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Clinton Crony Looms Large, Trump Embraces Shutdown, Parades & Priorities

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America relish enjoy watching the credibility of the Steele dossier implode even further now that disreputable Clinton fixer Sid Blumenthal is being implicated for feeding information to Steele.  They also shake their heads as President Trump says he would love a government shutdown unless he gets his way on border security just weeks after Republicans successfully convinced Americans that funding the government should not be contingent upon passing an immigration bill.  And they have no problem honoring the U.S. military with a parade as President Trump wants to do, but Jim says there are more pressing national security concerns, including long-term funding and pay raises.

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Memo Released, Now What?

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The memo alleging major missteps by the FBI and Justice Department will not likely result in criminal charges, but a former federal prosecutor says that doesn’t mean the issues at stake are any less serious and he says law enforcement officials have done a terrible job explaining the Russia investigation to the American people.

On Friday, the memo from Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee accused FBI and Justice Department officials of obtaining a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, or FISA, warrant on American Carter Page based on a discredited dossier.  They also allege officials failed to tell the FISA judge that the contents of the dossier had not been verified and that it had been paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

The GOP memo also quotes former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe as testifying the warrant never would have been issues without presenting the dossier as probable cause.

But is any of this likely to result in criminal prosecution?

“I doubt that they’ve committed a criminal offense.  More likely, what they’ve done is violate court rules and norms for the Justice Department’s performance when it refers evidence to the court and asks for use of the court’s processes like warrants,” said Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and a contributing editor at National Review.

McCarthy says prosecution in these cases is unlikely unless it rises to “an egregious level” of obstructing or perverting justice.  But he says these allegations are still serious and could carry some major repercussions.

“It’s a very serious matter and can be grist for all kinds of administrative discipline and even impeachment,” said McCarthy.

He says it’s the difference between abuse of power and criminal conduct.

“There are some varieties of abuse of power that we address in the criminal law but there are many we don’t.  That doesn’t mean that the abuses are less serious than crimes,” said McCarthy.

One of McCarthy’s greatest frustrations lies in what he sees as the FBI and Justice Department needlessly confusing the American people on what the Russia investigation led by Robert Mueller is all about.

McCarthy does not believe that the memo is grounds for scrapping the Mueller probe, but he says it’s understandable why people are reaching that conclusion.

“It’s the fault of the FBI and the Justice Department that they’re taking that position,” said McCarthy, who says the government announced a counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 campaign and that part of the probe would look at any Trump campaign officials who had improper ties to the Kremlin.

“That was a completely inappropriate thing to say publicly because the FBI and the Justice Department should never comment on whether investigations are going on and if they are going on what the focus on them is.  The government’s not supposed to talk about investigations,” said McCarthy.

“The real problem is that by doing it the way they did it, they conflated in the public mind the overarching Mueller mission…with this whole idea of a Trump-Russian collusion angle.

“And since in the public mind those two things are the same, then it’s perfectly understandable that people would say that if the Trump-Russia collusion angle is a complete fabrication and that a lot of it was built on this dossier, that Mueller’s investigation is illegitimate.  I don’t think that’s true but I can see how they feel that way.

They feel that way because of what the FBI and Justice Department said about this investigation, which was very misleading and very wrong,” said McCarthy.

The Democrats’ counter-memo is likely to be the next development in this political drama.  But McCarthy remains skeptical of their motivation in this investigation.

“What I’m afraid of is that it’ll just be a partisan political attack.  The reason I say that is not just because they’re Democrats and that’s what they do, although I must say on some level I do believe that.

“The other reason I’m fearful is that they were invited by the majority of the intelligence committee to make additions or changes to the [GOP] memo.  They really didn’t want to cooperate in it.  I think they just wanted to attack it in a partisan way,” said McCarthy.

McCarthy says there are only two possible reasons for Democrats not to cooperate and try to add the context to the memo that they claim is sorely missing.

