Did Ukraine ‘Whistleblower’ Help Corrupt FBI Officials Plot RussiaGate?

0

‘Our lawsuits are designed to break through the unprecedented cover-up of his activities…’

Did Ukraine 'Whistleblower' Help Corrupt FBI Officials Plot RussiaGate?
Eric Ciaramella / PHOTO: @SteveKingIA via Twitter

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Judicial Watch said Thursday that it had filed suit against the Justice Department and Central Intelligence Agency to discover what deep-state ties might link a CIA whistleblower in the Democrats’ ongoing impeachment saga to previous instances of corruption within the Obama intelligence community.

CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella—the presumed whistleblower used as a springboard to file impeachment articles against President Donald Trump—seems to have his prints on all things related to the chain of partisan efforts to undermine the Trump White House.

“There is significant public interest, thanks to the Obama Spygate scandal and the related abusive impeachment of President Trump, in what Eric Ciaramella was up to,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, in a press release.

“CIA operative Ciaramella is documented to be involved in the Russia collusion investigation, and was a key CIA operative on Ukraine in the both the Obama and Trump White Houses,” Fitton said. “Our lawsuits are designed to break through the unprecedented cover-up of his activities.”

A Web of Corruption…

Having worked directly with former national security advisers Susan Rice and H.R. McMaster, Ciaramella was able to spin an intricate web of deep-state ties, which Judicial Watch compiled from White House visitor logs.

CNN, NYT, Propagand
Hunter and Joe Biden / IMAGE: Donald J Trump via Youtube

Among others, the threads lead to former Vice President Joe Biden, Ukraine “dossier” operative Alexandra Chalupa, leftist mega-donor George Soros and House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff. (Ciaramella is said to have a “bro-like” relationship with some of Schiff’s staffers, one of whom was reportedly hired the day after he filed his complaint.)

Add the whistleblower’s radical lawyers in the mix and those ties extend to the inspector general’s office, intersecting with the likes of Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and even biased FBI line-attorney Kevin Clinesmith.

In Justice Department IG Michael Horowitz‘s recent FISA investigation, Clinesmith was one of the only known criminal referrals due to his altering of a CIA email that would have exonerated Trump adviser Carter Page from accusations he was a Russian spy, likely ending the surveillance of Trump’s campaign.

But prior to his induction into ‘Le Resistance,” Clinesmith had worked closely with Intelligence Community IG Michael Atkinson, who happened to be the person with whom the whistleblower filed the formal complaint about Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

In a  breach of several agency protocols, Atkinson then relayed the complaint directly to the congressional intelligence committees—although there is good reason to believe Schiff already had a hand in it before that.

It comes as no surprise, thus, that conservative transparency advocates Judicial Watch are trying to learn what other cronyism and cross-departmental collusion might have played a role in the elaborate setup.

The Web Unravels…

Justice Deparment Let Mueller Be Special Counsel Despite 'Conflict of Interest'
Robert Mueller, James Comey and Barack Obama / IMAGE: The Obama White House via Youtube

While some of the shocking ties between key players in the FBI’s Russia hoax and the current Ukraine hoax have been well reported on by conservative media, other outlets patently refuse to so much as speculate about the whistleblower’s identity.

But Judicial Watch said it already had pieced together some surprising links between Ciaramella and the Russia conspiracy based on information found in the Mueller Report.

Ciaramella’s name appears there several times while recounting a series of key events surrounding the firing of FBI Director James Comey, whose departure precipitated Mueller’s appointment to what had been an FBI investigation.

That same week, Ciaramella acted as a liaison with then-Chief of Staff John Kelly in setting up a meeting between Trump and two high-level Russian foreign ministers.

A phone call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which they discussed setting up the meeting and touched on Comey’s firing, was later leaked to The New York Times, Judicial Watch noted.

Comey acknowledged that during his earliest meeting with Trump, rather than attempting to build rapport he was treating them as counterintelligence operations.

With the FBI director gone and the formal investigation in to Russia soon out of their hands, partisan conspirators at the FBI—and other intelligence agencies—desperately needed an inside man.

It doesn’t take a logical leap to conclude that Trump’s unabashed foes within the intelligence community likely installed Ciaramella in the White House specifically to eavesdrop on the president, just as they had previously with his campaign advisers.

Investigate the Investigators

In its lawsuits, the extension of unanswered Freedom of Information Act requests filed in November with the DOJ and the CIA, Judicial Watch is seeking the final missing link: Correspondence between Ciaramella and some of the key FBI players in the Russia hoax.

Colbert's Softball McCabe i
Andrew McCabe / IMAGE: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert via Youtube

Specifically, it asked the DOJ for all of the FBI records pertaining to correspondence between Ciaramella and:

  • former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok (who led the investigations into both Trump and Hillary Clinton)
  • former FBI Attorney Lisa Page (who was also revealed to be having an affair with Strzok)
  • former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (who became acting director following Comey’s departure, until fired for his own misconduct)
  • the Special Counsel’s Office (for the Mueller investigation)

On the CIA side, the watchdog group requested all of Ciaramella’s emails between June 1, 2016 (shortly before the launch of the FBI’s probe into Trump) and Nov. 12, 2019, when the FOIA request was likely filed.

Whatever the outcome of Judicial Watch’s requests, should Ciaramella be linked with the Russia hoax, that information may likely surface in one of two other ways:

The first is an ongoing criminal investigation being led by special prosecutor John Durham within the Department of Justice.

The other would be if House articles of impeachment were sent to the Senate for trial. It is possible that Trump’s defense team may then subpoena Ciaramella and publicly expose his partisan ties in order to establish that Democrats repeatedly abused their power while engaged in an incessant crusade to impeach the president.

