Mueller dismisses top FBI agent in Russia probe for anti-Trump texts

7,768,999 Views | 49440 Replies | Last: 13 hrs ago by aggiehawg
benchmark
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AG
Another excellent read by Andrew McCarthy

Clinesmith's Guilty Plea: The Perfect Snapshot of Crossfire Hurricane Duplicity
Quote:

Among the branch's responsibilities, it reviews FISA warrant applications. The Carter Page applications, however, were handled in an unusual way. Details of the applications were scrutinized at the highest levels of the FBI and the Justice Department, to the point that the National Security branch's once-over became superfluous.

For example, Trisha Anderson, the OGC's former deputy general counsel, told the House Intelligence Committee in 2018 testimony that, though she normally reviewed FISA warrant applications before they went to the upper ranks for statutorily required sign-offs, she did not do that with the October 2016 Page application. By the time it landed on her desk, it had already been reviewed "line by line" by such superiors as the FBI's thendeputy director Andrew McCabe, as well as by thendeputy attorney general Sally Yates at Main Justice. It had even been perused by Anderson's OGC superior, General Counsel Baker. Baker conceded to the committee that it was unusual for him to review a FISA warrant application, particularly at an early stage, as he did with the Page application.

In the chain of command, Clinesmith ranked a few notches lower than Anderson: He reported to the National Security branch chief, who reported to Anderson, after which the chain ascended to Baker, McCabe, and ultimately Director James Comey. That is, Clinesmith was a junior officer support personnel. The decision to represent to the FISC that Page was a Russian spy had been made way above his pay grade. The bosses were so invested in it, they were relying on it to investigate the sitting president of the United States. And just a few weeks earlier, when the president fired Comey in May 2017, a special counsel had been appointed to take over the investigation. The Mueller team's mandate from the deputy attorney general was to get to the bottom of links between the Russian regime and former Trump-campaign advisers, such as Page.

This was not a train Clinesmith could have started or stopped on his own. Nevertheless, he was all in.

Tibbers
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Well doesn't that sound like Clinesmith leads to the rest?
will25u
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Just going to put this here. Another hit job on President Trump.

Showtimes 2 episode mini-series based on nobody's homie Comey's book.

will25u
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Barnyard96
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AG
will25u said:

Just going to put this here. Another hit job on President Trump.

Showtimes 2 episode mini-series based on nobody's homie Comey's book.


Rapier108
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Jeff Daniels is an awesome actor. Too bad he is another deranged leftist.
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." - Sir Winston Churchill
Zombie Jon Snow
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Rapier108 said:

Jeff Daniels is an awesome actor. Too bad he is another deranged leftist.

He did an incredible job in docudrama The Looming Tower as John O'Neill, the real chief of the New York FBI's Counterterrorism Center in the years after the first WTC bombing and leading up to 9/11. The 10 part miniseries on Hulu shows all the intelligence mistakes and inability to work together that let the pilots slip through and the plot to go undetected.

He was nominated for an Emmy for the role.


aggiehawg
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Quote:

But who were these "certain members"? The IG report identified one as "Case Agent 1," and about six months ago, The New York Times outed Somma as Case Agent 1. (The IG report also revealed that Case Agent 1 was Stefan Halper's handlermore on that connection later).
Following Somma's naming of Case Agent 1, there has been scant mention in the media or in congressional oversight hearings about his role in Spygate. But the reference in Clinesmith's plea agreement to other members of the Crossfire Hurricane team having received the memorandum detailing Page's work with the other intelligence agency suggests Somma's conduct may also be a focus of the Durham probe. While there have been no leaks from Durham's team to forecast what will come next, revisiting the IG report, in light of Clinesmith's plea, provides a hint.

One of the 17 substantial errors or omissions IG Horowitz detailed was the omission of "information the FBI had obtained from another U.S. government agency detailing its prior relationship with Page, . . ." In the 400-page report, the IG elaborated on this omission, explaining that "on or about August 17, 2016, in response to the Crossfire Hurricane team's prior Carter Page name trace request," "the Crossfire Hurricane team received a memorandum from another U.S. government agency detailing its prior interactions with Page, including that Page had been approved as an 'operational contact' for the other agency from 2008 to 2013.

