The private equity firm of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden inked a billion-dollar deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China just 10 days after the father and son flew to China in 2013.
The Biden bombshell is one of many revealed in a new investigative book Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends by Government Accountability Institute President and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer. Schweizer’s last book, Clinton Cash, sparked an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
According to an exclusive New York Post excerpt from the book, the Biden billion-dollar China deal occurred as follows. In 2013, Hunter Biden and the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry, Chris Heinz, were managing partners in the private equity firm Rosemont Seneca Partners. In December of that year, Vice President Biden and his son Hunter flew aboard Air Force Two to China. Ten days after the trip, a subsidiary of the Bank of China named Bohai Capital signed an exclusive deal with Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz’s Rosemont to form a $1 billion joint-investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST. The deal was later increased to $1.5 billion.
“The Chinese government was literally funding a business that they co-owned along with the sons of two of America’s most powerful decision makers,” writes Schweizer in Secret Empires.
Neither Joe Biden or John Kerry have yet to comment on how the son of a sitting vice president and the stepson of a Secretary of State were permitted to bag a billion-dollar deal with the Communist Chinese government—nor whether they had any knowledge or involvement in the deal.
Secret Empires is slated to hit bookstores nationwide on Tuesday, March 20.
DOJ’s internal watchdog to criticize former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe
McCabe authorized leaks to the media, according to new reports
The former deputy director also reportedly misled watchdog investigators about the media disclosures
McCabe stepped down from his position in January
The Department of Justice’s internal watchdog will criticize former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for authorizing leaks to the media and giving misleading statements to investigators about doing so, according to two new reports.
McCabe, 49, authorized FBI officials to speak to the media for articles prior to the 2016 election, including one about an ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation, according to a report being prepared by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
The FBI No. 2 also misled watchdog investigators when they initially asked about the media disclosures, according to The Washington Post.
THE WASHINGTON POST STORY:
“Report said to fault FBI’s former No. 2 for approving improper media disclosure, misleading inspector general
The Justice Department inspector general is preparing a damaging report on former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, alleging he was responsible for approving an improper media disclosure, two people familiar with the matter said. One of the people said McCabe will also be accused of misleading investigators about his actions.
The report is a part of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s broad review of the FBI and Justice Department’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
During that work, inspector general’s investigators found that McCabe had authorized the disclosure of information to the Wall Street Journal for an October 2016 story that examined feuding inside the FBI and Justice Department around the handling of a separate investigation into Clinton’s family foundation, two people familiar with the case said.
Those probing the matter believe that McCabe, who stepped down in January, misled them when they initially inquired about the subject, though one person familiar with the forthcoming report said McCabe disputes that he intentionally misled investigators.
It is unclear how McCabe is said to have misled investigators. The inspector general’s findings on the media disclosure were first reported by the New York Times.
Through a representative, McCabe declined to comment. A spokesman for the inspector general also declined to comment.
Horowitz’s report is almost certain to be used by President Trump, who has railed against leaks and made McCabe a particular target of his ire in recent months. McCabe, 49, briefly served as acting FBI director after President Trump fired James B. Comey from the job, and much like the man he succeeded, McCabe soon became a lightning rod in the political battles over the FBI, Clinton and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
The 2016 Wall Street Journal report came just as the FBI had reopened the Clinton email investigation on the eve of the presidential election — a matter that was separate from the Clinton Foundation case but had parallels in the way it was fraught with politics.
The Journal’s story was notable for the level of detail it contained about internal law enforcement debates, and its revelation of specific information about an ongoing criminal case was considered by the inspector general to be particularly problematic. It presents McCabe as a complicated figure — one who at times is seen by those lower in the bureau as standing in the way of the Clinton Foundation investigation, though he also seems to stand up to Justice Department leaders.
The Journal reported that McCabe retorted to a Justice Department official upset to learn of steps the FBI had taken in the Clinton Foundation investigation, “Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” That would contradict any attempt by Trump or the GOP to claim that he was favoring the Democratic presidential candidate.
The Journal’s story was written by Devlin Barrett, now a reporter at The Washington Post. Spokesmen for the Journal did not return an email message. Recently released text messages from an FBI agent and FBI lawyer involved in the Clinton email case show that two days before the story was published, the lawyer, Lisa Page, and the FBI’s top spokesman, Michael Kortan, were on the phone with Barrett for an extended conversation.
