House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes discusses the ongoing challenges with getting information from DOJ and FBI.
Chairman Nunes discusses a January 2017 briefing with the HPSCI and FBI Director Comey, and how his committee was originally misled by Comey about the origin of the Clinton-Steele Dossier. If there wasn’t a nefarious intent, a willful conspiracy to mislead, then why wasn’t James Comey forthright and fulsome in his answers?
You can call it a soft-coup, or you can call it politicization of the DOJ and FBI, but the end result is the same – the intentional effort to manipulate, influence, and ultimately subvert an election for the presidency of the United States. ~SD
You can call it a soft-coup, or you can call it politicization of the DOJ and FBI, but the end result is the same – the intentional effort to manipulate, influence, and ultimately subvert an election for the presidency of the United States. ~SD
During a Friday night segment of Sean Hannity former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova and former federal defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz debate whether the actions taken by:
….President Obama, Hillary Clinton, the DNC, Crowdstrike, Fusion-GPS, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, John Brennan, James Clapper, Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, John P Carlin, Mary McCord, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, James Baker, Michael Kortan, David Laufman, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Samantha Power, Lisa Monaco, Denis McDonough, Jim Rybicki, Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele…
…in 2016, were all just accidentally working in exactly the same direction; on exactly the same processes and political approaches with intelligence use by government institutions; in accidental alignment,… or, perhaps, it was all coordinated.
You can always tell when President Trump hits upon a subject the media is desperate to avoid covering. Yesterday President Trump tweeted about the “Pakistani Mystery Man” and the transparent media avoid the story like political Ebola.
Two months ago Andrew McCarthy wrote an article in National Review discussing the email President Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice sent to herself on inauguration day 2017. With the latest discoveries from James Comey’s admissions amid the headlines, the February article by McCarthy is very prescient. {see here}
Susan Rice emailed herself to create a record surrounding a January 5th, 2017, meeting between top White House officials and senior intelligence members. It was the next day, January 6th, when FBI Director James Comey briefed President-Elect Trump on part of the Clinton-Steele dossier. With hindsight, the White House meeting (1/5/17) and the Trump Tower briefing (1/6/17) take on additional meaning.
The departing administration’s highly-politicized intelligence apparatus, Comey (FBI), Brennan (CIA) and Clapper (DNI), conspired -strategically- to weaponize false intelligence in order to create a media narrative that would damage, and hopefully eliminate, the incoming president and his administration. With full measure of context, contrast against the identifiable behavior that followed; and accepting the FBI team was working diligently on an “insurance policy” agenda; there is no other way to look at these events.
[…] Let’s think about what was going on at that moment. It had been just a few days since Obama imposed sanctions on Russia. In that connection, the Kremlin’s ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, had contacted Trump’s designated national-security adviser, Michael Flynn. Obama-administration leadership despised Flynn, who (a) had been fired by Obama from his post as Defense Intelligence Agency chief; (b) had become a key Trump supporter and an intense critic of Obama foreign and national-security policy; and (c) was regarded by Yates and Comey as a possible criminal suspect — on the wayward theories that Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak could smack of a corrupt quid pro quo deal to drop the sanctions and might violate the never invoked, constitutionally dubious Logan Act.
Generally I would not refer so strongly to a prior discussion thread if the latest information did not absolutely confirm what was originally suspected.
On January 10th, 2017 we discussed “The Anatomy of a Modern Political Smear“, where we connected the dots, as they were happening in-real-time between James Comey, the Obama intelligence community and the media, specifically CNN. {Please See Here}
Yesterday, two events happened which absolutely confirm -with demonstrable certainty- what we immediately saw over 15 months ago. The first event was the appearance of James Comey on CNN to discuss his book. In part of the questioning by Jake Tapper, Comey admitted his January 6th briefing of the Steele Dossier content was ONLY about the Russian hookers, pee-tapes, and ridiculous sexual accusations against the President-elect. [CNN Transcript]:
TAPPER: So, let’s talk about the investigation and what you can talk about it. In January, 2017 when you met with President Trump and you did that oral presentation of what’s in that two page memo, summarizing the Steele dossier. We know from the book that you talked about these unverified allegations involving him and prostitutes.