The memorandum also detailed the information that Page had provided to the other agency concerning his prior contacts with certain Russian intelligence officers."

The IG report added it found "no evidence" that, prior to submitting the first FISA application, the Crossfire Hurricane team "requested additional information from the other agency" concerning Page's relationship. (That did not occur until Page went public about his relationship with the intelligence community and Clinesmith was directed to investigate Page's claims.)
Quote:

Additionally, no one from the Crossfire Hurricane team provided attorneys from the National Security Divisionthe division that assists with FISA applicationsthe August 17, 2016, memorandum or informed them of that memorandum's contents. That information was "highly relevant to the potential FISA application," according to the IG report. Further, the "FISA request form" Case Agent 1 prepared did not include information received "relating to Page's prior relationship with that [other intelligence] agency and prior contacts with Russian intelligence officers."

But it was not merely that no one shared that information with the NSD: The IG report expressly stated that "in late September 2016," an attorney with the Office of Intelligence who was "assisting on the FISA application," "explicitly asked" Case Agent 1 "about Page's prior relationship with this other agency." And that "Case Agent 1 did not accurately describe the nature and extent of the information the FBI received from the other agency."
Quote:

Case Agent 1's statement was inaccurate in several respects, as the IG report detailed. Specifically:
Quote:

In response to a question from the OI Attorney in late September 2016 as to whether Carter Page had a current or prior relationship with the other agency, Case Agent 1 stated that Page's relationship was 'date' (when Page lived in Moscow in 2004-2007) and 'outside scope.'

This representation was contrary to the information the other agency provided in its August 17, 2016 memorandum to the FBI, which stated that Page was approved as an operational contact of the other agency from 2008 to 2013 (after Page had left Moscow). . . .

Moreover, rather than being outside the scope of the FISA application, Page's status with the other agency overlapped in time with some of the interactions between Page and known Russian intelligence officers alleged in the FISA applications. Further, Page provided information to the other agency about his past contacts with a Russian intelligence officers (Intelligence Officer 1), which were among the historical connections to Russian intelligence officers that the FBI relied upon in the first FISSA application (and subsequent renewal applications) to help support probable cause.



Read the rest.

LINK
aggiehawg
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AG
More from Cleveland:

Quote:

Recall that the IG report maintained "the FBI first received reporting from Christopher Steele regarding alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections in early July 2016," but the Crossfire Hurricane team "did not become aware of the Steele reporting until September 19, 2016." But before then, only Steele's handler and select agents in the New York Field Office knew of Steele's reporting.

You know where Somma worked before joining the Crossfire Hurricane team in D.C. in August 2016? The FBI New York Field Office, where he served as a special agent for counter-intelligence with a focus on Russia.

The New York Field Office received Steele's reporting in July when Steele's handler, FBI Agent Michael Gaeta, on July 28, 2016, sent Steele's first two memos to the assistant special agent in charge of the New York field office. While the assistant special agent in charge assured Gaeta the reports would be "walled off" from agents in New York field office, might Somma nonetheless have known of Steele's reporting? Was that why he was so anxious to obtain a FISA warrant on Page?
Somma's in some real trouble here.

Quote:

The plea agreement noted that the August 17, 2016, memorandum on Page was provided to "certain members of the Crossfire Hurricane team," meaning more than one. Further, the IG report stated that "on September 28, 2016, the OI Attorney emailed Case Agent 1 a draft of the FISA application, copying other members of the Crossfire Hurricane team. As noted above, in a comment in the draft application, the OI Attorney asked 'do we know if there is any truth to Page's claim that he has provided information to (another U.S. government agency)was he considered a source/asset/whatever?"
fasthorse05
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Not to be pessimistic here, but that whole "intent" thing appears to be the main issue, which always seems to be the case with the Dems.

