Attorney General William Barr was questioned today by republican lawmaker Robert Aderholt about potentially fraudulent DOJ and FBI submissions to the FISA court – to gain a Title-One surveillance warrant against U.S. Person Carter Page.
In a deliberate response AG Barr stated: “The Office of the Inspector General has a pending investigation of the FISA process in the Russia investigation. I expect that will be complete in probably May or June, I am told.  More generally, I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016.”

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The response would indicate AG Barr is taking personal interest in the events behind the July 31st, 2016, origination of the Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence operation. Additionally, this approach indicates AG Barr’s review is going much further than Inspector General Horowitz; taking the review all the way to the origin of the intelligence community operation.

UPDATE: Bloomberg Reports: Attorney General William Barr has assembled a team to review controversial counterintelligence decisions made by Justice Department and FBI officials, including actions taken during the probe of the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, according to a person familiar with the matter.

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Representative Doug Collins has released the transcript from former FBI chief legal counsel James Baker during his first day of testimony to congress on October 3rd, 2018. (full pdf below)
Baker was part of the FBI small group who claimed to be somewhat skeptical of the manner in which the FBI investigation was taking place. James Baker told Congress during his testimony the investigation was “highly unusual.”
[scribd id=405636514 key=key-hSbU5u4s2gbRLNvuY77m mode=scroll]
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A late day submission to DC Circuit Court in a FOIA case previously discussed, reveals the content of Mueller’s probe & use of multiple, previously unknown, James Comey memos. Additionally, within the filing we discover how Comey documented multiple events, meetings and information surrounding the FBI investigation of Donald Trump.
The documents surface as part of the FOIA case [Backstory Here] where DC Court Judge James E. Boasberg -an Obama appointee and also a FISA judge- asked the FBI to file an opinion about the release of Comey memos to the public.  There are two issues: (1) can the memos be released? and (2) can prior sealed FBI filings, arguing to keep the memos hidden, be released?

In a very revealing filing last night (full pdf below) the lead FBI investigator for the Mueller special counsel, David W. Archey, informs the court that with the ending of the special counsel some of the memo material can be released, such as their existence; however, Archey also states much of the memo content and sealed background material from the FBI must continue to remain sealed and redacted.

The FBI will file a further declaration on or before April 15, 2019, to explain why the remaining redactions to the Third Archey Declaration continue to be necessary. (page 2)

Within the filing we discover the lead FBI agent was David W. Archey (background here). Archey was selected by Robert Mueller when the special counsel took over the counterintelligence investigation from Special Agent Peter Strzok. According to ABC: “Agent David Archey is described by colleagues as a utility man of sorts within the FBI”. However, until now his exact role was not known.
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House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins writes a letter to Chairman Jerry Nadler smartly using transparency to call his bluff.  First the letter:

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A little backstory…  Long-time CTH readers will note we have been recommending since candidate Trump first announced, when Donald Trump won the presidency one of the priorities should be to put the Secret Service back into the U.S. Treasury Department.

The reasoning for our recommendations beginning in 2015 was simple: the scale of opposition to an outsider as President would be off-the-charts.  DHS is a multi-layered matrix of conflicting political interests and career bureaucrats with internal agendas.
The recently visible political bias within the FBI is an example of the same issues likely to exist within another massive bureaucracy of the DHS.  Removing the U.S. Secret Service, and putting them back into Treasury, would give them operational independence and renewed clarity of purpose.  Current structures are just too sketchy.  That said, here’s the latest…
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Every narrative needs a foundation; every investigation, false or genuine, needs a predicate upon which to launch.  Remove the predicate and everything is exposed.
The predicate is the reason why so much effort was put forth by the conspiring Obama administration; and corrupt intelligence officials; and all political operatives; and the entirety of the mainstream media; to drumbeat that “Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 election.”
Without that predicate forming the motive for all subsequent action, the house-of-cards collapses; everything is exposed.
There is no amount of hindsight manipulation that can cover for a fraudulent basis of origination.  This is one of the reasons why voices like Diana West are so important.  Question the underlying assumption and the entire dynamic changes.
By now the intellectually honest reviewers of information all accept there was no effort from the Trump campaign to collude or conspire with ‘Russians’.  That narrative was always false; even Robert Mueller’s team of lawyers and FBI investigators have conceded their inability to substantiate those Trump-Russia assertions.  There never was any ‘there’ there.  All effort was instead trying to set up the obstruction case.
But further back in the narrative construct, those Trump-Russia assertions are predicated on there actually being some grand conspiratorial attempt by Russia to interfere in the 2016 election.  Without a factual basis for that claim, none of the CIA, FBI and DOJ-NSD operations hold any validity.
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Diana West discusses her new book “The Red Thread” with Stefan Molyneux in a recent interview.  Mrs West asks why the conspiracy against President Trump took place; and she is one of the few people openly challenging the false narrative about Russia intefering in the 2016 election.  This is a great interview to watch:

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“There was nothing normal about the 2016 presidential election, not when senior U.S. officials were turning the surveillance powers of the federal government — designed to stop terrorist attacks — against the Republican presidential team. These were the ruthless tactics of a Soviet-style police state, not a democratic republic.”
“The Red Thread asks the simple question: Why? What is it that motivated these anti-Trump conspirators from inside and around the Obama administration and Clinton networks to depart so drastically from “politics as usual” to participate in a seditious effort to overturn an election?”
– Book Available Here

House intelligence committee ranking member Devin Nunes appears on Fox New with Maria Bartiromo to outline the current status of his investigative releases.
According to the interview Representative Nunes will be submitting eight criminal referrals to the Dept. of Justice next week.   Five of those referrals are for specific people who participated in the political scheme against candidate, president-elect and President Trump.  The remaining three referrals are not person specific, but rather outlines of “conspiracy”:

• One referral is the conspiracy to intentionally falsifying material to the FISA Court in order to gain a Title-One FISA warrant against U.S. person Carter Page; and by extension the political campaign of Donald Trump.
• A second conspiracy referral targets the intentional manipulation of intelligence information; and a conspiracy to weaponize the intelligence apparatus against a political party and presidential candidate, Donald Trump.
• The third conspiracy referral is less specific and pertains to evidence collected that shows a small group of government officials engaged in “global classified intelligence leaks” to the U.S. media and other entities and/or persons.

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While we do not know the five individuals referenced, it is possible to overlay the three conspiracy referrals against other investigations.
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President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani appears on FtN to rebut the framework put forth by Jerry Nadler.  Toward the end of the combative and argumentative interview a frustrated Margaret Brennan accidentally let’s her bias surface visibly; she didn’t realize she was on camera (screen shot below).

[Transcript] MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re going to turn now to President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani who is here with me. Would you like to respond to the congressman who says he has the right and the committee has the right for all of this information. Do you agree that the public has the right?
RUDY GIULIANI: I- I would like him to get all the information.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Including the things that are protected–
GIULIANI: Everything.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –grand jury material.
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As often stated, Democrats are not trying to use the ‘impeachment’ process in the technical sense of the word; in the words of House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler they want to use hearings to show President Trump guilty of “betrayals to the public interest“, a purely political construct.
While this interview is somewhat insufferable to watch, it is valuable from the sense of revealing the political scheme as the House plans to continue advancing the Russian collusion-conspiracy for maximum political value.  Chairman Nadler is very forthcoming in the plan, watch:

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Nadler plans to use his committee throughout the summer for show-trials with witness testimony from the Mueller investigative group, starting with Robert Mueller.  The Democrats will then extract testimony from some of the rehearsed 19 lawyers and 40 FBI investigators to advance their narrative.
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