Did you brief him about any — any of the other things in the Steele dossier, claims that his associates, Michael Cohen or Paul Manafort, were potentially working with the Russians? Or was it only about the prostitutes?
COMEY: It was only about the salacious part of it.
TAPPER: Why? Why only about that?
COMEY: Because that was the part that the leaders of the intelligence community agreed he needed to be told about because we knew it and thought it was about to become public. And if it was true, we didn’t know whether it was true, it would be important to let him know this as part of a defensive briefing. (link)
The second event, was the actual release of the Comey memo describing that January 6th, 2017, briefing as directed by “the leaders of the intelligence community”. We now know exactly who was giving that instruction:
According to Fox News Catherine Herridge reporting, Inspector General Michael Horowitz is investigating the unauthorized distribution of classified memos by former FBI Director James Comey. The Wall Street Journal is also reporting that two of the four memos Director Comey gave to his friend Daniel Richman contained classified information.
According to the WSJ report: “At least two of the memos that former FBI Director James Comey gave to a friend outside of the government contained information that officials now consider classified, according to people familiar with the matter, prompting a review by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog.”
It is further reported that James Comey redacted elements of one memo himself in an effort to protect secrets before he handed the documents over to his friend Daniel Richman. Comey made the self-determination that no another memo contained classified information. However, after he left the FBI officials upgraded the second memo content to “confidential” after a review.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is now conducting an investigation into the releases of the memo and the overall circumstances surrounding the releases. Previously Comey stated he considered the memos personal records and not government documents. He told congress he wrote them and authorized their release to the media “as a private citizen.”
With Inspector General Michael Horowitz submitting a criminal referral for fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe; and with knowledge of federal prosecutor John Huber paralleling Horowitz for months within the investigation; it might be worthwhile going through the names of some officials likely to surface in the next few days/weeks.
The most interesting people in the ongoing investigation are those principals who clearly were in/around the center of 2015/2016 activity; were caught in 2017, yet remain inside the FBI and DOJ National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) ie. Main Justice.
♦James Baker – The former FBI chief legal counsel and close adviser to FBI Director James Comey. In addition to coordinating the “small group” activity to exonerate Hillary Clinton, Baker was also a recipient for some of the Comey Memos of recent release. This puts Baker in a position to understand the “insurance policy” described by FBI Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Counsel Lisa Page. Additionally, Baker would be able to identify the level of knowledge and participation of Director Comey, and is therefore perhaps the biggest risk to Comey specifically. December 21st, 2017, Baker was removed from any responsibility but remains inside the FBI in some capacity; he is therefore considered a cooperating co-conspirator for the FBI Inspection Division (INSD), IG Horowitz and likely prosecutor Huber.
Washington, D.C. – Today House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Ca.), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) issued the following statement:
“We have long argued former Director Comey’s self-styled memos should be in the public domain, subject to any classification redactions. These memos are significant for both what is in them and what is not.
Former Director Comey’s memos show the President made clear he wanted allegations of collusion, coordination, and conspiracy between his campaign and Russia fully investigated. The memos also made clear the ‘cloud’ President Trump wanted lifted was not the Russian interference in the 2016 election cloud, rather it was the salacious, unsubstantiated allegations related to personal conduct leveled in the dossier.
A few hours ago the DOJ released five memos to congress from the files of fired FBI Director James Comey. The total number of memos and emails is uncertain, presumably seven, however the DOJ released five (full pdf below).
Several of the emails and memos are sent to the Former FBI chief legal counsel James Baker (now a cooperating witness with IG Horowitz and Federal Prosecutor Huber); and/or Comey’s chief-of-staff James Rybicki (he resigned after the Page/Strzok texts surfaced). The publicly released versions contain redactions due to their classified nature:
Fired FBI Director James Comey appears on CNN for an interview with Jake Tapper and states [@03:20] he doesn’t know how many memos he may have written? …What?
We can see the growing legal risk to James Comey by the severity of his professional obfuscation. Despite flooding the media with interviews the overall Comey book tour is a significant narrative fail; he will find few defenders during an indictment.
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Institutional media quickly noted the public opinion shift on Comey as the American people’s BS-meter pegged Comey as condescending and self-interested. Politically democrats are not attempting to utilize Comey because he’s a known toxic commodity. Comey is left drowning in his own sanctimony, and his lack of self-awareness is pathetic.
