Fusion GPS dossier was one of the dirtiest political tricks in U.S. history

[GURPS]

On Thursday, a U.S. District Judge denied Fusion GPS’s effort to keep the House committee from bank records it sought. Judge Richard Leon, who took over the case after the previous judge Tanya Chutkan recused herself midway over unspecified conflicts, smacked down all four grounds by which Fusion GPS tried to block the congressional subpoena. That subpoena included requests for records of payments from Fusion GPS to journalists who have covered the Russian dossier story.

Fusion said the request for records lacked a valid legislative purpose, were overbroad and irrelevant, violated First Amendment rights to speech and association, and violated financial privacy laws. The judge disagreed on each count.

Lacked A Valid Legislative Purpose

Fusion tried to argue that House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) lacked the authority to issue the subpoena, in part because they erroneously believed he had recused himself from the Russia probe. Judge Leon cited the U.S. Constitution, rules of the House of Representatives, and the public record to throw water on the argument. He said that at no time did Nunes “recuse” himself from the Russia investigation, though he did allow other committee members to take charge of it while he resolved his ethics investigation.

“[H]e retained the power to issue the Subpoena at issues in this case… Indeed the Subpoena would be invalid without Chairman Nunes’s signature unless the full Committee authorized another member to sign it, which it did not,” Leon wrote.

Incidentally, Nunes was cleared of ethics violations in early December. He had been accused of sharing classified information when he revealed that Obama administration officials had collected and unmasked much information about Trump campaign officials and spread it around. The committee found that he had not violated House rules or any other standard of conduct.



http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/05...-gps-attempt-to-hide-info-from-investigators/

 

[GURPS]

What we do know is that in the middle of a contentious campaign for the presidency, Democrats paid Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump. The resulting, largely fictitious “dossier,” was then used not only as fodder for the Obama administration’s investigation into its political opponents but also to spread unsubstantiated rumors about Trump to the press.

We also know Christopher Steele, a former British spy, gathered information for the dossier from a hodgepodge of rumors from Russian sources that, according to Simpson’s own testimony, were never substantiated by the firm. Steele called the collection of rumors “raw” and “unverified.”

Simpson told Congress, in his prevaricating and often defensive testimony, that Steele allegedly went to the FBI because he believed the Kremlin had the goods on Trump. The Russians, he claimed, were blackmailing the candidate with evidence of sordid sexual escapades. More significant, the Trump team had colluded with the Russians in hacking e-mails of Democrats during the campaign and were working on a quid pro quo basis. It was like calling 911 when witnessing a potential crime, Steele noted.

Well, almost immediately, one of the most-repeated and significant claims backing this testimony had to be walked back.

Simpson told Congress “an internal campaign source,” a “whistle-blower” within the Trump organization, had corroborated some of the information in the dossier for the FBI. This was a bombshell (if true) because it meant that there was a legitimate source substantiating those assertions. So even the dossier’s most shocking tales could be treated seriously by the FBI and used as a pretext to investigate Trump’s organization in the middle of a political campaign.


https://nypost.com/2018/01/10/the-trump-dossiers-credibility-is-collapsing/

 

[GURPS]

House Intel Committee Democrats Started The False ‘Russia On Facebook’ Story


[TWITTER]https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/946207754745675776[/TWITTER]


Using information from Facebook and government officials, reported by York and Bump, we now know that:

• The 3,000 ads in question were not sophisticated whatsoever. They were mostly written in broken English, and most of the ad-views occurred after the election (while nobody saw 25 percent of the rest). Ten million people saw the ads, but only about 5 million saw the ads before the election, and most of these views occurred in 2015.
• The vast majority of the ads didn’t mention voting, or any specific politician or political party. They mostly covered divisive cultural issues, such as immigration or the Black Lives Matter group.
• Only about a quarter of the ads were geographically targeted (relatively easy to do on Facebook’s ad service), and more targeted ads ran in 2015 than in 2016. The targeted ads were all over the map, with many running in non-battleground states. A statement from Sen. Richard Burr’s office (R-NC) notes that five times more ads were targeted at Maryland than Wisconsin (262 to 55), and that “35 of the 55 ads targeted at Wisconsin ran prior to the Wisconsin primary – before there was an identified Republican candidate…” Not one of those 55 Wisconsin ads mentioned Trump by name.
• The three most heavily targeted states were Maryland, Missouri, and New York, all relatively safe wins for one political party. Washington DC, whose electoral votes always go Democrat in recent years, received more ads than did Pennsylvania, a politically contested state.
• Of the ads that more than one person saw, only about a dozen targeted the contested states of Michigan and Wisconsin, and most of these ads ran in 2015. Of the ads that were seen, the majority were seen by fewer than 1,000 people. Most of the Michigan and Wisconsin ads were less than $10 buys.
• The total ad-spend for Wisconsin was $1,979, and all but $54 was spent before the primary in early 2016. The ad-spend in Michigan was $823. In Pennsylvania it was $300. More than five times the money spent on these states was spent in California.