Everyone here knows the "intent", but hopefully,, our West Texas attorney assigned to investigate Mueller's team will be able to ascertain "intent" from other members of the team, which will likely have very vague and foggy memories.
benchmark
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Occasionally, I have to refresh my memory on why Page FISA's were so egregious despite him being such a small fish. Page's FISA captured all his texts/calls/emails going back years ... but more importantly, they were using the 2-hop and 3-hop to surveil Trump's entire campaign, transition, and presidency..

Good refresher FYI .....Bill Barr: Of Course the FBI Used the Carter Page FISA Warrant to Spy on the Trump Campaign
Quote:

.... the FISA warrant did not merely allow the surveillance of Page. It is a "two hop" or "three hop" surveillance warrant. Everyone Page communicated with was subject to surveillance and everyone those people communicated with was subject to surveillance. The reason the FISA warrant was requested on Pageand renewed twice despite it producing no evidence whatsoever of Page working for or with a foreign government (easy proof-Page was not charged with any crime or used as a cooperating witness in any prosecution) was, as Barr said, to allow surveillance to be conducted of first the Trump campaign, then the transition team, and finally of members of the Trump administration.
Rapier108
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Zombie Jon Snow said:

Rapier108 said:

Jeff Daniels is an awesome actor. Too bad he is another deranged leftist.

He did an incredible job in docudrama The Looming Tower as John O'Neill, the real chief of the New York FBI's Counterterrorism Center in the years after the first WTC bombing and leading up to 9/11. The 10 part miniseries on Hulu shows all the intelligence mistakes and inability to work together that let the pilots slip through and the plot to go undetected.

He was nominated for an Emmy for the role.
Yep, he did a good job in it.

It was good, except for trying to blame Bush for noting paying enough attention to Al-Qaeda.

Loved him in Gettysburg and Gods & Generals.

But we digress so back to the topic at hand and to make this post relevant, Comey is still a POS.
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." - Sir Winston Churchill
will25u
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Bonfire1996
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I love that Comey quote, and Barr/Durham should too.

- A "bunch" of people, huh? Define "bunch"
- interesting characterization stating "the right thing." Why didn't you say something like "lawful" or "legal" or "justified?" Why did you feel the need to characterize your actions in "right vs wrong" instead of "legal vs illegal" because the context of Durham/Barr/Clinesmith et al is purely "legal vs illegal"
fasthorse05
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It's taken several years, but I'm beginning to believe Comey may have malformed mind.

There just aren't that many people who can come across as 100% sold on his illegal actions as he does. In that sense, he's a VERY good poster child for the Left.

"It may not be legal, but it's right in my mind, and my party's mind, so screw the law, I can't be indicted", or something like that!
whatthehey78
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fasthorse05 said:

It's taken several years, but I'm beginning to believe Comey may have malformed mind.

There just aren't that many people who can come across as 100% sold on his illegal actions as he does. In that sense, he's a VERY good poster child for the Left.

"It may not be legal, but it's right in my mind, and my party's mind, so screw the law, I can't be indicted", or something like that!
Worked with a fellow who basically has/had the same mentality, i.e., "rules are for other people".
OPAG
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Quote:

Worked with a fellow who basically has/had the same mentality, i.e., "rules are for other people".

Comey has a self righteous arrogance about him that make the Pharisees seem humble!
"only one thing is important!"
aggiehawg
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AG
Part 2 of McCarthy's analysis of Clinesmith deal.

Quote:

In his false-statement charge against Clinesmith, Connecticut U.S. attorney John Durham does not allege that the former bureau lawyer was personally aware, prior to the first FISA warrant application, that Page had been a CIA informant. But Clinesmith certainly was told about it in June 2017, before the FBI applied for the fourth warrant. He was also told that the CIA had informed the FBI about Page's status back in August 2016. Despite having that information, the bureau's investigative team had never disclosed it to the FISC in applying for the first three warrants. Disclosing it now while mulishly seeking a fourth warrant against Page would be humiliating.

