The Trump administration and DOGE are continuing their efforts to slash federal spending, with major cuts to the Health Department announced Thursday. Trump takes &#8220;presidential action&#8221; against the elite law firms that targeted him. And, voters in Maine overwhelmingly support keeping men out of women’s sports – but the state’s Democratic governor is still defying Trump’s order to do so.
It’s Friday, March 28th, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
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<h2>DOGE Cuts HHS</h2>
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Topline: The Trump administration and DOGE are continuing their efforts to slash federal spending, with major cuts to the Health Department announced Thursday.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Thursday morning that his department will cut more than 10,000 jobs – more than 20% of HHS’ workforce.
Among others, the Food and Drug Administration will let go of 3,500 employees, though Kennedy said the cuts would not impact inspectors looking at drugs, medical devices, and food. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will lose 1,200 workers, the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services (CMS) 300, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2,400. The overhaul will also eliminate 13 of the department&#8217;s 28 existing divisions and create a new Administration for a Healthy America. According to Kennedy, the cuts will save taxpayer money and force health agencies to become more efficient.
“When I arrived I found that over half of our employees don’t even come to work,” Kennedy said. “As part of President Trump’s DOGE workforce reduction initiative, we’re gonna streamline HHS to make our agency more efficient and effective. … We’re gonna eliminate an entire alphabet soup of departments and agencies while preserving their core functions.”
Context: America’s health care system ranks <a href="https://www.ajmc.com/view/us-health-care-system-ranks-last-overall-among-other-high-income-countries">last</a> in health among 38 developed nations, but spends 2 to 3x more per capita on each patient. HHS funding increased by nearly 40 percent under the Biden administration, as staffing went up almost 20 percent – this week’s cuts will reduce the number of employees to pre-pandemic levels.
These aren’t the only cuts being made to HHS. A day earlier, Kennedy moved to pull nearly <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-government-pulls-back-over-11-billion-funding-state-health-departments-2025-03-26/">$12 billion</a> in COVID funding that had been allocated to state health departments, NGOs, and an assortment of international groups. Those funds were being used for COVID testing, COVID vaccines, etc. According to a DHS spokesman, &#8220;The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.” Instead, they say, “HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic.”
According to the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/chronic-disease/about/index.html">CDC</a>, 6 in 10 Americans suffer from a chronic disease, while 4 in 10 suffer from at least two.
<h2>Trump vs. Law Firms</h2>
<div id="attachment_899281" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-899281" class="size-large wp-image-899281" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/tRUMP-SIGNS-eo-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />(Photo by Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: President Trump is taking action against top law firms that have ties to people who drove investigations and litigation against him.
On Monday, Trump signed an executive order targeting the law firm Jenner &amp; Block. The order is similar to a few others he’s signed in recent weeks – it blocks the firm from entering federal buildings and revokes its attorneys’ security clearances. It also bars federal agencies from contracting with the firm.
“I just think that the law firms have to behave themselves,” Trump <a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1904244385342214479">said</a>. “We have others that want to make a settlement also having to do with the elections and other things, they&#8217;ve behaved very badly &#8230; our elections are very dishonest. Very corrupt.”
A federal judge blocked one of these Trump orders earlier this month – that order targeted Perkins Coie, the Clinton-tied law firm at the center of the Russian collusion conspiracy in 2016. The judge in that case, Beryl Howell, was appointed by Barack Obama and called Trump’s order “unlawful” and a violation of the First Amendment.
The targeted firms all have deep ties to the Democratic Party and Trump’s top antagonists. In fact, Trump’s latest order singles out Andrew Weissmann. He was a partner at Jenner &amp; Block from 2021 to 2022 – but before that, he was the top deputy of special counsel Robert Mueller and is thought to have been a key player in propagating the “Russiagate” hoax.
These orders don’t appear to be final – Trump has suggested that he will negotiate with the law firms if they come to the table. When asked if his actions amounted to “coercion” by a reporter, Trump responded, “The law firms all wanna make deals. You mean the law firms that we&#8217;re going after that went after me for 4 years ruthlessly, violently, illegally? I mean, are those the law firms you&#8217;re talking about? They&#8217;re not babies. They&#8217;re very sophisticated people.”
One prominent firm in the hot seat – Paul Weiss – has agreed to make several commitments to avoid sanctions, including $40 million worth of pro bono work for causes the White House supports.
<h2>Maine Defies Title IX</h2>
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Topline: Public universities in Maine are backing down from their transgender policies, but Governor Janet Mills (D) is still refusing to comply with Trump’s order on girls’ sports.
The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-spars-with-maines-dem-governor-over-men-in-womens-sports-at-white-house">public spat</a> between President Trump and Governor Mills over an executive order barring men from women’s sports has gone on for more than a month. Mills maintains that the EO does not carry the force of law and has stated flatly that she has no intention of complying with it.
“My issue is about the rule of law, pure and simple,” Mills said in a statement posted to <a href="https://x.com/TheMaineWire/status/1904334942999363625">X</a>. “[The Constitution] doesn’t allow [the president] him to make laws out of whole cloth by tweet or instagram post or press release or executive order.”
Congressional Republicans have been slow to codify Trump’s order on girls&#8217; sports. However, Title IX separates sports based on sex to ensure equal opportunity. Only during the Biden administration did the federal government decide to interpret Title IX through the lens of so-called gender identity. Eight public universities in Maine have already said they will comply with Trump&#8217;s order in response to the Department of Agriculture threatening to withhold federal funding over the issue.
Other departments have also opened investigations into Maine’s transgender policies. For example, Health and Human Services said it found Title IX violations and gave the state <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-admin-gives-maine-10-days-to-comply-with-wh-block-males-from-female-sports">ten days</a> to comply with Trump’s order – that letter was sent on March 19.
“The letter stipulated that if there is no voluntary compliance on the part of Maine, it&#8217;s going to be referred to the Justice Department for prosecution,” Steve Robinson, editor-in-chief of The Maine Wire (no relation) told Morning Wire. “I think there&#8217;s a lot of ego and stubbornness here. They&#8217;re not used to being told that they&#8217;re wrong or that they don&#8217;t have the authority to do something.”
New polling from the American Parents Coalition – which was exclusively shared with The Daily Wire – shows that Maine residents side with Trump on this issue &#8212; 63% said school sports participation should be based on biological sex. 60% said they’d support a ballot measure to protect girls’ sports, including 64% of independents.

