Lee Smith appears on Lou Dobbs to discuss the latest revelations in the Obama-era surveillance operations. Mr. Smith calls it “Obama’s culture of espionage.”
After President Trump announced he would veto any FISA reauthorization bill, without a full investigative review of prior FISA abuse so that legislation could be created specifically to fix the severe flaws in the process, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has dropped the vote for FISA reauthorization:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House of Representatives on Thursday dropped consideration of legislation that would have extended U.S. surveillance tools, after President Donald Trump threatened a veto and his fellow Republicans withdrew their support.
“The two-thirds of the Republican Party that voted for this bill in March have indicated they are going to vote against it now,” Representative Steny Hoyer said in a statement on Thursday, after a vote on the measure was unexpectedly postponed late on Wednesday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to members of the Democratic caucus saying she intends to hold negotiations with the Senate on a possible compromise bill that could be passed and sent to Trump. (read more)
A little background context is needed. In November of 2019 buried deep in the congressional budget Continuing Resolution (CR) was a short-term extension to reauthorize the FISA “business records provision”, the “roving wiretap” provision, the “lone wolf” provision, and the more controversial bulk metadata provisions [Call Detail Records (CDR)], all parts of the Patriot Act.
John Bash, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, has been assigned to assist USAO John Durham in the investigation of corrupt and malign activity by former USIC, DOJ and FBI officials. USAO Bash is in addition to USAO Jeff Jensen who is reviewing activity specifically as it pertains to General Michael Flynn.
John Bash is assigned to review the scale and severity of overall Obama-era unmasking to identify if laws were broken, and or if downstream leakers can be identified.
Tonight Sean Hannity invites Justice Dept. Spokesperson Kerri Kupec onto his television show so she could listen to him talk about it. Within the interview: “the attorney general determined that certain aspects of unmasking needed to be reviewed separately as a support to John Durham’s investigation,” Ms. Kupec said. WATCH:
Within an interesting interview conducted by Jan Jekielek of Epoch Times, former AAG Matt Whitaker confirms what CTH long suspected. The Mueller investigation was used by corrupt interests within the special counsel’s office to threaten any/all executive branch and congressional officials with “obstruction of justice” charges if they revealed any exculpatory or counter-narrative information during the Mueller probe.
Whitaker describes this as the “obstruction of justice trap.”
Essentially, this approach confirms the second-prong purpose of the Mueller investigation itself. First, use the special counsel in 2017, 2018 and into the beginning of 2019, as a shield (hide information); and secondly a weapon (threats) against any entity who would reveal the background intelligence that undercut the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.
We know President Trump was threatened by Rod Rosenstein not to declassify any information in September of 2018 or the Mueller investigation would use that act as evidence of obstruction. Whitaker confirms that same approach was applied toward any executive branch officer who would reveal or release information to congress during the tenure of the special counsel; even within the DOJ and including the attorney general.
This is how the Mueller probe was weaponized to mislead the American people.
Moments ago President Trump tweeted he will veto the House FISA re-authorization if it is passed without first investigating and exposing prior FISA abuses committed against his prior election campaign and administration:
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote by proxy on the FISA re-authorization previously passed by the Senate. No-one has any idea if the FISA vote will actually pass the House and it appears most republicans are positioned to vote against it.
Lou Dobbs discusses the issues with Representative Jim Jordan shortly before President Trump tweeted his intent. WATCH:
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These developments come on the heels of increased sunlight into the corrupt purposes and intents of Obama-era intelligence officials and how they weaponized their authorities to target the Trump administration starting with National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
[…] It was the FBI, not the NSA, that wiretapped Kislyak’s calls and created the summary and transcript, the former officials said. (link)
CTH wants details. Details on the process of this testimony from Rod Rosenstein; how it will be structured, how much time the committee will allow; who is questioning, Skype or in-person? Why are details important? Because CTH has enough questions to take more than a full day just from our independent research.
Additionally, Rosenstein is at the epicenter of the ‘insurance policy’ phase of the coup against President Trump. If the intent of Graham is to provide both transparency or a cover-up, former Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein is who you’d start with on both fronts.
According to numerous media reports Rod Rosenstein is scheduled to be the first witness to testify before Senator Lindsey Graham’s Judiciary Committee.
