The New York Times, a former newspaper, is now openly extolling the Deep State, pushing the narrative that we should thank our lucky stars that a cabal of unelected bureaucrats and spies is working diligently to undermine the duly elected President of the United States.
Times columnist James B. Stewart has written a whole book on the subject: Deep State: Trump, the FBI and The Rule of Law.
“In a sense, [Trump] is right,” Stewart told a smiling Savannah Guthrie on the Today Show. “There is a Deep State, there is a bureaucracy in our country who has pledged to respect the Constitution, respect the rule of law. They do not work for the President, they work for the American people. And as [former FBI Director James] Comey told me&#8230; ‘Thank goodness for that.’”
Michelle Cottle, a member of the Times editorial board, echoed him with a column headlined, “They Are Not the Resistance. They Are Not a Cabal. They Are Public Servants.”
“President Trump is right,” she wrote. “The deep state is alive and well. But it is not the sinister, antidemocratic cabal of his fever dreams. It is, rather, a collection of patriotic public servants&#8230;”
Like so much in the Times these days, these lies aren’t even smart. If these spies and bureaucrats are protecting the Constitution, let me ask this: where are they mentioned in the Constitution? The Constitution provides for a president, a legislature, courts. But it nowhere establishes an unelected collection of conspirators to spy on, leak on and foil the intentions of our duly elected representatives. Officials who work for the American people are elected by the American people and can be unelected by them. What exactly is our recourse if we want these glorious Deep State Heroes to stop doing what they’re doing and allow our President to get on with what we elected him to do?
The Times is selling this intellectual trash hard in hopes of delegitimizing the soon-to-be-released findings of the Department of Justice Inspector General Report on the shenanigans committed by Comey, John Brennan and the rest of Barack Obama’s law and intelligence agencies as they apparently worked to destroy the campaign of the Republican out to defeat Obama’s chosen successor Hillary Clinton.
DOJ Prosecutor John Durham’s investigation into that apparent malfeasance has reportedly now become a criminal investigation, causing potential perps like Comey and Brennan to lawyer up. The Timesand the rest of the left are desperate to get their counter narrative out before an Obama scheme unravels for all to see.
The nonsense Deep State Heroes narrative is also being used to glamorize Congressman Adam Schiff’s so-called impeachment investigation during which behind-locked-doors testimony is selectively leaked to the mainstream media who then dutifully bring it to the public as “mounting evidence” of Trump’s impeachability.
“Trump’s War on the Deep State Turns Against Him,” is the way the Times is trying to sell us this McCarthyite coup attempt.
“The impeachment inquiry is in some ways the culmination of a battle between the president and the government institutions he distrusted and disparaged,” we’re told triumphantly.
But again, if you work out the underlying argument, you find it’s absurd. We’re supposed to think: Obama’s minions bugging phones on which candidate Trump may have spoken, inserting agents into Trump’s campaign, and leaking what we now know were false stories to the press about Trump’s non-existent collusion with Russia — all these things are wonderful patriotic actions. But Donald Trump asking Ukraine to investigate corruption that may have involved Joe Biden’s son — this, by all that’s holy, is an impeachable offense!
In other words, it’s good when we conspire to do it whole hog but it’s criminal when you sort of kind of do it, because shut up.
It’s no mystery why we’re supposed to root for the Shadow Men to undo our votes. It’s because the Democrats don’t think they can beat Trump in the next election.
You remember elections, don’t you, New York Times? They’re the way we choose who governs us, not through a cabal of invisible, unelected bureaucrats and spies.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-doj-administrative-review-into-russia-probe-takes-serious-turn">DOJ Administrative Review Into Russia Probe Takes Serious Turn</a>

The New York Times Headquarters

KLAVAN: The New York Times Loves The Deep State

Adam Schiff

Barack Obama

Donald Trump

James Comey

John Brennan

New York Times

Trump Administration

According to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/ag-barr-expands-controversial-review-origin-russia-investigation-n1068971?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma">NBC News</a>, a review ordered by Attorney General William Barr and conducted by Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham has been expanded &#8220;significantly&#8221; and now includes two high-profile, vocal critics of President Trump that held key positions in the Obama administration: former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan. The review, new developments suggest, could also be morphing into an official criminal investigation.
Citing multiple current and former federal officials, including Brennan himself, NBC reported Saturday that Durham &#8220;has expressed his intent to interview a number of current and former intelligence officials involved in examining Russia&#8217;s effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.&#8221; Among the former officials are Clapper, who now works as a national security analyst for CNN, and Brennan, whose security clearance Trump famously <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-revokes-security-clearance-of-former-cia-director-john-brennan/2018/08/15/043b6fc4-a0bb-11e8-8e87-c869fe70a721_story.html">revoked</a> in 2018.
Reports that Barr greenlighted the expansion of Durham&#8217;s investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation began to circulate a few weeks ago, but the specific claim that Clapper and Brennan were of interest appears to be a new detail from NBC&#8217;s sources. Also new is NBC&#8217;s description of the response of CIA analysts reportedly targeted in the review.
&#8220;Durham has also requested to talk to CIA analysts involved in the intelligence assessment of Russia&#8217;s activities, prompting some of them to hire lawyers, according to three former CIA officials familiar with the matter,&#8221; NBC reports, noting that sources say there is &#8220;tension between the CIA and the Justice Department over what classified documents Durham can examine.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/19/us/politics/durham-review-fbi-witnesses.html">The New York Times</a> also revealed some new details about the ongoing review Saturday. Citing unnamed former officials and others familiar with the matter, the Times reports that the federal prosecutors &#8220;have asked witnesses pointed questions about any anti-Trump bias among former F.B.I. officials who are frequent targets of President Trump and about the earliest steps they took in the Russia inquiry.&#8221;
Thus far, according to the Times&#8217; sources, Durham&#8217;s team has interviewed about two dozen current and former FBI officials, while two senior FBI officials are assisting in the process. &#8220;The number of interviews shows that Mr. Durham’s review is further along than previously known,&#8221; the Times notes.
As for the expansion of the probe, NBC reports that Barr has given Durham the go-ahead to expand both his staff and the timeframe he can examine, which now includes &#8220;conduct past Donald Trump&#8217;s inauguration in January 2017.&#8221; NBC also notes suggestively that DOJ officials would offer no comment when asked if the review has &#8220;morphed&#8221; into a criminal investigation.
The initial investigation into Russian interference, headed up by then-FBI Director James Comey, eventually led to the special investigation into collusion and obstruction headed up by Robert Mueller. But after two years and over $30 million spent on the effort, Mueller&#8217;s exhaustive report concluded that &#8220;the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.&#8221;
As for alleged obstruction of justice by Trump, the special counsel came to no conclusion at all, stating &#8220;while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him&#8221; &#8212; a non-conclusion met with much criticism from both sides.
The DOJ&#8217;s review of the roles of various FBI and CIA officials in the origins of the Russia probe in a sense flips the focus of the initial investigation, looking not at Trump and his associates but at those who allegedly helped promote what Mueller determined to be the evidence-less &#8220;collusion&#8221; narrative.

Donald Trump Bill Barr

Report: DOJ Review Of Origins Of Russia Probe Expanded, CIA Officials &#8216;Hiring Lawyers&#8217;

James Clapper

William Barr

From the moment this ridiculous Ukraine story began, I have called it the Wile E. Coyote scandal: yet another gizmo from the Acme Impeachment Company designed to catch President Roadrunner and destined to blow up in the Democrats’ faces instead. As I write this, I feel that has become a description of painfully exquisite precision — because it seems to me the Democrats have reached the end of the road, run off the cliff, and will hang there in mid-air until they look down and fall into the oblivion they so deserve.
No matter how hard the networks, The New York Times and CNN try to sell this piece o’ garbage, it still looks the same way: like a sinister ploy by corrupt members of the intelligence community and their willing media executioners, an attempt to distract us from upcoming revelations about Obama’s anti-Trump spying campaign and discredit those who are investigating it.
But the Ukraine story has collapsed and, like mid-air Wile E. Coyote, the Left doesn’t know it yet. The central charge — that the president withheld aid from Ukraine to pressure them into investigating Joe Biden’s son in order to scuttle his campaign — makes no sense. Reports in the New York Times and Buzzfeed that the Ukrainians weren’t aware the aid had been delayed makes the story implausible. And the revelation that McCarthyite Trump foe Adam Schiff had contact with the whistleblower who ratted Trump out makes the whole thing look like the political hit job it almost surely is. (The indispensable Kimberly Strassel has a revealing timeline in her Friday Wall Street Journal column showing how Schiff manipulated information as Dianne Feinstein did with the Kavanaugh smear.)
The press is as clueless as their pet Democrats. Trapped inside their own echo chamber, they don’t know how ridiculous they sound to the rest of us. CNN’s Brooke Baldwin actually interviewed former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe in a weird attempt to debunk charges against McCabe’s FBI. Remember, these are the guys who seem to have engineered spy games against Trump on the basis of Russian disinformation paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.
“You were one of the top officials who made sure the Russia investigation was opened. You were at the top levels,” said Brooke — as if that made him an expert instead of a possible perp.
And McCabe — fired after coming under federal investigation for allegedly lying about press leaks — was shocked — shocked — to find that anyone could be suspicious of him. “The circumstances behind the opening of the Russia case are not a mystery. I have testified under oath about them as early as December of 2017. Jim Comey has made comments about them publicly. I have. We&#8217;ve both written books that touched on the issues.”
So the suspect says he’s innocent and his alleged co-conspirator agrees — how could anyone possibly continue to suspect him?!
MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace has the excuse of being on an openly left-wing outlet — but still. She brought on former CIA Director John Brennan, another of the alleged engineers of the anti-Trump plot. Wallace asked him if he could see any reason why he should be investigated.
Brennan was baffled! He then maundered on, Brennan-like, about how Trump was trying to discredit the investigation into Russian election interference. But that, in itself, is dishonest. Trump isn’t trying to discredit that. He’s trying to find out why he, a Republican candidate, was spied on by a Democrat administration. Seems like a pretty good question to me.
The truth will out, even as much of the press corps conspires to keep that truth from being revealed or believed. Meanwhile, the Democrats hover in mid-air as if they’re still on the road to victory.
But they can’t avoid looking down forever.

