Ex-FBI Boss Has ‘Grave Concern’ FISA Court Was ‘Defrauded Intentionally’ in Russia Probe

“I have grave concern that the court was defrauded intentionally … There was some type of agenda, an inappropriate agenda beyond an objective intelligence or criminal investigation,” said Kevin Brock, a retired FBI assistant director for Intelligence who helped implement most of the intelligence and informant rules the FBI uses today.

“I struggle to find any other explanation,” Brock told the John Solomon Reports podcast. “Any other explanation just doesn’t pass the smell test. I mean, the glaring — the Steele dossier, for an experienced counterintelligence agent in the field, was blinking red lights Russian disinformation campaign, and yet you’re going to have the highest levels of the FBI executives use that to create an investigation?”

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Trump Praises Carter Page’s Lawsuit Against FBI and DOJ, Asks ‘Where’s Durham?’

Trump was lamenting that the Justice Department was not investigating allegations of voter fraud in various swing states. He brought up an investigation led by U.S. Attorney John Durham into FBI and CIA intelligence-gathering activities related to the Trump campaign in 2016.

Republicans had high hopes for Durham’s investigation when it started in April 2019, but have recently grown frustrated at a lack of public revelations from the probe.

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Peter Strzok Defends FBI Against FISA Abuse Allegations, Says Agents Were ‘Overworked’

Former FBI official Peter Strzok defended the bureau’s surveillance of former Trump aide Carter Page in an interview aired Sunday, attributing failures found in a government watchdog report to agents being “overworked.”

“I don’t think at all that it’s anything improper. You get people who are overworked, who make mistakes — and don’t get me wrong, inexcusable mistakes,” Strzok said in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning.”

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Sen. Ron Johnson Subpoenas FBI Director Christopher Wray for All Crossfire Hurricane Documents

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray last week for all documents related to Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation of the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia.

The subpoena, issued on Aug. 6, calls for Wray to produce all of the documents related to the probe by Aug. 20.

Johnson is also demanding that Wray hand over all records that the FBI provided the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general for its scathing report on Crossfire Hurricane.

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Commentary: Time to Grab Some Popcorn as Attorney Lin Wood Agrees to Take on Carter Page’s Case

Lin Wood, the attorney representing a Kentucky teenager in a number of defamation lawsuits against major media outlets, announced a settlement Friday with the Washington Post. The terms of the agreement between the family of Nicholas Sandmann – the Covington Catholic High School student accused of disrespecting a “native elder” while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat during the January 2019 March for Life – remain secret. 

Wood and Sandmann settled a similar lawsuit against CNN earlier this year. Cases still are pending against NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Gannett.

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Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham Says He’ll Grant Request For Mueller Testimony

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday he will approve Democrats’ request to invite Robert Mueller to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee after the former special counsel published an op-ed in The Washington Post criticizing President Donald Trump’s decision to commute the prison sentence for Roger Stone.

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Appeals Court Orders Dismissal of Michael Flynn Prosecution

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the dismissal of the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said in a 2-1 ruling that the Justice Department’s decision to abandon the case against Flynn settles the matter, even though Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to prosecutors in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

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Eight More Key ‘Russiagate Investigators’ US Attorney John Durham is Likely Investigating

The multiple investigations of the U.S. government’s intelligence-gathering activities against the Trump campaign have typically focused on the actions of the same small group of former officials: James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, John Brennan, James Clapper and a few others.

But just as significant to the efforts to get to the bottom of the government’s Trump-related surveillance are a handful of current and former FBI and Justice Department employees whose names are not as well known to the public.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham Says He’s Been Denied Access to FBI Employees Who Interviewed Key Dossier Source

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that he has been denied access to interview an FBI agent and FBI analyst who met with a key source for the Steele dossier who disavowed the salacious document.

Graham has sought interviews with the FBI case agent and supervisory intelligence analyst to discuss their interview in January 2017 with the primary source for Christopher Steele, the former British spy who investigated the Trump campaign for Democrats.

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Judge Sullivan Defends Delay, Says Justice Department Reversal in Flynn Case ‘Unusual’

A federal judge on Monday defended his decision not to quickly approve the Justice Department’s request to dismiss its own criminal case against former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn, saying that the department’s reversal was unusual and he wanted to consider the request carefully before ruling on it.

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Once a Staunch Opponent of De-Classification, Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff Now Calls for Releasing ‘Any Flynn Transcripts’

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff on Friday called for transparency in the release of a transcript of former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s phone calls in late December 2016 with a Russian ambassador.

