DOJ IG Horowitz to Explain FBI’s Russia Hoax Before Senate Judiciary Committee

Ben Sellers
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‘He will deliver a detailed account of what he found … along with recommendations as to how to make our judicial and investigative systems better…’

Comey Currently Under DOJ Investigation for Mishandling Classified Info
Michael Horowitz (screen shot: ZeroHedge Janitor/Youtube)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A long-awaited report from the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, will conclude in December, outlining some of the questionable conduct by partisan FBI agents during the Russian collusion hoax.

Following the Dec. 9 release of the report, Horowitz will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Dec. 11, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, in a press release following a letter from Horowitz.

“I appreciate all the hard work by Mr. Horowitz and his team regarding the Carter Page FISA warrant application and the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign,”Graham said.

“I look forward to reviewing the report and hearing Mr. Horowitz’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he will deliver a detailed account of what he found regarding his investigation, along with recommendations as to how to make our judicial and investigative systems better,” he continued.

The IG investigation, which is being conducted in conjunction with a criminal probe in the Justice Department led by special prosecutor John Durham, has sought to examine the false pretenses under which Obama-era FBI officials sought permission from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court in order to spy on Page, a foreign-policy adviser for now-President Donald Trump during his campaign.

The FBI investigation into claims of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign was based largely on the dispatches of the now-debunked Steele Dossier, which was later revealed publicly to have been commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Using the left-wing research firm Fusion GPS as its conduit, Democrats secretly worked with top FBI officials, such as Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok, who already was overseeing a major investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to send and receive classified State Department material.

McCabe and Strzok were among the many operatives within the intelligence community who were rebuffed in previous IG reports for their misconduct and partisan, anti-Trump bias.

Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier documents, was a British spy with links to the Kremlin who had been fired as an FBI informant after he was discovered to be leaking information.

In May, open-records investigations revealed that Steele had met with a State Department official 10 days prior to the FISA warrant in 2016 and said he was “keen to see this information [the dossier] come to light prior to November 8,” the date of the U.S. presidential election.

“This important information further demonstrates the bias of the primary source of material that was the basis for the Carter Page FISA warrant,” Graham wrote in a letter to Horowitz and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Republicans Defend Trump After Leftists Attack Him As a 'Racist'
Lindsey Graham / IMAGE: News 19 WLTX via Youtube

Graham, a frequent ally of Trump’s, has been vocal of his support of the DOJ investigations into the corrupt intelligence community after having previously backed the two-year Mueller investigation into Russian collusion.

When the probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller yielded no evidence, Graham publicly declared that it was time to investigate the other side of the story and shed light on the Left’s own collusion within the American government.

Graham has received some criticism for the slow pace of his own Senate probes but has noted that he was awaiting the findings from the Justice Department’s thorough investigations.

Those investigations required that Attorney General William Barr and his investigators to interview sources in the United Kingdom, Italy and Australia who had been part of the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” sting operation against Trump.

House Democrats, meanwhile, pro-actively seeking to deflect revelations of their own behavior, quickly pivoted to new charges to lodge an ongoing impeachment probe against Trump that he abused his power in a July 25 call with the newly elected Ukrainian president.

The timing of Horowitz’s appearance in the Senate should prove interesting as the House is likely to be considering an impeachment vote around the same time.

The investigations are intrinsically linked as Trump, weathered by the slanderous Russian collusion probe, sought to uncover whether Ukraine had worked with Democrats to help craft and spread the false narrative in 2016 and if it might be working to support democratic candidates such as Vice President Joe Biden in the upcoming 2020 race.

A request for comment to the Inspector General’s office was not immediately answered, though sources have previously declined to comment on pending investigations, citing DOJ policy.

BOOKER: Biden ‘Might Have Been High’ on Campaign Trail

Ben Sellers
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‘Marijuana in our country is already legal for privileged people…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ, suggested during Wednesday’s debate that Vice President Joe Biden was one toke over the line on the campaign trial.

Booker, struggling to gain traction in one of the last debate opportunities before primaries being in February, lit into Biden’s declaration that more research may be necessary before deciding to legalize marijuana at the federal level.

“I thought you might have been high when you said it,” he told Biden.

While the drug has gained increasing mainstream acceptance since several states decriminalized it—with many on the Left linking it to issues of criminal justice and racism—Booker likely was raising it as a last resort in the hope of shaking off his abysmal polling numbers, between 1 and 3 percent in most recent surveys.

“Marijuana in our country is already legal for privileged people,” Booker continued, “and it’s why the war on drugs has been a war on black and brown people.”

Biden took the bait, and rather than give a coherent defense of his drug policy, he launched into a tone-deaf response on his support within the black community. Even the far-left Mother Jones was appalled in its recap of the exchange.

“I come out of the black community,” Biden said.

“I have more people supporting me in the Black community because they know me, they know who I am,” he continued. “Three former chairs of the Black Caucus, the only African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate, a whole range of people.”