HHS Headquarters in Washington

Morning Brief: DOGE Cuts HHS, Trump Vs Law Firms, Maine Gov Defies Title IX

Department of Health and Human Services

Donald Trump

Health and Human Services

Maine

Morning Wire

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Russiagate

Title IX

Transgender Athletes

The following is an excerpt from the new book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-President-Trump-Social-Republic/dp/1641774576" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Disappearing The President</a>” by Lee Smith, (October, 2024, Encounter Books)
* * *
<h3>The Counterinsurgents</h3>
Many of the analysts obsessed with Russian information warfare played crucial roles in Russiagate, like Hamilton 68 founder Clint Watts. “I was talking to him at the time and quoting him in stuff I was writing because I thought what he said made sense,” says Siegel. “And some of what he said didn’t make sense. People lose track of reality when they talk about information warfare.”
A West Point graduate, Watts joined the FBI after leaving the Army, and in 2011 he joined a think-tank based in Philadelphia, the Foreign Policy Research Institute. During the 2016 election cycle, he was a go-to talking head on Russian information warfare. “Regardless of the extent of Trump’s direct knowledge about Russia’s intelligence activities, active measures [by Russian intelligence] have achieved enormous success on the back of his presidential campaign,” he wrote in a 2016 article that supported the collusion narrative. “Russia sees Trump as a tool to undermine its American adversaries. In that regard, they’ve already achieved their goal and possess the potential to exceed their expectations.” (7)
The name of Watts’ organization, Hamilton 68, refers to the 68th essay from The Federalist Papers, in which Alexander Hamilton discusses the presidency and foreign influence: “These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?” (8)
The reference was clear: Trump had been raised by a foreign power. Thus, the purpose of Watts’ organization was not to track Russian “disinformation” and influence operations on social media, but was rather to add another branch to the counterinsurgents’ propaganda campaign vilifying the chief magistracy of the Union—Trump—as a Russian agent.
<div id="attachment_834755" style="width: 390px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-President-Trump-Social-Republic/dp/1641774576"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-834755" class="size-large wp-image-834755" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/51LJIqjf3CL-380x576.jpg" alt="Jacket design by Steve Cooley. Encounter Books." width="380" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/51LJIqjf3CL-380x576.jpg 380w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/51LJIqjf3CL-198x300.jpg 198w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/51LJIqjf3CL.jpg 560w" sizes="(max-width: 380px) 100vw, 380px" /></a>Jacket design by Steve Cooley. Encounter Books.</div>
Watts was supported by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), a project of the German Marshall Fund, a Washington, D.C. based think-tank funded by private donors; government agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development; foreign governments like Norway, Sweden, and Belgium; Big Tech oligarchies Google, Microsoft, and Amazon; and major Democratic Party donor George Soros, a Shadow Network giant.
ASD was founded in 2017 by a left-right coalition of anti-Trump activists who had supported and promoted Russiagate. Its board of advisors included: 
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Jake Sullivan, a longtime Clinton aide and now Biden’s national security advisor</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Michael McFaul, Obama’s ambassador to Russia</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">David Kramer, aide to Senator John McCain. Kramer gave a copy of the Steele dossier to BuzzFeed, which published it in January 2017.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Bill Kristol, anti-Trump editor of the now-defunct magazine, the Weekly Standard</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Michael Morrell, former acting CIA director and longtime deputy director under President Obama</li>
</ul>
Morrell explained the ASD’s purpose as it was getting off the ground in July 2017. “In a perfect world, we would have a national commission that would be looking into exactly what happened, exactly what did the Russians do and what can we do as a nation to defend ourselves going forward and deter Putin from ever doing this again,” Morell told a journalist. “We all know this is not going to happen, so things like the GMF [German Marshall Fund] effort are hugely important to fill the gap.” (9)
