The Justice Department and FBI have missed a Wednesday deadline to provide information about the government’s mysterious raid on a former FBI contractor-turned-whistleblower’s home last month.
Sixteen FBI agents on Nov. 19 raided the home of Dennis Nathan Cain, who reportedly gave the Justice Department’s Inspector General (IG) documents related to the Uranium One controversy and potential wrongdoing by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The documents in question allegedly showed that federal officials failed to investigate possible criminal activity related to Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and Rosatom, a Russian nuclear company. Its subsidiary purchased Canadian mining company Uranium One in 2013.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, whose panel has oversight of the Justice Department, penned a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Justice Department IG General Michael Horowitz, requesting information on the justification for the raid. Grassley gave Wray and Horowitz until Dec. 12 to respond to his request.
That deadline has come and gone, and neither the FBI nor DOJ has produced any documents or response.
“We have not yet received answers to the chairman’s questions on this matter,” a Judiciary Commitee spokesperson told Fox News late Thursday.
The FBI consistently has refused Fox News’ request for comment on the whistleblower raid and the Judiciary Committee’s requests. On Thursday, an FBI spokesperson told Fox News the agency would respond only to inquiries from the entity that requested the documents — in this case, the Judiciary Committee.
Questioning whether “we now live in a secret police state,” Cain took his frustration about the situation to Twitter earlier this week.
“So I blow the whistle on the FBI, get raided by the same FBI, and now they want to keep the FBI’s reasons secret? Do we now live in a secret police state? Feels a little like 1984,” Cain tweeted late Monday. The tweet eventually was deleted.
The Daily Caller requested that a court unseal the relevant search warrant materials, but the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, in a court filing, said: “the request should be denied.”
“Public disclosure of any search warrant materials would seriously jeopardize the integrity of the ongoing investigation,” the filing by the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. “Continued sealing is essential in order to guard against possible tampering of witnesses and destruction of evidence, to maintain the ability of the grand jury to investigate this matter, and to prevent the disclosure of sensitive investigative techniques and methods.”
A spokesperson for U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Robert K. Hur declined to comment.
Cain’s lawyer, Michael Socarras, told The Daily Caller the agent who led the raid accused his client of possessing stolen federal property. In response, Cain reportedly claimed he was a protected whistleblower under federal law, and said he was recognized as such by Horowitz.
Socarras also claimed Horowitz had transmitted information on the sale of Uranium One to a Russian firm’s subsidiary to both the House and Senate intelligence committees.
The bureau refuses to release 37 pages of new documents related to the controversial deal; reaction and analysis from Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz, former Republican congressman from Utah.
A spokesperson for the inspector general declined to comment.
“As frustrating and violating as this feels to me and my family. I will continue to put my trust in God. Some day this life will pass away. I will stand before my maker with a clean concience[sic] and Jesus as my defender. Until then I continue to fight the good fight with God’s help,” Cain tweeted Monday night.
On Tuesday, he added: “Thank you for the outpouring of encouragement. You all are awesome. A boxer goes into his corner to rest for a minute, refocus, and get some sideline coaching. Then the bell rings and he’s ready to go another round. This fight is spiritual and God is in our corner. Ding! Rom 8:31.”
Thank you for the outpouring of encourment. You all are awesome. A boxer goes into his corner to rest for a minute, refocus, and get some sideline coaching. Then the bell rings and he’s ready to go another round. This fight is spiritual and God is in our corner. Ding! Rom 8:31
Fox News has previously reported that Douglas Campbell, an FBI informant involved in the Uranium One deal, has testified to lawmakers that Moscow paid millions to American lobbying firm APCO Worldwide to influence Clinton and the Obama administration.
“The contract called for four payments of $750,000 over 12 months,” Campbell said in his statement this past February. “APCO was expected to give assistance free of charge to the Clinton Global Initiative as part of their effort to create a favorable environment to ensure the Obama administration made affirmative decisions on everything from Uranium One to the US-Russia Civilian Nuclear Cooperation agreement.”
