As you review this story keep in the back of your mind that U.S. DC Attorney Jessie Liu has been recently moved to head the Financial Crimes Division of the Treasury Department.
CTH noted last year when John Fry, an intelligence analyst with the IRS’s law enforcement arm, was arrested that something more was happening in the background of his case and the DOJ case against Natalie Sours-Edwards.   Today Ms. Sours-Edwards pleads guilty to downloading & distributing the financial records of people connected to the Trump orbit.
You might remember back in May 2018 when sketchy porn lawyer Michael Avenetti was releasing U.S. Treasury notifications on Michael Cohen received from an unknown source within the Treasury Department [See Here].  You might also remember when New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow wrote a sympathetic article after talking to the leaking treasury official [See Here].  As a result the Treasury Inspector General began an investigation.

(VIA DOJ) Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards Illegally Repeatedly Transmitted SARs and Other Sensitive Government Information To A Reporter Resulting In Approximately 12 News Articles Over 1-Year Period.
Ms. Sours-Edwards, a former senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”), pled guilty today to conspiring to unlawfully disclose Suspicious Activity Reports (“SARs”).
Beginning in approximately October 2017, and lasting until her arrest in October 2018, EDWARDS agreed to and did unlawfully disclose numerous SARs to a reporter (“Reporter-1”), the substance of which were published over the course of approximately 12 articles by a news organization for which Reporter-1 worked (“News Organization-1”).

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House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss two very important issues.  The first is the origination of the “whistle-blower” complaint and new issues surrounding Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.  The second important subject is the background of newly installed FISA Court monitor, David Kris, to oversee the FBI reform promises.
CTH has some explosive new information which has been shared with Mr. Nunes on both issues; but we start with the interview and ICIG Michael Atkinson.

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Since our original research into Atkinson, there have been some rather interesting additional discoveries.
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With increased scrutiny toward the actions, and lack thereof, from current FBI Director Christopher Wray, another sketchy aspect deserves some scrutiny.
Hat Tip Techno-Fog for noting some remarkable FBI activity.

Supervisory Special Agent Joseph Pientka III was first identified by Senator Chuck Grassley in May of 2018 as the second FBI agent involved in the 2017 interview of Lt. General Michael Flynn.
Frustrated by the FBI stonewalling his Senate inquiry, Chairman Grassley dropped the revelation publicly on May 11th, 2018, in a letter to the FBI.

[…] the Committee’s oversight interest in the underlying documents requested more than a year ago now outweighs any legitimate executive branch interest in withholding it. So too does the Committee’s interest in learning the FBI agents’ actual assessments of their interview of Lt. Gen. Flynn, particularly given the apparent contradiction between what then Directory Comey told us in March 2017 and what he now claims.
[…] In addition, please make Special Agent Joe Pientka available for a transcribed interview with Committee staff no later than one week following the production of the requested documents… (link)

The FBI never produced Supervisory Special Agent (SSA-1) Joe Pientka for Chairman Grassley’s committee, and the conflict between the Senate Judiciary Committee and the FBI was never reconciled.  (The DOJ/FBI made it to the safety of the mid-term election.)
Additionally, every single document containing information about the investigative activity of FBI agent Pientka has kept his name redacted.  Not a single DOJ/FBI document has ever included his name.
However, around two months after Grassley outed his identity; we discover from the Inspector General that the DOJ-NSD (National Security Division) admitted to the FISA court that Agent Pientka was significantly less than forthcoming with “factual omissions” in the Title-1 surveillance application he assembled against Carter Page.
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President Trump asks: “Are these “dirty cops” going to pay a big price for the fraud they committed?” 

However, the only person who can honestly answer that question is the person in the mirror when President Trump brushes his teeth.   Perhaps forgotten…
In the spring of 2018 a group of congressional reps led by Devin Nunes, Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Lee Zeldin and Bob Goodlatte, asked President Trump to declassify a series of documents so the public could see how former officials in the DOJ & FBI abused their offices and conducted political surveillance.
In September of 2018, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein asked President Trump not to declassify those same documents until after the Mueller probe was complete.  Rosenstein informed the President (confirmed in later POTUS interviews) that declassifying the material could be interpreted as impeding the Mueller investigation.
Two months later, in November 2018, the mid-term election took place.  Republicans lost the House and their committee chairs.  Many people suspected (I concur) the mid-term election was the real motive for the Sept. 2018 request from Rosenstein.  Four months after the mid-term, March 2019, the Mueller investigation of President Trump ended.
Two months after the Mueller probe ended U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, a profoundly supportive voice for DAG Rosenstein, asked President Trump to grant him unilateral declassification authority to assist the purposes and intents of his DOJ effort.  President Trump granted U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr with the authority to declassify on May 23rd, 2019; granting access to the same documents requested by congress a year earlier.
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Sara Carter held a pod-cast interview with HPSCI ranking member Devin Nunes.  At approximately 36:25 of the interview congressman Nunes discusses the testimony of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.