Moreover, the Russian ads Facebook turned over contained “clickbait-type ads that had nothing to do with politics,” according to a government official familiar with the ads. This raises the question as to whether all of these ads were even run by the Russian government, or by Russians trying to make money on the Internet.

[clip]

The evidence available to us today says that Russia’s activities on Facebook—if they even were sponsored by the Russian government—were no big deal. Twitter identified around 2,700 bot accounts possibly related to Russia. But if you realize how many bot accounts are on Twitter, let alone real accounts, this is just a drop in the bucket. Russians spent $46,000 on Facebook ads that ran before the election (of the reported $100,000). This compares to the Trump and Clinton campaigns’ combined $81 million spent on Facebook ads.

If all it takes is $46,000 to influence an election, the Lion’s Club in my hometown of 10,000 people could “interfere” next time around. Even the idea that Middle America could be influenced by Russian disinformation is downright insulting. Flyover country is apparently much smarter than the Obama administration’s top brass at the FBI, the only group in America that really was duped by Russian misinformation.

 

[GURPS]

Fusion hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to compile the “dossier” that included allegations about contacts between then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign, his advisers and Russia. The document has since become the focus of attacks by Trump and his supporters.

Fusion’s lawyers complained that the names of Fusion employees were publicly disclosed in six letters issued last week by Grassley and Senator Graham, a judiciary subcommittee chairman, although the company’s lawyers “on multiple occasions” had asked committee staff members to avoid doing so.

“Ignoring our requests, your office knowingly put these people in danger, by releasing their names to the public,” the Fusion lawyers argued. “These leaks are unauthorized and unethical.”

“Some of these employees are not yet 30 years old. Others have children. We also hope that nothing happens to these good people, simply because of your office’s labored efforts to defend this president or please the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.”


'Dossier' firm says U.S. senator's leaks endanger its employees


aww too bad

 

[GURPS]

A classified memo on potential FBI abuse of government surveillance was released Friday, and some lawmakers say that it suggests government corruption.

“At what point are we going to have real accountability in the Department of Justice and the FBI,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said in a conference call with reporters Friday, adding:

Obviously we have a number of key officials who have either resigned, retired, or been reassigned and yet here we are today [having] to go to extreme measures to act out the truth to the American people and it’s really about spying on American citizens, but more importantly, in doing that during a campaign and using an intelligence tool in an inappropriate way to make sure that there was, in my mind, an advantage for one political candidate over another. ​

The memo, released by House Intelligence Committee, shows that “opposition research against Donald Trump, funded by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was an essential element to the Obama administration’s application to spy on a Trump associate,” as The Daily Signal reported earlier.


Declassified Memo Shows DOJ Worked to ‘Tip the Scales of Justice,’ Lawmaker Says

 

[GURPS]

GOP Sens: Clinton Associates Passed Info to British Spy Who Compiled Anti-Trump Dossier


Clinton associates were passing information to the British spy Christopher Steele while he was compiling the unverified "Trump dossier," according to a memo put together by two Republican senators as part of their criminal referral against Christopher Steele.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) referred Steele to the Justice Department in January for further criminal investigation based on evidence they say show that he lied to the FBI about his meetings and discussions with the media, which would violate U.S. law.

The two senators in their referral point to a separate memo that Steele put together in addition to the dossier, a memo they say included information from at least one "friend" of the Clintons.

The GOP senators allege that the additional memo dated Oct. 19, 2016 was at least partially based on information 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," Grassley and Graham wrote to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray in their early January referral of Steele for further investigation.

 

[GURPS]

But there were two problems with Steele's credibility, according to the referral. The first was the lack of corroborating evidence. The other was convincing evidence that Steele lied to the FBI.

The credibility issue focused on whether Steele shared his dossier allegations with the press. When, in the late summer of 2016, the FBI asked Steele to join the Trump investigation — an extraordinary move, given that it was the middle of a presidential campaign and Steele was working for the Hillary Clinton campaign — one obvious condition was that Steele not share his information with the press.

Then, on September 23, 2016, Yahoo News published an article that was obviously based on Steele's dossier information. That seemed a clear violation of Steele's agreement with the FBI. What to do?