APCO has denied Campbell’s claims while Clinton called any claims of wrongdoing related to the Uranium One deal “the same baloney they’ve been peddling for years, and there’s been no credible evidence by anyone.
“In fact,” Clinton told C-SPAN in October 2017, “it’s been debunked repeatedly and will continue to be debunked.”
Separately, the DOJ and Special Counsel Robert Mueller face a Friday afternoon deadline to turn over documents related to their questioning of fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn’s team has alleged the FBI pressured him not to have a lawyer at the White House meeting in January 2017, after which Flynn was charged on one count of lying to federal authorities.
Flynn — who had to sell his house this year amid mounting legal bills — later pleaded guilty to lying to agents about a conversation he had with the Russian ambassador in December 2016 about sanctions that had recently been imposed by then-President Barack Obama. Flynn has since acknowledged seeking to convince Russia not to retaliate for those sanctions during the presidential transition period.
But Flynn’s lawyers, in an explosive Tuesday court filing that threatens to upend his pending sentencing, charged that the FBI had not finalized their pivotal, and only, account of Flynn’s statements until August 2017 — nearly eight months after their interview with him. Fired FBI Director James Comey has since admitted the Flynn meeting broke normal agency protocol.
The Office of the Special Counsel deleted text messages from the iPhone of fired FBI agent Peter Strzok before turning it over to the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG), according to a report released by the federal watchdog.
On Thursday, the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report stating thousands of text messages exchanged between Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page could not be recovered after Mueller’s team wiped clean the phones it had issued them.
So Mueller’s team wiped ALL of the data off of Peter Strzok’s iPhone after determining “it contained no substantive text messages.” Given what we know about Strzok, this smells like quite the coverup. Time for Congress to step in?
“SCO’s Records Officer told the OIG that as part of the office’s records retention procedure, the officer reviewed Strzok’s DOJ issued iPhone after he returned it to the SCO and determined it contained no substantive text messages,” the watchdog report reads. As Conservative Review national security reporter Jordan Schachtel first discovered, the OIG said Strzok’s cell phone was “reset to factory settings,” deleting all data stored on the device.
The federal watchdog said in the report it found “no discernible patterns” about the content of thousands of messages the FBI was able to recover between Strzok and Page. Both have been part of Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Strzok and Page testified before Congress this summer, and the former FBI agent admitted that he had not turned over all of his communications with Page to the Inspector General from his personal phone, even though their recovered conversations showed the two suggesting they move to apps like iMessage or Gmail. Strzok told outgoing Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) that it is a “safe assumption” that he sent messages to Page from his personal phone that were similar in nature to the widely-publicized messages attacking Trump supporters. He told House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) that he himself determined which messages on that phone were “relevant to FBI business” that the Inspector General could review.
At that time of their exchanges, the FBI was investigating whether former secretary of state and then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton improperly used a private email account while she was Secretary of State. Strzok, a senior counterintelligence agent, was assigned to the case, as was Page. Reports claimed the two were romantically involved during this time. Strzok was ultimately fired after anti-Trump text messages between him and Page were discovered by the special counsel.
Thursday’s report said the FBI used special software to collect more than 20,000 text messages from the pair’s phones, but not all were sent between Strzok and Page. Investigators have already released some of the controversial texts, including a message from Strzok saying he would “stop” President Donald Trump from winning the election.
Missing text messages from the pair’s iPhones, though, continue to elude the FBI.
Early this year, the Office of the Inspector General contacted Verizon Wireless to determine if the carrier retains old text messages. Verizon said messages are retained for up to seven days after they are sent, and then erased. The missing messages in question were much older than a week by that time and Verizon no longer had them.
Trump should have investigated Hillary and all the corrupt Democrats. Don’t play nice with demons is my motto.
0:55
Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” the likely next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said President Donald Trump might “face the real prospect of jail time” in light of charges against his personal attorney, Michael Cohen for illegal payments during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Schiff said, “There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time. We have been discussing the issue of pardons the president may offer to people or dangle in front of people. The bigger pardon question may come down the road, as the next president has to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump.”
