Could The Snitch Be Mitch McConnell And His Chinese Friends?
House Republicans are again battling with the Justice Department over information related to the Russia investigation, this time over documents the intelligence community said involves a top-secret source who has provided information to the CIA and FBI.
The mysterious source has also gathered information that was given to Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to The Washington Post.
WaPo reported Justice Department and intelligence community officials issued a stark warning to the White House on May 2 against a request from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes. Nunes had submitted a subpoena to the Justice Department on April 24 for records related to the Russia probe.
Justice Department and intelligence community officials argued to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that complying with the subpoena would reveal the identity of a top-secret source and would undermine protocol regarding intelligence sources, according to WaPo.
WaPo provided one small clue about the source: he or she is American.
Kelly discussed the issue with Trump, who sided with the intelligence officials. WaPo noted that it is unclear whether Trump knew that information from the source has been shared with Mueller. Trump has been heavily critical of the Mueller probe, which he has described as a “witch hunt.”
On Thursday, the day after the White House meeting, the Justice Department told Nunes that the agency was “not in a position to provide information responsive to your request regarding a specific individual.”
“Disclosure of responsive information to such requests can risk severe consequences, including potential loss of human lives, damage to relationships with valued international partners, compromise of ongoing criminal investigations, and interference with intelligence activities,” Stephen Boyd, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s office of legislative affairs, wrote to Nunes.
Nunes shot back in a statement to WaPo, saying that the Justice Department is “citing spurious national security concerns to evade congressional oversight while leaking information to The Washington Post ostensibly about classified meetings.”
Nunes threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt of Congress for failing to provide the documents on Sunday.
The standoff is not the first between Nunes and the Justice Department. The Republican has battled the agency over other records related to the Russia investigation, including surveillance warrants granted to the Justice Department to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The FBI and Justice Department relied heavily on the unverified Steele dossier to obtain the spy warrants, according to documents provided to the House Intel panel.
Nunes also recently threatened to subpoena the Justice Department for the FBI document that laid out the initial rationale for the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation into possible collusion. The investigation was opened on July 31, 2016 based on information about then-Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.
The Australian government reportedly passed information to the U.S. government about a barroom conversation that Papadopoulos had in London in May 2016 with Alexander Downer, the former Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. Downer reportedly relayed that Papadopoulos claimed to have learned the Russian government had obtained stolen Hillary Clinton emails. (RELATED: In Private, George Papadopoulos Denies Collusion)
The Daily Caller News Foundation has reported that Papadopoulos was introduced to Downer by Erika Thompson, another Australian diplomat.
Two weeks before that meeting, Papadopoulos met in London with Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor and diplomat who is suspected of being a Russian operative. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty on Oct. 5 to lying to FBI agents about the timing of his encounters with Mifsud and with two Russian nationals. He told the special counsel’s office that Mifsud said in that meeting that a Russian government official told him about stolen Clinton-related emails.
Halper, who works closely at Cambridge with Sir Richard Dearlove, a former MI6 chief, contacted Papadopoulos about writing a policy paper on Israeli and Cypriot energy issues. Halper, an American, paid Papadopoulos $3,000 for the paper and covered the cost of his room, board, and a flight to London. Papadopoulos met with Halper and one of his assistants for several days in London.
During one of their meetings, Halper asked Papadopoulos about Russia and emails, according to sources close to Papadopoulos’s version of the encounters.
TheDCNF also learned that Halper approached two other Trump campaign advisers, including Carter Page. Halper invited Page to attend a symposium at Cambridge in July 2016.
Another campaign official told TheDCNF they were contacted by and met with Halper several days before Halper’s initial outreach to Papadopoulos. That official, who did not want to be identified, said they were surprised to learn of the Papadopoulos encounter.
During an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, former FBI Director James Comey’s wife, Patrice, confessed that she supported Hillary Clinton and was “devastated” when Donald Trump won.
“I wanted a woman president really badly, and I supported Hillary Clinton,” Patrice Failor Comey told Stephanopoulos. “A lot of my friends worked for her. And I was devastated when she lost.”