Although Biden was, presumably, referring to former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley–Braun, another of his Democratic opponents onstage, Sen. Kamala Harris, was quick to correct him.

Some have argued that Harris’s privileged upbringing as the daughter of college professors who were of Jamaican and subcontinental Indian descent makes her appropriation of the African–American experience problematic at best.

However, Biden—who has a long history of gaffes—said he simply misspoke.

Even so, media pundits from both the Right and Left panned the former vice president’s lackluster showing.

“Are we afraid to say that a lot of his sentences don’t make sense—that he’s having trouble completing thoughts?” asked MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a frequent Trump critic, on his Thursday morning show, according to The Week.

One of Biden’s former Obama administration colleagues, David Axelrod, was even harsher, referencing the comically blind and feeble cartoon character Mr. Magoo, according to Fox News.

“Biden, I wouldn’t say that he was a house of fire in any of the debates that we’ve been to,” Axelrod said on CNN. “And yet he comes—kind of bumps along, kind of Mr. Magoo-ing his way through this.”

Chris Martin, communications director for the conservative America Rising PAC, compiled a montage of Biden blunders and criticism from left-wing mainstream media sites about his “no good, very bad night” a day after writing that the stakes couldn’t be higher for Biden.

Recently, Biden has been eyeball-deep in criticism for his involvement in a Ukraine conspiracy that ultimately compelled Democrats to launch an impeachment probe against President Donald Trump for pressuring the country’s new president to investigate.

But while Democrats have largely ignored the parallels between Trump’s alleged quid-pro-quo arrangement and those made by Biden during the Obama administration, they have been less forgiving on the front-runner’s other vulnerabilities.

Both Booker and Harris have gone after Biden’s complicated relationship with racial politics in the past.

Biden has polled well ahead of other Democrats in the race within the black community—largely due to familiarity and name-recognition from his role in the Obama administration. But fellow left-wingers have criticized him for working with pro-segregationist Democrats early in his career and resisting bus policies that would have expedited school integration.

“There’s a saying in my community—you’re dipping into the Kool-Aid and you don’t even know the flavor,” Booker told Biden during the July debate, as reported by The Hill. 

He was likely referencing the Newark, New Jersey, black community—although Booker, the son of IBM executives, graduated from Stanford University, received a Rhodes Scholarship and later attended Yale Law School.

TMZ reported Thursday that Martin Luther King III also snubbed Biden while applauding Booker and Harris during a post-debate discussion. The debate took place in his famous father’s hometown of Atlanta.

Politico Founder Asks 2020 Dems: ‘Why Do You Suck So Badly?’

Ben Sellers
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‘All the candidates, to one degree or another, are laboring with a hovering perception … [that] their candidacies are suffering from fundamental infirmities…’

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Candidates during the first Democratic primary debate / IMAGE: America Rising PAC

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) It turns out President Donald Trump isn’t the only 2020 candidate chafing DC’s chattering class of deep-state bureaucrats.

On the morning of yet another Democratic primary debate, one of Politico‘s founding editors, John Harris, posed a provocative question that he said is on the minds of many in The Swamp: “Why do you suck so badly?”

Harris, who built his publication’s brand around its insider-knowledge of the Beltway elites and its ability to reach the eyes of Capitol Hill power-brokers, said the rumblings of malcontent Democrats were growing, which had prompted the recent entries of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick into the race.

Former President Barack Obama—whose wife, Michelle, also has been a source of frequent 2020 speculation—warned candidates not to veer too far into the “crazy stuff” believing that the echo chamber of social media was reflective of the national Zeitgeist.

On top of their ever-growing radicalism, all the Democratic candidates suffer from their own political baggage or enthusiasm gaps, which are sure to be weaponized and exploited in a no-hold-barred contest with Trump.

“The suckage factor is the unmistakable context of tonight’s Democratic debate in Atlanta,” Harris wrote in his column posted early Wednesday.

“All the candidates, to one degree or another, are laboring with a hovering perception among Democratic influentials that, for one reason or another, their candidacies are suffering from fundamental infirmities.”

Harris’s column proceeded to pick apart the four front-runners and then offer a more general critique of those lagging in the single digits.

● Sen. Elizabeth Warren: After Warren was broadsided last debate for lacking specifics in her Medicare for All plan, she spent the past several weeks crafting and pitching, her detailed plan—which would cost in excess of $20 trillion, while still leaving many doubts about the funding sources and hidden costs.

Harris neglected to mention what could be Warren’s greatest vulnerability in a general election against Trump: The years she spent pretending to be of Native–American ancestry and benefiting professionally from her fraudulent minority status. She is perceived by some centrist voters in battleground states to be disingenuous and phony.

● Mayor Pete Buttigieg: The latest addition to the front-runner’s circle, Buttigieg is a perceived moderate relative to others in the field. He has touted his veteran status and support for military issues, although in many other areas his positions have been extremist.