He is right the Bob Mueller investigation is nothing but a destruction project to destroy Donald Trump. There is no such thing as justice in America for the rich and powerful.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich laid into special counsel Robert Mueller on Fox News’ “Hannity” on Wednesday night, labeling the Russia probe a “Trump destruction project.”
Gingrich’s observation came in response to the sentencing recommendation Mueller made earlier this week regarding President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
“Mueller is not involved in a investigation,” Gingrich charged. “Mueller has a Trump destruction project. He brought on a team, all of them dedicated to destroying Trump. They have done everything they could to destroy Trump.”
Gingrich explained, “You basically threaten somebody and say, ‘I’m going to bankrupt you. I’m going to put your son in jail. I’m going to charge you with so many different crimes, you’ll never get out from under it. Now would you like to talk?’”
ABC News reported Flynn put his home in Alexandria, Virginia up for sale last spring to pay his mounting legal bills.
Additionally, a month before entering into a plea agreement with Mueller in December 2017, the retired general reportedly expressed concern about his son being prosecuted for failing to register in relation to consulting work the two did for foreign entities, according to Forbes.
“It has nothing to do with the truth. It has nothing to do with justice,” Gingrich alleged.
He predicted, “Historians one day will comment that this was one of the most extraordinary efforts to undo the will of the American people by an established bureaucracy, and its establishment friends, that we’ve seen in all of American history.”
Hannity then raised the issue of new reporting by The Hill’s John Solomon indicating that former FBI Director James Comey was in email exchanges with other top DOJ officials and FBI investigators, which provides “the most damning evidence to date of potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”
“The email exchanges show the FBI was aware — before it secured the now-infamous warrant (to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page) — that there were intelligence community concerns about the reliability of the main evidence used to support it: the Christopher Steele dossier,” wrote Solomon.
Gingrich responded, “You had the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation actively trying to destroy a presidential candidate.”
He argued that Comey and others who were involved in the efforts to undermine Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, “operated on a premise … Hillary was going to win. So they never thought this would come to light. They thought they were helping the winner.”
Gingrich believes Mueller has taken up the banner and reiterated that the special counsel’s team is “actively trying to destroy the President of the United States.”
“And I know it’s frustrating but the fact is, this is a clear cut drama. They hate him, they want to destroy him, it has nothing to do with the truth and nothing to do with the law.”
Pollak: Michael Flynn Sentencing Document Shows Collusion — Between Media, Deep State, and Obama Admin
Drain the swamp, Trump. The clock is ticking
Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed a sentencing memorandum Tuesday with the federal court in Washington, D.C. that recommends General Michael Flynn receive no jail time after pleading guilty to the crime of lying to the FBI, citing “substantial” assistance to the government in its investigations.
The mainstream media interpreted that remark as evidence that Flynn gave Mueller key information against President Donald Trump and Russian “collusion.”
More likely, however, Mueller’s request reflects the fact that Flynn did not actually commit the crime to which he pleaded guilty. No less than then-FBI director James Comey told Congress last March that Flynn had not, in fact, lied to the FBI.
If Flynn had demanded a trial on the merits, he could have subpoenaed Comey in his defense. The Special Counsel likely pressured Flynn to cooperate using other accusations — against him, or perhaps his family.
It is not clear exactly what information Flynn provided Mueller. The only other crime referenced in the sentencing document is Flynn’s failure to register as a foreign agent for Turkey.
Again, though, that is rather flimsy. It is rare that anyone in Washington is prosecuted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and rarer still that anyone is pursued under the Logan Act, which was the reason Flynn was under surveillance in the first place.
In fact, the most explosive piece of information in the sentencing document is not about collusion with Russians, but about the collusion between the media, the intelligence services, and the outgoing members of the Obama administration.