Schiff Faces Lawsuit over Subpoena and Release of Rivals’ Phone Records

0

‘Schiff and his Committee ran roughshod over the rule of law in pursuit of the abusive impeachment …’

NUNES: Schiff Producing Russia Hoax's 'Low-Rent, Ukrainian Sequel' 1
Adam Schiff / IMAGE: CSPAN via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff‘s abuse of his authority to coerce telecommunications companies and solicit the phone records of his political adversaries now faces its own legal scrutiny.

Judicial Watch sued the California Democrat under open-records laws to uncover what basis he cited for issuing the phone-records subpoenas while overseeing House Democrats’ impeachment effort against President Donald Trump .

“Adam Schiff abused his power to secretly subpoena and then publish the private phone records, in potential violation of law, of innocent Americans,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “What else is Mr. Schiff hiding?”

Among those whose metadata he disclosed through in the committee’s secretive dragnet operations were the committee’s own minority member—Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.—as well as journalist John Solomon and several of Trump’s personal attorneys—including Rudy Giuliani.

Schiff claimed that he was exposing collusion between the president’s leading defenders. However, since not even the House’s eventual articles of impeachment accused Trump of any violations of the law, there would appear to be no underlying misconduct supporting the claim.

Rather, Schiff’s own violations of ethical and legal norms—including privacy laws and attorney–client privilege—would seem to closely mirror the exact accusations made against Trump, that he abused his power by pressuring the Ukrainian president to publicly investigate former Vice President Joe Biden for no other reason than his own political gain.

Many have criticized Schiff’s frequent leaks of privileged and private conversations, as well as classified information, for their potentially chilling effect on the justice system.

It comes amid the backdrop of another damning report that partisan Democrats within the FBI—many of whom have their own ties to Schiff—flouted the system of safeguards needed to prevent abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act while seeking permission to eavesdrop on Trump campaign advisers.

It also is not the first time Schiff has used the false pretense of investigating Trump for his political advantage: He publicly declared during the Mueller Investigation that he had evidence of impeachable conduct by the president. However, his evidence never materialized and the report debunked his accusations.

“Schiff and his Committee ran roughshod over the rule of law in pursuit of the abusive impeachment of President Trump,” Fitton said. “This lawsuit serves as a reminder that Congressman Schiff and Congress are not above the law.”

REPORT: ‘Sanctuary’ California to Steal 11 House Seats from Red States in 2020 Census

0

‘Put simply, in a district in which a large share of the population cannot vote, those who do vote count more…’

REPORT: Mumps Outbreak on Southern Border The Result of Illegal Immigration
Immigrants attempt to scale the wall separating Tijuana fron San Diego. / IMAGE: CBS News via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) At the heart of “sanctuary” blue states‘ recent fight to block a citizenship question from appearing on the 2020 US census lay a simple principle: more people = more money and political power.

Illegals need not commit voter fraud (although evidence shows that some do) in order to sway American politics to the left. All they need to do is show up, since congressional representation and the disbursement of many federal funds are both tied to a vicinity’s overall share of the total population.

Thus, contrary to their claims to be the champions of the poor and downtrodden, Democrats, in reality, seek to further empower the wealthy elites who can afford to import and subsidize more non-citizens within their community in order to maximize their policy-making clout.

While their partisan pyramid scheme has long been hiding in plain sight, the evidence needed to expose it has been hard to furnish. But a leading immigration-law watchdog, the Center for Immigration Studies, sought to do just that in a newly released report.

The analysis by CIS researchers connected the dots between migration patterns and their political impacts—in particular, the proportional representation in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Electoral College, which decides presidential elections.

“Apportionment is a zero-sum system,” said the report. “[B]y adding more population to some states rather than others, immigration will continue to significantly redistribute political power in Washington.”

The researchers found that population shifts due to immigration (both legal and illegal) were likely to result in 26 House seats getting redisbursed.

“Allowing in a large number of legal immigrants and tolerating illegal immigration has created a situation in which the votes of American citizens living in low-immigration districts count much less than those of citizens is living in high-immigration districts,” said the CIS report.

Staggeringly (but to nobody’s surprise), far-left California will claim 11 of those extra seats, compounding its kingmaker role for Democrats.

That, in turn, will drive political debate even farther to the radical fringes exemplified by ethically challenged California congresspeople like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff and Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters.

Also included among the seven states picking up new representatives are extreme-left Massachusetts, Illinois and New York, all of which house at least one major urban center with “sanctuary” designation. National armpit New Jersey, likewise dominated by leftist politics, rounds out the rogues’ gallery.

Meanwhile, “Of the 26 seats that will be lost, 24 are from states that voted for Donald Trump in 2016,” said the CIS report. “… Texas is the only solidly Republican state that gains, while Florida is a swing state.”

However, while blue New York and historically red Texas—both adding four seats—would seem to offset one another, the fact remains that left-leaning sanctuary cities and districts within states like Texas could potentially shift the intra-state political dynamics as well.

Texas is one of at least a dozen states that Democrats are openly targeting to flip, as demonstrated in Beto O’Rourke‘s well-funded 2018 challenge to Sen. Ted Cruz.

The Lonestar State faces incursions from all directions: As its southern borders are violated by illegals coming from or through Mexico—most of whom now claim asylum to delay deportation—Texas has also seen its urban centers, such as Austin, Houston and San Antonio, turn increasingly blue from liberals who, ironically, have fled the high taxation of states like California.

But CIS cautions that even within the ranks of non-citizens, illegals account for a relatively small portion the growth. Many of those impacting the political shift are welcomed into the country through visas and other programs, only to exploit the Constitution’s birthright citizenship provision by having anchor babies with dual citizenship.