Harris said Buttigieg lacked the gravitas needed to make a convincing case. He already has taken fire from other Democrats over his lack of experience and the perception of “white, male privilege.”

Although able to pull off seeming “articulate and sensible beyond his years,” Harris said, “Many in that dreaded professional class still are not convinced that a 37-year-old small-city mayor can be taken seriously for the presidency.”

● Former Vice President Joe Biden: Biden has faced a nonstop stream of scandal since entering the race late this year.

While his groping of young women, his reputation as a fabulist, his past support for racist policies and his involvement in the Ukraine scandal that has enmeshed the current president are all major liabilities that Democrats have tried to downplay, Harris said the legions of politicos in his circles are more worried about Biden’s age and mental acuity.

But as the front-runner who just won’t seem to fade, Harris said Biden insiders suggested he’s trying to ride out the competition by simply embracing mediocrity. “Joe knows he doesn’t have to be the best on stage. He needs to be good enough,” the source told Politico. “The reality is the media makes a lot more of these debates than voters do. And it’s not like they’re real debates about policy. These are TV shows.”

● Sen. Bernie Sanders: Of the four leading candidates, the socialist-leaning Sanders seems to have the most entrenched base of support—and the least room to grow. Those who support him likely made up their minds to do so during the 2016 election, although he has seen some unlikely success in appealing to younger voters.

In addition to his age and health, Sanders’s personal charisma continues to be a liability—particularly as the younger and slightly more affable Warren continues to poach his ‘best’ material.

“He must walk a balance, distinguishing himself from Warren without shredding their nonaggression pact and potentially angering her backers,” wrote Harris. “He must stand out enough that he can’t be ignored in the media coverage.”

But the suggestion that Sanders turn on the charm with light anecdotes and humor may be about as likely as seeing him unveil his trickle-down tax-cut plan.

● The rest: Harris was less cynical about the dark-horse candidates, praising the last debate performance of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who “may have less novelty than Buttigieg but more credibility.”

He said the high expectations pinned to Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker early on may have run up against their personal limitations on the campaign trail.

As for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, entrepreneur Andrew Yang and hedge-fund investor/donor Tom Steyer, none interested the political elites in his sphere, but he praised them for each enlivening the discussion in a unique way.

“At a minimum, these people should enjoy their remaining time in the spotlight,” he said. “At best, there may be some openings to add to the top tier or kick someone else out of it”

Trump’s EU Ambassador Claims ‘Quid Pro Quo,’ then Crumples Under GOP Scrutiny

Ben Sellers
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‘Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew these investigations were important to the president…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Both Left and Right claimed victory following the under-oath claim Wednesday by Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, that President Donald Trump had placed conditions on a meeting involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Sondland was part of what House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., referred to as the “three amigos,” along with Energy Secretary Rick Perry and former NATO Ambassador Kurt Volker, who supported Trump’s Ukrainian interests outside of the conventional State Department channels.

During the fifth day public hearings in the Democrat-led impeachment investigation, Sondland—who said he was a lifelong Republican— acknowledged that he had worked cooperatively with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.

However, he denied that he had engaged in a “rogue diplomacy” and said he made every effort to keep agencies like the National Security Council and State Department apprised of his efforts in Ukraine.

“We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani,” Sondland said in his opening statement. “Simply put, we were playing the hand we were dealt.”

In fact, the self-dealing businessman said that he, personally, disagreed with many of the Ukraine directives from the Oval Office but complied for the sake of advancing Ukrainian and U.S. security interests.

Key among the rifts, Sondland said, was the alleged preconditioning of U.S. support for Zelenskiy on a public declaration that Ukraine was re-opening investigations into the 2016 election and the Burisma energy company, where former Vice President Joe Biden‘s son had, until earlier this year, been a board member.

“As a presidential appointee, I followed the directions of the president,” he said. “We worked with Mr. Giuliani because the president directed us to do so, [… but] we had no desire to set any conditions on the Ukrainians.”

Sondland said it was clear to him that Trump’s willingness to meet with Zelenskiy at the White House was tied to the two investigations.

“Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelenskiy,” he testified. “… Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew these investigations were important to the president.”

Less clear, he said, was that the provision of military aid in Ukraine’s fight against Russia was tied to the investigations. Yet, Sondland said that over the course of his involvement, he came to infer that this was the case.

“[I]n the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, I later came to believe that the resumption of security aid would not occur until there was a public statement from Ukraine committing to an investigation of the 2016 elections and Burisma, as Mr. Giuliani had demanded,” he said.

Dueling Takeaways

Trump's EU Ambassador Claims Quid Pro Quo, then Crumples Under GOP Grilling 1
Adam Schiff and Devin Nunes / IMAGE: C-SPAN via Youtube

Left-wing media responded by celebrating the supposed admission by a defector from Trump’s inner circle who could not be discounted, as most other witnesses have, as a deep-state, NeverTrump bureaucrat or partisan operative.