Steele apparently told the FBI he had shared his information with only two parties — the FBI and his client, which was the opposition research fund Fusion GPS, working for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. But the Yahoo article "contained some of the same dossier information about Mr. Page compiled by Mr. Steele on which the FBI relied in its application," Grassley and Graham wrote. Wouldn't that lead a reasonable observer to suspect Steele had talked to Yahoo?

Steele denied to the FBI that he had done that. In turn, the FBI denied to the FISA court that Steele had talked to Yahoo. Grassley and Graham offered a quote from the actual application, in which the FBI wrote, "Given that the information contained in the September 23rd news article generally matches the information about Page the [Steele] discovered doing his/her research, [redacted portion] The FBI does not believe that [Steele] directly provided this information to the press."

Byron York: What explains the FBI's deep faith in Trump dossier author Christopher Steele?

 

[Hijinx]

I have a question:

What is worse.
The Russians spending money to help a Candidate win the U.S. Presidential election.

Or

The FBI working to help one candidate over the other to become President?

 

[Grumpy]

I have a question:

What is worse.
The Russians spending money to help a Candidate win the U.S. Presidential election.

Or

The FBI working to help one candidate over the other to become President?

That would absolutely be #2..and I would love to hear the convoluted explanation from someone that thinks #1 is the worse one.

 

[GURPS]

both are against the law ... # 1 is easier to hide

 

[GURPS]

Hillary Clinton’s Fingerprints Are All Over The FBI’s Investigation Into Trump’s Russia Ties
Her campaign is linked to at least three separate pieces of information fed to the FBI, including the dossier the FBI used as a pretext to spy on a Trump campaign associate.


A former State Department official confirmed on the record Thursday that Clinton associates were funneling information to Steele as he was compiling a dossier commissioned and paid for by the Clinton campaign and DNC. That’s on top of the recent revelation that a top Department of Justice official fed the FBI information compiled by his wife, who was working for the firm Clinton and the DNC were paying to dig up dirt on Trump, Fusion GPS.

The dossier was quoted “extensively” in the FBI’s application to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, according to a memo released by Republicans on the House intelligence committee. In a January letter to the FBI made public this week, two Senate Republicans also said Steele’s information formed a “significant portion” of the warrant application.

“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,” Sens. Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, and Lindsey Graham wrote in the letter referring Steele to the FBI for a criminal investigation.

Taken together, here’s what we know so far about the extent of Clinton’s involvement in the FBI’s case.

 

[GURPS]

An associate of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself to avoid revealing information to Congress about the so-called Steele dossier assembled to damage Donald Trump in run for the White House.

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.

[clip]

Kramer said he learned the information about sources in November 2016 after traveling to London to meet with Steele. Kramer and McCain 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 Dec. 27 to compel Kramer to discuss the 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, which the website BuzzFeed published on Jan. 10, 2017.


McCain Associate Invokes Fifth Over Anti-Trump Dossier

 

[GURPS]

CONFIRMED: Former Feinstein Staffer Raised $50 Million, Hired Fusion GPS And Christopher Steele After 2016 Election
A declassified congressional report confirms that Daniel Jones, a former intelligence committee staffer for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, hired Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to push the Russian collusion narrative against Donald Trump.


According to the report, Jones, who runs an investigative outfit called the Penn Quarter Group (PQG), told the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in March of 2017 that he had retained the services of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to “continue exposing Russian interference” in the 2016 election. Steele is the former British spy who authored the infamous unverified dossier of allegations against President Donald Trump.

Although Jones’ name is redacted in the report, the biographical details plus previous reporting on the matter make clear that he is the individual referenced. The report also revealed that Jones told federal investigators that he had raised $50 million from “7 to 10 wealthy donors located primarily in New York and California.”

As The Federalist first reported in February, Jones previously worked as a senior intelligence staffer for Feinstein, who currently serves as the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is currently investigating Fusion GPS. In that capacity, she violated committee precedent by unilaterally releasing a transcript of the testimony of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson without disclosing that a top former staffer of hers was directing the firm’s efforts during the Judiciary committee’s investigation.

The congressional report stated that Jones “planned to share the information he obtained with policymakers on Capitol Hill and with the press, and also offered to provide PQG’s entire holdings to the FBI.” That information was gleaned from an FBI interview document called an FD-302, which was prepared on March 28, 2017. Feinstein’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment about her interactions with Jones during the course of her committee’s investigation of Fusion GPS prior to the publication of this article.

The former Feinstein staffer’s involvement with Fusion GPS’s and Steele’s post-election dossier efforts was first publicly hinted at in January in several inquiry letters from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to various Democratic party leaders who were likely responsible for funding Fusion GPS’s 2016 dossier work. That letter named Jones in a lengthy footnote listing a host of characters involved with the dossier and its financing, creation, and dissemination.