Of the estimated 61 million immigrants and their U.S.-born children who are present in the country, roughly half of them are legal permanent residents, CIS said.

“While there is a consensus that naturalized citizens should be represented in Congress just like any other American, awarding congressional seats to states on the basis of their non-citizen populations raises important questions about political representation,” said the CIS report. “This is especially true when one considers that these districts are created by taking representation away from states comprised of American citizens.”

Additionally, the report points out the incongruity of leftist policies, which bar foreign nationals from making political campaign contributions but may, nonetheless, count them—including temporary workers and those on student guest-visas—when tabulating congressional seats.

Because the immigrants themselves remain unable to participate in the political process—unless they become naturalized citizens—the result is that they remain beholden to their magnanimous, liberal benefactors, much like the plantation days of yore.

“If nothing else, it means it takes far fewer votes to win a House seat in a district where a large share of adults is made up of non-citizens,” said the report. “Allowing in a large number of legal immigrants and tolerating illegal immigration has created a situation in which the votes of American citizens living in low-immigration districts count much less than those of citizens is living in high-immigration districts.”

All the while, Americans in states with lower volumes of immigration begin to lose their voting power since the votes of citizens in sanctuary states effectively count for more than themselves.

“Put simply, in a district in which a large share of the population cannot vote, those who do vote count more than citizens in districts where almost everyone is an American citizen,” CIS reported. “Put a different way, large non-citizen populations take voting power from some Americans and give it to other American citizens in high-immigration districts.”

Unfortunately, while highlighting the complexities of the problem, CIS offers few solutions, noting that the Constitution’s stance on non-citizen representation is open to interpretation.

Leftists, meanwhile, have viciously fought tooth and nail to retain their spoils system through court injunctions and other un-democratic processes, while rhetorically, they claim quite the opposite: that they wish for everyone to be counted equally.

“Given the large number of immigrants allowed into the country and their concentration in relatively few states, it is inevitable that immigration will exact a political cost from those states that receive relatively few immigrants,” the report concludes.

Media Who Doubted Trump’s Health Unquestioningly Accepts Dr.’s Claim of ‘Healthy, Vigorous’ Biden

‘My goodness gracious, he’s got a lot of history…’

Media Dutifully Accepts Physician's Claim of 'Healthy, Vigorous' Joe Biden
Joe Biden chats with oncologists at Duke University’s cancer center. / IMAGE: Duke Health via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After former Vice President Joe Biden’s physician rubber-stamped him with a clean bill of health, few in the media seem to be sounding any skepticism.

Kevin C. O’Connor, director of executive medicine at the GW Medical Faculty Associates, described the 77-year-old Democratic presidential front-runner as “healthy, vigorous [and] fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency,” according to a three-page summary of his recent medical history that Biden released Tuesday, The Washington Post dutifully reported.

Nothing to See Here…

The Post noted that despite his physical condition—which has included “challenging voters and reporters to push-up contests and wrestling matches,” concerns have been raised about Biden’s mental acuity.

However, without elaborating, the reporters quickly dispatched those as baseless attacks by President Donald Trump and instead dove into a laundry list of equally trivial afflictions.

“The summary indicated that Biden was being treated for several conditions, including an irregular heartbeat, gastroesophageal reflux and seasonal allergies,” it warned.

It also glowingly declared that the report was entirely thorough and no more questions needed to be asked.

“The records are the most complete glimpse into Biden’s health since the Obama–Biden campaign released 49 pages of records in 2008,” said the Post.

A Second Opinion…

Biden Accused of Using Obama as a Crutch
Barack Obama and Joe Biden / IMAGE: CBC News via Youtube

Yet, it took another, more reputable, DC publication—the right-leaning Washington Examiner—to raise valid concerns about Biden’s recent summary by literally getting a second opinion, which fittingly came from President Barack Obama’s longtime personal physician.

“He’s not a healthy guy,” Dr. David Scheiner said after reviewing Biden’s medical summary.

He’s not in bad shape for his age, but I wouldn’t say he’s in outstanding health,” Scheiner continued. “Could I guarantee he won’t have issues for the next four years? He has a lot of issues that are just sort of sitting there.”

Scheiner, who is 81 himself, said the risk of strokes topped his list of concerns for Biden. He noted that the report mentioned previously suffered two brain aneurysms that nearly killed him, was taking blood thinners and had a history of sleep apnea.

Also buried in the report was a previously undisclosed condition: Biden’s surgery for an enlarged prostate.

“I had no idea Biden had such a history,” Schener said. “My goodness gracious, he’s got a lot of history.”

In addition to his internal issues, Biden’s physician mentioned, without elaborating, that he had undergone various physical therapy treatments and surgeries for orthopedic injuries, suggesting his wrestling bouts during campaign stops might not be the best idea.

Fortunately for Biden, those campaign events have been few and far between.

An opinion piece in the left-wing The Week cautioned this week that Democrats were sleepwalking into a serious blunder by backing the former veep.

“Biden has so far run a lackluster at best campaign. He is doing relatively few events, and often puts his foot (or his wife’s fingers) in his mouth at the ones he does,” wrote Ryan Cooper. “… His own campaign reportedly cut back on campaigning earlier in the year for fear of negative press, and his allies have suggested he do the same.”

Another Double-Standard

 1
Joe Biden and Donald Trump / IMAGES via Youtube

Biden’s critics on the far-left, whose attention to his many flaws go only as far as the primary campaign season, are the current exception to the rule.

Meanwhile, in contrast to their obsequious reporting on Biden’s medical history, the Post and other members of the leftist mainstream media have repeatedly hyper-scrutinized and lambasted Trump’s checkups.