In reality, ASD and Hamilton 68 were partners in the FBI’s ongoing anti-Trump operation, which had been off-boarded to Robert Mueller’s team when the special counsel investigation began in May 2017.
When the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag appeared, Hamilton 68 reported that it was being spread by Russian bots. (10) Schiff and Feinstein’s letter on the hashtag relied exclusively on Hamilton 68’s data.
Even as the corporate media dutifully reported Hamilton 68’s declarations as fact, however, the Big Tech platforms were becoming increasingly wary of Watts’ analyses.
The Daily Beast offered a glimpse of this skepticism with a January 23, 2018 story reporting that Twitter analysts had determined the #ReleasetheMemo hashtag was spread by legitimate American accounts, not by Russian bots. (11)
Behind the scenes, Twitter officials were coming to believe that Hamilton 68 was a fraud. Twitter’s trust and safety head Yoel Roth told colleagues that a secret list of around 600 Russian bot accounts that Hamilton 68 monitored was “weird and self-selecting. They’re so unwilling to be transparent and defend their selection that I think we need to just call this out on the bullshit it is.” (12)
Twitter identified the 600 accounts tracked by Hamilton 68 and found they were neither Russian nor bots. Rather, Roth wrote to colleagues, “they appear to strongly preference pro-Trump accounts, which [Hamilton 68] use to assert that Russia is expressing a preference for Trump.” Roth wanted to confront Hamilton 68 publicly. “My recommendation at this stage is an ultimatum,” he wrote, “you release the list or we do.”
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Some Twitter employees were worried about taking on an organization that represented a powerful consortium of political and intelligence officials. Others represented those same interests inside the company. “We have to be careful in how much we push back on ASD publicly,” wrote Emily Horne, who later landed a job in the Biden White House. Another Twitter executive, Carlos Monje, wrote, “I also have been very frustrated in not calling out Hamilton 68 more publicly, but understand we have to play a longer game here.” Monje later became a senior advisor to Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Twitter lawyers drafted a careful response to Schiff and Feinstein explaining that the company’s initial inquiry regarding #ReleaseTheMemo had “not identified any significant activity connected to Russia.” Twitter wrote that “because the Hamilton Dashboard’s account list is not available to the public, we are unable to offer any specific context on the accounts it includes. …We have offered to review the list of accounts contained in the Dashboard and this offer remains open.” (13)
Facebook responded simply by noting that Hamilton 68’s allegations concerned content on Twitter, not Facebook. (14)
Those responses were not good enough for the California Democrats. On January 31, Schiff and Feinstein sent another letter demanding that Twitter and Facebook try harder. “It is unclear from your responses whether you believe any of the Russian-linked accounts involved in this influence campaign violated your respective user policies,” the duo warned. “We reiterate our request that you immediately take necessary steps to expose and deactivate such accounts if you determine that they violate your respective user policies.” The letter continued, “Twitter inexplicably…neglected to answer the question of whether Russian sources were actively engaged in promoting the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag, as illuminated by the Hamilton 68 dashboard of the German Marshall Fund.” (15)
In other words, You must find a way to tie pro-Trump accounts to Russian bots and then censor them—or else.
“In the end, Schiff, Feinstein, and the Dems just beat Twitter down,” says Langer, the Nunes aide. “They were threatening to take all kinds of retaliatory action if the platforms didn’t produce the right results. And eventually, Twitter found a way to connect #ReleaseThe Memo to Russian bots, even though there was no evidence for it and they knew Hamilton 68’s findings were fraudulent.”