Page worked in the FBI general counsel’s office and with McCabe, and she was briefly detailed to Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, and Page’s lawyer did not respond to messages Thursday night.
Kortan, who has since left the FBI, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Background briefings with high-level government officials are common in Washington, particularly when reporters already have information and agencies hope to fill in the gaps on limited, and potentially misleading, facts. But law enforcement officials are generally instructed not to reveal ongoing criminal investigations.
While the inspector general uncovered allegations specific to McCabe during his broader look at the Clinton email case, his report on the FBI official is not likely to be the only one the work produces. Horowitz is also examining broad allegations of misconduct involving Comey, the public statement he made recommending that the case be closed without charges and his decision on the eve of the election to reveal to Congress that the FBI had resumed its work.
Horowitz has said publicly he is going to release that report in March or April.
It was not immediately clear whether Comey knew about McCabe’s alleged authorization to disclose information to the media. Asked in May 2017 at a congressional hearing whether he had “ever been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation” or if he had “ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation,” Comey replied, “Never” and “No.”
Late last month, Comey defended the man he picked to be his top deputy, writing on Twitter that McCabe, “stood tall over the last 8 months, when small people were trying to tear down an institution we all depend on. He served with distinction for two decades.”
In May, after Comey’s firing, Trump asked McCabe in an Oval Office meeting whom he had voted for in the 2016 election, and vented over donations McCabe’s wife, who ran as a Democrat for a seat in the Virginia legislature, had received from the political action committee of Terry McAuliffe.
McAuliffe, then the governor of Virginia, is an ally of Clinton, and McCabe, after his wife’s loss in the race, would go on to supervise the probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server.
In the months that followed that conversation, Trump repeatedly took aim at McCabe in private and on Twitter, asking why his attorney general had not removed him from his post and remarking in Decemberthat the then-No. 2 official was “racing the clock to retire with full benefits.”
McCabe had long planned to retire March 18, when he became eligible to receive his benefits, but in late January, he surprised the bureau when he abruptly stepped down. The move came after a private meeting in which FBI Director Christopher A. Wray expressed concern to McCabe about what the inspector general had found.
“My conviction to adhering to process is similarly matched by my conviction to holding people accountable,’’ Wray wrote later in a message to staff that thanked McCabe for his “years of dedicated, selfless and brave service to the FBI and the American people.”
McCabe is still expected to formally retire in March. It was not immediately clear whether the inspector general’s report would affect that.”
The New York Times also reported details of Horowitz’s report, which is expected to be released in March or April.
NEW YORK TIMES STORY:
“Andrew McCabe, Ex-Deputy Director of F.B.I., Will Be Faulted for Leaks
WASHINGTON — A Justice Department review is expected to criticize the former F.B.I. deputy director, Andrew G. McCabe, for authorizing the disclosure of information about a continuing investigation to journalists, according to four people familiar with the inquiry.
Such a damning report would give President Trump new ammunition to criticize Mr. McCabe, who is at the center of Mr. Trump’s theory that “deep state” actors inside the F.B.I. have been working to sabotage his presidency. But Mr. McCabe’s disclosures to the news media do not fit neatly into that assumption: They contributed to a negative articleabout Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration’s Justice Department — not Mr. Trump.
The department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, has zeroed in on disclosures to The Wall Street Journal as part of a wide-ranging investigation into, among other things, how the F.B.I. approached the 2016 inquiry into Mrs. Clinton’s handling of classified information. Mr. Horowitz has said he expects to release a report this month or next.
Mr. McCabe, under pressure from the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, stepped down as the deputy director in late January amid concerns over the coming report.
The findings have potentially serious ramifications for the F.B.I., which is in the middle of a special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Though the report is not expected to focus on that, some of the same agents — including Mr. McCabe — handled both the Russia case and the Clinton inquiry. A report that questions the judgment of those agents would give fodder for Mr. Trump and his supporters to step up their attacks on the F.B.I.
A spokesman for Mr. Horowitz declined to comment. Mr. McCabe also declined to comment. He and his allies have steadfastly maintained that he did nothing improper and cooperated fully with the inspector general.
In October 2016, The Wall Street Journal revealed a dispute between F.B.I. and Justice Department officials over how to proceed in an investigation into the financial dealings of the Clinton family’s foundation. The article revealed a closed-door meeting during which senior Justice Department officials were dismissive of the evidence and declined to authorize subpoenas or grand jury activity. Some F.B.I. agents, the article said, believed that Mr. McCabe had put the brakes on the investigation.
