Title :
link :
WWW.MOEISSUESOFTHEDAY
.BLOGSPOT.COM
Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018
All Gave Some~Some Gave All
*****
At least, not everything said or posted about President Trump is totally negative.
Those who hate him will always hate him, no matter what. I certainly couldn't imagine Hillary (or Bill, for that matter) making anything even close to this gesture.
Please try to understand the weight of this image. This soldier lost both arms. The feeling of a handshake is now lost to him.
President Trump realized this, and so touched his face, so he can feel the human connection. This is what I see when I think of his motives. He gave up a billionaire lifestyle to now be insulted, dragged through the mud and lied about on a daily basis.
All to save this country and people he loves.
Please consider passing this on. Thank you.
Please try to understand the weight of this image. This soldier lost both arms. The feeling of a handshake is now lost to him.
President Trump realized this, and so touched his face, so he can feel the human connection. This is what I see when I think of his motives. He gave up a billionaire lifestyle to now be insulted, dragged through the mud and lied about on a daily basis.
All to save this country and people he loves.
Please consider passing this on. Thank you.
MONEY BAGS
Glass takes one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times!
Gold is the only metal that doesn't rust, even if it's buried in the ground for thousands of years.
Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end
If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. When a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.
Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals.
Kites were used in the American Civil War to deliver letters and newspapers.
The song, Auld Lang Syne, is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year.
Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent.
Peanut oil is used for cooking in submarines because it doesn't smoke unless it's heated above 450F.
The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.
Nine out of every 10 living things live in the ocean.
The banana cannot reproduce itself. It can be propagated only by the hand of man.
Airports at higher altitudes require a longer airstrip due to lower air density.
The University of Alaska spans four time zones.
The tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot heal itself.
In ancient Greece, tossing an apple to a girl was a traditional proposal of marriage. Catching it meant she accepted.
Warner Communications paid $28 million for the copyright to the song Happy Birthday.
Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
A comet's tail always points away from the sun.
The Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 caused more death and illness than the disease it was intended to prevent.
Caffeine increases the power of aspirin and other painkillers, that is why it is found in some medicines.
The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.
If you get into the bottom of a well or a tall chimney and look up, you can see stars, even in the middle of the day.
When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is sight.
In ancient times strangers shook hands to show that they were unarmed.
Strawberries are the only fruits whose seeds grow on the outside.
Avocados have the highest calories of any fruit at 167 calories per hundred grams.
The moon moves about two inches away from the Earth Each year.
The Earth gets 100 tons heavier every day due to falling space dust.
Due to earth's gravity it is impossible for mountains to be higher than 15,000 meters.
Mickey Mouse is known as "Topolino" in Italy.
Soldiers do not march in step when going across bridges because they could set up a vibration which could be sufficient to knock the bridge down.
Everything weighs one percent less at the equator.
For every extra kilogram carried on a space flight, 530 kg of excess fuel are needed at lift-off.
The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements.
And last but not least:
This is called 'Money Bags.' So send this on to at least 5 friends and money will arrive in 5 days. Based on Chinese Feng Shui, the one who does not pass this on will have money troubles for the rest of the year. Superstitious or not, I passed this along because
it is interesting information.
And I ain't taking any chances
Intel Memo Mystery: John McCain Pushed ‘Pee’ Dossier to FBI Months After Feds Already Used It to Gain FISA Warrant
by AARON KLEIN
by AARON KLEIN
Mark Wilson/Getty
TEL AVIV — Last week’s release of a four-page House Intelligence Committee memo alleging abuse of surveillance authority provides details that raise new questions about Sen. John McCain’s role in delivering the infamous, largely discredited 35-page dossier on President Donald Trump and Russia to the U.S. intelligence community under Barack Obama’s administration.
The memo, crafted by House Republicans, reveals, among other things, that former FBI Director James Comey personally signed FISA court applications utilizing the dossier to obtain FISA court warrants to conduct surveillance on Carter Page, who briefly served as a volunteer foreign policy adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Comey allegedly utilized the dossier, produced by the controversial Fusion GPS opposition research firm, to seek and receive the first warrant against Page on October 21, 2016. Federal agencies sought the renewal of the order every 90 days in accordance with court requirements. According to the memo, Comey “signed three FISA applications in question on behalf of the FBI, and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe signed one.”
Comey allegedly utilized the dossier to seek the initial warrant even though he would label the same dossier “salacious and unverified” eight months later during sworn testimony.
Comey also utilized the dossier, according to the memo, even though senior FBI officials were aware at the time that the document, authored by ex-British spy Christopher Steele, was produced by the controversial Fusion GPS firm and was funded by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) via the Perkins Coie law firm.