“We need to ensure a transparent and complete public record free of political manipulation,” Schiff wrote in a letter to Richard Grenell, the acting director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

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‘Appalling’ FBI Documents Show Flynn Was Targeted with Perjury Trap

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on Wednesday unsealed eleven pages of FBI emails and handwritten notes that provide further evidence that retired general Michael Flynn was set up for a perjury trap by the senior members of the Bureau.

The new documents are “even more appalling than the Friday production,” said Flynn’s lead  attorney Sidney Powell.

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FBI Informant Stefan Halpert Bragged About Connections to Russian Spies to Papadopoulos Spies in Secret Recordings

by Chuck Ross   It wasn’t long into his conversation with George Papadopoulos at a prestigious social club in London weeks before the 2016 election that FBI confidential informant Stefan Halper mentioned his links to several retired Russian spies. “I have a lot of friends in Russia,” Halper told Papadopoulos…

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Newspaper Giant McClatchy ‘Taking a Close Look’ at Its Cohen-Prague Reports in Wake of New Evidence

McClatchy news service says it is reviewing two reports published in 2018 that claimed to validate a key part of the infamous Steele dossier after declassified information showed that Russian operatives may have fed disinformation to dossier author Christopher Steele.

“We are taking a close look at this new information and will update or correct our story based on its merits. Until then, we continue to stand by our reporting,” McClatchy said in a statement to The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple.

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Identified: The FBI Agent Faulted in FISA Report for ‘Significant’ Errors

An FBI agent faulted for some of the most significant problems laid out in the Justice Department’s inspector general report on FISA abuse against a Trump campaign associate has been identified.

The New York Times, citing people familiar with the FBI’s Russia probe, identified Stephen A. Somma, a counterintelligence investigator who works out of the bureau’s New York field office, as “Case Agent 1” from the inspector general’s (IG) report.

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Senator Lindsey Graham Reveals Burisma Witness Wish List, Pledges Hearings on FISA Abuse

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said Sunday that he and other Republicans will begin calling witnesses within weeks for hearings related to Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine, as well as the FBI’s surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

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Commentary: With Mike Flynn, the Bad Guys Won and Made a Mockery the Justice System

America’s eyes turned to Iraq and Iran over the past few days as President Trump made a bold decision to take out one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists and faced down the Iranian government and their proxies at MSNBC, CNN, the Democratic Congress and Hollywood.

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Commentary: The FBI’s Darkest Hour

by Adam Mill   One can imagine the unspoken question hanging in the darkness during the January 2017 ride back to the airport. A small gaggle1 of FBI agents had just concluded their long-overdue interview with Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source. The silence must have been deafening. Steele had tried to conceal2 his…

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FBI’s Top Lawyer During Russia Probe ‘Distressed’ Over Scathing FISA Report: ‘Sloppiness Is Completely Unacceptable’

Former top FBI lawyer Jim Baker: “Sloppiness is completely unacceptable. That is not the way you operate in front of a federal court. I don’t know what word you want to use, it’s terrible, it’s unacceptable, it shouldn’t happen. That is not the way we should be filing matters in front of a federal court”

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Comey Says He Was ‘Wrong’ About FBI’s Surveillance Abuse, but Downplays His Own Role in Bungled Case

James Comey said Sunday that he was “wrong” about the FBI’s handling of surveillance warrants against Carter Page, who the former FBI director acknowledged was “treated unfairly” by having his name leaked to the press as a suspected Russian agent.

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Schiff Refuses to Say He Was Wrong About FBI’s Surveillance of Trump Aide Carter Page

Rep. Adam Schiff admitted Sunday that the FBI committed “serious abuses” of the foreign surveillance court process in order to spy on Carter Page, though the California Democrat stopped short of acknowledging he was wrong to defend the bureau and in his promotion of the infamous Steele dossier.

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What to Expect in the Justice Department’s FISA Report

Michael Horowitz

The Justice Department’s watchdog will release a much-anticipated report Monday scrutinizing the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016.

Republicans have eagerly awaited the report, believing it will reveal that the FBI abused the foreign surveillance court process in order to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Democrats hope the report will show that the FBI had a sound basis to investigate the Trump campaign.

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Senate Sets Date For FISA Abuse Hearing

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Dec. 11 to examine the findings from a Justice Department inspector general’s investigation into the FBI’s alleged abuse of the foreign intelligence surveillance court during the Trump investigation, the committee said on Monday.

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