Others rejected that notion. The Journal, citing sources including “one person close to Mr. McCabe,” revealed a tense conversation with a senior Justice Department official in which Mr. McCabe insisted that the F.B.I. had the authority to press ahead with the investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
The inspector general has concluded that Mr. McCabe authorized F.B.I. officials to provide information for that article, according to the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the report before it is published. The public affairs office had arranged a phone call to discuss the case, the people said. Mr. McCabe, as deputy director, had the authority to engage the news media.
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Such calls are common practice across the federal government when officials believe that journalists have only part of the story. Rather than let incomplete or inaccurate coverage circulate, officials often try to fill out the picture or provide a defense. But Justice Department rules prohibit the dissemination of confidential information, and the inspector general’s report is expected to criticize Mr. McCabe for disclosing the existence of a continuing investigation to The Journal.
When an inquiry uncovers evidence that an agent has violated Justice Department regulations, the inspector general typically refers the matter to the F.B.I.’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which handles questions of punishment.
It is unclear whether the inspector general will identify others who spoke about the Clinton investigation. But Mr. McCabe is by far the most prominent subject. Mr. Trump has taunted him on Twitter, writing in December that he “is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!” Mr. McCabe is eligible to retire March 18.
Mr. Trump has animosity toward Mr. McCabe for several reasons, including his close ties to the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, whom Mr. Trump fired last year. But the president is particularly bothered by the fact that Mr. McCabe’s wife, Jill, ran as a Democrat in a failed campaign for a State Senate seat in Virginia. Her campaign received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from a political committee run by Terry McAuliffe, the Virginia governor at the time and a longtime ally of the Clintons.
Later, after Mrs. McCabe lost the race, Mr. McCabe was promoted to deputy director and oversaw the Clinton investigation. Though Mr. McCabe sought ethics and legal advice about whether to recuse himself, some in the F.B.I. considered his involvement a conflict of interest. Ultimately, amid scrutiny from the news media, Mr. Comey pressured Mr. McCabe to recuse himself. The inspector general is examining whether Mr. McCabe should have done so earlier.
Mr. Trump has seized on that issue in repeatedly criticizing Mr. McCabe, a lifelong Republican who did not vote in the 2016 election. In face-to-face meetings with Mr. McCabe, the president questioned how he had voted and needled him about his wife. In one instance, he called Mrs. McCabe “a loser,” according to people familiar with the conversation, which was first reported by NBC News.
Mr. McCabe’s allies at the F.B.I. say that Mr. Trump is also eager to discredit Mr. McCabe because he can corroborate Mr. Comey’s accounts of meetings with Mr. Trump.
Mr. McCabe rose quickly through the F.B.I. ranks and was seen as a new model for the second-in-command when he was promoted in 2016. The F.B.I. had transformed from a law-and-order agency to an integral part of the nation’s intelligence apparatus, and Mr. McCabe, who graduated from Duke and Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, was picked not based on a career of street work but based on his intellect and decision-making.
That won him equal parts praise and disdain inside the F.B.I., with longtime agents accusing him of having ascended too quickly.
Mr. McCabe is on leave while he awaits retirement. He was succeeded by David L. Bowdich, the acting F.B.I. deputy director.
McCabe stepped down as deputy director in January after FBI Director Christopher Wray was briefed on Horowitz’s findings. An Obama appointee, Horowitz has been investigating the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation since Jan. 2017.
Among the leaks authorized by McCabe was one to The Wall Street Journal for an Oct. 30, 2016 article detailing an internal FBI and Justice Department battle over the Clinton Foundation investigation.
Some sources for the article suggested that McCabe issued a “stand down” order on the investigation. Other pro-McCabe sources portrayed him in a more positive light.
One source described an August 2016 conversation that McCabe had with a Justice Department official who thought the Clinton Foundation probe was a dead end.
“Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” McCabe asked the official, according to the source.
The sources for the article have not been identified, but one McCabe subordinate was in contact with Devlin Barrett, the reporter who wrote the article for TheWSJ.
Lisa Page, an FBI attorney, sent text messages to FBI agent Peter Strzok discussing her conversations with Barrett. Horowitz discovered Strzok and Page’s text messages as part of his investigation. The discovery led to Strzok’s removal from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
While McCabe’s position allowed him to speak with the media, Horowitz seemingly deemed it problematic that he authorized surrogates to discuss an ongoing investigation.