“The fact they didn’t do that suggests to me either that it doesn’t exist or they would rather package it in a way that was more of a partisan attack than an effort to get out one document that more fully explained what we’re dealing with,” said McCarthy.

He also cautions Americans following the story to be prepared for frustrations at how difficult it is to make more information public, noting that intelligence investigations are necessarily secretive so as not to damage national security and intelligence interests.

In addition to the response from Democrats, McCarthy says the significance of the memo and more will depend on exactly the role the dossier played in securing the FISA warrant.

“If they had other information that would have supported the issuance of a FISA warrant, then the use of the Steele dossier is much less important.

“But if the Steele dossier was critical to getting the warrant issued, that means the government brought to a court information that was unverified and uncorroborated to get surveillance authority – in essence to spy on one presidential campaign with what turns out to be opposition research that was provided to the government by the other presidential campaign,” said McCarthy.

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Dissecting the Memo

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President Trump declassified the high anticipated memo from House Intelligence Committee Republicans on Friday, and the four-page summary of federal FISA abuses convinces former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli that the government manipulated the system for partisan purposes and that the entire FISA system must be reformed.
The memo casts a critical eye on actions taken by FBI and Justice Department officials since October 2016, the first time they obtained a foreign intelligence surveillance, or FISA, warrant to keep tabs on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page over concerns about his ties to Russia.
The committee Republicans contend the warrant to conduct surveillance on Page was based on a dossier compiled by avowed Trump critic Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent.  Furthermore, the memo says recently ousted Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe testified just weeks ago that the warrant would never have been issued without the dossier.
The head of the FBI’s counterintelligence unit, Bill Priestap, testified that the bureau had not even vetted the dossier before using it to obtain the warrant, telling lawmakers their corroboration efforts were in their infancy at the time the initial warrant was granted.
That information was not presented to the court, neither was the information that the dossier had been paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli III says one revelation stands out above the rest.
“The biggest single piece of this is that Deputy Director McCabe, no big fan of Donald Trump as best we can tell, testified a little more than a month ago that without the Steele dossier they would not have gotten the initial FISA warrant,” said Cuccinelli.
“Even today McCabe acknowledges that without that dossier information, which has now been largely discredited, they would not have gotten a warrant in this most super-secretive courts that we have in this country,” said Cuccinelli.
Cuccinelli has argued before the FISA court and says the shadowy way it functions ought to be the second biggest headline in this story.
“Is this super-secret court working in a way that we as American citizens are comfortable with?  I’m not, and I think this memo is going to educate a lot more Americans about what’s wrong with how this court works over and above the political gamesmanship that went on with it, coming out of the FBI in the 2016 presidential election,” said Cuccinelli.
The memo reveals that former FBI Director James Comey signed off on the pursuit of the FISA warrant and two renewals.  McCabe signed another, as did former Justice Department officials Sally Yates and Dana Boente.  Current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel probe headed by Robert Mueller, also authorized a renewal.
Cuccinelli says getting a renewal is much easier than getting the initial warrant since FISA court judges are inclined to continue what one of their colleagues already approved.  In addition, Cuccinelli notes that the FISA court approves more than 99 percent of all warrant requests.
“It’s overwhelming.  It would strike you as laughable.  It really begs the question of why do we bother having a court that’s supposed to act as an independent filter?” asked Cuccinelli.
Yet he says politicians keep approving the FISA system to keep functioning in the same way, including a multi-year reauthorization in recent weeks.
“Here you have all these people who have voted to let this process go through.  Virtually the majority in both parties has voted for this multiple times and now they’re upset about it,” said Cuccinelli.
Democrats worked feverishly to prevent public release of the memo – or at least delay it long enough to release their own counterpoints.  In addition to concerns about providing the full context, Democrats like Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat in the intelligence panel, and other federal officials expressed concern about exposing sources and methods in the memo.
Cuccinelli says those need to be feverishly protected but that nothing of that nature appears in the memo.
“There’s nothing in here and this wasn’t changed very much.  We understand there was one change made at Schiff’s request, but there’s nothing in here that touches on sources and methods other than the dossier itself and a Yahoo news article that was also informed by Chris Steele,” said Cuccinelli.
The bottom line, says Cuccinelli, is that a lot of people
“It is Monday morning quarterbacking but this is a constitutional republic and this is what we call accountability.  This does not make the decision-making in the FBI nor the use of the FISA court look very good in the rear view mirror,” said Cuccinelli.
He says Democrats will likely try to make the case that the warrant would have been issued apart from the dossier, regardless of McCabe’s testimony.  Indeed, the memo does mention that George Papadopoulos was being investigated in July of 2016.
Cuccinelli sees the probe of the Trump team and its alleged ties to Russia as a house of cards, and he says there’s only one reason it still has any oxygen.
“This is genuine conspiracy theory stuff.  The only reason it’s treated more respectably is because the media wants to.  They do it for the same reason they were all covering Donald Trump so thoroughly in the Republican primaries – ratings,” said Cuccinelli.
In the end, Cuccinelli suggests Democrats ask themselves a serious question.
“How would the Democrats feel if the Trump administration’s law enforcement arms were able to do this in the fall of 2020?  How do you think they would like?  I don’t think they would like it very much and I think it ought to be fixed before we get there,” said Cuccinelli.
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Brat Discusses End of Shutdown, DACA Fight, FISA Memo

