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Christopher Steele

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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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.
Standard Podcast [ 14:44 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
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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.

 

Standard Podcast [ 8:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
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