As for misleading statements about the leaks, The Post reports that McCabe claims that he did not intentionally mislead investigators.
President Donald Trump will likely be pleased with the report, given his public spats with McCabe. Trump has criticized McCabe over campaign contributions that his wife, Jill McCabe, received for a Virginia state Senate race in 2015 from then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe.
McAuliffe, a staunch ally of the Clintons, directed hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to McCabe’s unsuccessful campaign. The donations drew attention, in part, because McAuliffe was under FBI investigation over campaign contributions he received from a Chinese billionaire.
McCabe recused himself from that investigation. He also recused himself from the Clinton probe shortly before the 2016 election, after TheWSJ reported the McAuliffe donations. McCabe became involved in the Clinton investigation in February 2016, after his wife’s campaign had ended.
NEW YORK — Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee on Saturday released a purported rebuttal to a four-page House Republican memo from earlier this month that alleges abuse of surveillance authority on the part of Obama-era federal agencies.
The Democratic rebuttal contains misleading claims, omits key details, and, perhaps unintentionally, actually proves the FBI and Department of Justice utilized the infamous, largely discredited 35-page anti-Trump dossier to obtain a FISA court warrant to monitor an individual formerly associated with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Here are seven key problems with the claims made inside the Democrats’ rebuttal memo.
1 – The House Democratic rebuttal opens with a seemingly deceptive statement that Steele’s dossier “did not inform” the FBI’s decision to start its investigation into Trump’s campaign in late July.
This is the first contention in the rebuttal, which relates it is trying to “correct the record.” However, the Republican memo did not assert that the dossier informed the FBI’s decision to launch its investigation in late July or anytime. Instead, the GOP memo documented that Steele’s dossier formed an “essential part” of the FISA court applications submitted by Obama-era federal agencies to monitor the communications of Carter Page, who briefly served as a volunteer foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Meanwhile, even though House Democrats seem to be rebutting a contention that was not made in the Republican memo, there are possible issues with the rebuttal’s claim that the FBI’s investigative team only received Steele’s “reporting” in mid-September, ostensibly referring to the written dossier. The Democrats entirely ignore that last July, Steele reportedly traveled to Rome, where he met with an FBI contact to supply the agency with alleged information he found during the course of his anti-Trump work. The Washington Post reported that Steele met with the FBI on July 5, 2016. The Democratic memo reveals that the DOJ “accurately informed the court that that the FBI initiated its counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016.” That is 26 days after Steele met with the FBI in Rome.
2 – While perhaps not intending to, the Democratic memo actually confirms that the Obama Justice Department did use Steele’s largely discredited dossier for FISA court applications to monitor Page.
The memo contains a sentence stating that “as DOJ informed the court in subsequent renewals”; but the rest of that sentence is redacted. The next sentence states that “Steele’s reporting about Page’s Moscow meeting,” with the remainder of that sentence also redacted. The next sentence states that “DOJ’s applications did not otherwise rely on Steele’s reporting, including any ‘salacious’ allegations about Trump…” The word “otherwise” indicates that, according to the Democratic memo, DOJ did indeed rely on Steele’s dossier for something.
As a side note, interestingly, the Democrats only use the term “salacious” regarding the dossier, not fully quoting from former FBI Director James Comey’s famous remarks in which he testified that the anti-Trump dossier contained “salacious and unverified” material.
Meanwhile, the Democratic rebuttal goes on to cite specific instances of the FISA applications utilizing Steele’s dossier, with the applications citing Steele’s alleged sources reporting that Page took meetings in Russia.
In a clear attempt to minimize the importance of the dossier, the Democratic memo refers to a 2013 case in which Russian agents allegedly targeted Page for recruitment. In that case, Page was identified in court documents made public as “Male-1” in reference to a case involving three Russian men identified as Russian intelligence agents. The spy ring was accused of seeking information on U.S. sanctions as well as methods of developing alternate sources of energy. The FBI court filings describe “the attempted use of Male-1 as an intelligence source for Russia,” but Page was not accused of having been successfully recruited or spying. The court documents cite no evidence that “Male-1” knew he was talking with alleged Russian agents. That the Obama-era federal agencies needed to still use the dossier in light of that 2013 case may show that the 2013 episode was not enough to obtain a FISA warrant on Page. Steele’s dossier contains claims of updated meetings between Page and Russians that went into the year 2016.