They touted his admission of any quid-pro-quo arrangement as a major breakthrough in their impeachment investigation.

Trump’s chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, previously seemed to acknowledge the preconditions but maintained that these were commonplace and not outside the realm of diplomacy.

Republicans have emphasized that Biden set a similar precondition on a billion-dollar U.S. loan to Ukraine, demanding that it fire the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma.

Steve Castor, the chief counsel for the GOP, noted that much of Sondland’s testimony seemed to be based around his presumptions rather than accurate recollections.

Sondland claimed he had been denied access to many of the crucial records he needed to fully prepare for the testimony.

“I’m not a note-taker or a memo writer … never have been,” he said.

Under further interrogation, he confessed that Trump had never personally discussed with him any sort of preconditions.

Several prominent GOP congressmen, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows, R-NC, tweeted that the nuanced admission eroded the Democrats’ argument.

In his opening statement, ranking minority member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., also attacked the shaky foundation and ever-shifting objectives that Schiff and others had set for their partisan effort to oust Trump.

“You have to give them points for their creativity in selling this absurdity as an impeachable offense,” Nunes said.

“… When the democrats can’t get any traction for their allegations of quid pro quo, they move the goalpost and accuse the president of extortion, then bribery, and at last resort, obstruction of justice,” he added.

While cautioning Sondland that he was caught in the middle of a smear campaign, Nunes noted the divisiveness of the proceedings had continued to erode public faith in government and democracy.

“They know exactly what kind of damage they’re inflicting upon this nation, but they’ve passed the point of no return,” Nunes said of the Democrats’ protracted efforts to smear Trump with a litany of now-debunked accusations and investigations. “… They’ve stoked a frenzy among their most fanatical supporters that they can no longer control.”

Whistleblower’s Lawyers Lash Out at Jim Jordan for Exposing Roles in Hoax

Ben Sellers
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‘#coup has started. First of many steps. #rebellion. #impeachment will follow ultimately…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The attorneys representing an “anonymous” whistle-blower (presumed to be partisan activist/CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella) lashed out at Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, for continuing to question their own ties to Left.

Andrew Bakaj has been linked to former Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough, who maintains close ties with Obama-era Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Clapper’s own partisan allegiances are well-documented.

He is known to have played a large role in leaking the false and salacious slanders against President Donald Trump that helped spur the Russia collusion probe that immediately preceded the current Ukraine conspiracy.

Ukraine Whistleblower's Lawyer Sends Cease-and-Desist Letter to White House
Andrew Bakaj/PHOTO: Twitter

Clapper, who is now a CNN commentator, has said he was following direct orders from President Barack Obama in helping engineer the hoax.

Clapper also may have had a hand in installing Ciaramella as a plant in the Trump White House after the Obama holdover had previously answered to national security adviser Susan Rice and is believed to have worked closely with former Vice President Joe Biden.

The current ICIG who replaced McCullough, Michael Atkinson, changed the agency’s policy to accept complaints based on secondhand information after coordinating with the so-called whistle-blower and reaching out directly to House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., instead of going through Justice Department channels.

Bakaj insisted, despite the evidence to the contrary, that he was contracted by the whistleblower and not working with a cabal of deep-state, partisan operatives.

His legal partner, Mark Zaid, also chimed in, The Hill reported.

But despite his suggestion that he has no partisan allegiances, Zaid previously issued tweets in which he vowed to “get rid of” President Donald Trump and claimed that a “coup” had begun.

The attorneys have aggressively pushed back against the disclosure of the whistle-blower’s identity, even sending a cease-and-desist letter to the White House with threats of legal repercussions. However, they have been unsuccessful in preventing private citizens from openly speculating based on the available evidence.

Jordan and other GOP members of the House Intelligence panel overseeing the impeachment hearings have kept pressure on Schiff for his farcical efforts to hide the identity, reneging on an earlier promise to have the whistle-blower testify.

Schiff has claimed that he, himself, does not know the whistle-blower’s identity, despite earlier tweets confirming that he and his staff had met with the individual.

However, the Washington Post fact-checking department has given him multiple “Pinocchio” ratings on those claims, as well as recently debunking the assertion that the whistle-blower had a statutory right to anonymity.

Strzok Used Unsecured Devices for Classified FBI Material

Ben Sellers
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‘The level of hypocrisy seen in your conduct is staggering and further calls into question your judgment…’

DOJ Agreed w/ Clinton Lawyers to Block FBI Access to Clinton Foundation Emails
Peter Strzok/IMAGE: YouTube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As the result of a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok, the Justice Department released a new document detailing the misconduct and bias that Strzok exhibited while leading investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails and the Russia collusion hoax.