After Trump made an unscheduled visit to Walter Reed National Medical Center in November—which press secretary Stephanie Grisham downplayed as minor lab work, announcing the president was “healthy and energetic”—the Post ominously ran with the headline: “Trump’s health under scrutiny again after unplanned visit to Walter Reed.”

It also reported that leftist talk-show hosts such as Trevor Noah and Stephen Colbert mocked the visit.

In advance of Trump’s annual physical in February, Yale physician Anna Reisman, writing for the Post, criticized the checkup as “a watered-down summary with a strong infusion of medical jargon” that was several layers removed from any actual medical expertise.

Even so, she acknowledged that Trump’s doctors, including his former personal physician, Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, had been browbeaten by the media—and other so-called medical experts—who harped on “Trump’s LDL cholesterol (over goal) and coronary calcium scores (moderately elevated but of unclear significance), kicking up a flurry of debate about what might be concluded, or not, about Trump’s heart health.”

Dems Can’t Contain Their Glee as Pelosi Reminds Them Impeachment is ‘Solemn’

0

‘You are not asleep, this is not a dream. This is really happening. This is our life. This is our country and our time…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s need to warn her fellow Democrats not to cheer and applaud impeachment were not evidence enough of the underlying partisan motives, the fact that they ignored her surely was.

Following the passage of the first article against President Donald Trump on Wednesday, Pelosi—herself appearing to stifle a smirk—signaled to the left wing of the House floor to cut their giddy celebrations.

As Townhall reported, Pelosi’s glare was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Democrats’ showboating—after incessantly repeating the disingenuous claim that they regarded it as a “solemn” occasion.

They even notably mocked the fact that their specious charges were post-hoc, given the majority of Democrats had already demanded impeachment before the so-called offense took place.

‘Trap-Door’ Crimes

Ostensibly, Trump’s impeachable actions began on July 25, during his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. However, that phone call occurred only a day after disastrous testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller in the House Judiciary Committee dispelled all hopes of getting their earlier claims of Russian collusion to stick.

A day after the call, Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, announced that impeachment proceedings were already underway, even before news of the so-called whistleblower complaint had surfaced.

On Wednesday, House Democrats laughed when House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who campaigned on the “Impeach 45” slogan, declared that she had “predicted” Trump’s impeachable conduct.

“Yes, I called for Trump’s impeachment early,” she crowed on the House floor.

Neither of the charges Democrats filed against Trump—“abuse of power” and “contempt of Congress”—relate to specific criminal conduct.

Democrats now claim that unlawful activity is not a precondition for impeachment, and have firmly established a chilling precedent for future chief executives that is likely to water down the process.

As George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley observed in testimony before the Judiciary Committee, a similar occurrence led to President Andrew Johnson’s 1868 impeachment in the wake of the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, when newly elected “Radical Republicans” went after the Southern Democrat by creating a “trap-door crime” to impeach him.

“It is not a model or an association that this committee should relish,” Turley said.

Lapdog Media

Although Pelosi nominally sought to tamp down the celebrations from her caucus, many in the liberal media took a victory lap on their behalf.

The Media Research Center reported that MSNBC host Rachel Maddow—who was one of the moderators in Democrats’ first primary debate—could not contain her glee.

“You are not asleep, this is not a dream. This is really happening. This is our life. This is our country and our time,” Maddow commenced.

Ignoring the defections of three Democrats in what otherwise was a party-line vote (with NeverTrump independent Justin Amash joining the Democrats), Maddow bizarrely suggested that the vote itself was a clear-cut mandate against Trump.

“The vote in the House of Representatives tonight to impeach the president was not close,” she deceptively asserted. “… These were not slim margins.”

Throughout the process, Democrats have depended on media lapdogs dutifully reporting on their constantly shifting narratives and objectives.

During the House Intelligence Committee’s secretive closed-door hearings, in which chairman Adam Schiff carefully vetted the witnesses he would trot before the public, Democrats relied on selective leaks to propel their case and omit any counter-evidence that would undermine the momentum they claimed to be building.

Schiff—the likely ringleader of the Ukraine conspiracy, who was exposed for colluding with the whistleblower in advance of the complaint—was spotted celebrating the fruition of his efforts at a fancy steakhouse on Tuesday as BizPac Review reported.

Warning Signs Ahead

But despite—or because of—the Left’s efforts to gaslight the public, Trump has continued to gain in popular support. Meanwhile approval for impeachment has noticeably receded, forcing even left-wing CNN to acknowledge Democrats’ losing effort.

The warning signs are clear, also, for Pelosi, who long claimed she would only proceed with impeachment on a bipartisan basis before backpedaling under party pressure.

The San Francisco congresswoman said that after having passed the articles, she may now withhold them from the GOP-led Senate until Democrats can argue more favorable terms than those they afforded the House minority.

That ploy—offering more evidence that Pelosi’s political imperative outweighs her supposed principles to hold Trump accountable for some perceived wrongdoing—are more likely to further erode her public standing.

Further denying due process to the president also could pose an unprecedented legal challenge if it is deemed to deny him of his right to a “speedy, public trial.”

Some have pointed to the fact that the court ruled against judicial review in the impeachment effort against President Richard Nixon as evidence that it is a “non-justiceable” political proceeding rather than a legal one.

But in the absence of an actual crime, the court may be called upon to clarify whether the impeachment provisions in articles 1 and 2 of the Constitution permit the House to invent its own standards.

Legal scholars including liberal Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz have said a recent court decision to review several of the subpoenas against the president might also undermine Democrats’ claim of “contempt of Congress.”