KLAVAN: What The Democrats Don’t Know Will Hurt Them

Andrew McCabe

Ukraine

Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh came loaded for bear on Monday, repeatedly taking aim at the Democrats&#8217; and the Drive-by-Media&#8217;s impeachment narrative, which he said is made up entirely of &#8220;lies.&#8221;
&#8220;The one thing that will get you through this and the one thing that you have to understand, is practically everything in the media about impeachment is a lie,&#8221; Rush said on his radio program Monday (transcript via <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/09/30/everything-youre-hearing-about-impeachment-is-a-lie/">RushLimbaugh.com</a>). &#8220;Everything is a lie. There isn’t any of it that is true, except if you switch things and have it apply to things the Democrats have done. Then most of it becomes true.&#8221;
&#8220;It is the most amazing thing, and they continue to make it up as the days and the hours go by,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They make it up to fit whatever objection is raised. They make it up to fit whatever suspicion is raised about what they’re doing. There are no boundaries here, folks. They’re gonna get rid of Donald Trump by hook or crook no matter what, and it doesn’t matter how. It doesn’t matter the mechanism. It doesn’t matter the validity. They’re going to do it. They have intended to do it since election night of 2016.&#8221;
Though he said all the Democrats&#8217; lies are &#8220;too numerous&#8221; to list, the host offered his listeners some of the big ones, including Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff having &#8220;lied through his teeth&#8221; when he made up quotes about Trump supposedly asking Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to &#8220;dig up dirt&#8221; on Joe Biden in the famous July 25 call.
&#8220;He said, ‘I want you to dig up dirt on my opponent. Dig up as much as you can. Make it up! And don’t get back to me ’til you do,'&#8221; said Limbaugh, adding, &#8220;That didn’t happen!&#8221;
Rush then pointed out reports that the requirements for whistleblower complaints were quietly downgraded from those with first-hand knowledge to second-hand knowledge a few weeks before the complaint against Trump was filed (a claim which subsequent <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-shows-russian-trolls-how-its-done-with-trump-inspector-general-whistleblower-smear">reports</a> have refuted). The allowance of &#8220;hearsay,&#8221; said Limbaugh, allows for Trump&#8217;s opponents to push through their objective &#8220;to get rid of Trump.&#8221;
Limbaugh then highlighted two other &#8220;noteworthy&#8221; developments from the last few days that demonstrate his premise that there&#8217;s a full-on &#8220;coup&#8221; going on conducted by the Democrats and the deep state. The first thing involved avid anti-Trumper John Brennan, the former CIA Director who&#8217;s now an analyst with NBC News, urging federal officials to come forward with damning accusations against the president.
&#8220;Now, John Brennan’s hands are as dirty as Obama’s in this whole thing,&#8221; said Limbaugh. &#8220;John Brennan (you probably have forgotten) traveled to Ukraine back in the time period around 2016 under a fake passport so it wouldn’t be known that he had gone, and he was arranging data on the dossier and all of the other dirt that they were trying to amass. Ukraine — not Russia, Ukraine — is the center of the universe of all this. Now, over the weekend John Brennan, Obama’s director of CIA — a man who voted for the Communist Party candidate in 1976 — John Brennan is among the radical leftists who personally, viscerally despise Donald Trump. He signaled everybody in the deep state to attack the president.&#8221;
Limbaugh then read Brennan&#8217;s tweet: &#8220;A reminder to federal officials: There is no limit on the number of individuals who can use the whistleblower statute. If you think you were involved in unlawful activity as a result of a directive from Mr. Trump or someone doing his bidding, now is the time to report it.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
A reminder to federal officials:
There is no limit on the number of individuals who can use the whistleblower statute.
If you think you were involved in unlawful activity as a result of a directive from Mr. Trump or someone doing his bidding, now is the time to report it.
— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnBrennan/status/1177917399254872064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Brennan just sent out a call to everybody in the administrative state to come forward and be your own whistleblower,&#8221; said Rush. &#8220;He’s giving them cover. He’s telling them, &#8216;Come forward! We’ll protect you. You can make it up. If you think you were involved in unlawful activity as a result of a directive … now is the time to report it.'&#8221;
&#8220;The next thing that happened that really made me blow my gasket was this story that’s the whistleblower fears for his or her safety and is now under federal protection,&#8221; said Limbaugh, adding later, &#8220;So the CIA agent here that’s been placed in the White House to spy on Trump — with secondhand, thirdhand knowledge — now goes and acts as a whistleblower and is afraid that he might be murdered by Trump. That’s the story. They had to protect him. Federal protection! He was afraid, feared for his life. Yeah, like Trump is gonna go get him. And then they actually said, &#8216;The whistleblower may have a point. You see what Trump did? Trump said he wants to confront his accuser! Trump says he has a right. The whistleblower is right to be afraid.'&#8221;
&#8220;The whistleblower is the most protected, popular, safe person in this country!&#8221; Limbaugh exclaimed. &#8220;The entire left is looking out for whoever this is, and yet they have to run a story — and the Drive-Bys trumpet it to the heavens — that the whistleblower’s afraid of being murdered! That’s what the story was. &#8216;Fears for safety&#8217; means &#8216;afraid of being killed.'&#8221;
&#8220;That’s a lie,&#8221; said Limbaugh. &#8220;That’s an exaggeration. All of this is just compounding on itself.&#8221;
Limbaugh also stressed a point he&#8217;s made previously about the whistleblower complaint, then offered up a theory about its origins: &#8220;Everybody that’s looked at this knows that this complaint was written by lawyers, not intelligence people. In fact, it’s being praised! It’s being held up as an example for would-be writers as a teaching tool, this complaint. I think it was written by House Intelligence Committee staffers, if you want to know the truth. I can’t prove it. But since we don’t need direct, firsthand knowledge, I’m gonna blow the whistle on the House Intelligence Committee. These are people that know this system cold, by the way. This thing as a blatant, total setup — carefully thought through, brilliantly conceived, flawlessly executed so far.&#8221;
During the segment, Rush spelled out his central premise: &#8220;If Trump is so easily removed, if Trump is so egregious and has committed so many repugnant acts, why do you have to build a case made on so many lies? Why not just tell people the truth of what Trump did? Well, because the truth doesn’t get ’em anywhere near impeachment. The truth gets them nearer jail. The truth gets them near a problem. That’s what they’ve got to keep covered up. That’s what they’ve got to shift. They have to shift the aura of suspicion away from them themselves and on to Trump — and, of course, with the aid and assistance of the Drive-By Media, they can do just that, and they are.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/state-department-takes-new-action-on-hillary-investigation">State Department Takes New Action On Hillary Investigation</a>