A 27-page letter addressed to Strzok from the Office of Professional Responsibility highlights some of the 40,000 text messages Strzok exchanged with his mistress, FBI attorney Lisa Page, on bureau-issued phones that they either thought were untraceable or simply didn’t care.

“You were aware that your communications with [Page] on your FBI-issued phone were monitored and logged and admitted you could ‘envision a number of scenarios’  in which the disclosure of those messages would hurt the integrity of the FBI and the Clinton Email and Russia investigations,” said the letter from OPR Assistant Director Candice Will, citing an investigation by FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Technical Difficulties?

Although many of the damaging texts between the two FBI lovebirds have long been in the public record, the new document reveals more about the carelessness with which Strzok handled both his personal indiscretions and the sensitive FBI material that he was charged with safeguarding.

FBI's Trump Haters Under Probe for Leaks to Media
Peter Strzok & Lisa Page/PHOTOS: Justice Dept. & Ohio State U.

At the same time as he was using his FBI phone for embarrassing personal matters, Strzok also frequently used his unsecured email and devices to handle classified FBI material.

When investigators asked why Strzok failed to use secured machinery that he had been issued, he pleaded incompetence.

“You acknowledged you had been issued an FBI laptop to work from home but claimed you did not know how to properly log on to use the machine,” said the OPR letter.

As the Russia probe was intensifying, a month before Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey helped trigger the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to independently investigate it, the love affair between Strzok and Page was beginning to unravel.

In April 2017, the two exchanged messages on their FBI-secured phones to discuss the fact that Strzok’s wife, suspecting infidelity, had gained access to his personal accounts and devices.

    Strzok: [My wife] has my phone [] . Read an angry note I wrote but didn’t send you. That is her calling from my phone. She says she wants to talk to [you]. Said we were close friends nothing more.
    Page: Your wife left me a [voicemail]. Am I supposed to respond. She thinks we’re having an affair. Should I call and correct her understanding? Leave this to you to address?
    Strzok: I don’t know. I said we were [] close friends and nothing more. She knows I sent you flowers, I said you were having a tough week.

Strzok claimed to the inspector general that his wife’s access to the accounts was “unusual” and “limited,” also saying there were no classified work materials because he had “double deleted” them.

However, he evidently was much more careless with his own private secrets, failing even to take the security precautions that a typical teenager might take.

In a footnote referencing another text exchange between Strzok and Page, the OPR elaborated on exactly what Mrs. Strzok uncovered while perusing her then-husband’s devices:

    [Y]our wife had access to your devices and had located [Page]’s husband’s full name, found a hotel reservation ostensibly used by you and [Page] during a romantic encounter, had access to photographs from your phone, threatened to send all the information to [Page]’s husband, and also, threatened to hire a private investigator. [Page] told you to determine whether your wife might use recovery software to locate other evidence of your affair on your devices.

A Parallel Investigation

As the clumsiness of the love affair played out in comical fashion, the seriousness of the classified-information breach seemed to be an afterthought for the two top-level investigative officials.

Anthony Weiner
Anthony Weiner/IMAGE: Movieclips Indie via Youtube

Strzok’s own security foibles contrasted with the backdrop of classified material discovered on the laptop of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-NY, who was married to Hillary Clinton‘s personal assistant.

Strzok expressed to Page his disinterest in the new break in the Clinton case and appeared to slow-walk the investigation into it, both due to his political biases and a personal reluctance to travel to New York.

Rather than coordinate the investigation from the field, Strzok instead took a conference call and downplayed the importance of the discovery.

However, Strzok’s inaction led an agitated New York case agent to take his worries outside the FBI chain to a Justice Department U.S. attorney’s office.

After news of the Weiner emails broke, with only weeks to go before the 2016 election, Comey announced the reopening of the Clinton case, seeing no other option. Clinton supporters later scapegoated Comey and the FBI for her election loss due to the negative headlines.

Despite Strzok’s litany of excuses, the inspector general determined “there is no reasonable excuse for the FBI’s delay in following up on this matter.”

‘Immeasurable Harm’

The OPR letter to Strzok cites unprofessional conduct, security violations and dereliction of supervisory duty as the reasons for his termination.

“Your misconduct has cast a pall over the FBI’s Clinton Email and Russia investigations and the work of the Special Counsel [Mueller],” it said. “The immeasurable harm done to the reputation of the FBI will not be easily overcome.”

BARR: Mueller Expressed Never Disputed Accuracy of AG's Report Summary
William Barr / IMAGE: Senate Judiciary Committee

The letter also points out the irony in Strzok’s own lack of judgment and the parallels with the Clinton case, where he was investigating and criticizing others for similar circumstances.

“The level of hypocrisy seen in your conduct is staggering and further calls into question your judgment,” it said.

“Your impermissible use of your private email to conduct official FBI business in a matter that involved a possible misuse of a private server and email accounts to conduct government business created a strong likelihood that the public image of the FBI would be significantly tarnished, and the investigative conclusions of one of the FBI’s largest cases would be called into question,” it continued.