The questions about McCain’s involvement follow an admission last month by the founders of Fusion GPS that they helped Steele share the document with the Arizona senator utilizing a surrogate after the November 2016 presidential election. McCain in turn reportedly provided the dossier to the FBI in December 2016.
The timeline revealed in the memo shows that by the time McCain delivered the dossier to the FBI leadership in December 2016, the agency had not only already launched an investigation into Trump’s campaign partially utilizing the dossier but Comey himself had two months earlier signed an application using the dossier to obtain a FISA warrant on Page.
It is therefore not clear why Fusion GPS would seek out McCain to deliver to the FBI a document already being utilized by the agency to launch a probe into Trump’s campaign and obtain a FISA warrant after Steele himself provided the dossier to the FBI in July 2016.
It is also not clear whether, at the time he delivered the dossier to the FBI, McCain was aware of the origins of the information, primarily that Fusion GPS compiled the charges and that they were paid to do so by Clinton’s campaign and the DNC.
McCain has not responded to multiple Breitbart News requests for comment.
Necessity of McCain delivering dossier
In August 22 testimony released last month, Fusion GPS Co-Founder Glenn R. Simpson stated that Steele’s outreach to the FBI was “something that Chris took on on his own.” Simpson stated that as far as he knew Fusion GPS did not fund Steele’s July 2016 trip to Rome to meet with the FBI. He said he believes that the trip expenses may have been reimbursed by the FBI.
In a New York Times oped last month, Simpson and fellow GPS Co-Founder Peter Fritch relate that they helped McCain share their anti-Trump dossier with the Obama-era intelligence community via an “emissary.”
“After the election, Mr. Steele decided to share his intelligence with Senator John McCain via an emissary,” the Fusion GPS founders related. “We helped him do that. The goal was to alert the United States national security community to an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power.”
It was not clear from their statement whether McCain knew Fusion GPS was behind the dossier.
While the Fusion GPS oped sheds some light on the manner in which McCain obtained the dossier, the Fusion founders did not name the “emissary” who delivered the document to McCain.
A January 11, 2017 statement from McCain attempted to explain why he provided the documents to the FBI but did not mention how he came to possess the dossier or whether he knew who funded it.
“Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the director of the FBI,” McCain said at the time. “That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue.”
Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow, said McCain first consulted him about the claims inside the dossier at a security conference in Canada shortly after last November’s presidential election.
Wood stated that McCain had obtained the documents from the senator’s own sources. “I told him I was aware of what was in the report but I had not read it myself, that it might be true, it might be untrue. I had no means of judging really,” Wood further told BBC Radio 4 in January.
Last December, Wood related that he served as a “go-between” to inform McCain about the dossier contents. “My mission was essentially to be a go-between and a messenger, to tell the senator and assistants that such a dossier existed,” Wood told Fox News.
In March, Vanity Fair raised questions about the alleged involvement of longtime McCain associate David J. Kramer, a former State Department official, in helping to obtain the dossier directly from Steele. The issue was also raised in a lawsuit filed against Steele by one of the individuals named in the dossier.
Kramer was reportedly questioned by the House Intelligence Committee about his involvement in the dossier affair.
Newsweek reported on an alleged McCain-directed meeting between Kramer and Steele involving the dossier:
Kramer was reportedly directed to meet with Steele in London by McCain, who then received copies of the Trump-Russia dossier and delivered them to the Arizona senator upon returning home. McCain then gave the dossier to the FBI in December 2016.
Briefing to Trump leaked to media, contents of dossier publicly disclosed
One issue that could be relevant in Fusion GPS’s admitted decision to turn to McCain is a revelation in the House memo that dossier author Steele was terminated as an FBI source “for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations – an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016 Mother Jones article by David Corn.”
Another issue here is the timing. McCain reportedly delivered the dossier to FBI leadership in December 2016. The memo relates that in early January 2017, prior to Trump’s inauguration, Comey briefed then President-Elect Trump and President Obama on the dossier.
As Breitbart News documented, Comey’s dossier briefing to Trump was subsequently leaked to the news media, setting in motion a flurry of news media attention on the dossier, including the release of the document to the public. The briefing also may have provided the veneer of respectability to a document circulated within the news media but widely considered too unverified to publicize.
On January 10, 2017, CNN was first to report the leaked information that the controversial contents of the dossier were presented during classified briefings on classified documents presented one week earlier to Obama and Trump.