James Comey admitted that his wife and girls all took part in the Women’s March in response to Donald Trump’s election.
“My wife and girls marched in the Women’s March, the day after President Trump’s inauguration,” he said. “At least my four daughters — probably all five of my kids, wanted Hillary Clinton to be the first woman president. I know my amazing spouse did.”
In an interview that aired Sunday night, former FBI Director James Comey sat down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and offered an ominous assessment of the country under President Donald Trump’s leadership.
Stephanopoulos brought up Comey’s remarks that right now is a “dangerous” time in America.
“I think it is [dangerous],” Comey told Stephanopoulos. “And I chose those words carefully. I was worried when I chose the word “dangerous” first. I thought, is that an overstatement? And I don’t think it is.”
Indict That Bastard.
He expounded, “I worry that the norms at the center of this country — we can fight as Americans about guns, or taxes or immigration, and we always have, but what we have in common is a set of norms — most importantly, the truth. And if we lose that, if we lose tethering of our leaders to that truth, what are we?”
An associate of Arizona Sen. John McCain is invoking his Fifth Amendment rights in order to avoid revealing information to Congress about the Steele dossier.
David J. Kramer, a former State Department official, pleaded the fifth in response to a subpoena issued in December by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Fox News reported.
In a Dec. 19 interview with the committee, Kramer said that he had information about some of the sources of information in the dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele and financed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Kramer learned the information in Nov. 2016, after traveling to London to meet with Steele. Kramer and McCain, a Republican, first learned of the dossier earlier that month after meeting with an associate of Steele’s.
After the London meeting, Steele provided a copy of the dossier to Kramer with instructions to share it with McCain. The senator then provided a copy of the document to then-FBI Director James Comey during a Dec. 9, 2016, meeting.
The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena on Dec. 27 to compel Kramer to discuss the dossier’s sources.
Kramer, who was a director at the McCain Institute and now works for Florida International University, has avoided speaking publicly about his handling of the dossier. There has also been widespread speculation that he is BuzzFeed’s source for the document. The website published the dossier on Jan. 10, 2017.
In addition to his interview with the Intelligence Committee, Kramer was deposed in December as part of a lawsuit filed against BuzzFeed for publishing the dossier. Kramer’s lawyers have requested that his deposition in that case be sealed.
Steele, McCain and Fusion GPS, the firm that hired Steele to write the dossier, have all denied being BuzzFeed’s source. Kramer is the only person known to have handled the completed dossier who has not denied providing it to BuzzFeed.
Kramer and his attorney have not responded to numerous requests for comment.
McCain Associate Who Handled Dossier Asks Judge To Seal Deposition
An associate of Arizona Sen. John McCain’s who handled the dossier is asking a federal judge to block the release of a videotape and transcript of a deposition he recently gave in a lawsuit related to the salacious document.
David Kramer, a former State Department official and former director at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, filed a motion in federal court in Florida asking a judge for a protective order to block the public release of his deposition.
Kramer was deposed last month by lawyers for a Russian businessman suing BuzzFeed News for publishing the dossier. The lawyers for the businessman, Aleksej Gubarev, are interested in Kramer because he is one of just a few people known to have handled the dossier after it was completed by former British spy Christopher Steele and before its Jan. 10, 2017 publication.
Gubarev’s attorneys want to find out whether BuzzFeed’s source gave any warnings about the veracity of the dossier and whether it was verified or unverified.
Steele, McCain and Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the dossier on behalf of Democrats, have all denied being BuzzFeed’s source.
Kramer has not commented publicly on the issue.
Kramer’s lawyer, Marcos Jiminez, argued in a motion to seal that the release of the deposition would jeopardize his personal safety, make him subject to hounding from the press, and conflict with congressional investigations looking into the dossier.
Kramer was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee last month and has also met with the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“Mr. Kramer seeks to prevent the Plaintiffs from sharing his videotaped deposition and accompanying transcript beyond the instant litigation,” wrote Jiminez.
