RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/390228-london-bridges-falling-down-curious-origins-of-fbis-trump-russia-probe
The bridge to the Russia investigation wasn’t erected in Moscow during the summer of the 2016 election.

It originated earlier, 1,700 miles away in London, where foreign figures contacted Trump campaign advisers and provided the FBI with hearsay allegations of Trump-Russia collusion, bureau documents and interviews of government insiders reveal. These contacts in spring 2016 — some from trusted intelligence sources, others from Hillary Clinton supporters — occurred well before FBI headquarters authorized an official counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016.

The new timeline makes one wonder: Did the FBI follow its rules governing informants?
Here’s what a congressman and an intelligence expert think.

“The revelation of purposeful contact initiated by alleged confidential human sources prior to any FBI investigation is troublesome,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), an ally of President Trump and chairman of a House subcommittee that’s taking an increasingly aggressive oversight role in the scandal, told me. “This new information begs the questions: Who were the informants working for, who were they reporting to and why has the [Department of Justice] and FBI gone to such great lengths to hide these contacts?”

Kevin Brock agrees that Congress has legitimate questions. The retired FBI assistant director for intelligence supervised the rewriting of bureau rules governing sources, under then-director Robert Mueller a decade ago. Those rules forbid the FBI from directing a human source to target an American until a formally predicated investigative file is opened.

What a month! The anti-Trump venom persisted…and worsened. It came into sharper focus with the news that the FBI, under the Obama Administration, had inserted Stefan Halper as a spy (or informant, as the New York Times euphemistically called him) into the Trump campaign – ‘Operation Crossfire,’ as it was dubbed – “benign information gathering,” as James Clapper put it[1]. This is in addition to the dubiously obtained FISA warrants to surveil the Trump organization. Not since Lyndon Johnson spied on Goldwater in 1964 has the FBI been so blatantly used for political purposes. But, where is the outrage over the use of government to silence the opposition? Incredibly (and fortunately), it is having little effect on Mr. Trump’s policies here or abroad – like the tax bill, deregulation, North Korea, Jerusalem and Iran.

As for the latter, the EU is upset over Mr. Trump’s failure to recertify the Iran nuclear deal. Only a people who viewed Mr. Obama’s Iran deal through the commercial lens of their largest companies would be so unconcerned with a rogue nation that has used its new-found wealth to fund militarization and terrorism. Only a people protected by their big brother in North America would not fret about the nuclear ambitions of Iran.(Despite the EU having a slightly larger economy, the U.S. spends more than two and a half times what the EU does on defense, and a big slice of that spending is in defense of Europe.)

…………………………………………………………

Consider the month’s news: The spiking of the Iran nuclear deal (a deal which Mr. Obama realized the Senate would never support); setting a date (possibly) to meet with Kim Jong-un, and re-locating (finally) the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Curiously, but not surprisingly, the Left derided all three decisions. Nancy Pelosi criticized the President for meeting with Mr. Kim and then criticized him for renegotiating the terms. The movement of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem was accomplished, but both Iran (financial sanctions and a new deal) and North Korea (denuclearization of the Peninsula) remain works in progress. The Left is in denial: How does an outsider, a boorish, unprincipled ignoramus, with dyed-blonde hair, accomplish what sanctimonious political elites could not?

http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3745/Russians-for-Hillary-3.aspx

The evidence leading to the big Veselnitskaya “shocker” — that the Russian lawyer was an informant for the Russian government all along — was a set of her emails, which suddenly and anonymously appeared in the electronic dropbox of Dossier, an organization set up by Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, “the former tycoon” the New York Times tells us (not oligarch?), “who was stripped of his oil holdings, imprisoned and then exiled from his native Russia.”

Note that the release date of the Veselnitskaya story, April 27, 2018, is the same as that of the final report by the House Intelligence Committee on Russia. What do you say Agent Veselnitskaya story was a little “insurance” against the report being a blockbuster? Nice distraction, if necessary.

On April 28, 2018, Bill Browder pops up on NPR to comment.

SIMON: Let’s start with the story of this lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. She told NBC, I am a lawyer. I am an informant for the Russian government – after claiming that she wasn’t anybody’s agent. You know her, right?

BROWDER: I know her really well. She was trying to repeal the Magnitsky Act, which I was very instrumental in passing. And she did a lot of terrible things in Washington and New York to try to do that. And she had always presented herself as some kind of private citizen. When she calls herself now an informant, I would say that doesn’t go nearly as far as what she really is. She is an agent of the Russian government. And the emails that came out yesterday pretty much prove that. And so what we know now is that an agent of the Russian government, proven by emails, showed up in Trump Tower, trying to get Donald Trump Jr. to convince his father to repeal an anti-Russian Magnitsky sanctions act.

http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3744/Russians-for-Hillary-2.aspx

Yesterday, drawing mainly on interviews with the Senate Judiciary Committee, I set forth the direct statements and strong indicators that all four of the “Russians” in the infamous meeting at Trump Tower set up to assist in the election of Donald Trump were against the election of Donald Trump.

Thus a key vector of so-called “Russian collusion” was actually activated by a bunch of Russians for Hillary.