But that was the dilemma: Either admit that corruption or incompetence explained an inexcusable concealment of information from the FISA court, or try to concoct some rationalization that could harmonize the FBI's representations with the contradictory CIA information, even if that required obfuscation. Sadly, when one studies the inexcusable conduct of the Trump-Russia probe, it is not surprising that Clinesmith went with the second option. The bureau, abetted by the Justice Department, desperately wanted to convince itself that there was no need to make an embarrassing disclosure. In that mindset, silence (i.e., doing nothing) is orders of magnitude easier to rationalize than a confession of inexplicable error that one knows will be met with condemnation.

"But wait a second," you're saying to yourself. "I've read about the case. As I understand it, the CIA told Clinesmith in an email that Page was a CIA source, and then Clinesmith altered the email to say Page was not a CIA source. There's no way to rationalize that. It's a black-and-white lie."
Quote:

Alas, things are never that straightforward. When intelligence agencies interact, opaque code is standard fare. And where there is coded language, which two different agencies might claim to construe slightly differently, there is opportunity for mischief especially if a lawyer is involved. Clinesmith and his superiors exploited that opportunity.

And Clinesmith reprised the sleight of hand in last week's "I did it, but I didn't do it" guilty plea.
Quote:

Your Rosetta Stone for this legerdemain is the term "digraph." It refers to a two-letter designation that denotes some kind of status. A good example of a well-known digraph is CI, which means "confidential informant" in law-enforcement parlance.

In connection with Clinesmith's case, we're talking about a digraph that the CIA uses in its intelligence reports. The digraph remains classified. We are not told what the two letters are in either the criminal information against Clinesmith or the DOJ inspector general's FISA abuse report (where most of the Clinesmith story is related at pages 24756, with the SSA referred to as "SSA 2"). We are informed only that the digraph denotes an American who has been approved by the CIA for "operational contact" with a foreign power.
Quote:

When you encounter "(digraph)," then, understand that it is a CIA term, defined as an American who is tasked by the CIA to have contact with certain foreigners and who wittingly reports the resulting intel back to the CIA. To understand the game that Clinesmith is playing, it is vital to remember this definition of digraph. The key to his defense is to feign confusion about the term's meaning conflating it, as we shall see, with nonvoluntary sources who unwittingly give information to the CIA.
Yeah right. The guy was the FBI's point man with the CIA but didn't understand the lingo. Reminds me of a certain Secretary of State who didn't know that a "C" meant "classified.

Quote:

The last thing Clinesmith wanted was to be told by the liaison that Page was a witting CIA source. He was looking for some reason, any reason, to avoid learning that a concept the law refers to as conscious avoidance, or willful blindness. Probably without realizing she was doing it, the liaison gave Clinesmith the out he was looking for by using the word encrypt. Clinesmith proceeded to seize on encryption as a rationale for interpreting the digraph as an analogy to the FBI's masking situation where the bureau, in writing reports, encrypts the identity of an American who is incidentally monitored and does not intentionally provide information to the U.S. government.

Manifestly, this is not an honest reading of what the CIA liaison said. And Clinesmith knows it. The liaison was not talking about all circumstances in which the CIA encrypts an American's identity; she was referring to the very specific situation when the CIA uses the digraph in question the digraph that Clinesmith expressly asked about. She said the CIA uses this digraph when those Americans "provide reporting to us."
Let's be clear on that. The liaison did not say the CIA uses the digraph "when we incidentally get information from an unwitting American who is communicating with a target we're surveilling." She said the CIA uses the digraph when these Americans "provide reporting to us." The commonsense inference is the direct, intentional transmission of information to the agency.
Quote:

But the liaison did not leave it at that. To ensure that she was communicating the concept accurately, she added two other things. First, she told Clinesmith to consult the documents the CIA had already given the FBI months earlier, which laid out that Page was a witting source authorized for operational contact with Russians. And second, the liaison offered to provide Clinesmith a definition of digraph so the term could be conveyed accurately to the FISC.