GOP Sen. Grills Horowitz on FBI Bias, McCabe’s Role in Spying on Trump

0

‘He seemed to be pretty involved. And yet, on some pretty significant issues in your report, he just doesn’t recall…’

Sen. Ron Johnson Grills Horowitz on FBI Bias and McCabe's Role in Trump Spying
Ron Johnson / IMAGE: screenshot via hsgac.senate.gov

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A week since his first Congressional appearance to discuss the FBI’s handling of a controversial domestic surveillance probe against the Trump campaign, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz filled in some of the gaps during a return visit Wednesday.

In the shadow of a looming House vote to impeach President Donald Trump, Horowitz’s follow-up appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee seemed destined to create a much smaller ripple than his prior testimony before the Judiciary Committee.

Following repeated spin from Democrats and key FBI officials who have claimed that the IG report found no bias within agency ranks, HSGAC chair Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., pressed Horowitz to elaborate on what his conclusions actually meant regarding the political underpinnings of top investigative officials.

“What you’re saying—this is what I want to clarify, because I think this has been misconstrued and misused, depending on where you put it: You’re not saying that that bias did not potentially influence,” Johnson pressed Horowitz. “You’re just saying that you have no evidence that it did. Is that an accurate statement?”

Horowitz, who emphasized at last week’s hearing that the report did not exonerate top officials such as former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, explained that his conclusion was narrowly focused on the decision by FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap to open the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump’s alleged Russia ties.

“Because that decision was isol—was made by one person—we knew who made the decision, understanding that there were questions raised by people above and below him,” Horowitz said. “As to the other decisions … we don’t reach a motivation conclusion precisely because of the concerns we have on that.”

Narrowly-Defined Standards

As Johnson pressed further about what evidence would be needed to determine bias, Horowitz again emphasized that its direct role in a decision-making process was the essential parameter and not simply is presence.

“We’re not concluding that someone’s biased simply because they supported one candidate or the other,” Horowitz said, noting that agents’ misuse of FBI devices to express political opinions did raise other serious legal issues not addressed in his report.

NeverTrump Sen. Sasse 'Embarrassed' by Report of FBI's FISA Abuses
Michael Horowitz / IMAGE: CBS News via Youtube

“… What we’re looking at are what are the comments so significant that it concerned us that they might have caused them to influence decisions that were made,” he said.

In a nod to the other high-profile case that began with an inspector general complaint—the Ukraine probe fielded by Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson—Horowitz said that whistleblowers were one of the ways such a determination might be reached absent direct, incriminating evidence.

Horowitz candidly conceded that the shocking text-message exchanges between FBI lovebirds Peter Strzok and Lisa Page—as well as overtly anti-Trump messages from low-level attorney Kevin Clinesmith and others down the line—had indeed shown bias but failed to meet his standard since the perpetrators had no final decision-making authority.

However, the inspector general observed that the lack of oversight, disinterest and claims of ignorance from decision-makers like Comey and McCabe also provided a substantial basis for further investigation and accountability.

Closure on their role in what Trump supporters maintain was a clear-cut, partisan conspiracy will likely come from the broader, ongoing criminal investigation in the Justice Department being led by special prosecutor John Durham.

The Missing Link?

Johnson again sought to drill in on McCabe, whom Horowitz has criticized in previous reports for failing to recuse himself from a parallel FBI investigation on Hillary Clinton—despite a conflict of interest involving the political ties of McCabe’s wife, Jill, and then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton flunkie.

Horowitz also referred McCabe for prosecution in a separate report that examined his lying under oath to investigators about a series of media leaks—which resulted in his high-profile firing in 2018.

Colbert's Softball McCabe i
Andrew McCabe / IMAGE: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert via Youtube

Johnson said McCabe’s decision to stack the deck on the Russia investigation by hand-picking Strzok to lead it—against the advice of others within the agency—suggested the deputy director’s unofficial influence may have been a missing link in the chain of bias that was overlooked by the inspector general’s report.

McCabe also took a direct role in instructing the agency’s New York field office to review the dubious Steele Dossier while seeking probable cause to spy on Trump adviser Carter Page.

Steele, a retired British spy, had been fired from the FBI as a resource after he was found to have shopped his report to far-left Mother Jones magazine and other national media outlets.

Upon landing at the Clinton-funded Fusion GPS firm, Steele transmitted the so-called research to McCabe via thumb drive using the back-channel husband–wife duo of Bruce and Nellie Ohr.

Despite major red flags, the FBI later used Steele’s innuendo as the primary basis for a series of warrant applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court.

At the hearing Wednesday, Johnson said not everything seemed to add up concerning McCabe’s role in the investigation.

“He seemed to be pretty involved,” Johnson said. “And yet, on some pretty significant issues in your report, he just doesn’t recall. Do you find those memory lapses credible?”

Horowitz demurred, however, saying his investigators “don’t make a determination or credibility finding on that issue” within the report.

McCabe, currently a CNN analyst, struck an indignant tone last week at the suggestion that his motives may have been less-than-savory.

He complained to anchor Chris Cuomo that he had been terrorized by Trump’s past accusations against him.

“To spend your life dedicated to protecting America and upholding the Constitution” McCabe lamented, “and then to be accused by the President of treason and suggest—and have him further put the suggestion out that the proper penalty for us would be death—I can’t describe to you how revolting that is and quite honestly terrifying.”

Vox, SB Nation Forced to Cut Hundreds of Freelancers over Calif.’s New Labor Law

‘This is a bittersweet note of thanks to our California independent contractors…’

 1
Uber drivers lobby for ’employee’ designation in California. / IMAGE: Sacramento Bee via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A radical, union-backed effort in California to force ride-share companies like Uber to provide employee benefits to its independent contractors is now taking a toll on liberal media.