The document begins its recitation of Flynn’s offenses by citing information that had appeared in the Washington Post from a leaked, classified surveillance transcript in which Flynn’s name had been “unmasked”:
Days prior to the FBI’s interview of the defendant, the Washington Post had published a story alleging that he had spoken with Russia’s ambassador to the United States on December 29, 2016, the day the United States announced sanctions and other measures against Russia in response to that government’s actions intended to interfere with the 2016 election (collectively, “sanctions”). See David Ignatius, Why did Obama Dawdle on Russia’s hacking?, WASH. POST (Jan. 12, 2017).
That information, the document suggests, led the FBI to interview Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017 — the conversation in which he did not (according to Comey) lie to them, but which landed him in trouble.
The government had the surveillance transcripts, and it knew what Flynn had told the Russian ambassador. But the Post‘s intervention was crucial in setting the trap in which to ensnare Flynn and turn him into a government witness.
Mueller’s sentencing document does not mention the fact that the information published in the Post was illegally leaked to the press by the intelligence services. And the reason that happened was that the outgoing Obama administration changed the rules on the sharing of classified surveillance among government agencies, weakening privacy protections, probably intending that such information be more difficult to keep secret, and easier to leak.
Moreover, someone in the Obama administration — we do not yet know who, though it had to be someone senior — “unmasked” Flynn’s name to make sure he was exposed.
So while we do not yet know Mueller’s next moves, what the Flynn sentencing document reinforces is the that the Russia collusion investigation was tainted from the start by a crime committed against Flynn himself — with the collusion of the media, the deep state, and Obama’s loyalists.
She needs to worry more about the Americans that she represents in California.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) promised over the weekend to pass the Dream Act in the new Congress, which would provide amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.
Pelosi, who will likely become the next speaker of the House in January, said in a statement on Saturday that she will work to pass the Dream Act with her new House Democrat majority.
“America draws strength from our long, proud heritage as a nation of immigrants. In the Majority, Democrats will work to reverse the Republicans’ destructive anti-immigrant agenda,” Pelosi contended. “Our House Democratic Majority will once again pass the Dream Act to end the uncertainty and fear inflicted on patriotic young men and women across the country.”
Pelosi released the statement in response to a letter from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which urged Pelosi to take up legislation in the first 100 days of the new term to protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) illegal aliens and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) refugees. The Hispanic Caucus stressed that any new legislation should include a “pathway to citizenship,” “an end to immigration laws that tear families apart,” an end to the “militarization of our borderlands,” and a “recommitment to our nation’s founding ideals as a place of refuge for those seeking protection at our borders.”
“Undocumented immigrants work hard, obey the laws, and pay taxes. They are our friends and neighbors. They are part of the American social fabric and deserve a pathway to the American dream,” the Hispanic group added in the letter.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), one of the lawmakers who signed the letter to Pelosi, told CBS News that Democrats should move “expeditiously” in January to pass legislation to shield illegal immigrants and TPS refugees from deportation, without funding a wall on America’s southern border.
“I think the Dream Act should be taken on alone, with no poison pills attached to it,” Espaillat said.
President Donald J. Trump and congressional Republicans contended they could only consider some form of amnesty for illegal aliens if it were tied to wall funding as well as pro-American immigration reform such as E-Verify, ending chain migration, and ending the diversity lottery.
Espaillat said, “These young people are still in limbo. Had it not been for the courts, they would probably be underground. They would be in the shadows.”
Pelosi’s statement comes as President Trump has threatened to shut down the government in December over partially funding a wall along the U.S. southern border. Trump has demanded that Congress fund $5 billion of wall funding or he will partially shut down the government.
President Trump reiterated his threat of a government shutdown if Democrats do not give him wall funding in December.
“We would save Billions of Dollars if the Democrats would give us the votes to build the Wall,” Trump tweeted on Monday. “Either way, people will NOT be allowed into our Country illegally! We will close the entire Southern Border if necessary. Also, STOP THE DRUGS!”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
We would save Billions of Dollars if the Democrats would give us the votes to build the Wall. Either way, people will NOT be allowed into our Country illegally! We will close the entire Southern Border if necessary. Also, STOP THE DRUGS!