But again, that was the last thing Clinesmith was interested in. In writing back, he basically tells the liaison: Never mind, we've got this. He was not going to give the liaison a chance to correct his distortion of the word encrypt, his studied obtuseness. Instead, Clinesmith claimed that the FBI was digging into the CIA documents (though he later conceded to the IG that he did not do so he assumed that someone would dig into them). More significantly, he stated, "I think the definition of the (digraph) answers our questions." He was talking, of course, about the way he chose to construe what the liaison said about "digraph," not what she actually said.
LINK
fasthorse05
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Quote:

there is opportunity for mischief especially if a lawyer is involved.
Got a kick out of that! Yes it's true, but it was still funny. "Mischief" "Shennanigans"--lots of stuff fits.
will25u
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will25u
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aggiehawg
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John Solomon.

Quote:

n December 2015, the Obama State Department and its ambassador in Kiev were upset over a negative story about then-Vice President Joe Biden ahead of his visit to Ukraine. So a U.S. embassy official turned to a "sensitive source" for help.

"Thank you very much for looking into this and very sorry to ask," U.S. embassy official Alexander "Sasha" Kasanof wrote businessman Konstantin Kilimnik in a Dec. 6, 2015 email obtained by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators and reviewed by Just the News. "Ambassador very unhappy about the article, though agree it stinks to me to (sic) of people we know very well."

A few lines later, Kasanof's email offered Kilimnik some valuable inside skinny about the Obama administration's assessment of a sensitive meeting between indicted fugitive Ukrainian oligarch Dmitri Firtash's associate Yuriy Boyko and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. "I thought Boyko did quite well, in fact," Kasanof wrote. "Don't know that he convinced Nuland on everything (incl. DF intentions), but his performance was much less Soviet and better than I thought would be. So job well done!"
Quote:

In addition to treating him as a valuable political intelligence source, State officials often shared their private insights with Kilimnik, a Ukrainian consultant close to the American lobbyist Paul Manafort, according to numerous communications obtained by Just the News. For instance, Eric Schultz, a former U.S. embassy official in Ukraine who by 2016 had become U.S. ambassador to Zambia, gave his frank personal assessment after President Obama named Marie Yovanovitch to be the new chief U.S. diplomat in Kiev and George Kent to be her top deputy.

"He's ok i think though yes, very pro-Ukraine," Schultz wrote of Kent in an email from his personal Gmail account in May 2016 to Kilimnik, using mostly lower-case letters. As for Yovanovitch, Schultz added: "she's not (doesn't handle pressure and can be difficult) but then she might be more Russian oriented than you realize. she never learned Ukrainian when she was in kyiv before but speaks good Russian."
Quote:

In other words, the State Department and its Kiev embassy were routinely trading information with a man the Senate report now portrays as an asset of a hostile foreign power during a time when Biden, now the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, oversaw Ukrainian policy for the Obama administration.

To the surprise of many, the bipartisan Senate report treats Kilimnik's ties to Trump through Manafort very differently than his dealings with the Obama administration on one of Biden's signature policy issues.
Quote:

A second U.S. official agreed the State Department emails obtained by Just the News likely merited a damage assessment if Kilimnik truly was a Russian intelligence officer. "If you have a verified contact with someone suspected of being an intelligence officer or working with a hostile foreign service, you usually have to do a damage assessment," the source said.

State Department officials, including the now-retired Ambassador Schultz, did not return emails seeking comment Monday.
LINK
drcrinum
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Transcript of Flynn oral arguments at DC Court of Appeals now available:
https://www.scribd.com/document/473615590/Flynn-Appeals-Court-Transcript-DC-Circuit-Arguments

It's about time the DC Court renders its opinion on Flynn.
fasthorse05
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Like many elected officials, the DC Court judges might be motivated to scoot more quickly if someone said they wouldn't receive a paycheck for August or September (realizing August is almost gone).