The news network cited “multiple U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the briefings” – in other words, officials leaking information about classified briefings – revealing the dossier contents were included in a two-page synopsis that served as an addendum to a larger report on Russia’s alleged attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Prior to CNN’s report leaking the Comey briefing to Trump, which was picked up by news agencies worldwide, the contents of the dossier had been circulating among news media outlets, but the sensational claims were largely considered too risky to publish.
All that changed when the dossier contents were presented to Obama and Trump during the classified briefings. In other words, Comey’s briefings themselves and the subsequent leak to CNN about those briefings by “multiple US officials with direct knowledge,” seem to have given the news media the opening to report on the dossier’s existence as well as allude to some of the document’s unproven claims.
Just after CNN’s January 10 report on Comey’s classified briefings about the dossier, BuzzFeed famously published the dossier’s full unverified contents. When it published the dossier text, BuzzFeed reported that the contents had circulated “for months” and were known to journalists.
The New York Times used CNN’s story on Comey’s briefing to report some contents of the dossier the same day as CNN’s January 10 report on the briefings.
The memos describe sex videos involving prostitutes with Mr. Trump in a 2013 visit to a Moscow hotel. The videos were supposedly prepared as “kompromat,” or compromising material, with the possible goal of blackmailing Mr. Trump in the future.
The memos also suggest that Russian officials proposed various lucrative deals, essentially as disguised bribes in order to win influence over Mr. Trump.
The memos describe several purported meetings during the 2016 presidential campaign between Trump representatives and Russian officials to discuss matters of mutual interest, including the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta.
It seems the news media utilized the leak about Comey’s dossier briefings to finally publicize the dossier’s existence and some of its contents even though many news media outlets reportedly possessed some of the dossier information for months.
Yet in his testimony, the FBI’s Comey claimed the opposite was the case. He stated that he and other U.S. officials briefed Obama and Trump about the dossier contents because they wanted to alert the president and president-elect that the news media were about to release the material. It is not the usual job of the U.S. intelligence community to brief top officials about pending news media coverage.
In his prepared remarks before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on June 8, 2017, Comey detailed why he claimed the Intelligence Community briefed Obama and Trump on the “salacious material” – a clear reference to the dossier.
Comey wrote:
The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect; and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
Study: Each Resettled Refugee Costs Taxpayers $15,900 a Year
by IAN MASON
PressThe Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a pro-American immigration think tank, issued a study Monday showing a strikingly high price tag for resettling refugees in the United States.
When they combined resettlement costs with Medicaid, Food Stamps, public education, public housing, and a bevy of other government programs and benefits, the study’s authors, Matthew O’Brien and Spencer Raley arrived at a figure of $79,600 in taxpayer costs for the first five years of an average refugee’s stay in the U.S., which annualizes to $15,900.
The figures do not include an assessment negative societal impact, if any, from refugee resettlement. The authors write:
It is important to note that this analysis does not address the costs associated with any incurred national security and law enforcement costs associated with some refugees who pose a threat. The total price of additional vetting and screening expenditures, law enforcement and criminal justice costs, and federal homeland security assistance to state and local agencies is hard to quantify.
The $15,900 price tag does not tell the entire fiscal story of refugee resettlement. As advocates of permissive refugee and asylum policy are apt to point out, many refugees do work and contribute to the American economy after resettlement. That contribution has proven difficult to quantify, however. Left-leaning PolitiFact, for example, concluded the extent of that contribution is unclear after a draft Obama-era Health and Human Services report on the matter found a massive offsetting contribution, but was rejected in September.
The FAIR study’s authors, however, provide some data that suggest pessimism as to refugees’ ability to offset their welfare burden in the short-term. “According to [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] ORR, refugees’ earnings are meager throughout their first five years in the United States, increasing from $10.22/hour to $10.86/ hour – only a 6.3 percent increase over five years, on average,” they explain.
Unlike other types of immigration, refugee resettlement is an explicitly humanitarian endeavor. Refugee policy has never been based on a purely fiscal calculation. But, as FAIR’s authors stress, “As the nation considers what levels of immigration we can fiscally and environmentally sustain, it is important to understand the costs of resettling both refugees.”
“Reflecting America’s long tradition of providing refuge to the oppressed, we have admitted over 3.5 million people since 1980 and 96,900 refugees just in the last year in 2016,” reads the study’s summary, concluding:
We continue to admit refugees at a rate of roughly 50,000 to 100,000 refugees per year and 20,000-50,000 political asylees per year. Most of this cohort arrives here without financial resources and possessing few marketable job skills. And the American taxpayer is being asked to feed, clothe and shelter them, in addition to funding job training programs.