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Senate Democrats abandoned their hopes of attaching an immigration bill to legislation to fund the federal government , but Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., warns a fierce fight over immigration policy is still coming that conservatives must win.

Brat also expounded upon why he and dozens of other House Republicans want to make public a FISA memo on FBI and Justice Department conduct in recent years.

However, the big story on Capitol Hill Monday was Senate Democrats agreeing to a GOP plan to fund the federal government through February 8 in exchange for a promise to start a debate on legislation to grant legal status and possibly a path to citizenship for people brought to the United States illegally when they were children.

Until Monday, Democrats has insisted upon immigration being tied to the funding, but Brat says reality smacked the minority party in the face since the government partially shuttered operations at midnight Saturday morning.

“I think they heard plenty of feedback coming back that said, ‘What are you guys doing?'” said Brat, noting the position of Democrats was tantamount to withholding pay for our military and funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program all for the sake of helping people in the U.S. illegally.

Brat says the untenable position of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, and other Democrats even overwhelmed efforts in the media to paint Republicans as responsible for the shutdown since they control the White House and both chamber in Congress.

“It’s amazing that you have to have a debate on who shut the government down.  You’ve got 95 percent in the House and the Senate on the Democrat side voting to shut it down.  If you forego rationality and language in the public square, that’s a hint where your society is,” lamented Brat.

In addition to wanting legislation to provide legal status for 800,000 people enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, Brat says Democrats wanted the provision with no conditions.

“They got out way over their skis.  They’re saying they want a DACA debate.  We’re going to have a DACA debate.  What they really mean is they want a clean, Democrat DACA bill and no border security,” said Brat.

It’s not just Democrats pushing for a generous DACA bill.  The so-called Gang of Six includes Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo.

The legislation they crafted with Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., not only grants permanent legal status to the roughly 800,000 DACA enrollees but to all people here illegally who are eligible for DACA but never signed up for it.  All of them would also be allowed to pursue a “pathway to citizenship.”

In addition, the parents of all of those people would also get legal status despite being responsible for the law-breaking to enter the U.S. in the first place.  All told, some 10 million people could gain legal status as a result of the Gang of Six bill.

The offsets in the legislation amount to very little.  The Gang of Six bill would tweak but not fundamentally change current chain migration and visa lottery policies and only allocate money to maintain existing border fencing.

Brat says that approach is reckless, and he is particularly frustrated about the lack of action on chain migration, which allows citizens to sponsor immediate and extended family members to come to the U.S. legally.

“You have all of the leading conspirators on the other side – Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Dick Durbin – all coming out against chain migration as early as five years ago.  They’ve totally switched sides,” said Brat.