I put “Russians” in quotation marks above because three of the four have American and Russian citizenship both. One is even the longtime business partner of an American lawyer, Edward Lieberman, whose close associations with Bill and Hillary Clinton go back at least as far as when his late wife Evelyn was deputy chief of staff for President Bill Clinton.

In his Senate interview, Rob Goldstone, the Brit who coordinated the meeting via email with Don Jr., by the way, also revealed something of interest in his along these same political lines.

The bizarre series of relationships that led to this 20-minute meeting at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016 center on Goldstone’s capacity as the rep of a Russian pop star, Emin Agalerov, whose “Russian oligarch” father Agar Agalerov had partnered with the Trump organization to stage the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Approaching Don Jr., Goldstone dangled information from the Russian “Crown prosecutor” via Agar Agalerov via Emin Agalerov that was described as incriminating to Hillary.

http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3743/Russians-for-Hillary.aspx

Earlier this month, the Senate Judiciary Committee released a set of transcripts of interviews and exhibits related to its “Inquiry into Circumstances Surrounding Trump Tower Meeting.”

I am looking at the interviews from the “Russian” side of the table, the people who sat across from Don Trump Jr. as he waited expectantly to hear an incriminating story about Hillary Clinton that never came: Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, Anatoli Samochornov, Rinat Akhmetshin, the Britisher Robert Goldstone. There is also the written testimony of Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Whether there is anyone who still believes this meeting was anything but a set-up from the get-go, it’s notable that these interviews show us there was not one Trump supporter among the Russians there to “help” Trump. You might even call this weird posse, “Russians for Hillary.”

Take Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze. He moved to the US in 1991 and became a US citizen in 2001, still retaining his Russian Federation passport. He is so pro-Hillary that until he learned that the meeting with Don Jr. would not feature information incriminating to Hillary, he didn’t even want to go.

Kaveladze: Look, I didn’t want to be a part of a meeting where some negative information on a Presidential candidate would be discussed. So, honestly, I was considering if I realized during the lunch that the meeting would be about negative information on Ms. Clinton, I ‘ m not going to go to that meeting .

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/01/may-jobs-numbers-are-bad-news-for-democrats.html

Friday’s monthly employment report was great news for anyone looking for a job in America – unless you happen to be a Democrat running for Congress.
That’s because voters who are employed are historically more likely to favor incumbents than those who are out of work.
With the jobless rate now down to 3.8 percent, Democrats in 435 House districts and 35 Senate races face a major challenge as they try to unseat Republican majorities in both chambers.

Among the many contentious topics swirling around this year’s campaign, none is more important than the perennial issue of employment. Voters who are employed are historically more likely to favor incumbents than those who are out of work.

That poses a major challenge for Democrats in 435 House districts and 35 Senate races who are looking to unseat Republican majorities in both chambers.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/trump-campaign-spying-obama-administration-investigation/Trey Gowdy and Marco Rubio evidently paid little attention to testimony before their own committees on how Obama officials made the Trump campaign the subject of a counterintelligence investigation.

Well, well, well. The bipartisan Beltway establishment has apparently had its fill of this “Trump colluded with Russia” narrative — the same narrative the same establishment has lustily peddled for nearly two years. The Obama administration recklessly chose to deploy the government’s awesome counterintelligence powers to investigate — and, more to the point, to smear — its political opposition as a Kremlin confederate. Now that this ploy has blown up on the Justice Department and the FBI, these agencies — the ones that went out of their way, and outside their guidelines, to announce to the world that the Trump campaign was under investigation — want you to know the president and his campaign were not investigated at all, no siree.

What could possibly have made you imagine such a thing?

And so, to douse the controversy with cold water, dutifully stepping forward in fine bipartisan fettle are the Obama administration’s top intelligence official and two influential Capitol Hill Republicans who evidently pay little attention to major testimony before their own committees.

Former National Intelligence director James Clapper was first to the scene of the blaze. Clapper concedes that, well, yes, the FBI did run an informant — “spy” is such an icky word — at Trump campaign officials; but you must understand that this was merely to investigate Russia. Cross his heart, it had nothing to do with the Trump campaign. No, no, no. Indeed, they only used an informant because — bet you didn’t know this — doing so is the most benign, least intrusive mode of conducting an investigation.

Me? I’m thinking the tens of thousands of convicts serving lengthy sentences due to the penetration of their schemes by informants would beg to differ. (Mr. Gambino, I assure you, this was just for you own good . . .) In any event, I’ll leave it to the reader to imagine the Democrats’ response if, say, the Bush administration had run a covert intelligence operative against Obama 2008 campaign officials, including the campaign’s co-chairman. I’m sure David Axelrod, Chuck Schumer, the New York Times, and Rachel Maddow would chirp that “all is forgiven” once they heard Republicans punctiliously parse the nuances between investigating campaign officials versus the campaign proper; between “spies,” “informants,” and other government-directed covert operatives.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/31/what-nevertrump-never-understood/
Imagine if, on the evening of Tuesday, September 4, President Trump delivered the following speech from the White House . . .