The following January, Twitter released a report detailing its research into a new batch of 418 accounts that “appeared to originate in Russia.” The company admitted it could not determine if they actually were Russian bot accounts, but claimed they behaved similarly to Russian bots. Of the top three hashtags employed by these 400 accounts, number two was #ReleaseTheMemo, which was included in approximately 38,000 Tweets. (16) Thus, based on a few hundred accounts that may or may not have been Russian, Twitter insinuated that a grassroots campaign among American conservatives might really be a Russian influence operation.
“These possible Russian bot accounts comprised less than one-half of one percent of activity on the hashtag,” says Langer. “That’s a drop in the ocean. It’s statistically irrelevant. But Twitter left that out of the report.”
The release of the Nunes memo on February 2, 2018, exposed Russiagate as an instrument of information warfare, paid for by the Clinton campaign and directed by Obama’s spy chiefs. It was the Shadow Network’s counterinsurgency campaign targeting Trump, his allies, and supporters.
“What we’re now experiencing is what countless other countries around the world have experienced since the start of the Cold War,” says Benz. “When the U.S. government controls your information eco-systems, controls your political leadership, censors you, spies on you, and propagandizes you. People in Boston are now experiencing what people in Baghdad did. This is what it feels like when the U.S. government deploys its military, its intelligence, and civil society partners and media in a whole-of-society campaign to re-engineer your country.”
* * *
Lee Smith is the author of the New York Times bestseller &#8220;The Plot Against the President.&#8221; His other books include &#8220;The Permanent Coup&#8221; and &#8220;The Strong Horse.&#8221; A veteran journalist and regular contributor to Tablet Magazine, Smith lives with his wife and son in Charleston, SC.
This excerpt is published by permission from Encounter Books. “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-President-Trump-Social-Republic/dp/1641774576" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Disappearing The President</a>” by Lee Smith, (October, 2024, Encounter Books). Copyright 2024 by Lee Smith. Jacket design by Steve Cooley.
The views expressed in this book excerpt do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
* * *
NOTES:
Chapter Three: The Counterinsurgents
7. Andrew Weisburd, Clint Watts, and Jim Berger, “Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy,” War on the Rocks, November 6, 2016, https://warontherocks.com/2016/11/trolling-for-trump-how-russia-is-trying-to-destroy-our-democracy/.
8. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp
9. Josh Rogin, “National Security Figures Launch Project to Counter Russian Mischief,” Washington Post, July 11, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/07/11/national-security-figures-launch-project-to-counter-russian-mischief/.
10. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/right-wing-demand-releasethememo-endorsed-russian-bots-trolls-n839141
11.  Spencer Ackerman, “Source: Twitter Pins #ReleaseTheMemo on Republicans, Not Russia,” Daily Beast, January 23, 2018, http<a href="http://www/">s://www.</a> thedailybeast.com/source-twitter-pins-releasethememo-on-republicans-not- russia#:~:text=The%20online%20groundswell%20urging%20the,widely%20 since%20late%20last%20week.
12.  Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), “1.THREAD: Twitter Files #15 MOVE OVER, JAYSON BLAIR: TWITTER FILES EXPOSE NEXT GREAT MEDIA FRAUD,” X, January 27, 2023, 12:49 p.m., https://x.com/mtaibbi/ status/1619029772977455105.
13.  Vijaya Gadde, Twitter General Counsel letter to The Honorable Dianne Feinstein and The Honorable Adam Schiff, January 26, 2018, https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/twitter_response_jan_26.pdf. 
14. https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/6/4/64bd3267-fdc9-46fb-b265-589dc5d08eff/8DBC13B7F818DA79F0E8C614A8F8159D.facebook-response-to-feinstein-schiff-1.26.18.pdf
15.  “Feinstein, Schiff Send Follow Up Letter to Twitter and Facebook on #ReleaseTheMemo Campaign,” U.S. Senate Committee on The Judiciary, January 31, 2018, https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/dem/releases/feinstein-schiff-send-follow-up-letter-to-twitter-and-facebook-on-releasethememo-campaign.
16.  Twitter, “Retrospective Review: Twitter, Inc. and the 2018 Midterm Elections in the United States,” January 31, 2019 (updated February 4, 2019), https:// cdn.cms-twdigitalassets.com/content/dam/blog-twitter/official/en_us/ company/2019/2018-retrospective-review.pdf.