The transcript from Atkinson’s House testimony has never been released.  Rep. Nunes states the reason HPSCI Chairman Schiff has kept the transcript hidden and classified is because the content is extremely damaging to the origin of the impeachment fraud.  Additionally, the testimony from Atkinson conflicted with evidence which surfaced later:

“[Atkinson] is under active investigation. I’m not gonna go any farther than that because you know obviously he has a chance to come in and prove his innocence, but my guess is Schiff, Atkinson they don’t want that transcript out because it’s very damaging”… (Link)

CTH has previously outlined ICIG Michael Atkinson as a dirty player amid a network of very corrupt officials who hold self-interests from participating in unlawful abuses of government surveillance including the DOJ and FBI activity during the 2016 election.
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Fox News host Dan Bongino interviews Rudy Giuliani for his podcast.  The topics include increased crime in New York City; Iran, the ‘Spygate” surveillance scandal; the IG report on FISA abuses against the Trump campaign, and Joe Biden’s history of corruption.
The interview starts around 04:00 minutes into the video.

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Logical thought is antithetical to the interests of the coup-plotters.  Nuance and obfuscation are their shields; that’s why they, writ large, will not release the classified documents. A common sense American Thinker article cuts through the chaff and countermeasures for many interests:
[…] The implications of intercepting the communications of a U.S. citizen who is associated with the political campaign of a candidate seeking the presidency rings nearly every “bell” in the FBIs and Attorney General’s Guidelines for sensitive investigations. As discussed in the IG report, by regulation, these cases cannot be initiated without the written approval of the Director and the Attorney General. 

In addition to the approval obviously granted by the Director and AG, the IGs report identified the following additional high level officials who reviewed and approved the Page FISA affidavit:  “NSD’s Acting Assistant Attorney General, NSD’s Deputy Assistant Attorney General with oversight over 01, 01’s Operations Section Chief and Deputy Section Chief, the DAG, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, and the Associate Deputy Attorney General responsible for ODAG’s national security portfolio.”
The suggestion that somehow, seventeen significant errors, omissions of fact, falsehoods, or deliberate misrepresentations made their way into a FISA affidavit/s (accidentally, at the hand of an anonymous case agent) and then were not immediately noted and corrected throughout the course of this exceptional review process is simply not believable. ~ Continue Reading

Today the DC U.S. Attorney requested a one week delay prior to submitting a second briefing for the sentencing of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
According to the filing, the DOJ is seeking a one week delay, from Dec 30th to January 6th, in order to gather more material for a new sentencing memorandum.  Due to Flynn’s non-cooperation, it is anticipated the DOJ will enhance the prior memo from December 2018 and ask for a more severe sentence.

In their sentencing memo of December 2018 the DOJ (Mueller ongoing) did not request prison time, arguing for a sentence “at the low end of the guidance range.”
However, with AG Bill Barr and U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu; and given the events over the past year, including 6(e) grand jury information; there is a possibility the DOJ will now request a much more harsh sentence to include time in prison.

An interesting CTH discussion on Carter Page is worth expansion.  Factually I have not spent much time thinking about Mr. Page because he always seemed irrelevant.  However, some people have put a great deal of smart thought into how Page plays into the larger SpyGate dynamic.  That analysis is interesting & the various possibilities are a good read.

From the initial CTH review of Page he always seemed to be a tool. Something akin to a disposable syringe.  The viral agent in the syringe is important; the motives of those using the syringe obviously important; but Page himself seemed disposable to the sharps bag.
Maybe that’s the wrong way to look at him.
Having not spent much time thinking about him, it’s very interesting to read Treeper comments about him and the various possibilities his appearance in 2016 might represent.  So please use this thread to discuss your own opinion(s).
What role do you think Mr. Carter Page played in the larger objectives of the coup crew?

To understand why there’s no-one in the administrative mid-tier of the FBI acting in a whistle-blowing capacity requires a background perspective looking at the totality of corruption.  The institutions are protecting themselves; and yes, that protection applies to the internal dynamics.
Former DAG Rod Rosenstein was dirty.  He might not have started out dirty, but his actions in office created a dirty mess.  Rosenstein facilitated the McCabe operation against Trump during the May 16th, 2017, White House FBI sting against Trump with Mueller.  Rosenstein also facilitated the special counsel (writ large), and provided three scope memos to expand the corrupt investigation of President Trump.  According to the inaction of AG Bill Barr, we’re not allowed to see those authorizing scope memos.

Additionally, despite knowing the Trump investigation held a false predicate, Rosenstein signed the 3rd renewal of a fraudulent FISA application.  Worse yet, even if Rosenstein was caught up by corruption around him, he did nothing to stop the fraud once identified.
Why is Rosenstein a key inflection point?  Because Rod Rosenstein recommended current FBI Director Christopher Wray to President Trump.  POTUS then allowed Wray, as he does all department heads, to select his deputy – Wray chose David Bowditch.
♦Keep in mind the National Security Division of the DOJ (DOJ-NSD) was/is the epicenter of many corrupt activities, including filing the fraudulent FISA application, manipulating interpretations of law for FARA (§901) violations, and doing all of this while denying any inspector general oversight. As FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer recently noted, the DOJ-NSD is positioned as a rogue legal arm of the U.S. intelligence apparatus.
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