The House Republican memo and a subsequent criminal referral authored by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) both state that the FISA applications relied heavily on the dossier. Grassley and Graham both reviewed the original FISA applications.
The Grassley-Graham memo relates (emphasis added):
On March 17, 2017, the Chairman and Ranking Member were provided copies of the two relevant FISA applications, which requested authority to conduct surveillance on Carter Page. Both relied heavily on Mr. Steele’s dossier claims, and both applications were granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). In December of 2017, the Chairman, Ranking Member and Subcommittee Chairman Graham were allowed to review a total of four FISA applications relying on the dossier to seek surveillance of Mr. Carter Page, as well as numerous other documents relating to Mr. Steele.
3 – The rebuttal leaves out key information that may dispute the Democratic document’s claim that the FISA warrant was “not used to spy on Trump or his campaign.”
The rebuttal claims this is the case because Page “ended his affiliation with the campaign months before DOJ applied for a warrant.” This is misleading. The FISA warrant gives access to phone calls, email, web browsing history and other electronic records, meaning agents can retrieve any emails or recorded communications from the period Page was affiliated with the campaign and would be able to access any recorded communications with the campaign from that period. Also, according to reports, the FBI monitored Page while he spoke to then-Trump adviser Steve Bannon about Russia in January 2017.
4 – The rebuttal tries to give legitimacy to the possibly illicit surveillance of Page by noting that two of the presiding federal judges were appointed by President George W. Bush and one by President Ronald Reagan.
However, the Republicans’ issue has never been claims of partisanship on behalf of the judges, but rather the charge that key information was withheld from the judges, primarily the origins of the dossier, which was produced by the controversial Fusion GPS and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Republicans also charge that the FISA court was not told about credibility issues related to Steele.
5 – The Democratic memo raises immediate questions about the possible use of a second dossier authored by Cody Shearer, a shadowy former tabloid journalist who has long been closely associated with various Clinton scandals.
The rebuttal states that the DOJ provided the FISA court with “additional information obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborate Steele’s reporting.” The rebuttal does not mention the names of the other “independent sources.”
Shearer reemerged in the news cycle last month when the Guardian newspaper reported that the FBI has been utilizing a second dossier authored by Shearer as part of its probe into Trump and alleged Russian collusion.
The Guardian reported the so-called Shearer memo was given to the FBI by Steele in October 2016 to back up some of his claims.
According to the Guardian report, the FBI is still assessing portions of the Shearer memo. The newspaper reported that, like Steele’s dossier, Shearer’s memo cites an “unnamed source within Russia’s FSB” alleging that Trump was compromised by Russian intelligence during a 2013 trip to Moscow in which the future president purportedly engaged in “lewd acts in a five-star hotel.”
Shearer’s name was reportedly associated with the Grassley-Graham criminal referral of Steele, which contains redacted information that Steele received information from someone in the State Department, who in turn had been in contact with a “foreign sub-source” who was in touch with a redacted name described as a “friend of the Clintons.”
Numerous media reports have since stated that the second dossier author mentioned in the Grassley-Graham memo was Shearer, an associate of longtime Clinton friend Sidney Blumenthal.
According to sources who spoke to CNN, Shearer’s information was passed from Blumenthal to Jonathan Winer, who at the time was a special State Department envoy for Libya working under then-Secretary of State John Kerry.
Citing the same source, CNN reported that Shearer’s dossier is “actually a set of notes based on conversations with reporters and other sources.” CNN reported that Shearer had “circulated those notes to assorted journalists, as well as to Blumenthal.”
National Review previously dubbed Shearer a “Creepy Clinton Confidante” and “The Strangest Character in Hillary’s Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy.”
6 – While trying to argue otherwise, the Democratic rebuttal actually confirms the key contention in the Republican memo that the FBI and DOJ failed to inform the FISA court that Steele’s dossier was funded by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) via the Perkins Coie law firm.
In an attempt to rebut the Republican argument that the FISA court was not informed about the dossier’s specific origins, the Democratic memo quotes from an explanation to the court that Steele:
was approached by an identified U.S. person who indicated to Source #1 [Steele] that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. (The identified U.S. person and Source #1 have a long-standing business relationship.) The identified U.S. person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.
Contrary to the rebuttal’s characterization, this paragraph is a far cry from informing the court that the dossier utilized in the FISA warrant was paid for by Trump’s primary political opponents, namely Clinton and the DNC. Also, the general mention of “a U.S.-based law firm” does not identify to the FISA court the actual firm, Perkins Coie, which is known for its representation of Clinton and the DNC. Further, informing the FISA court about “an identified U.S. person” who hired Steele fails to actually identify that U.S. person as Glenn Simpson, founder of the controversial Fusion GPS.