Rush Limbaugh

Limbaugh: Everything Media’s Telling You About Trump Impeachment Is A Lie

On his radio show Thursday, Rush Limbaugh addressed the revelations from The New York Times about the identity of the &#8220;whistleblower&#8221; who sparked the controversy of President Trump&#8217;s July 25 phone call with Ukraine&#8217;s president that has given the Democrats a rationale to move forward on their impeachment campaign.
According to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/us/politics/who-is-whistleblower.html">Times</a>, the whistleblower is &#8220;a CIA officer detailed to the White House,&#8221; and, according to <a href="https://twitter.com/paulsperry_/status/1177285616993804288">Paul Sperry</a>, former D.C. bureau chief for Investor&#8217;s Business Daily,  rumors are &#8220;swirling&#8221; that the whistleblower was one of former CIA Director and current NBC analyst John Brennan&#8217;s &#8220;old CIA humps detailed over to — planted inside — the White House to spy on Trump and help thwart the investigation of #Spygate which also involves Obama DOS/FBI/CIA skullduggery in Ukraine.&#8221;
&#8220;This is part of the same intel cabal that ran the Russia collusion mess!&#8221; Limbaugh exclaimed after reading an excerpt of the Times&#8217; report on the as-of-yet still anonymous whistleblower (transcript via <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/09/26/the-deep-state-coup-hasnt-ended-its-just-taken-a-turn-toward-ukraine/">RushLimbaugh.com</a>). &#8220;So he was a CIA officer. He was a plant! He was a deep state plant from the CIA at the White House!&#8221;
&#8220;Okay, what does this prove?&#8221; Limbaugh said. &#8220;It proves the intelligence community is spying on the president. It proves it. Trump said it during the 2016 campaign. They laughed at him; they mocked him. They said, &#8216;You&#8217;re insane. You&#8217;re crazy. Nobody&#8217;s monitoring your calls. Nobody&#8217;s tapping your wires. The CIA&#8217;s not spying on you!&#8217; Yes, they are. Not, &#8216;yes, they were.&#8217; Yes, they are.&#8221;
&#8220;He &#8216;is a CIA officer detailed to the White House,&#8217; meaning not a Trumper,&#8221; Rush continued. &#8220;This is somebody the CIA, the intel community, sent over there. This guy was put there as a spy and did his job &#8230; I knew the intel community was part of this — and, folks, nothing’s changed. Nothing’s new. It’s the same operation. They just failed to get Trump on Russia.&#8221;
&#8220;It&#8217;s the same theme! Trump interfered in the 2016 election. The Russians meddled; Trump colluded. The FBI tried to plant spies to prove this,&#8221; Limbaugh said before stressing something he&#8217;s stated repeatedly on his show: &#8220;It did happen because the meddling happened with the Democrats. The Democrats meddled and interfered by creating (the Hillary Clinton campaign buying) the Steele dossier.&#8221;
Along with the Times report, Limbaugh pointed to a tweet from Sperry, stating, &#8220;Rumors swirling the anti-Trump whistleblower was of Brennan&#8217;s old CIA humps detailed over to — planted inside — the White House to spy on Trump and help thwart the investigation of #Spygate which also involves Obama DOS/FBI/CIA skullduggery in Ukraine.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Rumors swirling the anti-Trump whistleblower was one of Brennan&#8217;s old CIA humps detailed over to &#8212; planted inside &#8212; the White House to spy on Trump and help thwart the investigation of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Spygate?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Spygate</a> which also involves Obama DOS/FBI/CIA skullduggery in Ukraine
— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) <a href="https://twitter.com/paulsperry_/status/1177285616993804288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 26, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Trump is right. The whistleblower is a political hack,&#8221; said Rush. &#8220;The rumors are circling now that he is one of John Brennan’s buddies. John Brennan ran the CIA for Obama. He was one of the original Never Trumpers running the Russia investigation. He was on TV every day promising people Trump was going to jail. He was promising people that Trump was gonna get frog-marched. He was promising people that Trump was going to be found guilty of treason. And then when the Mueller report came out no collusion, Brennan was out: I must have been given false information. No, your efforts bombed. Your efforts failed. So the whistleblower, one of John Brennan’s old CIA buddies planted inside the White House to spy on Trump and to try to undermine the Barr investigation into the original FBI investigation, like when did it begin, who’s really responsible for it.&#8221;
&#8220;The FBI was tasked with taking out Trump in the Russia investigation,&#8221; said Limbaugh. &#8220;The CIA has been tasked with taking Trump out on this Ukraine business.&#8221;
Limbaugh also noted that the Democrats have reportedly had the whistleblower complaint since August, yet chose to sit on it. &#8220;Adam Schiff’s had this on his desk since August! Pencil Neck had it,&#8221; said Rush. &#8220;This whistleblower report is just like the Christine Blasey Ford letter, which had just been waiting there for Dianne Feinstein, in that case, to unveil it. This has been an operation needing only a timeframe for execution. The timeframe is they decide to go with this shortly after everybody thinks that Pelosi has authorized impeachment.&#8221;
&#8220;So this is supposed to go on top of that as the perception of evidence that Trump has done something impeachable,&#8221; he said, stating in a mockingly dramatic tone: &#8220;&#8216;He has asked Ukraine to meddle in the 2020 elections.&#8217; That’s based on the fact that Trump supposedly asked the guy to look into Biden. It’s okay for Hillary to hire Christopher Steele and to create a phony document, the Steele dossier — and it’s okay for the Democrats to take that to the FISA court and use that as evidence for a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign and the Trump transition. Oh, that’s perfectly fine. Perfectly fine. The Russians can collude with the Democrats and vice-versa all day long if the objective is to get Trump.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-democrats-quid-pro-quo-claim-against-trump-is-weak-heres-why">Shapiro: Democrats’ ‘Quid Pro Quo’ Claim Against Trump Is Weak; Here’s Why</a>

Limbaugh: Turns Out Ukraine ‘Whistleblower’ Was ‘Deep State Plant From The CIA’

Hillary Clinton

Joe Biden

On his talk radio program Tuesday, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh discussed the newly revealed messages from former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was removed from the Trump-Russia investigation after his overt anti-Trump bias came to light. Strzok&#8217;s newly released texts and emails from December 2016 and April 2017 triggered a request by two high-ranking Republican senators&#8204; on Monday for further investigation. The reason they&#8217;re so &#8220;significant,&#8221; said Limbaugh, is they provide a possible clue about the role of John Brennan&#8217;s CIA in spreading false &#8220;collusion&#8221; claims to the press.
On Monday, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a <a href="http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2019-05-06%20RHJ%20CEG%20to%20IC%20IG%20(leaks).pdf">letter</a> to Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson highlighting a text and an email from Strzok that raised serious questions. In a December 2016 text to his paramour, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Strozk wrote: &#8220;Think our sisters have begun leaking like mad. Scorned and worried and political, they&#8217;re kicking in to overdrive.&#8221; Then, in an April 2017 email to some of his FBI colleagues, Strzok wrote: &#8220;I&#8217;m beginning to think the agency got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn&#8217;t shared it completely with us. Might explain all these weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as source of some of the leaks.&#8221;
Limbaugh addressed the &#8220;fascinating&#8221; development on Tuesday. &#8220;Now, this is significant, because we now know that there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It looks like the CIA was, in fact, leaking false Trump-Russia stories to the press to undermine Trump. These are leaks that even the FBI agents running their own version of a coup thought were wrong and incorrect, and it was John Brennan running the CIA at the time.&#8221;
&#8220;[T]hey&#8217;re concluding that Brennan and the CIA are leaking and putting this stuff in the media that they, then, have to deal with themselves,&#8221; he said after dismissing the idea that this was a &#8220;CYA&#8221; attempt by the FBI. &#8220;And they are concluding here, these are &#8216;incorrect leads all these media folks have.&#8217; That is a solid indication that the FBI&#8217;s looking at this as it&#8217;s happening, and that the CIA is releasing a bunch of BS that even the FBI thought was BS. And the media was just swallowing it all up, not questioning any of it.&#8221;
Why was the media unquestioningly accepting this &#8220;BS&#8221;? Because &#8220;it came from Obama&#8217;s CIA, which they revere,&#8221; said Limbaugh.
The host then highlighted one of those early leaked claims that proved to be false: that Putin was &#8220;personally involved&#8221; in colluding with Trump, a claim reported just two days before Strzok&#8217;s December text:
<blockquote>
&#8220;U.S. Officials: Putin Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack.&#8221; That has to be Brennan. It has to be. It has to be the CIA. From the article: &#8220;U.S. intelligence officials now believe with &#8216;a high level of confidence&#8217; that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.&#8221;
</blockquote>
&#8220;So here&#8217;s Strzok Smirk, and they&#8217;re looking at this, and they see this. They know they didn&#8217;t put that out there, and figured it had to come from their &#8216;sisters&#8217; at The Agency,&#8221; said Limbaugh. He then quoted again from the report on the false claim:
<blockquote>
&#8220;Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said.&#8221;
</blockquote>
&#8220;That&#8217;s all from an NBC story December 14th, 2016, and it syncs right up with Strzok Smirk&#8217;s texts,&#8221; he said. Rush then &#8220;flash-forwarded&#8221; to today, with a new poll finding that <a href="https://scottrasmussen.com/57-of-democrats-believe-president-trump-guilty-of-treason/">55% of Democrats</a> believe that Trump is a traitor. &#8220;There it is! If that&#8217;s all the kind of garbage these people, these Democrats have been consuming for two years, what do you think they&#8217;re gonna think?&#8221; Rush exclaimed. 
&#8220;Folks, there has to be a price paid by the people who have done this,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I mean, this is a flat-out lie. Somebody literally made this up, or they got scammed by some agents in Russia who are running a scam on Brennan and they knew what Brennan wanted to hear, so they told him.&#8221;
Transcript via <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/05/07/newly-released-strzok-page-communications-implicate-cia/">RushLimbaugh.com</a>

Limbaugh: Here&#8217;s Why The Newly Revealed Texts From Anti-Trump Strzok Are So &#8216;Significant&#8217;

Peter Strzok

Russia

The following is satirical.
Top officials are deeply upset about Attorney General Bill Barr&#8217;s announcement that he is investigating the reasons the FBI spied on Donald Trump&#8217;s campaign.
In a statement made while he was pasting on a fake beard and disguising himself as an Egyptian goatherd, former FBI Director James Comey said, &#8220;It is a very sad day for this nation when I have to leave town as quickly as possible in this ridiculous getup. I can&#8217;t believe that anyone could doubt the righteousness of the most righteous person this universe has produced since Paul Scofield in A Man for all Seasons, and you can&#8217;t get any more righteous than he was, believe you me.&#8221; Mr. Comey than excused himself, climbed out the bathroom window and has not been seen since.
In a statement delivered to the bottom of a table in O&#8217;Malley&#8217;s bar in Chappaqua, Hillary Clinton vehemently denied any collusion with the Russians, saying, &#8220;Yes, I paid a foreign national to gather Russian disinformation on Donald Trump and yes I passed that completely false disinformation to the FBI and yes they used that totally invented slander to get a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign but the crucial element of intent was not there. Just ask James Comey, if you can ever find him.&#8221;
Former CIA Director John Brennan, in an impassioned speech delivered from a car speeding toward the Canadian border, said, &#8220;I am so aggrieved by this odious calumny that I have decided to change my name and live in an undisclosed location until the heat&#8217;s off. You&#8217;ll never take me alive, John Law.&#8221;
Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page could not be reached for comment without dodging a fusillade of machine gun fire from the abandoned warehouse in which they were holed up.