The FAIR study’s findings largely comport with the 2015 results of another pro-American immigration reform group, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). At that time, CIS found a figure $64,370 per Middle Eastern refugee during the first five years of resettlement.
More than 500K in U.S. Risk Female Genital Mutilation, Say Feds
by LANA SHADWICK
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that “more than 500,000 women and girls in the United States are at risk of or have been subjected to FGM/C (Female Genital Mutilation or Cutting).”
The CDC says that some of these half million women and girls are cut in the United States. Others are sent abroad for mutilation.
Today is the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and other U.S. agencies are calling on the “global community” for an end to this abuse.
In the United States, FGM/C is a serious crime and officials have prosecuted individuals who performed the procedure.
Those who engage in this criminal procedure can be convicted and serve prison time. There are also immigration consequences.
Last year, the State of Texas took aim at FGM by passing legislation that provides for the prosecution of individuals who transport girls within or out of the state to undergo the procedure, reported Breitbart Texas at the time. The state already has a ban on the procedure.
Lana Shadwick is a writer and legal analyst for Breitbart Texas. She has served as a prosecutor and associate judge in Texas. Follow her on GAB @lanashadwick and Twitter @LanaShadwick2.
Priebus: FBI Dep. Director Called NYT Russia Investigation Story “Total BS”
BY CILLIAN ZEAL
In a Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said that FBI officials had told him as early as February of 2017 that a New York Times story about contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians was “total BS.”
That report, which was formally debunked under oath by former FBI Director James Comey last summer, had claimed that “(p)hone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.”
During the appearance, which happened in the wake of the FBI memo’s release last Friday, Priebus harkened back to the publication of the Times report and the president’s frustration at the Russia investigation.
Asked about whether he felt “misled” by the administration about contacts with Russians after it came out Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner had met with a Russian lawyer during the campaign, Priebus said that he hadn’t.
“I never felt that I was involved in something nefarious. The whole way through from the beginning to the end,” Priebus said.
“So you can understand the frustration of the president when he’s told he’s not under investigation. I think you know the story of Andrew McCabe that walked into my office, shut my door and basically told me that The New York Times’ story that was in the paper that first came out in February that said there are constant contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians with the door closed — looked at me and said, ‘I want you to know that this story right here is total BS. It’s overstated and it’s not true,'” Priebus revealed.
“This is the deputy director of the FBI. I didn’t know who he was,” he added. “It’s the middle of February.
“And so everyone’s in this world where we’re being told one thing and sort of operating in this other world of constant obsession by the media.”
The news that the report was false is nothing new. FBI Director James Comey had officially disavowed it during his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last June.
“The challenge, and I’m not picking on reporters, about writing stories about classified information is the people talking about it often don’t really know what’s going on, and those of us that actually know what’s going on are not talking about it.
“And we don’t call the press to say, ‘hey, you got this thing wrong about this sensitive topic,’” he added.
“We just have to leave it there … nonsense. But I can’t go on explaining why it’s nonsense.”
As for whether he thought the president was preparing to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, Priebus responded, “not at all.”
“I think it’s news. I think it’s a 24/7 obsession with this issue,” Priebus said.
“Listen, it’s a legitimate issue that the president and all of his supporters, at least the ones that go on television, reiterate in saying they want to cooperate with the special counsel. They’re not going to get in the way. And I’ve not heard anything to the contrary of that mantra.”
Trump: Nancy Pelosi Is 'Our Secret Weapon'
By Susan Jones
(CNSNews.com) - In remarks at the Sheffer Corporation in Blue Ash, Ohio, Monday, President Trump criticized House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), calling her the Republicans' "secret weapon."
"Nancy Pelosi -- what she's doing to this country -- and she's gone so far left, and Schumer's gone so far left -- I look forward to running against them," Trump said, referring to both the midterm election in November and the presidential election in 2020.
Trump urged his audience to "start thinking about '18. Start thinking about November." He said Pelosi and her fellow Democrats want to raise taxes on Americans while depriving the military of funding. Then he mentioned the bonuses and rising family incomes created, he said, by the Republican tax cut legislation.
So Nancy Pelosi, again, said, 'That's crumbs.' Well, she's a rich woman who lives in a big, beautiful house in California who wants to give all of your money away, and she talked about crumbs.
And I really think her statement about crumbs -- because you're getting thousands and thousands of dollars, and you're getting it every year. So I think her statement, 'crumbs,' will be equivalent -- and I said this the other day for the first time. When I first heard the word 'deplorable,' I thought it was a bad thing. But I had no idea it was not going to be good for our opponent.