Brat says the progression of legalizing DACA recipients and their extended families results in an economic nightmare.

“If you allow the DACA piece to go through that will have a lot of unintended consequences like chain migration and extended families.  That will lead to millions more, while we’re trying to get 20 million American citizens that have left the workforce back in the workforce,” said Brat.

“We’ve got to get all of our own citizens back in the labor force and then you see if you have a labor shortage.  The other key piece is we’re trying to move towards a rational skills and merit-based immigration system instead of the familial piece that has gotten us in this boat in the first place,” said Brat.

Brat also says following the Gang of Six prescription will result in another huge bill to pay for a nation already more than $20 trillion in debt.

“Who’s gonna pay the bill?  That’s where you get the issue: health care, if you’ve got two kids in public schools that’s $26,000 a year.  Every person in the country with a certain status is eligible for $40,000 of federal benefits a year.  That’s one of the reasons we’ve got a welfare crisis right now,” said Brat.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed to begin a DACA debate before government funding runs out again on Feb. 8.  Given the easy passage of the Gang of Eight bill in the Senate in 2013, passage of the Gang of Six bill seems likely.

That would put immense pressure on the House and President Trump to go along, but Brat says 2013-2014 proves stopping a bad bill is not impossible.

Brat should know.  His upset primary win over the sitting House majority leader in June 2014 was a major factor in derailing the Gang of Eight plan.

“It did blow up in the House.  I think there was an election that had something to do with it in Virginia’s seventh district.  I’ve heard rumors,” cracked Brat.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., is sponsoring a far different immigration reform plan.  He would grant legal status to DACA recipents with no pathway to citizenship.  He would also limit chain migration to spouses and children and ditch the visa lottery altogether.  His bill would authorize border wall construction but fails to appropriate money for it.

Brat says commitment to Goodlatte’s approach and a President Trump veto as a backstop gives amnesty opponents plenty of firepower.

“We need to start off strong with the Goodlatte bill.  Then you could have a debate between the Goodlatte bill and the Senate.  Then the president is the ultimate veto threat, so a lot of it is going to depend on where President Trump comes down on this,” said Brat.

Brat is also one of several dozen House Republicans who have seen the FISA memo from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that GOP members describe as alarming “alarming” to “stunning” to sure to land people in prison.  While specifics are still under wraps, the four-page memo focuses on alleged FISA abuses by the FBI and Justice Department during the 2016 campaign.

The top Democrat on the intelligence panel, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., says the memo should not be released because the American people will not be able to understand it without the supporting documentation.

Brat says the memo should be made public because the people have the right to make up their own minds about what’s in it and what the fallout should be.

“We’re a democratic republic.  The people are our boss.  We’re not the boss. Maybe he got his eighth grade civics upside down but I still believe in the good old school stuff where the people are my boss and I’m going to let them see the information, let them make up their mind, and then I’m going to represent them.  That’s my job,” said Brat.

Despite the strong adjectives used by other Republicans, Brat says he is not worried about the memo being over-hyped.

“There’s something just very, very wrong at the highest levels of our Justice Department,” said Brat.  “I’m not too worried about the over-hype on this.  You cannot over-hype any corruption at all in the highest levels of government.”

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Dems Feel Heat on Shutdown, FBI Loses Key Emails, Paul Attacker’s Bogus Reason

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Chatting before the much-anticipated Senate vote to end the government shutdown, Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are glad to see Democrats feeling the heat on refusing to fund the government and taking some steps to get things fully up and running, but they also warn listeners what Democrats and some Republicans really want in an immigration bill to go along with reopening the government.  They also don’t believe the FBI’s explanation that it somehow lost five critical months worth of text messages from Peter Strzok, the agent fired form the Mueller special counsel team and bragged about an “insurance policy” against a Trump victory.  And they also call BS on the explanation from Sen. Rand Paul’s neighbor for attacking Paul, namely that the senator was assaulted from behind and had five ribs broken because he was stacking brush close to their shared property line.