James Comey: &#8216;It&#8217;s Sad I Have To Flee The Country In This Stupid Egyptian Goatherd Disguise.&#8217; [Satire]

Satire

The following is satirical.
Flash! In a dramatic mass breakout, several former government officials have escaped from justice. Tunneling free in the pre-dawn darkness, the dangerous crew raced into the woods, where they split up, hoping to avoid the sweeping spotlights, armed search parties and howling bloodhounds. As the law followed in hot pursuit, several clashes broke out between officers and the bad men.
Perjurer and Leaker James Comey sprayed the night with machine gun fire as he climbed atop an old gas storage facility, trying to escape the federales.
&#8220;You&#8217;ll never take me alive, you lousy G-Men,&#8221; Comey shouted. &#8220;I know how dirty the FBI is and I&#8217;ll never turn myself into them as long as I can go out with a bang.&#8221; Then, with an insane scream of &#8220;Top of the World, Ma!&#8221; Comey fired into the storage tanks and disappeared in a gigantic ball of fire.
Another renowned perjurer, James Clapper, slogged desperately through a muddy stream trying to throw the bloodhounds off his terrible scent. The snarling fugitive traded gunfire with officers before losing them, but later turned up, wounded and bleeding on the steps of a nearby cathedral, where he cried out for forgiveness before tumbling down the stairs to the sidewalk, where he lay still.
&#8220;Who was he?&#8221; asked a passerby of a nearby policeman.
&#8220;He used to be a big shot,&#8221; the copper replied.
Escaped Communist John Brennan managed to evade the law using the skills he learned in the CIA. Brennan made his way to the Sixth Avenue studios of CNN, where he&#8217;d once strutted around like he owned the world. Now he found the place apparently deserted, and was left to pound pitiably on the locked doors shouting, &#8220;Open up, ya dirty rats. Don&#8217;t you remember me? I was your pal!&#8221; There was no answer, though several anchormen were seen peering through the darkened windows, pretending they weren&#8217;t at home.
Still at large, are Andrew McCabe, Hillary Clinton and the mysterious gangleader known only as the Big O.
Updates as they come in.

Flash! Government Criminals Escape from Justice! [Satire]

Will the government officials and members of Congress who perpetuated the Russian collusion narrative, hyping every non-story as evidence of treason, face consequences for their involvement?
The short answer is &#8220;no.&#8221;
The long answer is also &#8220;no,&#8221; even though there should be.
These people, who spent years telling the American people that the president of the United States colluded with a foreign government to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton, will not face any consequences. Instead, they have been, and will continue to be, richly rewarded for their roles.
James Comey
The ex-FBI director was one of the principle players in the Russia conspiracy, having been provided the discredited &#8220;Trump dossier&#8221; paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and compiled by an ex-British spy with help from the Russians. Comey was the one who briefed President Donald Trump on the uncorroborated, salacious dossier, giving media outlets the &#8220;hook&#8221; they needed to report on the document, which they had already been shown.
Trump fired Comey, so he then leaked FBI records to the media to make sure a special counsel investigation would ensue against Trump. He may have been fired, but he has managed to maintain a high-profile ever since.
He published a book in 2018 and naturally made the media rounds to make his claims about Trump and Russia with no pushback from alleged journalists. He was also given the opportunity to teach a course about ethical leadership at his alma mater, the College of William &amp; Mary.
Comey may, however, be brought before Congress for more questioning, as hinted to by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
John Brennan
The former CIA director also spent the past two years claiming to have special insight into the investigation against Trump. Just three weeks ago he predicted there would be more indictments from Mueller&#8217;s investigation. When there weren&#8217;t, Brennan went to MSNBC to defend his actions during the scandal.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t know if I received bad information, but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was,&#8221; he said.
Brennan was rewarded for his constant attacks on Trump with a contributor position at NBC and MSNBC as a senior national security and intelligence analyst. Even though he spent years pushing Russian conspiracy theories, there&#8217;s no indication that he won&#8217;t be retained by the network.
James Clapper
The former Director of National Intelligence was apparently the one who decided to set Trump up by suggesting he be briefed on the uncorroborated dossier, according to memos from Comey. He also appears to have been the one who leaked the briefing to CNN, who reported the story as a bombshell.
Clapper was rewarded with a CNN contributorship.
Andrew McCabe
McCabe became acting FBI director when Comey was fired and led the agency when the Russia investigation began because it might not have been started if Trump&#8217;s chosen successor was in charge. The investigation, we now know, was opened in part as retaliation against Trump for firing Comey.
McCabe was fired after an Inspector General report found he had repeatedly lied under oath about leaking to the media.
As soon as he was fired, a GoFundMe account was set up to pay his legal bills, which raised over half a million dollars from just over 13,000 donors. McCabe, like Comey, was also rewarded with a book deal, which brought with it breathless coverage and interviews with all the networks.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)
Schiff may be one of the worst offenders over the past few years, having gone on dozens of news programs to proclaim he has seen the &#8220;ample&#8221; and &#8220;more than circumstantial&#8221; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45072/republicans-escalate-calls-adam-schiffs-ashe-schow">evidence that Trump colluded with Russia</a>. Further, Schiff has vowed to continue investigating Trump even after the Mueller investigation concluded.
Schiff has been rewarded with a hero status among Democrats, who now feel he may be their best hope to take down Trump. He is also still routinely interviewed by the media.
Other Players
We can&#8217;t forget some of the others involved in the media scandal. Fired FBI agent Peter Strzok, who famously texted his mistress about an &#8220;insurance policy&#8221; if Trump won the election, also raised half-a-million dollars on GoFundMe. His mistress, Lisa Page, resigned from the FBI and seems to be the only person in this scandal not receiving public support. Bruce Ohr, who acted as an intermediary between the people paid by Clinton to create the dossier, Fusion GPS, and the FBI, is still with the Department of Justice.

Will There Be Consequences For Comey, Brennan, Clapper, McCabe, Or Schiff Over Russiagate?

On Wednesday&#8217;s episode of &#8220;The Andrew Klavan Show,&#8221; the host discusses the lack of evidence uncovered by Robert Mueller&#8217;s special counsel probe into then-candidate Donald Trump&#8217;s 2016 presidential campaign and alleged ties to the Russian government. Transcript and video below.
The Democrats don&#8217;t want to let this Russian collusion narrative go, they can&#8217;t let it go because they have built up this entire mythology. Here&#8217;s the truth: Trump won because he outsmarted a terrible candidate. I mean Trump may not have been that great a candidate either, but he outsmarted Hillary Clinton. She was always a bad politician, she was a bad retail politician, she was a bad wholesale politician, she had a history of corruption that was as long as your arm, she had a scandal ongoing during the campaign that was a genuine scandal, a real scandal. Just the fact that the Russians were diddling around trying to divide people, which they always do, I&#8217;m sure we do it to them as well, it&#8217;s just spy versus spy stuff, it&#8217;s not that big a deal. They just seized on that, and they have now spent millions of our dollars chasing this down.
Even journalist Ken Dilanian tweeted after the Senate Intelligence Committee&#8217;s statement was put out saying they&#8217;ve found no evidence of collusion: &#8220;to be clear, the Senate Intelligence Committee has not found evidence exonerating Trump either.&#8221; So I tweeted back to him, &#8220;You know what? They haven&#8217;t found evidence exonerating you either!&#8221; You can&#8217;t find evidence exonerating someone from that kind of crime. I mean there&#8217;s certain crimes that only that if you can prove somebody else did it then you&#8217;re off the hook, if you can prove somebody else committed the murder then you didn&#8217;t commit the murder, but this kind of crime you can&#8217;t prove it didn&#8217;t happen. He was talking to the Russians, he was talking to all kinds of people, he was a novice. His campaign was filled with second-raters and novice people because none of the mainstream Republicans, the professionals, would join the campaign, so he was stuck with a lot of people who were kind of sleazy like Paul Manafort. I&#8217;m sure they were talking to all kinds of people, but the idea that Trump was colluding with Russia to overturn the election, to skew the election is just a nonsense. If it was anybody, it was Hillary Clinton who was colluding with Russia to get dirt on Donald Trump.
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gRYKdcewFXA?start=606" width="560"></iframe></div>
Look, they&#8217;ll never find out that Trump didn&#8217;t collude with the Russians; all they can find out is that they have no proof that he did, that&#8217;s the best that can happen, but they&#8217;re not going to let it go. Here&#8217;s just a sample, here is John Brennan &#8211; the ex-CIA chief who lied to Congress about the fact that he was spying &#8211; this is the guy who sat down and said &#8220;oh no we&#8217;re not spying&#8221; while he was crawling around inside their computers. Here he is desperately trying to keep this illusion alive:
<blockquote>
Brennan: It&#8217;s collusion in plain sight. Donald Trump at the end of July openly called on Russian intelligence to find Hillary Clinton&#8217;s emails, there were engagements at the Trump Tower, there were the back-and-forth between various individuals who are affiliated with the Trump campaign and Russian individuals that collusion, I think, is quite obvious and apparent. What the Muller team is doing is trying to determine whether or not the engagement rises to the level of criminal conspiracy, whether they violated the law. You can collude without violating the law, and I know the Senate Intelligence Committee came out and said they found no direct evidence of criminal conspiracy but that&#8217;s not the Senate intelligence committee&#8217;s remit, it is the FBI and a special counsels team to do the criminal investigation. I was hoping that the Senate Intelligence Committee was going to look at what the Russians actually did, how did the government respond, the intelligence community, the law enforcement community, what can we do to better prepare ourselves in the future to prevent the Russians from interfering in the election? Do the intelligence community agencies need to have greater authorities or tools or capabilitie,s does there need to be greater collaboration between the federal government and the states in order to ensure that the voting infrastructure is going to be better protected? These are the things that our congressional committees should be doing, but criminal investigations should be left to the Department of Justice, the FBI and a special counsel.
</blockquote>
This whole thing is so unfair. The Democrats are telling a story, the Republicans are telling a story. I&#8217;m not going to tell you that the Republicans come out and they&#8217;re shining angels of truth. That&#8217;s nonsense, that&#8217;s not the point. The only point is that this massive organization for communication, the American media, is almost entirely all on one side and is ginning this fiction up, and it&#8217;s making sure that everyone hears this fiction and no one hears anything contradictory. &#8203;
<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/andrew-klavan-show&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1550241143602000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFGllx753GV1vTGlfsND0rD1m3KUg" href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Watch more of &#8220;The Andrew Klavan Show&#8221; here</a>.
<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt%3D2&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1550241143602000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFQYbvDQ6RG_2EykOBL9sW4fRhzQg" href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt=2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Listen to more of &#8220;The Andrew Klavan Show&#8221; on iTunes here.</a>