CNBC reported that far-left site Vox was expecting to lay off hundreds of freelancers as a result of the state’s AB 5 bill, which became law in September and will take effect next year.

The controversial law extends not only to major corporations in the developing “gig economy,” such as ride-share giants Uber and Lyft, but also to other fields that often rely on temp or piecemeal employees—including hospice care, janitorial work, babysitting, construction, food delivery and sex workers.

Freelance writers—who have become a major component in the business model of many foundering media companies—are limited under the law to only 35 articles for year before they are required to receive benefits and minimum wage.

Vox Media’s portfolio includes six brands, covering a range of political and entertainment websites based mostly out of Washington, DC, and New York.

The decision is said to particularly impact its flagship sports-oriented site, SB Nation, which uses contractors for its California team blogs.

SB Nation’s executive director of team sites, John Ness, announced the upcoming change in a post on Monday.

“This is a bittersweet note of thanks to our California independent contractors,” Ness said. “In 2020, we will move California’s team blogs from our established system with hundreds of contractors to a new one run by a team of new SB Nation employees.”

He said more than 200 contributors had written thousands of posts over the past year.

SB Nation “has long relied upon us giving contractors the keys to publishing what they felt their communities wanted (and needed), and these contractors consistently lived up to the spirit and the letter of their agreements with us,” he wrote.

California contractors who continue onward will not be paid for their contributions, he said, although they may apply for some newly-created full- or part-time positions with the company.

The implications for the law related to other states with California operations remain unclear. Uber had indicated early on that it may revisit and consider overhauling its entire business model in response.

As for contract journalism work, it disproportionately will impact those whose stringers reside in California or other blue states that may consider enacting similar laws, potentially decimating a segment of the Left’s online media.

Sites including Vox’s political wing, Buzzfeed and HuffPo all outsource their writing and rely on user-contributed content as part of a hybrid model alongside paid industry professionals. It is unclear if the companies pay for the user content or simply publish it for free.

Both Buzzfeed and HuffPo (whose founding publishers overlap) were forced to enact major staff cuts earlier this year, which their move from mainstream to the extreme leftist fringes being partially attributable for the declines in traffic and advertising.

Notwithstanding the smug satisfaction of sticking it to the leftist media though, civil libertarians remain alarmed by the unintended consequences that could stem from the sweeping labor law.

One group, the Pacific Legal Foundation, is helping affected would-be journalists push back against what could amount to a First Amendment violation, exerting a chilling effect by establishing de facto limitations on the number of permissible articles a writer may submit.

PLF is representing the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the National Press Photographers Association in a newly filed lawsuit.

“Treating journalists differently based solely on the content of their speech is flatly unconstitutional,” said PLF attorney Jim Manley in a press release. “The government cannot single out journalists and deny them the freedom to work as freelancers.”

The groups also criticized the arbitrary nature of how various industries were designated.

“Under the law, a freelancer like me can write 200-plus press releases in a year for a marketing firm, and it’s no problem,” said San Diego freelance writer Randy Dotinga, a board member and former president of ASJA, in the press release.

“But if a newspaper wants me to write a weekly column about local politics, it must put me on staff—a very unlikely prospect—or violate the law,” he said. “Otherwise I am silenced.”

2nd-Amendment Sanctuaries Grow in Va. After Gun Grabbers Take Over State Gov’t

0

‘I don’t want anyone knocking on my door to take guns away…’

Virginia’s Second Amendment Sanctuaries / IMAGE: Screenshot via Gun Rights Watch

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Overrun by migration and recent transplants in a handful of high-density, urban pockets—including the vastly left-leaning federal bureaucracy housed in the exurbs of Northern Virginia—the Old Dominion’s Democrats this year succeeded, for the first time in 20 years, in gaining full control of its legislature.

With controversial Gov. Ralph Northam—whose ‘blackface’ scandal this year made him more beholden than ever to the far-left fringes of his base—still at the helm for the next two years, liberals have promised to feast on their newfound power by enacting radical legislation on par with areas like New York and California.

But the Virginia natives in many of the commonwealth’s still-deeply-red counties have promised to stand their ground—literally, if necessary.

More than 80 municipalities have begun establishing “Second-Amendment sanctuary” laws, according to Gun Rights Watch, promising civil disobedience if the state passes extreme gun-control measures as Northam has promised.

“This message was really a resolution to send our thoughts to our local representatives of the General Assembly as to what we would prefer not be done, and that was to make any restrictive laws that violate the Second Amendment,” Phil North, chairman of the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors, told US News and World Report.

“We heard people just say, ‘Please support it,” North added. “I don’t want anyone knocking on my door to take guns away.'”

The ensuing showdown could illustrate precisely why the Constitution’s framers put gun rights so high on their list of fundamental freedoms.

Northam said he plans to re-introduce several measures that failed last year under the GOP-led General Assembly, Lynchburg’s WSET reported.

Among the agenda items he proposes are strict background checks and bans on “assault” weapons accessories such as high-capacity magazines, bump stocks and silencers.

Other regulations would:

  • permit only one handgun purchase per 30-day waiting period
  • require that lost or stolen guns be reported within 24 hours
  • enact red-flag policies that would let law-enforcement temporarily confiscate firearms
  • expand a law that prohibits gun ownership for those under final protective (restraining) orders
  • make it a felony to allow access to a loaded, unsecured firearm for anyone under 18
  • free localities to enact laws stricter than the state, such as bans in public facilities

“I suspect most of the work to be done in January,” Northam said.

Despite Northam’s claims that he is willing to work with Republican legislators, Northam’s track record of supporting radical, boundary-pushing policies in areas like abortion belies his rhetoric of compromise.