My fellow Americans,

Traditionally, this is the day when the country ends summer fantasies, gets back to work and to school—when we get serious. And it is high time for our political system to follow suit and get serious. Tonight we start.

Two months from now, we will vote for 435 members of the House of Representatives, 34 senators, and countless other officials. Since the last election, we’ve been bombarded with accusations from government officials acting in semi-secrecy and through friendly collaborators in the media that your votes were somehow tainted, and the election results were illegitimate.

Sadly, this outrageous campaign has abetted the Democratic Party’s near-unanimous refusal to accept the results of our election. Aptly, they call what they have been doing “the Resistance.” This open cabal of officials, of the media, of corporate America’s leadership, these upscale lords of the universe, are trying to overturn the results of the last presidential election.

They aim to convince you that you are stupid, unsophisticated, and at least a little racist. In short, they want you to know that you can’t govern yourselves as well as they would have you governed. They tell you that you must vote for Democrats, any and all Democrats, because if enough are elected, they will impeach Donald Trump who is responsible in part for the stupidity, racism, sexism, etc. that led you to vote as you did in 2016.

For what will they impeach me? For having done exactly what? They won’t say directly. They want an endless investigation producing more leaks and suggestions that the worst of the allegations about me may be true. And they want elections to be run on the basis of their smoke and mirrors campaigns.

But it’s time to get serious. That’s why, tonight, I’m telling them what Muhammed Ali told George Foreman after he had absorbed his best punches: Now it’s my turn.

So, tonight, hear this.

Robert Mueller, you’re fired. As of noon Eastern Daylight Time on September 5, along with every person you have hired, you are no longer an employee of the United States. The same goes for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. I am canceling all security clearances of yours and of theirs as of that hour. By that moment, you and they will have delivered to the Justice Department’s inspector general every copy of every document connected with your investigation of anything having to do with the 2016 election, and every electronic instrument containing such documents. After that moment, your possession of any such documents, in any form, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Second, in the exercise of my authority under Article II of the Constitution, I hereby declassify, as of noon Eastern Daylight Time on September 5, any and all documents in the possession of the Department of Justice, the Department of State, the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Agency relating in any way to the election of 2016.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/report-obama-white-house-tried-to-intrude-on-fbis-russia-investigation/

The Obama administration tried to take over the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign, The Hill’s John Solomon reported on Fox News Thursday night. And according Solomon, the FBI began spying on members of the Trump campaign to gather the intelligence that ultimately justified the collusion investigation, weeks or even months before the FBI had a formal predicate.

“That’s very important. The rules say you can’t use sources until you have a predicated investigation. The predication is July 31, 2016,” Solomon told Fox host Sean Hannity. The investigative reporter said he had sources and documents backing up his claim that he would be making public in his report in The Hill on Friday.

He stressed that informants were making contacts with the Trump officials and providing information to the FBI “much, much earlier than July 31.”

The second part of his bombshell report, Solomon explained, deals with internal FBI communications between former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, his mistress Lisa Page, and others discussing how the Obama White House was trying to take over the investigation.

“The words ‘the White House is running this’ are clear in the text message,” Solomon told Hannity, adding that “the FBI agents who opened this case feared that Barack Obama was weak on national security and wouldn’t do what they needed for Russia.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-curious-case-of-mr-downer-1527809075?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=1&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

To hear the Federal Bureau of Investigation tell it, its decision to launch a counterintelligence probe into a major-party presidential campaign comes down to a foreign tip about a 28-year-old fourth-tier Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos.

The FBI’s media scribes have dutifully reported the bare facts of that “intel.” We are told the infamous tip came from Alexander Downer, at the time the Australian ambassador to the U.K. Mr. Downer invited Mr. Papadopoulos for a drink in early May 2016, where the aide told the ambassador the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Word of this encounter at some point reached the FBI, inspiring it to launch its counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign on July 31.

Notably (nay, suspiciously) absent or muddled are the details of how and when that information made its way to the FBI, and what exactly was transmitted. A December 2017 New York Times story vaguely explains that the Australians passed the info to “American counterparts” about “two months later,” and that once it “reached the FBI,” the bureau acted. Even the Times admits it’s “not clear” why it took the Aussies so long to flip such a supposedly smoking tip. The story meanwhile slyly leads readers to believe that Mr. Papadopoulos told Mr. Downer that Moscow had “thousands of emails,” but read it closely and the Times in fact never specifies what the Trump aide said, beyond “dirt.”

When Mr. Downer ended his service in the U.K. this April, he sat for an interview with the Australian, a national newspaper, and “spoke for the first time” about the Papadopoulos event. Mr. Downer said he officially reported the Papadopoulos meeting back to Australia “the following day or a day or two after,” as it “seemed quite interesting.” The story nonchalantly notes that “after a period of time, Australia’s ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, passed the information on to Washington.”

My reporting indicates otherwise. A diplomatic source tells me Mr. Hockey neither transmitted any information to the FBI nor was approached by the U.S. about the tip. Rather, it was Mr. Downer who at some point decided to convey his information—to the U.S. Embassy in London.