KLAVAN: The Mueller Probe Is Coming Up With Nothing

Andrew Klavan

Democratic Party

Following a report on a chain of emails between FBI officials regarding FISA applications for a Trump associate that may contain &#8220;the most damning evidence to date of potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA),&#8221; President Trump brought up alleged FISA abuse in a series of tweets late Thursday.
On Wednesday, The Hill&#8217;s <a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/419901-fbi-email-chain-may-provide-most-damning-evidence-of-fisa-abuses-yet">John Solomon</a> reported on emails recently requested for declassification by House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) that sources say could prove to be the smoking gun on FISA abuse by high-ranking FBI officials under Obama.
&#8220;The email exchanges included then-FBI Director James Comey, key FBI investigators in the Russia probe and lawyers in the DOJ&#8217;s national security division, and they occurred in early to mid-October, before the FBI successfully <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/11/fbi-secured-warrant-to-monitor-ex-trump-adviser-carter-page.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">secured a FISA warrant</a> to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page,&#8221; Solomon reports. &#8220;The email exchanges show the FBI was aware &#8212; before it secured the now-infamous warrant &#8212; that there were intelligence community concerns about the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trey-gowdy-well-never-know-if-the-fbi-had-enough-to-spy-on-carter-page-without-the-trump-dossier" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">reliability of the main evidence</a> used to support it: the Christopher Steele dossier. The exchanges also indicate FBI officials were aware that Steele, the former MI6 British intelligence operative then working as a confidential human source for the bureau, had <a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/409817-russia-collusion-bombshell-dnc-lawyers-met-with-fbi-on-dossier-before" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">contacts with news media</a> reporters before the FISA warrant was secured.&#8221;
Solomon&#8217;s report has gained traction, including with Fox News, with Sean Hannity in particular promoting the report and inviting Solomon on his radio show Thursday to discuss the story.
While Trump didn&#8217;t specifically cite Solomon, he addressed FISA abuse in a tweet quoting Fox Business Network&#8217;s Trish Regan: &#8220;&#8216;Did the FBI follow protocol to obtain the FISA warrant? I don&#8217;t think so. The Dossier was opposition research funded by opponents. Don&#8217;t use Government resources to take down political foes. Weaponizing Government for gain,'&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;Is this really America? Witch Hunt!&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Trish_Regan: &#8220;Did the FBI follow protocol to obtain the FISA warrant? I don&#8217;t think so. The Dossier was opposition research funded by opponents. Don&#8217;t use Government resources to take down political foes. Weaponizing Government for gain.&#8221; Is this really America? Witch Hunt!
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1070877381861277696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 7, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
Trump also touched on the alleged FISA abuse in series of tweets blasting Robert Mueller&#8217;s &#8220;witch hunt&#8221; on Friday.
&#8220;Will the scathing document written about Lyin&#8217; James Comey, by the man in charge of the case, Rod Rosenstein (who also signed the FISA Warrant), be a big part of the Report?&#8221; he asked. &#8220;Isn&#8217;t Rod therefore totally conflicted? Will all of the lying and leaking by the people doing the Report, &amp; also Bruce Ohr (and his lovely wife Molly), Comey, Brennan, Clapper, &amp; all of the many fired people of the FBI, be listed in the Report? Will the corruption within the DNC &amp; Clinton Campaign be exposed?&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
&#8230;.Foundation be listed at the top of the Report? Will the scathing document written about Lyin&#8217; James Comey, by the man in charge of the case, Rod Rosenstein (who also signed the FISA Warrant), be a big part of the Report? Isn&#8217;t Rod therefore totally conflicted? Will all of&#8230;.
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1071009820575186945?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 7, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
&#8230;the lying and leaking by the people doing the Report, &amp; also Bruce Ohr (and his lovely wife Molly), Comey, Brennan, Clapper, &amp; all of the many fired people of the FBI, be listed in the Report? Will the corruption within the DNC &amp; Clinton Campaign be exposed?..And so much more!
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1071015457409384453?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 7, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
Solomon brings up Comey, Rosenstein and Clapper in his report on the FBI email chain:
<blockquote>
The addition [of the emails] to the [committee&#8217;s] list also comes at a sensitive time, as House Republicans prepare on Friday to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/12/02/comey-deal-house-subpoena-russia-hillary-clinton/2185198002/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">question Comey</a>, who signed off on the FISA warrant while remaining an outlier in the intelligence community about the Steele dossier.
Most intelligence officials, such as former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, have embraced the concerns laid out in the Steele dossier of possible &#8212; but still unproven &#8212; collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
</blockquote>
Even without full access to the potentially declassified emails, what is already publicly known about the FISA warrant process is damning on its own, as The Daily Wire noted Thursday: &#8220;FBI officials that have since demonstrated a clear political bias used an unverified document produced as opposition research as rationale to secure multiple FISA warrants related to a presidential candidate representing the opposing party of the administration.&#8221;
Solomon ends his report by saying it&#8217;s time to put Comey and Rosenstein &#8220;under a public microscope,&#8221; because they should have the answers to many of the pressing questions about the FISA warrants.
<a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/419901-fbi-email-chain-may-provide-most-damning-evidence-of-fisa-abuses-yet">Read Solomon&#8217;s full report here</a>.

After Report On &#8216;Damning&#8217; FBI Email Chain, Trump Hits Alleged FISA Abuse

Robert Mueller

A chain of emails between FBI officials regarding FISA applications obtained largely on the basis of the infamous Democrat-funded anti-Trump dossier may contain &#8220;the most damning evidence to date of potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA),&#8221; The Hill&#8217;s <a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/419901-fbi-email-chain-may-provide-most-damning-evidence-of-fisa-abuses-yet">John Solomon</a> reports.
The evidence reportedly contained in the email chain relates to the dossier, compiled by former MI6 British intelligence operative Christopher Steele and funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, which contains salacious and &#8212; over two years later &#8212; still unverified claims about Trump&#8217;s supposed connections to Russia. As more details about the process have come to light, it has become more clear that the partisan and highly suspect dossier was the key source of information FBI officials used to obtain the initial warrant to spy on Trump associate Carter Page.
House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-CA) requested right before Thanksgiving that President Trump declassify the emails, which have been withheld from most members of Congress for over two years. According to Solomon&#8217;s sources, this could spell trouble for some high-profile former FBI officials.
&#8220;The email exchanges included then-FBI Director James Comey, key FBI investigators in the Russia probe and lawyers in the DOJ&#8217;s national security division, and they occurred in early to mid-October, before the FBI successfully secured a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page,&#8221; Solomon writes. &#8220;The email exchanges show the FBI was aware &#8212; before it secured the now-infamous warrant &#8212; that there were intelligence community concerns about the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trey-gowdy-well-never-know-if-the-fbi-had-enough-to-spy-on-carter-page-without-the-trump-dossier" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">reliability of the main evidence</a> used to support it: the Christopher Steele dossier.&#8221;
Steele, who has been highly <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier">critical of Trump</a>, worked for the FBI as a confidential human source until November 1, 2016, when he was fired &#8220;on the grounds that he had unauthorized contacts with the news media,&#8221; Solomon notes. His firing came two weeks after information he provided was used to secure the warrant.
The emails reportedly show that officials were aware that Steele had contacted news media before the FISA warrant was secured &#8212; that contact resulting in a <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-told-fisa-court-steele-wasnt-source-of-report-used-to-justify-surveilling-trump-team-docs-show">Yahoo News report</a> that was used by FBI officials as supposedly &#8220;independent&#8221; corroboration of some of Steele&#8217;s claims to help secure the warrant.
If the FBI indeed knew before obtaining the warrant that Steele had contacted media, that would constitute &#8220;circular intelligence reporting,&#8221; a &#8220;forbidden tactic in which two pieces of evidence are portrayed as independent corroboration when, in fact, they originated from the same source,&#8221; Solomon explains.
We already know that FBI officials failed to reveal to Congress until months after the fact that Steele had been paid by the firm Fusion GPS, which had been hired to do oppo research for Clinton and the DNC, notes Solomon. &#8220;If the FBI knew of his media contacts and the concerns about the reliability of his dossier before seeking the warrant, it would constitute a serious breach of FISA regulations and the trust that the FISA court places in the FBI.&#8221;
One of Solomon&#8217;s sources commented that if the email chain is released as requested by Nunes, &#8220;the American public will have clear and convincing evidence to see the FISA warrant that escalated the Russia probe just before Election Day was flawed and the judges [were] misled.&#8221;
The evidence that has already come to light is damning enough: FBI officials that have since demonstrated a clear political bias used an unverified document produced as opposition research as rationale to secure multiple FISA warrants related to a presidential candidate representing the opposing party of the administration.
&#8220;If ever there were grounds to investigate the investigators, these facts provide the justification,&#8221; writes Solomon.
<a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/419901-fbi-email-chain-may-provide-most-damning-evidence-of-fisa-abuses-yet">Read Solomon&#8217;s full report here</a>.