Racist Va. Gov. Northam Whitewashes Slavery with 'Indentured Servant' Euphemism
Ralph Northam / IMAGE: Face the Nation via Youtube

His very presence in the governor’s mansion is a symbol of the Left’s brazen tenacity—and hypocrisy—after the nearly universal resignation calls following the emergence of his racist yearbook photo quickly dissipated in the interest of political expediency.

Other Democrats in the state have been less tolerant of the dissent, threatening to prosecute resisters and even to dispatch the National Guard.

US Rep. Gerry Connolly—a longtime liberal representing Fairfax County, just outside of Washington, DC—said those refusing to enforce the bills should step aside, reported the Washington Examiner.

“I would hope they either resign in good conscience, because they cannot uphold the law which they are sworn to uphold, or they’re prosecuted for failure to fulfill their oath,” Connolly said.

“The law is the law,” he continued. “If that becomes the law, you don’t have a choice, not if you’re a sworn officer of the law.”

Ironically, Connolly’s own district declared itself a different type of ‘sanctuary’ last year, voting to refuse to comply with federal immigration enforcement.

The movement against Draconian gun-control proposals—which also has taken root in at least 10 other states, according to Gun Rights Watch, mirrors the Left’s illegal immigration sanctuaries, at least in terms of the rhetoric involved.

Unlike illegal-immigration sanctuaries—which stand in open defiance of the federal laws on record, undermining the Constitution’s supremacy clause—the opponents of gun-control overreach may well have the Constitution on their side.

But Richard Schragger, a professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law, countered that the immigration sanctuaries are permissible since they reflect decisions to refuse voluntary cooperation with a federal agency.

Without evidence, Schragger claimed those resolutions were largely ‘symbolic’—ignoring the fact that many sanctuary cities have openly encouraged illegals to violate federal law and have enticed them with public welfare and healthcare incentives—in some cases, even voting rights.

For some, the potential for tyranny among the authorities themselves may be all the more reason to keep Second Amendment rights intact. For others, it may be the need to protect one’s self in the face of an absent police force.

Increasingly, law enforcement officers have also begun violating their oaths to preserve public safety by allowing dangerous criminals in their custody to walk free in defiance of ICE detainers.

In neighboring North Carolina, the city of Charlotte saw its homicide rate this year rise above 100 victims for the first time in 26 years after sanctuary Sheriff Garry McFadden took office on a platform of refusing to cooperate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

FBI Lawyer Who Changed Carter Page Email Could Get Up to 20 Years in Prison

0

‘It was as if J. Edgar Hoover came back to life…’

Kevin Clinesmith / PHOTO: Facebook via Zerohedge

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) At Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary hearing with Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz,  GOP senators asked Horowitz if there ever—to his knowledge—had been anything similar in U.S. history to the FBI’s efforts to influence the 2016 election and undermine President Donald Trump while colluding with the opposition party.

“How bad is it?” marveled Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham, R-SC. “It was as if J. Edgar Hoover came back to life—the old FBI.”

Horowitz said he was unaware of any precedent, particularly one in which low-level FBI staffers like openly biased line attorney Kevin Clinesmith had been able to sway the course of historically significant events by altering a few words in an email.

Unfathomable FBI Abuse

Clinesmith—referred to throughout the report as SSA 2—is the only person known in Horowitz’s most recent investigation into the Russia hoax to have been criminally referred for prosecution.

According to the report, he stealth edited an email from the CIA confirming that Trump adviser Carter Page had been an informant for the FBI’s sister-agency to indicate that he had not been one.

“You were able to uncover and discover abuse of power I never believed would actually exist in 2019,” said Graham, commending Horowitz and his staff for their meticulous legwork in reviewing more than a million documents.

The FBI’s entire investigation into Trump was largely predicated on the possibility that the campaign may have been compromised by Russian agents, alleged to include Page, a scholar in East European energy policy who had maintained Russian contacts.

However, Page’s role as a CIA informant offered an alibi that would clearly undermine the FBI’s case for wiretapping him, creating a problem for those at the FBI who were determined to circumvent the safeguards of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“It would be like getting a lab report from the FBI, the fingerprints don’t match and the lab says they do,” observed Graham.

Horowitz, during his testimony, deferred on any speculation of Clinesmith’s criminal conduct, which now lies in the hands of Attorney General William Barr and the Justice Department’s top brass.

According to US Code, the penalty for falsifying or altering records in a federal investigation includes fines and imprisonment “for not more than 20 years.”

An Ongoing Saga

Justice Deparment Let Mueller Be Special Counsel Despite 'Conflict of Interest'
Robert Mueller, James Comey and Barack Obama / IMAGE: The Obama White House via Youtube

Other FBI officials stemming from Horowitz’s probes of the Russia conspiracy have been recommended for criminal prosecution—including counterespionage agent Peter Strzok, who was hand-picked by Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to be the front-line in the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation.

Strzok was deemed in a prior Horowitz report to have violated multiple FBI policies by illegally leaking classified material to media outlets. McCabe and former FBI Director James Comey also have figured prominently into Horowitz’s past reports.

After the news leaked of Horowitz’s latest criminal referral—likely part of a left-wing media effort to diminish the report’s impact—widespread speculation centered on Lisa Page, McCabe’s legal counsel and Strzok’s extramarital paramour, who was appointed to special counsel Robert Mueller‘s staff until shocking emails between the two now-notorious FBI lovebirds revealed an egregious anti-Trump bias.

Clinesmith was also in the news during GOP-led congressional hearings about a prior Horowitz report on bias surrounding the Hillary Clinton “Mid-Year Exam” probe into her mishandling of classified emails.