So many of these jackwagon politicians just keep getting checks, while businesses, their employees, and other American citizens are left to dangle in the political winds.

Especially if they kept having legal fees of $1,000.00 to $1,500.00 per hour from their attorney in Dallas. I know attorneys fees are $1,000.00/hour in Dallas because, fortunately, I'm on the outside looking in on a legal situation with a friend in Arlington. So Powell has GOT to be charging, at least, $1,000.00/hour.

*******s!
MouthBQ98
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AG
This makes it sound like they arranged to take Manafort out once he went to work for team Trump and they might have suspected he had a little inside knowledge of Obama administration dealings in Ukraine, or they knew from their own relationships pre 2016 election he would make a good patsy to smear Trump with.
pagerman @ work
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Quote:

To the surprise of many, the bipartisan Senate report treats Kilimnik's ties to Trump through Manafort very differently than his dealings with the Obama administration on one of Biden's signature policy issues.
One wonders who would be surprised by this.
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. It's inherent virtue is the equal sharing of miseries." - Winston Churchill
drcrinum
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https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1298297674383396864.html


Rambling thread but sort of interesting. How they have been hiding evidence in our electronic data world.
aggiehawg
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MouthBQ98 said:

This makes it sound like they arranged to take Manafort out once he went to work for team Trump and they might have suspected he had a little inside knowledge of Obama administration dealings in Ukraine, or they knew from their own relationships pre 2016 election he would make a good patsy to smear Trump with.
Manafort worked for Yanukovych. The coup a/k/a "The Maidan Revolution" that removed him from power was more than likely a CIA operation. Manafort and Kiliminik would have a front row seat to some of what was going on.
fasthorse05
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Quote:

If DOJ (internally) found THAT MUCH exculpatory evidence in the General Flynn case, don't you think they have uncovered the METHODS these weasels have used to hide evidence in A LOT of other cases?
I've wondered the same thing many times. It's an ancillary thought to all of the goings on, and the investigation would frickin' take forever, but it sure would be fun (assuming I'm still alive) to be around when the investigation was complete.

The last sentence tells you what my thoughts are on the exculpatory evidence topic.
Hate is how progressives sustain themselves. Without hate, introspection begins to slip into the progressive's consciousness, threatening the progressive with the truth: that their ideas and opinions are illogical, hypocritical, dangerous, and asinine.
This is backed by data.
akm91
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Quote:

In other words, the State Department and its Kiev embassy were routinely trading information with a man the Senate report now portrays as an asset of a hostile foreign power during a time when Biden, now the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, oversaw Ukrainian policy for the Obama administration.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report is trash, just like the majority of members of that committee.
captkirk
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Kilmnik has been dishonestly portrayed since the beginning. It's irritating that they are allowed to this and not really get called out. Same **** with Misfud
fasthorse05
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Mifsud apparently knows Claude Rains (Invisible man for us oldies).

I'm not sure he'll ever be found.

Oh, I have no doubt Kilimnik was/is FSB. I can't imagine the Obama administration really caring who Kilimnik was as long as he contributed mightily to getting Trump.
Hate is how progressives sustain themselves. Without hate, introspection begins to slip into the progressive's consciousness, threatening the progressive with the truth: that their ideas and opinions are illogical, hypocritical, dangerous, and asinine.
This is backed by data.
aggiehawg
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Not sure he's still alive at this point.

Taking a trip down memory lane, remember when Mueller hammered Papadopulus over not telling the FBI that Mifsud was in DC for an openly scheduled conference? And that was six months after opening Crossfire Hurricane because of Papa? Mifsud trained FBI agents and CIA agents. They knew where he was all along...until Papa's involvement truly became public and Mifsud disappeared. They had six months to talk to him. They didn't.

Why?