President-Elect Donald Trump Meets With Biden, Congressional Leaders In Washington

Remember When The Deep State Framed Trump As A Russian Agent?

Adam Schiff

Books

Democrats

Federalist Papers

Leftists

Twitter

Twitter Files

The testimony and report of Special Counsel <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/john-durham" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Durham</a> show clearly that there was “political coordination” at the FBI in the investigation into former President Donald Trump over alleged collusion, according to Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro made the comments on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1752-the-schiff-hits-the-fan-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">his Thursday show</a> while discussing Durham&#8217;s testimony on Wednesday before Congress. Durham conducted a nearly four-year investigation that painted a damning picture of an FBI that disregarded its mission and central principles in order to pursue a partisan investigation into Trump.
“That report, if you&#8217;ll recall, was just an absolute disaster for Democrats. I called it maybe the worst political scandal in American history. Nobody actually took it seriously in the press, because to do so would have been devastating for the Obama administration. In particular, as I wrote at the time, Crossfire Hurricane was initiated based on sheer conjecture,” Shapiro said. 
Shapiro explained that the investigation was based on shoddy evidence that was in part begun by agents who had voiced political opposition to Trump. 
“The FBI basically greenlit the investigation within days of receiving that flimsy information. Peter Strzok, who&#8217;s an ardent Trump hater, he helped initiate that investigation. The investigation from notes was launched well before any dialogue with Russia, with Australia, or the intelligence community prior to any critical analysis of the information itself,” Shapiro said.
Durham <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/john-durham-set-to-testify-in-congress-over-damning-report-on-fbi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found in his report</a> that the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump’s campaign “based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” and took allegations about Trump far more seriously than allegations about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1687352286746000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2XxW0VTdKx-2nQAhkiTR8M">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
During his testimony, Durham said that investigators at the FBI suffered from confirmation bias, and ignored evidence that didn&#8217;t fit the narrative that Trump was colluding with Russia.
&#8220;Well, all of this ticked off the Democrats to no end, because what he is suggesting here is systemic failure. And it&#8217;s not just a question of a few bad apples,” Shapiro said. 
Durham said <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/john-durham-says-fbi-agents-apologized-to-him-for-trump-probe" target="_blank" rel="noopener">during his Wednesday testimony</a> that some current and former agents at the FBI had apologized to him for the investigation. 
“Let me give you some real-life views,” Durham said. “I have had any number of FBI agents who I’ve worked with over the years — some of them are retired, some of them are still in place — who have come to me and apologized for the manner in which that investigation was undertaken.”

House Select Intelligence Committee Receives Testimony From Former Special Counsel John Durham In Closed Hearing

Durham Testimony Suggests ‘Political Coordination’ Against Trump At FBI, Ben Shapiro Says