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Rep. Jordan Details Pursuit of Truth on Dossier, Unmasking

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Rep. Jim Jordan says the connection between the Democrats and an anti-Trump dossier is well established and he says the big questions now are whether the dossier was the grounds for a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on the Trump campaign and whether the FBI and Justice Department used it as an “insurance policy” against a Trump presidency.

Last week, Jordan and other lawmakers grilled Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team, with a special emphasis on recently fired FBI official Peter Strzok and recently demoted Justice Department official Bruce Ohr.

Strzok was fired by Mueller, allegedly for his barrage of anti-Trump text messages to his mistress, FBI attorney Lisa Page.  However, in addition to the political chatter came a Strzok text suggesting he expected Trump to lose the election but was planning to take action if the GOP nominee won.

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” texted Strzok.  “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” he added in a text dated Aug. 15, 2016.

Jordan thinks there is a major story behind that text and likely explains why Mueller kicked Strzok to the curb in the Russia probe.

“Remember, Peter Strzok is Mr. Super Agent Guy at the FBI.  He ran the Clinton (email) investigation, interviewed (Cheryl) Mills, (Huma) Abedin, and Sec. Clinton.  He’s the guy who did the famous exoneration letter that changed the term ‘gross negligence’ – a crime – to ‘extreme carelessness.’  He’s also the guy who ran the Russia investigation and interviewed Mike Flynn.

“So he gets kicked off the Mueller team  and we’re told it’s because of anti-Trump text messaging and Lisa Page.  My belief is it’s got to be more than that.  Because as I said in committee a couple of weeks ago, if you kicked everyone off the Mueller team who is anti-Trump, you wouldn’t have anybody left,” said Jordan.

So what might be the real reason for Strzok’s dismissal?

“It has to be something more and my contention is it goes to the dossier, the dossier that I believe was used for securing the warrants to spy on Americans, the dossier that was put into the application that was taken to the FISA court to get warrants to spy on Americans associated with the Trump campaign.

“I believe Peter Strzok, who was the deputy head of counterintelligence at the FBI and ran both the Clinton and Russia investigations, probably has his fingerprints all over that application,” alleged Jordan.

While Strzok’s direct involvement with the dossier has yet to be proved, Jordan says the FBI’s connection to the dossier seems pretty clear.

“Did they pay Christopher Steele, the guy who wrote the dossier?  It’s been reported that he was reimbursed by the FBI.  Why are they paying the guy who was paid at the same time by the Clinton campaign.  If the answer to that question is yes, I think that shows that this took place,” said Jordan.

He says the rest of the money trail is very well established.

“The Clinton campaign and the DNC paid Russians to influence the campaign.  They paid the law firm, who paid Fusion GPS, who paid Christopher Steele, who took that money and paid Russians to get false information that was used to go get warrants to spy on Americans.

Jordan adds that if the FBI did pay for the dossier, the other lingering question is even more troubling.

“If that in fact happened, that definitely shows there was an effort to go after the Trump people and the Trump campaign with this ridiculous report the Clinton campaign paid for that we call a dossier,” said Jordan, who is stunned that Mueller is spending all his energies looking at possible crimes on the GOP side of this campaign.

“[The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee] paid Russians with campaign dollars to influence the election and what’s Mueller’s investigation looking at?  The other campaign,” said Jordan.

When it comes to Bruce Ohr, at first blush there appears to be circumstantial evidence of impropriety, as a result of Ohr’s consultation with Fusion GPS Co-Founder Glenn Simpson and the revelation that Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS during the final months of the campaign.

Jordan says it goes a lot deeper than that.

“His wife not only worked there, she was hired specifically for the Russian project.  Second, Bruce Ohr met with Christopher Steele during the campaign.  So at the same time the DNC is paying Christopher Steele to put together this dossier, he’s also meeting with a top Justice official.  That’s kind of strange,” said Jordan.

But he says the unlikely coincidences keep coming, mostly notably the post-election meeting between Ohr and Simpson.