Originally I thought he was in a safe house somewhere. Now I'm not so sure. He was a spook, no doubt about that. But he might have been playing both sides and paid the price.
nortex97
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Another infuriating McCarthy piece (part 3);

Quote:

Clinesmith Minimizes His and the FBI's Misconduct . . . Yet Prosecutors Accept the Plea

So how could Clinesmith plead guilty to a false statement while insisting the statement wasn't false? On the narrowest of grounds. In essence, Clinesmith is saying that while he believed that the substantive information he was conveying was accurate, he understands that the SSA was asking for a statement in writing from the CIA, and he instead gave SSA a statement in writing from Clinesmith, which he deceptively led the agent to believe was from the CIA.

Is that good enough to sustain a guilty plea? Technically, it probably is.

The false-statement statute calls for the transmission of false information to be not just knowing but willful. There has to be a purpose to do wrong, an intent to deceive. My quarrel has been that Clinesmith is not admitting to an intent to deceive, because he has claimed he believed that the information he transmitted to the SSA accurately reflected the CIA's position, and therefore that he was not really deceiving the SSA or the court. In pleading guilty through gritted teeth, Clinesmith concedes only that he knew the SSA was expecting to get a document written by the CIA, and instead Clinesmith gave him a document Clinesmith had altered. In factitiously parsing, Clinesmith continues to maintain that the deception of the SSA was minor and that he and, derivatively, the FBI did not intentionally deceive the FISC at all. It's just a misunderstanding.

I don't blame Judge Boasberg for accepting the plea. I don't like it. But to be fair, as long as the defendant barely admits making a false statement of some kind, there is no requirement that the defendant's allocution accord with the prosecution's more robust construction of falsity. The court may properly accept the plea as long as the defendant's statements do not negate guilt. The judge's main job is to protect the defendant's rights, not uphold the prosecution's theory of the case.
What I don't understand is why Clinesmith's guilty plea is satisfactory to the Justice Department to the Durham team, which negotiated the plea and is poised to drop any other potential charges against Clinesmith in exchange for the admission of guilt as he has farcically articulated it.

Clinesmith knew he was giving the SSA false information, not just a falsified document. That is the rational interpretation of the facts. The claims that Page was not a CIA informant and that the CIA had said as much were, in fact, false. Clinesmith also appears to have attempted to mislead the IG about, at a minimum, his communications with the CIA liaison, his discussions with the OI attorney, and his understanding of how the CIA email came to be altered. And most important for present purposes, Clinesmith had a powerful motive to lie.

The FBI, including Clinesmith personally, had bounteous reasons to know that the first three Carter Page FISA warrants had been obtained under false pretenses in sworn presentations to the FISC judges. As an FBI attorney who worked on FISA submissions, Clinesmith knew that the bureau has a heightened duty of candor in making presentations to the court and is expressly required under the rules to notify the court promptly when the FBI learns that the court has been given misinformation. In one of its most consequential investigations ever, the FBI had serially flouted these obligations.
That's just the end; read the whole thing as to how he wound up with those conclusions. My expectation/hopes of Durham/Barr doing anything real continue to drop by the hour.

Don't shoot the messenger; the cover-up is in high gear.
MouthBQ98
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fasthorse05 said:

Quote:

If DOJ (internally) found THAT MUCH exculpatory evidence in the General Flynn case, don't you think they have uncovered the METHODS these weasels have used to hide evidence in A LOT of other cases?
I've wondered the same thing many times. It's an ancillary thought to all of the goings on, and the investigation would frickin' take forever, but it sure would be fun (assuming I'm still alive) to be around when the investigation was complete.

The last sentence tells you what my thoughts are on the exculpatory evidence topic.


I don't think we can trust the DOJ any longer as an institution to do what it is charged with. There are too many unethical win at any cost types and too many partisan political types embedded within it and they have changed the culture from preserving the reputation for ethical integrity to one of playing political games and getting wins for the department to build a resume for private employment later.

The ethical leadership and rank and file that remain did not speak up or intervene when these ethical or even legal violations began to happen, so there is clearly an institutional cultural problem, and one that interferes with the goal of doing justice.
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