Report: FBI Email Chain May Spell Big Trouble For Anti-Trump FBI Officials For FISA Abuse

Authorities now say they have <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/clintons-obama-suspicious-packages/h_b215a0b31750a9f48e8bcf3ef4ad884f?utm_source=twCNNi&amp;utm_content=2018-10-24T16%3A47%3A14&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_term=link">intercepted a fifth suspicious package</a>, this time at the offices of former DNC Chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL). The package was addressed to former Attorney General Eric Holder.
Law enforcement officials descended on Wasserman Schultz&#8217;s Florida office early Wednesday, just as news was breaking that suspicious packages had been intercepted in both New York and Washington, D.C., addressed to former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama.
The fifth package was addressed to former Attorney General Eric Holder, but was reportedly delivered to Wasserman Schultz because it was listed as &#8220;undeliverable&#8221; by the US Postal Service and returned to sender. Wasserman Schultz&#8217;s Florida office was listed as the return address.
The suspected bomber apparently mailed Holder&#8217;s package to the wrong address.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
BREAKING: per <a href="https://twitter.com/PamelaBrownCNN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PamelaBrownCNN</a>, a suspicious package was sent to former AG eric holder, but it was the wrong address, so it was returned to the return address &#8230; which was that of debbie wasserman schultz
&#8212; kelly cohen (@politiCOHEN_) <a href="https://twitter.com/politiCOHEN_/status/1055136384632188928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
The Daily Wire reported earlier that authorities believe all five attempted bombings are connected, and that all five packages share similar characteristics: the suspicious devices were wrapped in manila paper, contained most of the same components, were mailed using stamps, and all five listed Debbie Wasserman Schultz&#8217;s Florida office as the return address. All of the devices &#8220;appear to be working explosives,&#8221; <a href="https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/national-international/Bomb-Hillary-Clinton-House-Chappaqua-New-York-George-Soros-498411611.html">according to a local NBC affiliate</a> in Washington, D.C..
Authorities are reporting only one key difference in the packages so far: the package destined for Democratic mega-donor George Soros, which appeared at his New York home on Tuesday before the other packages arrived at offices and Secret Service screening facilities, <a href="https://www.knoe.com/content/news/Pipe-bomb-hand-delivered-to-George-Soros-mailbox-authorities-say-498363381.html">was reportedly hand-delivered</a> and placed in a &#8220;wooded area&#8221; near Soros&#8217;s home, where it was discovered by a member of the household staff.
The four other packages were mailed.
Two packages &#8212; the ones destined for Clinton and Obama &#8212; were intercepted by the Secret Service. Neither Clinton nor Obama has mail delivered directly to their homes; the Secret Service screens their mail at offsite facilities before delivery.
&#8220;The packages were immediately identified during routine mail screening procedures as potential explosive devices and were appropriately handled as such,&#8221; Secret Service said in a statement. &#8220;Both packages were intercepted prior to being delivered to their intended location. The protectees did not receive the packages nor were they at risk of receiving them.&#8221;
One package, sent to CNN&#8217;s New York offices in the Time Warner Center in New York City, arrived at its destination but was addressed to former CIA director John Brennan, who is a contributing reporter at MSNBC, not CNN. The NYPD evacuated CNN&#8217;s New York studios and most of Columbus Circle while they swept for additional suspicious items.
Authorities in Florida told local media that no one was hurt by the fifth device. Wasserman Schultz&#8217;s office was evacuated as soon as the device was discovered.

FIFTH Suspicious Package Intercepted At Debbie Wasserman Schultz&#8217;s Office, Addressed To Eric Holder

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Eric Holder

So how do voters feel about President Trump revoking former CIA director and current MSNBC analyst John Brennan&#8217;s security clearance and threatening to do the same for other former big names in the intelligence community? A new Harvard CAPS/Harris survey reported by <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/403538-majority-say-brennan-comey-should-not-have-security-clearances-poll">The Hill</a> found that a strong majority agree with the president.
&#8220;The survey showed 59 percent of registered voters felt Brennan should have lost his security clearance, while 64 percent said Comey and others at the FBI who were fired or demoted over their actions should lose their clearance,&#8221; The Hill reports.
The issue, the poll suggests, comes down to what former national security officials do after leaving office. If they become consultants or news contributors, like Brennan, 60% said they should have their clearances stripped.
Former Bill Clinton pollster and adviser Mark Penn, who has frustrated his liberal colleagues by <a href="http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/388549-stopping-robert-mueller-to-protect-us-all">sounding the alarm</a> over the Mueller investigation&#8217;s potential abuse of power, said that the results show that &#8220;there would definitely be support for a wholesale policy revoking their clearances.&#8221;
Trump&#8217;s crack down on security clearances began with Brennan, who has repeatedly accused the Trump and his team of various illegal actions. Brennan has portrayed Trump&#8217;s revocation of his clearance as a grave &#8220;abuse&#8221; of his executive authority which is part of &#8220;a broader effort by Mr. Trump to suppress freedom of speech &amp; punish critics.&#8221; In an op-ed for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/opinion/john-brennan-trump-russia-collusion-security-clearance.html?action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;clickSource=story-heading&amp;module=opinion-c-col-right-region&amp;region=opinion-c-col-right-region&amp;WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region">The New York Times</a> after his clearance was revoked, Brennan laid out his accusations of &#8220;collusion&#8221; against Trump.
&#8220;Mr. Trump&#8217;s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash,&#8221; Brennan wrote. &#8220;The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of &#8216;Trump Incorporated&#8217; attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets.&#8221;
In a scathing response, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) suggested Brennan&#8217;s NYT op-ed was a prime example of why he had his privileges revoked. &#8220;Director Brennan&#8217;s recent statements purport to know as fact that the Trump campaign colluded with a foreign power,&#8221; <a href="https://www.burr.senate.gov/press/releases/statement-from-senate-intel-chairman-richard-burr-on-comments-by-former-cia-director-john-brennan-">said</a> Burr in a press statement. &#8220;If Director Brennan&#8217;s statement is based on intelligence he received while still leading the CIA, why didn&#8217;t he include it in the Intelligence Community Assessment released in 2017? If his statement is based on intelligence he has seen since leaving office, it constitutes an intelligence breach. If he has some other personal knowledge of or evidence of collusion, it should be disclosed to the Special Counsel, not The New York Times.&#8221;
Survey details: The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll online survey consisted of surveys of 1,330 registered voters conducted Aug. 22-23. The partisan breakdown is 37 percent Democrat, 32 percent Republican, 29 percent independent and 2 percent other.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/34792/report-trump-considered-revoking-obamas-security-james-barrett">Report: Trump Considered Revoking Obama&#8217;s Security Clearance. Trump: &#8216;Fake News&#8217;</a>

Poll: Voters Side With Trump On Security Clearances

On Thursday, former CIA Director John Brennan, who has taken it upon himself to be a one-man band slamming President Trump, got more than he bargained for when he tweeted of the &#8220;steady collapse of a U.S. Presidency,&#8221; adding &#8220;I do take strong comfort in knowing that the rule of law &amp; our great government institutions are prevailing.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
I take no delight in seeing the steady collapse of a U.S. Presidency, but I do take strong comfort in knowing that the rule of law &amp; our great government institutions are prevailing. Things ultimately will get better, and we will heal as a Nation.
&#8212; John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnBrennan/status/1032637365301522432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 23, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
Unfortunately for Brennan, Fox News&#8217; Laura Ingraham happened to notice Brennan&#8217;s tweet, and responded with a brutal torpedo of a tweet:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Yeah, <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnBrennan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JohnBrennan</a>, like the &#8220;rule of law&#8221; when you authorized spying on Senate staffers by breaking into computers and lied about it. <a href="https://t.co/WLXKkLSkuJ">https://t.co/WLXKkLSkuJ</a>
&#8212; Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) <a href="https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/status/1033021200560271361?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 24, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
For those unaware of Ingraham&#8217;s reference, here&#8217;s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-spying-senate-staffers">The Guardian</a> from July 2014 , which is decidedly leftist, and its own take on what happened:
<blockquote>
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, issued an extraordinary apology to leaders of the US Senate intelligence committee on Thursday, conceding that the agency employees spied on committee staff and reversing months of furious and public denials. Brennan acknowledged that an internal investigation had found agency security personnel transgressed a firewall set up on a CIA network, which allowed Senate committee investigators to review agency documents for their landmark inquiry into CIA torture. 
</blockquote>
Yet <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6apC6jN0TZo&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;t=18m36s">speaking to Andrea Mitchell</a> in March 2014, Brennan said, &#8220;As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn&#8217;t do that. I mean, that&#8217;s&#8211; that&#8217;s just beyond the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.&#8221;

Watching Trump&#8217;s Troubles, Brennan Celebrates &#8216;Rule Of Law&#8217; Prevailing. Ingraham Bludgeons Him On Twitter.