He asserted that Kramer’s deposition in the BuzzFeed lawsuit “would reveal the extent of the Congressional Committees’ knowledge regarding the information provided by Mr. Kramer in closed-door sessions.”
Jimenez also argues that should Kramer’s deposition be released to the public, he “will be hounded by the press.”
Kramer and McCain first learned of the dossier shortly after the 2016 election while attending the Halifax International Security Forum. On the sidelines of that event, Kramer and McCain had a conversation with Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Russia and associate of Steele’s.
Kramer then traveled to London to meet with Steele. While there, the pair made arrangements for Kramer to obtain the dossier back in the U.S. and to provide a copy to McCain.
McCain shared an incomplete version of the dossier with then-FBI Director James Comey on Dec. 9, 2016. The Republican was unaware at the time that Comey and the FBI were already aware of Steele’s report. FBI agents met with the ex-spy multiple times prior to the election.
Steele published his final dossier memo on Dec. 13, 2016. It is that document which alleges that Gubarev used two of his web-hosting companies to hack into the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems prior to the election. The dossier also alleges that Gubarev was recruited under duress by Russia’s spy services. He denies all of the allegations. In addition to suing BuzzFeed, he is suing Steele in London, where the former spy is based.
In court filings there, Steele has acknowledged that the Dec. 13 memo contained unverified information.
As of the beginning of this month, Steele and Fusion GPS have dodged requests for depositions from Gubarev’s lawyers.
David Kramer Motion to Seal deposition in BuzzFeed lawsuit by Chuck Ross on Scribd
This Muslim woman tried to burn the school down and join Al-Qaida. But the FBI let her go.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — After Tnuza Jamal Hassan was stopped from flying to Afghanistan last September, she allegedly told FBI agents that she wanted to join al-Qaida and marry a fighter, and that she might even wear a suicide belt.
She also said she was angry at U.S. military actions overseas and admitted that she tried to encourage others to “join the jihad in fighting,” but she said she had no intention of carrying out an attack on U.S. soil, according to prosecutors. Despite her alleged admissions, she was allowed to go free.
Four months later, the 19-year-old was arrested for allegedly setting small fires on her former college campus in St. Paul in what prosecutors say was a self-proclaimed act of jihad. No one was hurt by the Jan. 17 fires at St. Catherine University, but her case raises questions about why she wasn’t arrested after speaking to the agents months earlier and shows the difficulty the authorities face in identifying real threats.
“She confessed to wanting to join al-Qaida and took action to do it by traveling overseas. Unless there are other circumstances that I’m not aware of, I would have expected that she would’ve been arrested,” said Jeffrey Ringel, a former FBI agent and Joint Terrorism Task Force supervisor who now works for a private security firm, the Soufan Group, and isn’t involved in Hassan’s case. “I think she would’ve met the elements of a crime.”
Authorities aren’t talking about the case and it’s not clear how closely Hassan was monitored before the fires, if at all. When asked if law enforcement should have intervened earlier, FBI spokesman Jeff Van Nest and U.S. Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Tasha Zerna both said they couldn’t discuss the case.
Counterterrorism experts, though, say it seems she wasn’t watched closely after the FBI interview, as she disappeared for days before the fires. But the public record in a case doesn’t always reveal what agents and prosecutors were doing behind the scenes.
Authorities are often second-guessed when someone on their radar carries out a violent act. Some cases, including Wednesday’s mass shooting at a Florida high school that killed 17 people, reveal missed signs of trouble. The FBI has admitted it made a mistake by failing to investigate a warning last month that the suspect, Nikolas Cruz, could be plotting an attack.
U.S. officials were also warned about Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev two years before his 2013 attack, though a review found it was impossible to know if anything could’ve been done differently to prevent it. And the FBI extensively investigated Omar Mateen, the gunman in the June 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting. As part of an internal audit, then-FBI Director James Comey reviewed the case and determined it was handled well.
Hassan, who was born in the U.S., has pleaded not guilty to federal counts of attempting to provide material support to al-Qaida, lying to the FBI and arson. She also faces a state arson charge. One fire was set in a dormitory that has a day care where 33 children were present.