Attorney General William Barr, who is named in Strzok’s suit, released the document in the hopes of a dismissal of the case.

“It is because of those text messages, and the paramount importance of preserving the FBI’s ability to function as a trusted, nonpartisan institution, that Plaintiff was removed from his position, and not because of any alleged disagreement with Plaintiff’s viewpoints on political issues or Tweets from the President,” Barr’s motion said.

Strzok—along with Comey and FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe—are believed to figure prominently into a sweeping criminal investigation being led by special prosecutor John Durham that is expected soon to conclude.

REPORT: 8 States Have More Voters than Residents

Ben Sellers
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‘Although the issue has become politicized, the counties and states where voter registrations exceed 100% represent a wide cross-section…’

ICE Requests All North Carolina Voting Records Due to Non-Citizen Voters 2
IMAGE: WNCT-TV9 via Youtube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Concerns of voter fraud, already rampant following recent elections, are likely to become even more prevalent as the 2020 election approaches.

According to pollster and political analyst Scott Rasmussen, eight states currently have more registered voters than voting-age citizens.

The problem may be less nefarious than it seems—many come as the result of voters having died or moved away—paired with negligence on the part of voter registrars to regularly update and maintain their active voter lists.

“Although the issue has become politicized, the counties and states where voter registrations exceed 100% represent a wide cross-section of urban and rural counties, as well as areas dominated by Republicans and Democrats,” said RealClear Politics.

However, it is no less alarming when paired with other mechanisms for abuse that are designed to exploit the weaknesses in the system, such as Motor Voter laws that automatically register anyone who obtains a driver’s license—regardless of citizenship—and jurisdictions that actively resist voter ID laws and other verification methods.

In one of the most blatant abuses, Los Angeles County had 1.6 million more people on its voting rolls than actual, eligible residents, according to RealClear Politics’ latest calculations.

By comparison, Hillary Clinton was said to have won the popular vote in the 2016 election by only 2.8 million votes—a fact that the Left has long sought to use as a way to invalidate President Donald Trump’s election despite his decisive Electoral College victory.

Trump has questioned whether voter fraud may have played a substantial role in determining the popular vote and driving up Clinton’s numbers in major left-wing “sanctuary cities” such as L.A., San Francisco, Chicago and New York.

Although Los Angeles agreed to purge many of its inactive voters in a January settlement led by Judicial Watch, illegitimate voters are able to fly under the radar in other parts of the country.

Among the other states that stand out, according to RealClear Politics, is Kentucky, where defeated Gov. Matt Bevins recently conceded to a Democratic challenger in the state’s gubernatorial contest—despite Bevins’ insistence that rampant voter fraud played a role.

Of the Bluegrass State’s 120 counties, 48 exceeded the registration rolls, meaning 40 percent of the counties in the state had more voters than people, according to RealClear Politics.

Coincidentally, Kentucky’s secretary of state, Alison Lundergan Grimes, has been a highly partisan political operative and previously challenged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for his congressional seat.

The most comprehensive data cited by many seems to be a 2012 Pew Reasearch study that found 1.8 million dead voters and 2.75 million voters registered in multiple states. It said that, in total, 1 in 8 registrations was invalid for some reason

A separate study by the Public Interest Legal Foundation determined that 28 states had individual counties with registration totals higher than the population. However, Rasmussen reported the number to be 30.

Regardless of whether these discrepancies are overseen by conservative or left-leaning voter registrars, the threat to democracy is indisputable.

Socialist mega-donors like George Soros have adapted an approach of targeting hyper-localized municipal races in crucial areas where they may individually fly under the radar but help to put in place a radical infrastructure from the ground up as part of long-term efforts to flip statehouses and the U.S. Congress through redistricting.

The effects already have become clear in states like Virginia, where a recent election gave both chambers of the General Assembly to Democrats for the first time in 20 years after protracted efforts by far-left activists to flip the state.

Rep. Ilhan Omar Has Paid $370K to New Lover’s PR Firm Since Affair Discovered

Ben Sellers
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‘The Federal Election Commission essentially closed its doors so everyone knows they can pretty much do whatever they want to do…’

Ilhan Omar Calls Trump’s Border Wall a ‘Monument to Racism’
Ilhan Omar / IMAGE: @DrDavidDuke via Twitter

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has funneled $370,000 to the consulting firm of a man she allegedly cheated on her ex-husband with, the New York Post reported.

The new divorcée claimed recently that she was not seeing anybody, but the Post reported that Omar had been dating a married man, Tim Mynett, based on discussions with his wife, Dr. Beth Mynett and court documents filed in the couple’s divorce proceedings.

In April, according to the documents, the Mynetts separated after he revealed the affair with Omar, whom he met through his work for left-wing Democrats at the firm E Street Group.