We have over two dozen documented contacts between Rosenstein and Robert Mueller before the special counsel was launched. The first contact was a phone call the morning after former FBI Director James Comey was fired. Literally hours after Comey was fired, based -in part- on a letter written by the former DAG recommending the firing, Rosenstein was coordinating the appointment of the special counsel to investigate President Trump.
You could spend several hours of inquiry into just that part of the decision-making process alone; without even touching the ramifications of his role in the Carter Page FISA applications and what came next. Rosenstein was also the principle influence agent in 2018 who told President Trump not to declassify any documents requested by congress or POTUS would be facilitating an ‘obstruction’ charge against the office of the President.
Yeah, Rosenstein has a lot to answer for.
As one of his last actions before leaving his post, former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard “Ric” Grenell has declassified the transcripts of the wiretapped phone conversations between former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Additionally, it appears that Grenell has declassified some of the origination documents from the CIA and U.S. intel community that were manipulated in the assembly of the Intelligence Community Assessment (an aspect of particular importance to USAO John John Durham). As we suspected Ric Grenell is leaving the decision, and timing for their release to incoming DNI John Ratcliffe.
WASHINGTON DC – Richard Grenell has declassified a new batch of Russia probe documents on his way out as acting director of national intelligence, leaving the decision on whether to make those files public up to newly sworn-in Director John Ratcliffe.
The documents include transcripts of phone calls that then-incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak had in December 2016, during the presidential transition period.
Oh my, acting DNI Ric Grenell was/is buckets of brutally honest awesome.
In a departing letter to SSCI Vice-Chair Mark Warner, Grenell responds to a Warner inquiry demanding justification for his blitz of sunlight and naming of unmaskers.
Specifically pointing to the release of names that unmasked Trump administration officials Grenell notes “the decision to declassify the names of individuals who sough to unmask the identity of General Flynn poses absolutely no risk of compromise of either sources or methods.” Grenell also tells Warner, “cherry picking certain documents for release while attacking the release of others that don’t fit your political narrative is part of the problem the American people have with Washington DC politicians.”
For well over a year we’ve been saying AG Bill Barr’s biggest challenge is not investigating the soft-coup but rather managing through what We The People are already aware of.
With that in mind; and with congress moving to put former DAG Rod Rosenstein and former Special Counsel Robert Mueller under a microscope; it is interesting to note AG Bill Barr recently conceding his two friends were corrupt. WATCH:
[Transcript] …”Now what happened to the president – and I’ve said this many times – what happened to the president in the 2016 election; and throughout the first two years of his administration was abhorrent. It was a grave injustice and it was unprecedented in American history.”
“The law enforcement and intelligence apparatus of this country were involved in advancing a false and utterly baseless Russian-collusion narrative against the president.”
The proper investigative and prosecutive standards of the Dept of Justice were abused, in my view, in order to reach a particular result.” ~ (AG Barr, May 18, 2020)
How can AG Barr say the DOJ/FBI conduct during the first two years of the administration “was abhorrent” without specifically implying his two friends, Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein were complicit in the “grave injustice” he outlines?
It is interesting that no media (of any disposition) has ever questioned AG Barr about Rosenstein and Mueller considering his words that outline their behavior as abhorrent.
When contemplating the malign activity of Rod Rosenstein; and how angered President Trump is with former AG Jeff Sessions; it is worth remembering that Sessions requested Rod Rosenstein as his deputy, and then immediately thereafter Sessions recused himself, effectively positioning Rosenstein to run the operation against President Trump.
That’s the background context for a great interview by Gregg Jarrett where Jarrett walks through the timeline of events with former HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes. At the 5:30 point of the interview, Nunes identifies Rosenstein as part of the coup attempt and blasts him for how Rosenstein structured the fraudulent scope memos.
Nunes says his investigation is now looking at the part of the effort where Robert Mueller’s investigation was used as part of the initiating effort to remove President Trump. With the focus on the Mueller team, Nunes is now making additional criminal referrals based on his findings. WATCH:
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It’s worth remembering Sharyl Attkisson has identified Rosenstein as a defendant in her lawsuit about illegal surveillance operations carried out while she was a CBS reporter.
According to the lawsuit (full pdf) Rod Rosenstein, as the U.S. Attorney for Maryland, was in charge of the Obama 2011 and 2012 operation to monitor journalists specific to Ms. Attkisson’s reporting on Fast-n-Furious and Benghazi.