Laura Ingraham

Bright and early Tuesday morning &#8212; actually so early it was still dark &#8212; President Trump picked up his phone to address another report he says is more &#8220;fake news.&#8221;
On Monday, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/john-brennans-choice-to-confront-trump">The New Yorker</a> published a piece based on unnamed sources claiming that White House officials had discussed revoking former President Obama&#8217;s security clearance back in 2017, but national security adviser H.R. McMaster blasted the idea and, ultimately, &#8220;Trump decided not to exclude Obama.&#8221; Here&#8217;s the passage:
<blockquote>
At the time, some of Trump&#8217;s most fervent supporters in the White House saw former Obama Administration officials as powerful enemies who threatened the new President&#8217;s rule, and they agitated for punishing them by revoking their security clearances. The idea was rebuffed by the national-security adviser at the time, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/mcmaster-and-commander">H. R. McMaster</a>, who signed a memo extending the clearances of his predecessors at the N.S.C., Republicans and Democrats alike. As Trump stepped up his public and private attacks on Obama, some of the new President&#8217;s advisers thought that he should take the extraordinary step of denying Obama himself access to intelligence briefings that were made available to all of his living predecessors. Trump was told about the importance of keeping former Presidents, who frequently met with foreign leaders, informed. In the end, Trump decided not to exclude Obama, at the urging of McMaster.
</blockquote>
On Tuesday, Trump took to Twitter to slam the report. &#8220;Fake News, of which there is soooo much (this time the very tired New Yorker) falsely reported that I was going to take the extraordinary step of denying Intelligence Briefings to President Obama,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;Never discussed or thought of!&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Fake News, of which there is soooo much (this time the very tired New Yorker) falsely reported that I was going to take the extraordinary step of denying Intelligence Briefings to President Obama. Never discussed or thought of!
&#8212; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1031861173149413376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 21, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
All the security clearance talk stems from Trump&#8217;s decision to revoke the clearance of former Obama CIA Director John Brennan after he became an MSNBC analyst and began repeatedly making &#8220;collusion&#8221; allegations against Trump and his administration.
After the White House announced the revocation of his clearance last week &#8212; citing his &#8220;erratic conduct and behavior&#8221; and accusing him of &#8220;leveraging&#8221; his clearance to make false claims against the administration &#8212; Brennan wrote an op-ed for the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/opinion/john-brennan-trump-russia-collusion-security-clearance.html">New York Times</a> laying out his collusion accusations.
&#8220;Mr. Trump&#8217;s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash,&#8221; wrote Brennan. &#8220;The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of &#8216;Trump Incorporated&#8217; attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets.&#8221;
In a response released to the press, the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Republican Sen. Richard Burr, pointed out that Brennan&#8217;s accusations have some problems.
&#8220;Director Brennan&#8217;s recent statements purport to know as fact that the Trump campaign colluded with a foreign power,&#8221; <a href="https://www.burr.senate.gov/press/releases/statement-from-senate-intel-chairman-richard-burr-on-comments-by-former-cia-director-john-brennan-">said</a> Burr. &#8220;If Director Brennan&#8217;s statement is based on intelligence he received while still leading the CIA, why didn&#8217;t he include it in the Intelligence Community Assessment released in 2017? If his statement is based on intelligence he has seen since leaving office, it constitutes an intelligence breach. If he has some other personal knowledge of or evidence of collusion, it should be disclosed to the Special Counsel, not The New York Times.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/34625/senate-intel-chair-heres-why-brennans-accusations-james-barrett">Senate Intel Chair: Here&#8217;s Why Brennan&#8217;s Accusations Against Trump In NYT Op-Ed Aren&#8217;t Believable</a>

Report: Trump Considered Revoking Obama&#8217;s Security Clearance. Trump: &#8216;Fake News&#8217;

Donald Trump stripped former CIA Director John Brennan&#8217;s security clearance last week, and now the Obama appointee is threatening to take legal action.
Brennan told NBC&#8217;s &#8220;Meet the Press&#8221; Sunday that multiple lawyers have reached out to him about the president using his executive authority to revoke his clearance. The CIA director-turned-MSNBC security analyst said he&#8217;s considering pressing for an injunction to stop Trump from moving forward with revoking his clearance as well as the clearances of nine other former government officials connected to the Russia probe and/or critical of the president.
&#8220;If my clearances and my reputation as I&#8217;m being pulled through the mud now, if that&#8217;s the price we&#8217;re going to pay to prevent Donald Trump from doing this against other people, to me it&#8217;s a small price to pay,&#8221; Brennan said, the <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/brennan-considers-legal-action-stop-clearance-revocations-151506505--politics.html">Associated Press</a> reports. &#8220;So I am going to do whatever I can personally to try to prevent these abuses in the future. And if it means going to court, I will do that.&#8221;
On Wednesday, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/34561/white-house-revokes-former-cia-director-john-kassy-dillon">announced</a> that Trump was revoking Brenna&#8217;s clearance, citing his &#8220;erratic conduct and behavior&#8221; and &#8220;wild outbursts.&#8221; The administration also accused Brennan of &#8220;leveraging&#8221; his clearance to make false claims against the Trump administration. The former CIA director&#8217;s &#8220;series of unfounded and outrageous allegations,&#8221; the White House says, have been made with the apparent goal of &#8220;sow[ing] division and chaos.&#8221; Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that &#8220;something had to be done&#8221; to stop Brennan and company from continuing to fuel the &#8220;rigged witch hunt.&#8221;
Brennan&#8217;s potential abuse of his security clearance hasn&#8217;t just been questioned by Trump; as <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/34580/trump-was-right-revoke-former-cia-director-joseph-curl">The Daily Wire</a> noted, others, including Sen. Rand Paul, have openly questioned how Brennan is using his access to information. &#8220;Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump,&#8221; Sen. Paul tweeted in late July.
In its coverage of Brennan&#8217;s legal threat, AP notes that Trump has the authority to revoke security clearances. Currently, he is required to handle revocations according to an executive order signed by President Clinton in 1995, but Trump could also issue a new executive order if he wants to alter the revocation and appeal process. &#8220;Former Obama-era CIA Director Leon Panetta, who also served as defense secretary, said Sunday that Trump must abide by the executive order unless he decides to change or cancel it,&#8221; AP notes.
More than 75 intelligence officials have denounced Trump for his threats to revoke the clearances, while pundits and politicians are invoking &#8220;McCarthyism&#8221; and Nixon&#8217;s &#8220;enemies list&#8221; to condemn the president&#8217;s handling of those &#8220;sowing division and chaos.&#8221;
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/34625/senate-intel-chair-heres-why-brennans-accusations-james-barrett">Senate Intel Chair: Here&#8217;s Why Brennan&#8217;s Accusations Against Trump In NYT Op-Ed Aren&#8217;t Believable</a>

Former Obama CIA Director Threatens Lawsuit Against Trump

&#8220;Life, Liberty, &amp; Levin&#8221; host and bestselling author Mark Levin appeared on Sean Hannity&#8217;s Fox News program Wednesday to praise President Donald Trump for revoking former CIA Director John Brennan&#8217;s security clearance, citing the former Obama official&#8217;s past support for a socialist candidate funded by Russia. &#8220;So how did this man ever get a security clearance?&#8221; Levin asked. 
&#8220;We have never had a former communist who literally we now know spread Russian lies to misinform, propagandize the American people to impact a presidential election either,&#8221; said Hannity. &#8220;These are unprecedented times.&#8221;
Levin slammed the &#8220;fabulously stupid Omarosa media&#8221; for their coverage of the revocation.
&#8220;First of all, apparently the fact that Brennan voted for a Stalinist who was funded by the Soviets, the communist party USA, was very attractive to Barack Obama who made him CIA director. Think about that,&#8221; said Levin. &#8220;So how did this man ever get a security clearance? I&#8217;m curious about this.&#8221;
Security clearance is not a right, said Levin, it is privilege, and President Trump has the right to revoke that privilege.
&#8220;Nobody is stopping Brennan from speaking,&#8221; he said. &#8220;In fact, nobody could stop him. He has a big mouth, he will never shut up, he&#8217;ll go on TV and be the kook that he is. The idea that he has a right to access to information because he served in the Obama administration at the CIA is a preposterous argument.&#8221;
Levin continued: &#8220;Who else is the president looking at? Comey and people who are keeping score, Comey is a Republican. How many times have people told the media Mueller is a Republican, Comey is a Republican, and even they question the president! OK, you got a Republican&#8230; And by the way, for the media, most of these people the president are looking at are white. I know that&#8217;s very important to you.&#8221;
Levin pointed out that several former Obama officials have given misleading comments to the American public and to Congress, yet still have their security clearance. 
&#8220;Good job, boys and girls in the Obama administration, with your security clearances,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The fact that Obama appointed these people and gave them security clearances, it&#8217;s not the obligation of this president to let them retain their security clearances. There is no constitutional issue. That&#8217;s just nonsense.&#8221;
Hannity remarked, &#8220;I would take away all of their clearances.&#8221;
&#8220;I would take away all of their clearances too,&#8221; agreed Levin. &#8220;But the fact of the matter is we really need to focus in on the conduct of these individuals.&#8221;
Watch the clip below:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/68zXU5pI_FU" width="640"></iframe></div>
<a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/08/16/mark_levin_how_did_a_communist_like_brennan_get_a_security_clearance_trump_should_pull_more_clearances.html">H/T RealClearPolitics</a>