It was not good, because, about two days after she (Hillary Clinton) said it, I go to a rally, and everyone's wearing shirts: 'I am a deplorable.' 'We're all deplorables.' I said, what's going on with the word 'deplorable,' Rob?"
You know, we had that, right? It just went pretty wild. It was not a good day for her, and I think this is not a good day for Nancy Pelosi. She's our secret weapon.
The crowd laughed, and Trump continued:
"No, she's our secret -- I just hope they don't change her. There are a lot of people that want to run her out. She's -- she's really out there, and I'm supposed to make a deal with her."
Pelosi is insisting on an immediate immigration deal that gives legal status to dreamers, while deferring any action on chain migration or the diversity visa lottery. President Trump insists that any dreamer deal include three other elements -- border security, including a wall; and an end to chain migration and the diversity visa lottery.
Talk About a Dip-Stick --- Adam Schiff Says Russians Promoted 2nd Amendment so Americans Would ‘Kill Each Other’
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) suggests Russians promoted the Second Amendment during the 2016 presidential election in the hope that more Americans would kill each other.
He made the observation during a speech at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Media Research Center reports that Schiff claimed that Russians took to social media during the presidential campaign in order to divide America and cause one demographic of Americans to oppose another. He said Russia pushed “content designed to pit us against each other, to exploit our divisions.”
He suggested that this included Russians parroting Black Lives Matter and promoting the Second Amendment.
MRC quoted Schiff saying, “Apparently the Russians are very big fans of our Second Amendment. They don’t particularly want a Second Amendment of their own, but they’re really glad that we have one. The Russians would be thrilled if we were doing nothing but killing each other every day, and sadly we are.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange
Texas Mom
"If you were in a public place, would you feel comfortable with this man sitting ten feet away from your children?"
This is the thoughtful response from one of our readers:"I would gently explain to my children that while it is his absolute right to do it, I do not approve. In no uncertain terms I would tell them that if I ever catch THEM wearing brown slacks, blue socks and black shoes, IN PUBLIC, I will slap the s**t out of them."
Texas Mom
Dirty Terrorist Captured In America's Heartland
by: Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo
WASHINGTON — A Saudi immigrant suspected of once applying to join Al Qaeda’s most notorious training camp was arrested on a charge of visa fraud in Oklahoma, where he had been living for years with his family, federal law enforcement officials said on Tuesday.
The F.B.I. discovered the man, Naif Abdulaziz Alfallaj, only recently, when the authorities matched his fingerprints to those taken from a document captured in Afghanistan, the officials said. The document was an application for the Farooq camp, where four of the Sept. 11 hijackers trained.
He apparently filled out the application in 2000, when he was about 17, the officials said, well after Al Qaeda had made its intentions of attacking the United States and its allies known to the world. Anyone who tried to join the camp would have known that Al Qaeda was a terrorist organization, the law enforcement officials said.
He apparently filled out the application in 2000, when he was about 17, the officials said, well after Al Qaeda had made its intentions of attacking the United States and its allies known to the world. Anyone who tried to join the camp would have known that Al Qaeda was a terrorist organization, the law enforcement officials said.
Typically people who applied to the camp filled out what was known as a “mujahedeen data form.” They needed an invitation to join the camp and a reference from someone known and trusted by Al Qaeda. Trainees learned how to use weapons and explosives at the camp. After training, camp attendees fought with Al Qaeda or the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Loretta Lynch signed FISA warrant request to spy on Carter Page
Shutterstock.comFormer Attorney General Loretta Lynch has recently made headlines for her likely role in helping Hillary Clinton escape prosecution for illegally using a personal computer for confidential communications. Now, it also appears that Lynch — when she was not talking with former president Bill Clinton on an Arizona tarmac — was an important factor in another area: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant requests.
As attorney general, Lynch reportedly signed off on almost all of the Obama administration’s FISA warrant requests in 2016, including one to spy on Carter Page, who was a foreign policy adviser at one time for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign. The warrant request for Page was based on evidence provided by the infamous Steele dossier — a dossier that was paid for by Trump’s opposition, Hillary Clinton and the DNC — and did not disclose those names to the court, according to the just-released House Intelligence memo.
Memo Provides Details
With the release of the memo, we now know that the FBI and DOJ relied heavily on the ‘unverified’ dossier, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele and funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Page.
In fact, the memo reveals that Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe testified that without the Steele dossier, no FISA warrant would have been sought from the FISA Court.
The FISA application to obtain the warrant against Page, and three subsequent renewals, did not disclose the names of the political entities who funded the Steele dossier to the court, according to the memo.
