingly the New York Times launched a proactive defense surrounding his predicted testimony; within the August 27th article they cited Fusion GPS as a source saying Nellie Ohr never worked on the dossier (see screengrab):

(article link)

Whoopsie…
Obviously Mr. Ohr did not tow-the-media-predicted-line.
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Last Sunday Representative Darrell Issa was being interviewed by Maria Bartiromo about the testimony of Bruce Ohr when Issa innocuously said that Nellie Ohr was working for Fusion GPS in 2015.  Previous to that statement by Issa the timeline for Nellie Ohr working with Fusion GPS began in April of 2016 (simultaneous to Fusion beginning the contract work for the Clinton Campaign and sub-contracting of Chris Steele).

If the 2015 date was correct, this was a big deal; a VERY BIG deal.  Well, today amid other revelations within an excellent report by Chuck Ross at the Daily Caller, the 2015 date is confirmed:

[…] Republicans pressed Ohr about how his wife, a Russia expert named Nellie Ohr, came to work for Fusion GPS.
Ohr testified that Fusion approached his wife for a job and that she began working for the research firm in late 2015. California GOP Rep. Darrell Issa said Ohr testified that his wife was paid $44,000 by Fusion GPS. As TheDCNF has reported, Ohr did not disclose his wife’s Fusion income on his annual ethics disclosure form.

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Based on almost a year of reluctance by AG Jeff Sessions and DAG Rod Rosenstein to take any substantive action that would weed out the corrupt officials within the institutions of the DOJ and FBI; and considering the level of willful blindness, evidenced in 2017, by Sessions, Rosenstein, Christopher Wray and David Bowditch as they avoid addressing the corruption found by congress and the DOJ Inspector General; we accepted –reluctantly– that no other corrective recourse was available for President Trump except to fire the four inept leaders after the 2018 mid-term election.

It now appears that approach is looming.  A Bloomberg interview with President Trump in the Oval Office:

WASHINGTON DC – President Donald Trump said Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s job is safe at least until the midterm elections in November.
“I just would love to have him do a great job,” Trump said Thursday in an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg News. Asked if he’d keep Sessions beyond November, he declined to comment. (read more)

Jim Jordan appears with Martha MacCallum for a discussion about DOJ official Bruce Ohr testifying to a joint session of congress:

(link)

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The sketchy story of the jihadist training compound in New Mexico takes yet another weird turn today.  A New Mexico judge dismissed all charges against three suspects tied to a compound where alleged Muslim extremists reportedly trained children to be school shooters.

New Mexico – District Judge Emilio Chavez on Wednesday dismissed charges against three of the five defendants, ruling that authorities violated the state’s “10-day rule.”
Child abuse charges against Lucas Morton, Subhannah Wahhaj and Hujrah Wahhaj were dropped because prosecutors missed the 10-day limit for an evidentiary hearing to establish probable cause.

(more…)

House Judiciary Committee Representative Jim Jordan appears on Fox News with Lou Dobbs to discuss the testimony of DOJ Official Bruce Ohr.

Today DOJ Official Bruce Ohr is testifying in a closed-door session to a joint House Oversight and Judiciary Committee.  The republican representatives asking questions were selected by Chairman Bob Goodlatte.  Democrats are relying on staff.
According to Kyle Cheney (Politico) Bruce Ohr has four lawyers with him, personal lawyers and lawyers representing the interests of the DOJ.  Initial indications are Ohr has provided testimony that directly conflicts with Fusion-GPS Glenn Simpson, and prior testimony from witness Lisa Page to the joint committee.