The Democrats claim that the above-referenced paragraph proves the Obama-era agencies informed the FISA court about the “political” origins of the dossier. However, the Republican memo specifically and apparently correctly charged that “neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts.” The Democratic memo fails to dispute that charge.
7 – The Democratic rebuttal omitted key details about the FBI’s internal assessments of Steele and his reporting.
The Democratic memo claims that the Obama-era agencies “repeatedly affirmed to the Committee the reliability and credibility of Steele’s reporting, an assessment also reflected in the FBI’s underlying source documents.”
Actually, the House Republican memo documents that a “source validation report conducted by an independent unit within FBI assessed Steele’s reporting as only minimally corroborated.”
Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” host Brian Stelter said President Donald Trump’s tweet saying the FBI missed the warning on Florida shooter because they are working on the Russia investigation was more evidence that “questions” about his fitness for office are so urgent.”
Stelter said Trump sounded “deeply trouble” and “unhinged.”
Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign – there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!
Stelter said “This has been a talking point from pro-Trump media ever since Friday that there is a link between the FBI’s failure and the ongoing Russia probes. This is nonsensical.”
He added, “Here are just some of the tweets from the president. You look at what he is doing here. He is undercutting his own national security adviser, he is ranting and raving about the fake media, he has got tweets riddled with misspellings and profanity. Maybe in person, President Trump is cool, calm, and collected. But on Twitter, he sounds deeply troubled. He sounds unhinged. This is why questions about his fitness for office are so urgent. This is the biggest story that I see happening right now.”
As details about the Florida school shooting emerge, more and more questions surface as to why and how 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz carried out the deadly massacre that killed 17 people.
Cruz and his brother Zachary were orphaned in November when their adoptive mother, Lynda Cruz, died of flu complications. Their father, Roger Cruz, died in 2005 of a heart attack.
Neighbors say that Zachary was quiet, while Nikolas frequently got into trouble and enjoyed hurting animals. One relative claims he has autism. He was also reportedly showing signs of depression and had been in counseling, but he hadn’t shown up for treatment in over a year.
Since 2010, Broward Sheriff’s deputies were called to the family residence 39 times. The reasons ranged from “mentally ill person” to “child/elderly abuse.” Many of the incidents are unaccompanied by written reports, so it is unclear who was the focus of many of these disturbances and what the specific details were.
Cruz reportedly arrived to the scene of the massacre in a gold Uber car, carrying a black bag and wearing a black hat. One staffer radioed another to alert him that Cruz was “walking purposefully” towards the school, but by then, it was too late.
Cruz, then, was said to have opened fire — killing 17 and wounding 15 others. He then reportedly ditched his vest and AR-15 rifle to blend in with the terrified, fleeing crowd. (Though Cruz was expelled from the school for getting into a fight and bringing knives on campus, he was wearing a Stoneman Douglas High maroon T-shirt, perhaps to better look inconspicuous.) He was apprehended a little over an hour later at a Walmart in nearby Coral Springs, where he bought a drink from the Subway inside.
I thought the Russians were suppose to be in Collusion with Donald Trump.
Russian internet trolls not only used social media accounts to promote President Donald Trump’s election bid, they also operated accounts supporting the candidacies of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued an indictment for 13 Russian nationals affiliated with three Russian companies suspected of interfering in the 2016 election. The goal of their campaign was to sow discord in the U.S. political process.
The indicted Russians operated both pro- and anti-Trump social media accounts, and accounts were also used to support Democratic presidential candidate Sanders and Green Party candidate Stein.
Russians named in the indictment also set up a “Blacktivists” Instagram account that promoted the message: “Choose Peace and Vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it’s not a wasted vote.” They also used the Instagram account “Woke Blacks” to encourage people not to vote.
“A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment on Feb. 16, 2018, against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities accused of violating U.S. criminal laws in order to interfere with U.S. elections and political processes,” special counsel spokesman Peter Carr said in a statement.
“The indictment charges all of the defendants with conspiracy to defraud the United States, three defendants with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five defendants with aggravated identity theft,” Carr said.
Mueller’s indictment, however, does not allege any of the Russian online activities in any way altered the outcome of the 2016 election.