And as additional evidence to corroborate Steele’s dossier, the FISA application cited a Yahoo News article — which was based on leaks from Steele himself.
The evidence suggests that key members of the Obama-era FBI and DOJ, including FBI Director James Comey, were to blame for these politically-motivated surveillance abuses against a U.S. citizen, and now Attorney General Loretta Lynch can be added to the list, as she would have signed off on the warrant request, which was submitted to the FISA Court in October 2016.
Lynch was appointed as Attorney General on April 27, 2015, and held that position until January 2017.
The FISA Court
The FISA Court is a U.S. federal court that has the legal authority to decide whether electronic surveillance on potential spies should be granted. It is composed of 11 federal judges selected by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to serve seven-year terms.
Generally, one of the security agencies, such as the FBI, puts together the evidence needed to support the warrant request, and then the attorney general signs off on it before it is submitted to the FISA Court.
More than a thousand applications for electronic surveillance, all signed by the attorney general, are submitted each year, and the vast majority are approved. From 2009 to 2015, for example, more than 10,700 applications for electronic surveillance were submitted, and only one was denied in its entirety, according to annual reports sent to Congress. Another one was denied in part, and 17 were withdrawn by the government.
In short, FISA requests are almost always granted — or at least they were during the Obama years. Critics have accused the FISA Court of essentially becoming a “rubber stamp” for government requests.
Troubling Implications
Lynch joins Comey, McCabe, lead FBI agent Peter Strzok, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, and others on a long list of powerful government officials who appear to have worked behind the scenes to not only protect Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, but to undermine Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Talk about “collusion” to “meddle” in an election.
NEW: Criminal Referral Confirms Nunes Memo’s Explosive Claims Of FISA Abuse
Details from government documents confirm there was inadequate verification of a partisan dossier used to justify surveillance of a Trump campaign affiliate.
By Mollie Hemingway
By Mollie Hemingway
A criminal referral from top Senate investigators confirms explosive charges in last week’s House Intelligence Committee memo regarding abuse of surveillance authorities at the FBI and Department of Justice. It also reveals a host of problems arising from the bureau’s cooperation with foreign investigator Christopher Steele, who was working on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The eight-page memo from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) includes underlying evidence to support the claims.
“It appears the FBI relied on admittedly uncorroborated information, funded by and obtained for Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign, in order to conduct surveillance of an associate of the opposing presidential candidate. It did so based on Mr. Steele’s personal credibility and presumably having faith in his process of obtaining the information. But there is substantial evidence suggesting that Mr. Steele materially misled the FBI about a key aspect of his dossier efforts, one which bears on his credibility,” Sens. Graham and Grassley wrote.
The letter describes a verification effort before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) so inadequate it resembles a concerted effort to conceal information from the court. However, the senators blame Steele’s “apparent deception” for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) failures by FBI and Justice, and refer Steele for investigation of violating federal lawregarding making false statements to the U.S. government. The letter also reveals Clinton associates were feeding Steele allegations that he used in his reports.
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A salacious and unverified dossier formed an essential part of the application to secure a warrant against a Trump campaign affiliate named Carter Page. This application failed to reveal that the dossier was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
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The application presented a Yahoo News article as corroboration for the dossier, when in fact it was sourced to the dossier’s author Christopher Steele.
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The wife of a high-ranking Justice Department official also worked on behalf of the Clinton campaign effort, and her husband Bruce Ohr funneled her research into the Department of Justice. Although he admitted that Steele “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,” this and the Ohrs’ relationship with the Clinton campaign was concealed from the secret court that grants surveillance warrants.
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The dossier was “only minimally corroborated” and unverified, according to FBI officials.
Evidence supporting all of these claims is included in a less redacted version of the senators’ January 4, 2018, referral made publicly available late Tuesday evening. A highly redacted version of the referral was made publicly available the previous day, causing Grassley to ask the FBI to aim for more transparency. The FBI had previously attempted to keep the public from learning details of its relationship with Steele, leading Grassley to publicly decry a “bureaucratic game of hide the ball” by the FBI and DOJ.
According to the senators, the FBI relied on dossier author Steele’s alleged credibility — as opposed to corroboration or verification of his salacious and improbable claims — for the initial warrant application and its three renewals. The application also mentioned a Yahoo News article, but not only didn’t mention the article was sourced to an anonymous Steele, it positively claimed it wasn’t.