Although her attempts to set fires largely failed, Hassan told investigators she had expected the buildings to burn down and “she hoped people would get killed,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Winter said in court. He added that she was “self-radicalized” and became more stringent in her beliefs and focused on jihad.
Hassan’s attorney, Robert Sicoli, declined to talk about whether the family saw warnings. Her mother and sister declined to speak to The Associated Press.
According to prosecutors, Hassan tried to travel to Afghanistan on Sept. 19, making it as far as Dubai, United Arab Emirates, before she was stopped because she lacked a visa.
Prosecutors say that when the agents interviewed Hassan on Sept. 22, she admitted she tried to join al-Qaida, saying she thought she’d probably get married, but not fight. When pressed, she allegedly told investigators she guessed she would carry out a suicide bombing if she had to do it but she wouldn’t do anything in the U.S. because she didn’t know whom to target.
Hassan admitted that she wrote a letter to her roommates in March encouraging the women to “join the jihad in fighting,” prosecutors allege. The letter was initially reported to campus security, and it’s unclear when it was given to the FBI or if the agency made contact with Hassan before the September interview.
It’s also unknown how closely U.S. authorities were monitoring Hassan between the interview and Dec. 29, when she was barred from traveling to Ethiopia with her mother. Prosecutors say at the time, Hassan had her sister’s identification and her luggage contained a coat and boots, which she wouldn’t have needed in Ethiopia’s warm climate.
Hassan later ran away from home and her family reported her missing Jan. 10. Her whereabouts were unknown until the Jan. 17 fires.
Ron Hosko, a retired assistant director of the FBI’s criminal division who has no link to Hassan’s case, said that based on an AP reporter’s description of it, “I would certainly look at this person, not knowing more, as somebody who would be of interest to the FBI.” However he cautioned that the public doesn’t know the extent of the agency’s efforts to monitor Hassan, including whether she was under surveillance, what sort of background investigation was done and how agents might have assessed her capacity to follow through on a threat. He also said the FBI might have made decisions based on her mental capacity.
“Not every subject requires 24/7 FBI surveillance,” he said. The reality is that hard decisions on resources are being made constantly, with the biggest perceived threats receiving the most attention.
“I’m sure there are plenty of days where they hope they are right and they are keeping their fingers crossed,” he added.
Stephen Vladeck, professor of law at the University of Texas, said monitoring possible threats is a delicate balance, and law enforcement can’t trample civil rights while trying to prevent violence.
“This is a circle that can’t be squared,” he said. “We are never going to keep tabs on every single person who might one day pose a threat.”
So all of this talk about Trump Collusion was a lie by Democrats and Media? Investigate Bob Mueller Now!
A federal grand jury issued indictments Friday for 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies suspected of interfering in the 2016 election, the special counsel’s office announced.
According to the indictment, signed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the Russian nationals began conspiring as early as 2014 to interfere “with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.”
Part of the scheme involving defendants posing as Americans and communicating “with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.”
In a press briefing held shortly after the indictment was announced, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said that there was no allegation in the indictment that “any American” — including members of the Trump campaign — “was a knowing participant in the alleged unlawful activity.”
Rosenstein also said that “there is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.”
According to the indictment, the Russian operatives used three companies — the Internet Research Agency, Concord Management and Concord Catering — to carry out the scheme.
Dubbed the “translator project,” the campaign began in April 2014 and employed hundreds of Russian operatives tasked with using fictitious online personas to sow discord on social media platforms.
The goal of the project was “information warfare against the United States of America,” the indictment asserts.
The scheme involved intelligence gathering activities inside the U.S. as well as interactions with U.S. political activists.
Two defendants, Aleksandra Krylova and Anna Bogacheva, traveled to the U.S. in 2014 to gather intelligence as part of the project. Between June 4, 2016 and June 26, 2016, Krylova and Bogacheva several states, including New York, California, New Mexico and Texas to gather intelligence.
The Russians also purchased space on computer servers inside the U.S. in order to mask their activities.