Tim Mynett reportedly declared his love for Omar before leaving his wife, the mother of his 13-year-old child.

“Although devastated by the betrayal and deceit that preceded his abrupt declaration, Plaintiff  [Beth Mynett] told Defendant [Tim Mynett] that she loved him, and was willing to fight for the marriage,” said the documents. “Defendant, however, told her that was not an option for him.”

Even with divorce likely to weigh heavily on the two wayward couples’ finances, the arrangement thus far seems to have been a boon for Tim Mynett.

The Post said that when news of the affair first broke, Omar’s campaign already had paid his firm $223,000 for services such as “digital advertising, fundraising consulting and video production.”

Filings since then have revealed an additional $146,712.63 in payments.

Although watchdog groups like Public Citizen and the National Legal and Policy Center have tried to raise the alarm, there seems to be little interest in pursuing accountability at the overwrought, understaffed Federal Elections Commission.

“We have no election cop on the beat,” Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, told the Post. “The Federal Election Commission essentially closed its doors so everyone knows they can pretty much do whatever they want to do and that’s the status of our political system today.”

Already Omar has come under scrutiny with investigative authorities like the IRS and the FEC for blurring her personal affairs with her political coffers.

Some have accused her of committing tax fraud—and possibly immigration fraud—while claiming she was married to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, a British citizen at the time who is believed to be her brother. At the time, however, while supposedly married to Elmi, Omar continued to cohabitate and file taxes with her previous common-law husband, Ahmed Hirsi.

Omar later divorced Elmi, remarried Hirsi and continued having children with the latter before finalizing their divorce earlier this month.

However, in the wake of her romantic entanglements, Omar has been accused of using at least $3,000 in campaign expenses to cover a divorce lawyer, as well as other illicit reimbursements for things like travel and hotel accommodations.

Because her latest dalliance involves a contractor for her campaign, those expenses may come under further scrutiny. Six of the payments Omar made to the E Street firm, each exceeding $12K, were for travel expenses.

“On reflection Defendant’s more recent travel and long work hours now appear to be more related to his affair with Rep. Omar than with his actual work commitments, averaging 12 days per month away from home over the past year,” Beth Mynett wrote in her divorce filings.

Even if Omar is able to outmaneuver the government agencies probing her suspicious write-offs, another worry she now faces may be the House Ethics Committee, which has recently been busy with proceedings involving two other House Democrats, Reps. Katie Hill of California and Alcee Hastings of Florida.

Both were accused of maintaining inappropriate relationships with staffers following newly implemented congressional guidelines. Hill later resigned her seat.

Omar’s relationship with the Democratic leadership was strained after she faced intense criticism for a series of anti-Semitic tweets and public comments, prompting the House to pass an anti-hate resolution that, while watered-down from its original language, was a direct condemnation of her.

At least two other close allies of Omar’s in Congress, fellow “Squad” members Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY, also have faced tough questioning over allegations that they misused campaign funds during the 2018 election.

Tax-Cheat Al Sharpton’s Charity Reimburses Him for 13 Years of Salad Days w/ Massive Bonus

Ben Sellers
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‘For anybody else it would be laughable…’

Sharpton Targets the Jefferson Memorial
Al Sharpton/Photo by Elvert Barnes

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) For 13 years, the Harlem-based, charity-nonprofit National Action Network was stiffing its founder and figurehead out of more than a million dollars by underpaying him for his value.

So says that leader, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who retroactively gave himself a raise, according to the New York Post.

According to tax filings, Sharpton’s total compensation last year was $1,046,948, a substantial increase over 2017. Not only did he give himself a 32 percent raise–bringing his salary to $324,000, but he also received a bonus of $159,596 and reported “other compensation” of $563, 352.

It is unclear whether that compensation was related in part to the $531K Sharpton received last year for leasing the rights to his own life story to the charity should it wish to develop Sharpton’s tale into a movie. Also unclear: whether that movie would be a heist film.

On the plus side, after his years of being underpaid and receiving no bonus from NAN from 2004-2017, Sharpton seems to bear no ill-will toward his charity.

The two parties were in agreement that “he has now been fully compensated for all the years he was underpaid and received no bonus,” the Post reported.

Still, Sharpton seemed to suggest that perhaps the reason for his underpayment may have been related in some way to prejudice or racism.

“Fifteen years, you are talking about since 2004 when I came back after running for president,” he said. “For anybody else it would be laughable.”

He claimed the job required “several hours a day” with only one day off a week. Compared to other  similar nonprofits and companies, “that’s the salary that they would get,” Sharpton said.

After forgoing a salary in 2008, Sharpton has made more than six figures from the charity in each successive year, the Post said.

Meanwhile, both NAN—which pulled in aroud $7.3 million  last year—and Sharpton, individually, have been forced to pay off delinquent tax debts in recent years.