Reporter Michael Isikoff recently confirmedthat Steele was obviously his source for the article, and that Clinton’s Russia dossier project head Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS was a longtime friend. The FBI stated to the court that Steele had nothing to do with the article. Shopping his unverified allegations to the media was contrary to Steele’s agreement with the FBI. Even after Steele publicly testified about his many media contacts, the FBI hid that part of his dossier operation from the court and continued to rely on his credibility for surveillance reauthorization.
The senators’ criminal referral confirms the details in the House Intelligence Committee memo, adding quotes and details from testimony by top officials at the FBI and source documents, including two FISA warrant applications provided to the committee. Here are some key excerpts from the criminal referral.
Comey On Dossier’s Lack Of Meaningful Corroboration
When asked at the March 2017 briefing why the FBI relied on the dossier in the FISA applications absent meaningful corroboration–and in light of the highly political motives surrounding its creation–then-Director Comey stated that the FBI included the dossier allegations about Carter Page in the FISA applications because Mr. Steele himself was considered reliable due to his past work with the Bureau.
Dossier Formed ‘Bulk’ Of FISA Application
Indeed, the documents we have reviewed show that the FBI took important investigative steps largely based on Mr. Steele’s information–and relying heavily on his credibility. Specifically, on October 21, 2016, the FBI filed its first warrant application under FISA for Carter Page. [REDACTED] The bulk of the application consists of allegations against Page that were disclosed to the FBI by Mr. Steele and are also outlined in the Steele dossier.
Isikoff’s Yahoo Article Cited In Place Of Corroboration
The application appears to contain no additional information corroborating the dossier allegations against Mr. Page, although it does cite to a news article that appears to be sourced to Mr. Steele’s dossier as well.
Political Basis Mentioned Only ‘To A Vaguely Limited Extent’
[T]he FBI noted to a vaguely limited extent the political origins of the dossier. In footnote 8 the FBI stated that the dossier information was compiled pursuant to the direction of a law firm who had hired an “identified U.S. person”–now known as Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS–[REDACTED] The application failed to disclose that the identities of Mr. Simpson’s ultimate clients were the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
Application Claimed Steele Had Nothing To Do With Yahoo Article
[REDACTED], the application attempts to explain away the inconsistency between Mr. Steele’s assertion to the FBI and the existence of the article, apparently to shield Mr. Steele’s credibility on which it still relied for the renewal request. The application to the FISC said: “Given that the information contained in the September 23rd news article generally matches the information about Page that [Steele] discovered doing his/her research, [REDACTED] The FBI does not believe that [Steele] directly provided this information to the press” (emphasis added).
Even After Terminating Steele For Unauthorized Contacts With Media, FBI Claimed He Hadn’t Talked To Yahoo
In footnote 9 of its January 2017 application to renew the FISA warrant for Mr. Page, the FBI again addressed Mr. Steele’s credibility. At that time, the FBI noted that it had suspended its relationship with Mr. Steele in October 2016 because of Steele’s “unauthorized disclosure of information to the press.” … In defending Mr. Steele’s credibility to the FISC, the FBI had posited an innocuous explanation for the September 23 article, based on the assumption that Mr. Steele had told the FBI the truth about his press contacts. The FBI then vouched for him twice more, using the same rationale, in subsequent renewal applications filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April and June 2017.
Steele Was So Political He Flagrantly Violated His FBI Agreement Over Reopening Of Clinton Investigation
The FBI relayed that Steele had been bothered by the FBI’s notification to Congress in October 2016 and the reopening of the Clinton investigation, and as a result “[Steele] independently and against the prior admonishment from the FBI to speak only with the FBI on this matter, released the reporting discussed herein [dossier allegations against Page] to an identified news organization.” However the FBI continued to cite Mr. Steele’s past work as evidence of his reliability, and stated that “the incident that led to the FBI suspending its relationship with [Mr. Steele] occurred after [Mr. Steele] provided” the FBI with the dossier information described in the application. The FBI further asserted in footnote 19 that it did not believe that Steele directly gave information to Yahoo News that “published the September 23 News Article.”
Even After Steele Publicly Admitted In Court To His Media Operation, The FBI Hid It
In Steele’s sworn court filings in litigation in London, he admitted that he “gave off the record briefings to a small number of journalists about the pre-election memoranda [i.e., the dossier] in late summer/autumn 2016.” In another sworn filing in that case, Mr. Steele further stated that journalists from “the New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New Yorker, and CNN” were “briefed at the end of September 2016 by [Steele] and Fusion at Fusion’s instruction.”The filing further states that Mr. Steele “subsequently participated in further meetings at Fusion’s instruction with Fusion and the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Yahoo News, which took place mid-October 2016.”…
The first of these filings was publicly reported in the U.S. media in April of 2017, yet the FBI did not subsequently disclose to the ISC this evidence suggesting that Mr. Steele had lied to the FBI. Instead the application still relied primarily on his credibility prior to the October media incident.