After he, too, wound up on Mueller’s staff investigating Trump, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-NC, unmasked him as having sent an instant message that said “viva le resistance” to an FBI colleague.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Graham noted other questionable dispatches from Clinesmith (whose social media now appears to have gone dark), including a message the day after Trump’s election that presciently fretted, “my god damn name is all over the legal documents investigating [Trump’s] staff.”

What Lies Ahead

 1
John Durham / PHOTO: U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut via Facebook

Clinesmith’s case—and any others referred by Horowitz and Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., during their respective investigations—likely will fall under the purview of the criminal investigation being led by special prosecutor John Durham.

Like Mueller in the earlier DOJ investigation of Trump, Durham has the power to empanel a grand jury and indict, which Horowitz did not.

Reports suggest that the Durham investigation has also expanded beyond the FBI to look into possible corruption and leaking of classified material by Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Clapper has said that his actions in the matter were following the direct orders of President Barack Obama.

But however high up the chain the anti-Trump conspiracy may go, there clearly was an effort to create layers of deniability and separation from the White House by dispatching foot-soldiers like Clinesmith to do the dirty work.

“One of the most concerning things here was that nobody needed to be told,” Horowitz testified at the hearing.

FISA Reform?

Many GOP senators joined the inspector general in calling for sweeping reforms of the FBI’s counterespionage practices, particularly as related to the safeguards needed at the secretive FISA court for rubber-stamping domestic surveillance.

Some of FISA’s staunches defenders, such as Graham and Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said that Horowitz’s findings had shaken their formerly unwavering faith in its purpose to protect American citizens.

“I’d hate to lose the ability of the FISA court to operate at a time probably when we need it the most,” Graham said, “but after your report, I have serious concerns about whether the FISA court can continue unless there’s fundamental reform.”

Although current FBI Director Christopher Wray pledged, in the aftermath of the report, to begin implementing all of Horowitz’s recommendations, some—including Trump—questioned his response and his commitment to the major cleanup task ahead.

NeverTrump Sen. Sasse ‘Embarrassed’ by Report on FBI’s FISA Abuses

0

‘This wasn’t Jason Bourne; this was Beavis and Butthead…’

Ben Sasse Refuses To Say If He’ll Challenge Trump In 2020
Ben Sasse/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Among the most shocking aspects of the FBI‘s surveillance of Trump campaign advisers may be the impunity with which biased and corrupt law-enforcement officials conducted themselves during the Obama administration and 2016 presidential campaign.

While the Left’s media echo chamber shows no signs of being swayed by revelations in Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz‘s recent report, outlining 17 gross abuses of the warrant application process for the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court, some centrist adversaries of President Donald Trump are taking note.

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., has been a vocal Trump critic in the past—as well as a staunch believer in the FBI’s integrity, he acknowledged during Wednesday’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Noting his impassioned debates with fellow GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Sasse said, “I constantly defended the integrity and professionalism of the bureau and of the department that you couldn’t have something like this happen.”

The self-described national-security hawk said that in the wake of Horowitz’s findings he was “embarrassed on behalf of the FBI … because I believe that it is critically important that we have the FISA statute.”

Sasse observed that the unprecedented power of the FISA courts to permit the wiretapping of American citizens without any due process meant that it was particularly incumbent upon the court and the investigating agencies to act in good faith.

Roughly 98 percent of the surveillance applications to the court are approved, he said.

“When you, the American citizen who might be being surveilled … if you can’t be there to defend yourself, it’s because the department’s lawyers are so super-scrupulous that if there’s any information that might exonerate you … they would say the bar is so high here we’ll always err on the side of privacy unless we believe there’s a good reason to pursue this investigation,” Sasse said.

Several of the conservative senators on the Judiciary Committee spent their allotted time during Horowitz’s testimony highlighting the seriousness of the abuses committed by partisan operatives in the FBI who willfully deceived the FISA court.

Among their offenses were:

  • altering an email from the CIA that confirmed Trump adviser Carter Page‘s role as an informant to say he was not one
  • failing to report that the Steele dossier‘s primary source had disavowed the reports as jest and drunken bar talk among friends
  • omitting in their warrant application and renewals the fact that the Steele dossier had been commissioned as opposition research against Trump by the rival Hillary Clinton campaign

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who preceded Sasse in interrogating Horowitz, drew upon his own experiences as a DOJ prosecutor.

While the disregard of privacy rights was astounding in its own right, Cruz said the fact that it happened to a rival presidential candidate—and later president—made it particularly staggering.

He found it unlikely that top brass at the FBI and Justice Department would be so disinterested in the actions of low-level attorneys like Kevin Clinesmith, whom Horowitz referred for criminal prosecution over the altering of the CIA email.

“Any responsible leader, when hearing that you’re talking about sending in spies and sending in a wire tap on any presidential nominee should say, ‘What in the hell are we doing,'” Cruz said.

“… This wasn’t Jason Bourne; this was Beavis and Butthead,” he added.

NeverTrump Sen. Sasse 'Embarrassed' by Report of FBI's FISA Abuses
Michael Horowitz / IMAGE: CBS News via Youtube

Contradicting the preliminary media spin on the report, which was released Monday, Horowitz agreed with the GOP senators that his conclusions were not simply addressing minor mistakes committed by low-level bureaucrats at the agency.

Horowitz told the senators that top officials whose oversight should have provided an extra safeguard—including then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr—actively supported the use of the discredited Steele dossier to bolster the Trump wiretapping effort.

Nonetheless, the inspector general said, many of the chief decision-makers closest to the Obama White House were able to maintain plausible deniability by exploiting policies that did not require them to sign off on the controversial measures of their overtly partisan underlings.

“One of the most concerning things here was that nobody needed to be told,” Horowitz said.