“Did they meet to get their story straight and get their story straight and figure out, ‘We did this.  What do we have to do to correct it and get our story straight.’  Or – maybe and – did they meet to say, ‘Maybe it’s time to double down.  Maybe it’s time to go after President-Elect Trump,” said Jordan.

Jordan is increasingly confident his suspicions are correct given that the “unmasking” of Trump campaign officials began during the transition period.

“Never forget, it was during the transition, from Election Day until Inauguration Day, that we started to see all of this unmasking and all of these leaks from the intelligence community,” said Jordan, suggesting that timeline alone requires detailed testimony from Ohr.

Jordan says Congress will continue to pursue answers, beginning with deposing Strzok, Ohr, Page, and Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.  He also wants to see the FISA application and what evidence was submitted to obtain warrants.  He also wants all of this to take place in public so the American people can evaluate the facts for themselves.

The congressman also demands a second special counsel to look into all this since – if there’s any fire to the smoke – the Justice Department and FBI are incapable of investigating the matter.

“I don’t like special counsels.  I never have.  But I don’t know any other remedy,” said Jordan.

 

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FBI Informant Cleared to Testify, Sandy Hook Shooter Warnings, Kid Rock Bails

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America enjoy a late lunch today as they cheer the Justice Department for allowing the FBI informant to testify about his knowledge of a massive Russian bribery scheme to influence U.S. nuclear policy.  They’re also exasperated as FBI files show people warned authorities about the Sandy Hook shooter’s fascination with mass killings and pedophilia and his specific statements about killing his mother and students.  And they react to Kid Rock announcing he is not running for Senate and never had any intention of doing so, but Him explains why he thinks that explanation is bogus.

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Lawyer for FBI Informant Talks Russia Uranium Probe

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The lawyer for a former FBI informant who gathered evidence of a massive Russian bribery scheme to influence U.S. nuclear policy during the Obama administration says it is illegal for the government to prevent her client from speaking to Congress about what he knows.

She also says her client’s revelations went largely ignored by the FBI for political reasons and that he was threatened with criminal prosecution by the Justice Department under former Attorney General Loretta Lynch if he ever spoke publicly about the case.

Victoria Toensing has been representing the unnamed informant for the past several weeks.  Toensing is a former deputy assistant attorney general and a former federal prosecutor.  She is now a partner in the Washington law firm of diGenova & Toensing.

She says this whole saga began more than eight years ago.

“My client began working with the FBI in 2009 after he was contracted with the Russian company in the nuclear business.  All of a sudden, he was asked to take part of his salary and give it as kickback money in bribes.  They didn’t say it that way.  They just said take part and pay this person, pay that person.  So he went to the FBI.  He was appalled,” said Toensing.

“The FBI saw an opportunity and they said, ‘Work undercover for us.’  So he thought he was being a good American and he reported not only the payoffs – that was just run of the mill corruption, it’s bad corruption – but also it was important for the government as a counterintelligence measure to get information about what the Russians were doing,” said Toensing.

Toensing says her client fed volumes of information to the FBI only to learn the bureau did nothing with it.

“So that started in 2009.  Can you imagine my client’s surprise when he finds out in October 2010 that the U.S. government authorized the purchase by these corrupt companies of a company [that provided] 20 percent of the uranium for the United States?” said Toensing.

The informant was dumbfounded.

“‘Why did this go through?  Why did this happen?  Look, I’ve been giving you all this information,’ he says to his FBI people.  They kind of rolled their eyes and one of them said, ‘Politics,'” said Toensing.

No prosecutions occurred in the case until 2014 and Toensing says even then the worst penalties amounted to a slap on the wrist.  The ordeal took a much uglier turn when the Justice Department refused the informant’s request for reimbursement.

“My client was never given the money back that he paid out from his own salary that the FBI had promised to give him, so he brought suit in 2016,” said Toensing, who was not representing him at that time.

“When he filed this suit, the Loretta Lynch Justice Department called his lawyer and threatened him and said, ‘If you don’t withdraw this lawsuit, we’re going after your liberty and reputation,” she added.