Mark Levin: Trump Should Pull MORE Security Clearances

Conservatism

Mark Levin

Sean Hannity

In a scathing press statement released Thursday, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), explained why former CIA Director John Brennan&#8217;s accusations against President Trump and complaints about him stripping his security clearance don&#8217;t hold water.
At the White House press briefing Wednesday, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/34561/white-house-revokes-former-cia-director-john-kassy-dillon">announced</a> that Trump had revoked the security clearance of Brennan, an Obama-appointee who is now a security analyst at MSNBC, citing his &#8220;erratic conduct and behavior&#8221; and &#8220;wild outbursts,&#8221; and accusing him of &#8220;leveraging&#8221; his clearance to make false claims against the Trump administration.
In response, Brennan penned an op-ed in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/opinion/john-brennan-trump-russia-collusion-security-clearance.html?action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;clickSource=story-heading&amp;module=opinion-c-col-right-region&amp;region=opinion-c-col-right-region&amp;WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region">The New York Times</a> condemning Trump&#8217;s actions and leveling more accusations of collusion.
&#8220;Mr. Trump&#8217;s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash,&#8221; wrote Brennan. &#8220;The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of &#8216;Trump Incorporated&#8217; attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets.&#8221;
Citing the op-ed, Burr issued a rebuttal on Thursday that concisely picked apart Brennan&#8217;s arguments.
&#8220;Director Brennan&#8217;s recent statements purport to know as fact that the Trump campaign colluded with a foreign power,&#8221; <a href="https://www.burr.senate.gov/press/releases/statement-from-senate-intel-chairman-richard-burr-on-comments-by-former-cia-director-john-brennan-">said</a> Burr. &#8220;If Director Brennan&#8217;s statement is based on intelligence he received while still leading the CIA, why didn&#8217;t he include it in the Intelligence Community Assessment released in 2017? If his statement is based on intelligence he has seen since leaving office, it constitutes an intelligence breach. If he has some other personal knowledge of or evidence of collusion, it should be disclosed to the Special Counsel, not The New York Times.&#8221;
Burr concluded by suggesting that if Brennan doesn&#8217;t have any hard evidence, as appears to be the case, then Trump had every right to revoke his clearance.
&#8220;If, however, Director Brennan&#8217;s statement is purely political and based on conjecture, the president has full authority to revoke his security clearance as head of the Executive Branch,&#8221; he concludes.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/34597/twitter-shreds-comey-after-he-lashes-out-trump-joseph-curl">Ex-FBI Director Comey Lashes Out At Trump For Revoking Former CIA Head Brennan&#8217;s Security Clearance</a>

Senate Intel Chair: Here&#8217;s Why Brennan&#8217;s Accusations Against Trump In NYT Op-Ed Aren&#8217;t Believable

On Thursday, William H. McRaven, who was the commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command from 2011 to 2014 and oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, fired off a blistering <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/revoke-my-security-clearance-too-mr-president/2018/08/16/8b149b02-a178-11e8-93e3-24d1703d2a7a_story.html?utm_term=.ea7eef05418c">public letter</a> to President Trump excoriating him for revoking the clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan. In the letter, McRaven described Brennan as &#8220;a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question.&#8221;
That description of Brennan might have a difficult time comporting with the facts.
First, here&#8217;s McRaven&#8217;s screed:
<blockquote>
Dear Mr. President:
Former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance you <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-revokes-security-clearance-of-former-cia-director-john-brennan/2018/08/15/043b6fc4-a0bb-11e8-8e87-c869fe70a721_story.html?utm_term=.ba5fe3a75c05">revoked</a> on Wednesday, is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don&#8217;t know him.
Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.
Like most Americans, I had hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and become the leader this great nation needs.
A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself.
Your leadership, however, has shown little of these qualities. Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.
If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken. The criticism will continue until you become the leader we prayed you would be.
</blockquote>
Now for some facts regarding the &#8220;unparalleled integrity&#8221; of Brennan:
1, When Brennan served Barack Obama as CIA director, the CIA appeared as if it tried to silence Benghazi survivors by presenting non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to them at a memorial service for the victims of the Benghazi attack. As Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard noted in a <a href="https://www.weeklystandard.com/stephen-f-hayes/benghazi-survivors-given-ndas-at-cia-memorial-service-for-woods-doherty">comprehensive piece</a>, &#8220;Two former CIA officials who fought in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, were asked to sign additional nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) more than six months after those attacks. The two officials, who will testify Thursday before a subcommittee of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, were presented the nondisclosure agreements during a memorial service in May at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, honoring Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, two of the CIA-affiliated personnel who died during those attacks.&#8221;
Hayes noted that Brennan had categorically denied claims that the CIA tried to silence its operatives or contractors from speaking out about their experiences, writing in <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cia-director-pledges-make-benghazi-survivors-available-talk_753776.html">a letter dated September 3, 2013</a> to House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers that no officer, whether staff or contractor, had been forced to take a polygraph test or been forced to sign an NDA because of their presence at Benghazi or their participation in any activity related to the Benghazi attacks.
Hayes pointed out, &#8220;Several members of the team on the ground in Benghazi that night were presented with new non-disclosure agreements at a CIA ceremony on May 21, 2013, honoring CIA officials killed in those attacks. Some of these CIA officials were asked to sign the new NDAs despite the fact that they were leaving government service and despite the fact that they were still bound by previous NDAs. According to testimony that two of these officials are expected to provide at classified hearings before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Thursday, the new NDAs were both unexpected and unnecessary.&#8221;
As Hayes reported, Mark Zaid, who represented three Benghazi survivors, said the NDAs his clients were asked to sign connected to their experiences in Benghazi. He added, &#8220;There is no doubt that the NDAs would not have been presented to them had it not been for Benghazi. That is their impression and my analysis based on twenty years of experience.&#8221;
2. In <a href="https://www.weeklystandard.com/stephen-f-hayes/the-big-reveal-the-story-of-how-470-000-documents-from-osama-bin-ladens-compound-finally-got-into-the-open">another piece</a> by Hayes, he noted that while Brennan was CIA director, after the raid on Osama bin Laden&#8217;s compound, many documents that were captured were buried. Hayes has written of those documents. &#8220;Not coincidentally, those documents badly undermined the Obama administration position on al Qaeda, Iran, jihadism, etc.&#8221; Hayes pointed out, &#8220;Relevant intelligence agencies engaged in a protracted fight about who could have access to the information. The Defense Intelligence Agency was repeatedly denied full access by the CIA, which had &#8216;executive authority&#8217; over the collection and which was run throughout much of the bureaucratic infighting by John Brennan, an Obama crony who had predicted in April 2012 that al Qaeda would meet its demise by the end of the decade.&#8221;
3. In 2014, Brennan <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/the-google-search-that-made-the-cia-spy-on-the-us-senate">wrote a letter</a> to Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senator Saxby Chambliss, the panel&#8217;s ranking Republican, acknowledging that the CIA&#8217;s penetration of the computer network that had been utilized to review the agency&#8217;s torture program was wrong and violated agreements the Intelligence Committee had made with the CIA. He never apologized; instead, he sent another letter that elided any apology, asserting he favored an &#8220;independent&#8221; accountability review board, whose members would be appointed by Brennan, to review the matter. Unsurprisingly, the accountability board issued a report and exonerated Brennan. Brennan later apologized verbally, but as Vice News reported, Intelligence Committee members said it was unacceptable because there was not a written record of it.

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Articles tagged with John Brennan

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Flash! Government Criminals Escape from Justice! [Satire]

Will There Be Consequences For Comey, Brennan, Clapper, McCabe, Or Schiff Over Russiagate?

KLAVAN: The Mueller Probe Is Coming Up With Nothing

After Report On ‘Damning’ FBI Email Chain, Trump Hits Alleged FISA Abuse

Report: FBI Email Chain May Spell Big Trouble For Anti-Trump FBI Officials For FISA Abuse

FIFTH Suspicious Package Intercepted At Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s Office, Addressed To Eric Holder

Poll: Voters Side With Trump On Security Clearances

Watching Trump’s Troubles, Brennan Celebrates ‘Rule Of Law’ Prevailing. Ingraham Bludgeons Him On Twitter.

Report: Trump Considered Revoking Obama’s Security Clearance. Trump: ‘Fake News’

Former Obama CIA Director Threatens Lawsuit Against Trump

Mark Levin: Trump Should Pull MORE Security Clearances

Senate Intel Chair: Here’s Why Brennan’s Accusations Against Trump In NYT Op-Ed Aren’t Believable

Commander Who Oversaw Bin Laden Raid Condemns Trump, Praises Brennan’s ‘Integrity.’ That ‘Integrity’ Is Questionable.