Court Wasn’t Told Steele Was ‘Desperate’ To Keep Trump From Being Elected
The FBI received similar information from a Justice Department official, Bruce Ohr, who maintained contacts with Mr. Simpson and Mr. Steele about their dossier work, and whose wife also worked for Fusion GPS on the Russia project. REDACTED He also noted in the same interview that Mr. Steele was “desperate” to see that Mr. Trump was not elected president. None of the information provided by Mr. Ohr in his interviews with the FBI was included in the FISA renewal applications, despite its relevance to whether Mr. Steele had lied to the FBI about his contacts with the media as well as its broader relevance to his credibility and his stated political motive.
Why Steele’s Alleged Lies Matter
Whether Mr. Steele lied to the FBI about his media contacts is relevant for at least two reasons. First, it is relevant to his credibility as a source, particularly given the lack of corroboration for his claims, at least at the time they were included in the FISA applicdations. Second, it is relevant to the reliability of his information-gathering efforts.
The More Steele Blabbed, The More The Kremlin And Others Could Manipulate Him
Mr. Steele conducted his work for Fusion GPS compiling the “pre-election memoranda” “[b]etween June and early November 2016.” In the British litigation, Mr. Steele acknowledged briefing journalists about the dossier memoranda “in late summer/autumn 2016.” Unsurprisingly, during the summer of 2016, reports of at least some of the dossier allegations began circulating among reporters and people involved in Russian issues. Mr. Steele also admitted in the British litigation to briefing journalists from the Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New Yorker, and CNN in September of 2016. Simply put, the more people who contemporaneously knew that Mr. Steele was compiling his dossier, the more likely it was vulnerable to manipulation. In fact, in the British litigation, which involves a post-election dossier memorandum, Mr. Steele admitted that he received and included in it unsolicited–and unverified–allegations. That filing implies that he similarly received unsolicited intelligence on these matters prior to the election as well, stating that Mr. Steele “continued to receive unsolicited intelligence on the matters covered by the pre-election memoranda after the US Presidential election.”
Steele Took Info From Clinton Pals (Reported Elsewhere To Be Close To Sidney Blumenthal)
One memorandum by Mr. Steele that was not published by Buzzfeed is dated October 19, 2016. The report alleges REDACTED as well as REDACTED Mr. Steele’s memorandum states that his company “received this report from REDACTED US State Department,” that the report was the second in a series, and that the report was information that came from a foreign sub-source who “is in touch with REDACTED, a contact of REDACTED, a friend of the Clintons, who passed it to REDACTED.” It is troubling enough that the Clinton campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele allegations raises additional concerns about his credibility.
Steele’s Known Behavior Contradicts The FBI’s Assertions To The Court
These facts appear to directly contradict the FBI’s assertions in its initial application for the Page FISA warrant, as well as subsequent renewal applications. The FBI repeatedly represented to the court that Mr. Steele told the FBI he did not have unauthorized contacts with the press about the dossier prior to October 2016. The FISA applications make these claims specifically in the context of the September 2016 Yahoo News article. But Mr. Steele has admitted — publicly before a court of law — that he did have such contacts with the press at this time, and his former business partner Mr. Simpson has confirmed it to the Committee. Thus, the FISA applications are either materially false in claiming that Mr. Steele said he did not provide dossier information to the press prior to October 2016, or Mr. Steele made materially false statements to the FBI when he claimed he only provided the dossier information to his business partner and the FBI.
FISA Application Relied More On Steele’s Supposed Credibility Than Independent Verification Or Corroboration
In this case, Mr. Steele’s apparent deception seems to have posed significant material consequences on the FBI’s investigative decisions and representations to the court. Mr. Steele’s information formed a significant portion of the FBI’s warrant application, and the FISA application relied more heavily on Steele’s credibility than on any independent verification or corroboration for his claims. Thus the basis for the warrant authorizing surveilance on a U.S. citizen rests largely on Mr. Steele’s credibility. The Department of Justice has a responsibility to determine whether Mr. Steele provided false information to the FBI and whether the FBI’s representations to the court were in error.
When Grassley announced the criminal referral in early January, he said, “Maybe there is some innocent explanation for the inconsistencies we have seen [from Steele], but it seems unlikely.” He told NBC News, “In any event, it’s up to the Justice Department to figure that out.”
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter at @mzhemingway
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