The Justice Department staked its argument on the non-disclosure agreement, or NDA, that the informant signed when first agreeing to funnel evidence to the FBI.

“They said, ‘You signed a non-disclosure agreement when you started working and you will be violation of that non-disclosure agreement, and we will prosecute you for that,'” said Toensing.

In decades of legal work, Toensing says she’s never come across a threat like that over an NDA.

“I’ve never heard of a criminal penalty in a non-disclosure agreement.  It’s usually a civil penalty, a $25,000 fine or something,” said Toensing, who also says there almost always exceptions to the NDA, such as court subpoenas or congressional testimony.

Furthermore, she says the Justice Department won’t even allow her client to see his NDA.

“How do I know?  When the lawyer in 2016 filed a [Freedom of Information] request to get that non-disclosure agreement, the government refused to answer, wouldn’t even respond,” said Toensing.

The effort now is to waive the terms of the NDA.  Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is formally inviting Toensing’s client to testify and also asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to release him from the NDA to testify.

Toensing says if given the opportunity, her client’s testimony will be “significant” but she doesn’t see how the testimony can legally be blocked.

“It’s a constitutional issue.  The executive branch can’t forbid someone from giving information to the legislative branch.  That’s a separation of powers issue,” said Toensing.

When asked if Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the probe into Russian involvement in the 2016 elections could complicate his decision on Grassley’s request for the informant to testify, Toensing says it is vital no to intertwine or conflate the two matters.

“No, no, no, no.  Don’t do this.  This is not all things Russia.  I haven’t met a reporter yet who understands this, which shows you how good the Democrats are in their talking points.

“Jeff (Sessions) recused himself because he was involved in the campaign and there’s a specific Justice Department guideline that says if the campaign is being investigated, if you participated in the campaign you have to recuse yourself.  This is not all things Russia,” said Toensing.

She says Trump could also release her client from his NDA.

While on the subject of recusal, Toensing says former FBI Director Robert Mueller ought to step aside as special counsel following the revelation from the informant that the FBI sat on the Russian corruption while Mueller was in charge.

Toensing says that alone is not evidence of any misdeeds by Mueller, but she says the mere appearance of impropriety should lead him to step away from the investigation.

In addition, she says the virtual media blackout on this story since the explosive reports emerged earlier in the week is stunning.

“Gosh, it’s just amazing.  I was told by a friend of mine that knows something about this that he approached CNN and they said, ‘No, we don’t want to do it.’

“I was called by CNN [Thursday] just to give some facts.  At the end, I said, ‘Well, why don’t you have me on.’ ‘Oh that’s a good idea.  We’ll get back to you,'” said Toensing.

“Jake Tapper had (former Attorney General) Eric Holder on the other day after this story broke and didn’t even ask him if he had been briefed on the corruption investigation.  He didn’t even ask him.  He calls himself a journalist?” said Toensing.

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WV Gov. Joins GOP, Mueller Calls Grand Jury, Wasserman-Schultz Cries Wolf

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America welcome West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s decision to flip to the Republican Party, giving the GOP control of the governor’s office in 35 states.  They also wade through the implications of Special Counsel Robert Mueller creating a grand jury for his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign.  And they unload on former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz for her shameful efforts to protect herself and her former IT staffer from a criminal investigation by alleging anti-Muslim bias by the FBI.

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Wray Replaces Comey, Trump’s Personnel Problem, ‘Paddy Wagon’ Politics

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud the Senate for approving Christopher Wray as the new FBI director with virtually no drama. They also discuss Rep. Mike McCaul’s reluctance to be considered to lead the Department of Homeland Security.  While many border security advocates are not fans of McCaul, Jim wonders whether Trump’s public criticisms of administration figures will convince qualified people to pass on chances to serve.  And Jim and Greg react as you might expect after the author of a Washington Post opinion piece slams President Trump for his use of the term “paddy wagon” in a speech,” claiming it is a slur against the Irish that should not be part of civil discourse.

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