Sharpton last year paid off nearly $100K in state taxes to New York but still owes nearly $700K in taxes for three separate companies, the Post reported.

Schiff Deceives over ‘Corrupt’ (Obama-Backed) Ukraine Prosecutor

Ben Sellers
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‘Maybe I knew that once and have forgotten, but I’m not familiar with that now…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) If President Richard Nixon’s Watergate investigation spawned a generation of sloppy, biased journalists, then House Democrats’ Ukraine affair may well do the same for the legal field.

On Friday, House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Democratic counsel Daniel Goldman took turns asking leading questions and peddling misinformation during the impeachment-probe testimony of former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

Among the disgraceful tactics deployed was an attempt to smear the president and his supporters by linking them to a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor whom the Obama administration had a likely hand in promoting—and who was responsible for dropping an investigation against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

While Schiff claimed in his opening statement that Yovanovitch was “very direct, she made points very clearly and she was, indeed, tough on corruption”—citing the words of her replacement, acting Ambassador William Taylor—Yovanovitch herself came across as vague, tentative and noncommittal in her testimony.

She frequently seemed uninformed of the matters on which Goldman sought to solicit damaging sound-bytes in order to smear and undermine the decision-making of President Donald Trump.

“Maybe I knew that once and have forgotten, but I’m not familiar with that now,” she said after Goldman asked whether she was familiar with allegations Russian leader Vladimir Putin had made against Ukraine concerning interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

Regarding allegations of corruption that involved Joe and Hunter Biden advocating for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while it was under investigation—and ultimately pressuring officials to fire if the investigating prosecutor, Viktor Shokin—Yovanovitch also pleaded ignorance to the high-level discussions being conducted on her watch by the Obama administration.

“There have been rumors out there about things like that, but there was nothing hard—at least nothing that I was aware of,” she claimed.

Biden admitted in a 2018 panel discussion with the Council on Foreign Relations that he had pressed for Shokin’s firing.

Other hard evidence—based on open records requests by Hill columnist John Solomon—has revealed that many high-level discussions took place between Burisma representatives and Obama’s State Department officials.

Those included meetings with Burisma board members Hunter Biden and Devin Archer—a former senior adviser to then-Secretary of State John Kerry—with top State officials including Kerry.

Rather than address this evidence in Friday’s hearing, Schiff and Goldman sought to smear the reporter and imply that it was part of an intimidation effort led by Trump.

Schiff—in what surely would have brought an objection in a court of law—asked Yovanovitch point-blank if she felt tweets by the president defending himself had been designed to intimidate her and other witnesses in the sham hearing.

“I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is to be intimidating,” she said.

Prosecutor Shell Game

Both Goldman and Schiff also sought to exploit the public’s limited awareness of Ukrainian politics by conflating two former prosecutors-general.

Repeatedly, they invoked the name of Yuriy Lutsenko, seeking to link the Obama-backed prosecutor to Trump consigliere Rudy Giuliani.

Whistleblower Complaint Full of Contradictions, Evidence of Partisan Bias
Yuriy Lutsenko / IMAGE: Hromadske via Youtube

They attacked Lutsenko—who was installed during Yovanovitch’s tenure and largely overlapped with her time as Ukrainian ambassador—for his failure to prosecute corruption.

Ironically, it was Lutsenko who dismissed the investigation against Burisma. He was later cited by left-wing media such as Bloomberg—and by the official “whistleblower” complaint that triggered the investigation—as the source of claims that there was “no evidence” to support allegations against the Bidens.

Those claims have been widely repeated in the liberal media echo chamber, although there is a preponderance of evidence to contradict them.

Lutsenko—who does indeed have a long history of corruption linked to Ukraine’s liberal wing—later recanted his assertions but has continued to waiver on whether the Bidens were part of the official Burisma investigation.

Biden himself had high praise for Lutsenko in the same panel discussion where he admitted pressuring officials to fire Shokin.

“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Biden recalled. “Well, son of a b**ch, he got fired—and they put in place someone who was solid.”

President Trump, on the other hand, pressed for Lutsenko’s dismissal in the same July 25 phone call where he encouraged newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to beware of Yovanovitch. Lutsenko ultimately was ousted in August 2019.

Although Trump was unquestionably referring to Shokin in the July transcript as the fired prosecutor who was “treated very badly” by the Obama administration’s puppet Ukrainian government, during the Yovanovitch testimony, Goldman falsely suggested that it was Lutsenko—who was still in office then—whom Trump was rushing to defend.

As noted in the whistleblower document, Trump had previously praised Lutsenko during the short span of time that he acknowledged the Bidens were part of the investigation he had conducted into Burisma.

However, no evidence exists publicly to support the claim that he was working closely with Giuliani to smear Yovanovitch. Rather, contradictory evidence suggests that the corrupt prosecutor was largely allied with—and subject to pressure from—those supporting the Democrats’ efforts not to investigate Burisma.

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