 

[GURPS]

In March, Steele was ordered by the English High Court to appear for an upcoming videotaped deposition in London to be used as trial testimony in ongoing civil litigation against Buzzfeed for publishing the unverified dossier.

Buzzfeed, the online publication, is being sued by Russian businessman Aleksej Gubarev in the UK and in Florida for publishing the dossier prepared by Steele and his company, Orbis Business Intelligence, that named companies owned by Gubarev, a technology executive.

In the complex litigation, Buzzfeed, according to the Times of London, is now seeking to quiz Steele on "the dossier as a whole," which is a change in tactics.

Buzzfeed's director of communications, Matthew Mittenthal, told Fox News via email, "We believe that Mr. Steele's testimony about his work on the dossier is essential to the public's understanding of the ongoing federal investigations into a critical document that was circulating and informing decisions at the highest level of government. We have made it clear to the courts that we are not seeking Mr. Steele's confidential sources."

Not so fast, said Evan Fray-Witzer, a Boston based attorney representing the Cyprus-based Russian technology guru.

Steele was paid $168,000 by Glenn Simpson's company Fusion GPS for the series of memos containing information that was selectively briefed to journalists approved by Simpson and used by the FBI. The entire 35 pages of Steele memos was published by Buzzfeed in January 2017. Simpson's Fusion GPS was paid through law firm Perkins Coie, whose client was the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

Fray-Witzer alleged that "Buzzfeed wants to pretend that it was reporting on some government investigation. It wasn't. The Dossier wasn't some government report, it was a bunch of memos written by a private opposition research firm hired to try to find dirt. And when Buzzfeed threw it up on the internet, they weren't publishing the Pentagon Papers, they were doing exactly what they admitted they were doing - publishing salacious, unverified information because they thought people would click on it. If you publish clickbait you should own up to it and not pretend it's journalism."



http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ump-dossier-author-and-ex-spy-under-fire.html

 

[GURPS]

The eye-opening disclosure came at the end of a highly informative discussion with Cater Page about his interactions with Stefan Halper, the informant already believed to have pumped members of the campaign for information. For some reason, after identifying Halper by name on air, Fox News has reverted to the practice of keeping his name secret, at least for the moment. Halper evidently was quite a charmer, accrding to Carter Page. Yet, Halper also is believed to have planted with George Papadopoulos (whom he also paid $3000 for a “research paper”) the information about Russia having hacked DNC emails, which information Papadopoulos then revealed to Australia’s ambassador to Great Britain (called the “high commissioner” among Commonwealth countries), who, then fed it to the FBI to justify the FISA warrant.

Up until the revelations of spies (or “informants” as the New York Times and other anti-Trumpers call them) worming their way into the Trump campaign, it was fiendishly complex explaining to members of the general public what went on. But everyone understands the words spy, secret agent, and informant.

The revelation that the Obama administration security apparatus was spying on the Trump campaign is easy to understand and outrageous on its face.




https://www.americanthinker.com/blo...ed_to_insert_selves_into_trump_campaign_.html

 

[Hijinx]

The eye-opening disclosure came at the end of a highly informative discussion with Cater Page about his interactions with Stefan Halper, the informant already believed to have pumped members of the campaign for information. For some reason, after identifying Halper by name on air, Fox News has reverted to the practice of keeping his name secret, at least for the moment. Halper evidently was quite a charmer, accrding to Carter Page. Yet, Halper also is believed to have planted with George Papadopoulos (whom he also paid $3000 for a “research paper”) the information about Russia having hacked DNC emails, which information Papadopoulos then revealed to Australia’s ambassador to Great Britain (called the “high commissioner” among Commonwealth countries), who, then fed it to the FBI to justify the FISA warrant.

Up until the revelations of spies (or “informants” as the New York Times and other anti-Trumpers call them) worming their way into the Trump campaign, it was fiendishly complex explaining to members of the general public what went on. But everyone understands the words spy, secret agent, and informant.

The revelation that the Obama administration security apparatus was spying on the Trump campaign is easy to understand and outrageous on its face.




https://www.americanthinker.com/blo...ed_to_insert_selves_into_trump_campaign_.html

And nothing will be done about it.

 

[Sapidus]

both are against the law ... # 1 is easier to hide

I thought you said Collusion wasn't a crime?

 

[nutz]

I thought you said Collusion wasn't a crime?

It's not, please provide a legitimate reference proving otherwise.

 

[Bird Dog]

I thought you said Collusion wasn't a crime?

How was your vacay?????

 

[Sapidus]

It's not, please provide a legitimate reference proving otherwise.

Tell that to your buddy Gurps