Crossfire Hurricane

Hillary Clinton

John Durham

Members of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/fbi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FBI</a>&#8216;s Crossfire Hurricane team were not made aware of intelligence about <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/hillary-clinton" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hillary Clinton</a>&#8216;s 2016 presidential campaign allegedly cooking up a plan to tie her rival <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a> to Russia, according to Special Counsel <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/john-durham" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Durham</a>.
During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Chairman <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/jim-jordan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jim Jordan</a> (R-OH) got Durham to establish how the intelligence was important enough to be discussed by CIA Director John Brennan during a White House briefing with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden (who is now president of the United States), Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey in the summer of 2016.
That information came from a Russian intelligence report and was soon placed into a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/cia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CIA</a> referral memo addressed to Comey and Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok, who was involved in opening the Crossfire Hurricane inquiry. Yet, as told by Durham, Crossfire Hurricane agents who had recently started investigating alleged links between Trump&#8217;s campaign and Russia never got the memo.
Durham said &#8220;no&#8221; when asked whether Comey shared the information with FBI agents on the case. He was then prompted to recount how a supervisory special agent who had been involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation became distraught when Durham&#8217;s team shared the intelligence with him during an interview.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
WATCH: Full exchange between Rep. <a href="https://twitter.com/Jim_Jordan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Jim_Jordan</a> and Special Counsel John Durham.
The hearing continues LIVE on C-SPAN3 and online here: <a href="https://t.co/To3Po9IsyS">https://t.co/To3Po9IsyS</a> <a href="https://t.co/plHwPbxONk">pic.twitter.com/plHwPbxONk</a>
&mdash; CSPAN (@cspan) <a href="https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1671523231021551616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 21, 2023</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;We interviewed the first supervisor on the Crossfire investigation, the operational person,&#8221; Durham said. &#8220;We showed him the intelligence information. He indicated he had never seen it before. He immediately became emotional, and got up and left the room with his lawyer, spent some time in the hallway, and came back.&#8221;
He added later: &#8220;The information was kept from him.&#8221;
Durham&#8217;s <a href="https://www.justice.gov/storage/durhamreport.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a>, which the Department of Justice (DOJ) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/durham-report-makes-sobering-findings-about-fbis-handling-of-trump-russia-probe" target="_blank" rel="noopener">released</a> last month, indicated the &#8220;Clinton Plan intelligence&#8221; could have been helpful to agents involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. &#8220;Most&#8221; of the individuals shown parts of the information by Durham&#8217;s team advised they had never seen it before, the special counsel&#8217;s report said.
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The report specifically points to British ex-spy Christopher Steele&#8217;s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/us/trump-russia-investigation-dossier.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">now-discredited</a> anti-Trump dossier, stemming from research funded by Clinton&#8217;s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, that the FBI was <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/doj-inspector-general-finds-17-significant-errors-or-omissions-in-carter-page-fisa-applications" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found</a> to have improperly used to secure FISA surveillance warrants against onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. It also references the unfounded secret <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/durham-finds-researcher-felt-threatened-by-schiff-staffer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">backchannel</a> between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank that was <a href="https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/793250312119263233" target="_blank" rel="noopener">promoted</a> by Clinton and her team in the run-up to the 2016 election.
&#8220;Whether or not the Clinton Plan intelligence was based on reliable or unreliable information, or was ultimately true or false, it should have prompted FBI personnel to immediately undertake an analysis of the information and to act with far greater care and caution when receiving, analyzing, and relying upon materials of partisan origins, such as the Steele Reports and the Alfa Bank allegations,&#8221; Durham&#8217;s report said.
&#8220;The FBI also should have disseminated the Clinton Plan intelligence more widely among those responsible for the Crossfire Hurricane investigation so that they could effectively incorporate it into their analysis and decision-making, and their representations to the OI attorneys and, ultimately, the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court],&#8221; Durham&#8217;s report said.

John Durham Affirms Crossfire Hurricane Investigators Kept In Dark About Alleged Clinton Plan

2016 Election

James Comey

Politics

Russia

Scandals

U.S.

Special Counsel <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/john-durham" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Durham</a> said <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/fbi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FBI</a> agents approached him to apologize for the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
During testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Durham spoke about his report that criticized the FBI over its probe into alleged links between Donald Trump&#8217;s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.
&#8220;Our findings were sobering. I can tell you, having spent 40 years-plus as a federal prosecutor, they were particularly sobering to me,&#8221; Durham said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
House Judiciary Committee John Durham Testimony
.@RepMikeJohnson: &quot;You said that your findings and conclusions are sobering&#8230;Why?&quot;
DURHAM: &quot;I have had any number of FBI agents&#8230;who have come to me and apologized for the manner in which that investigation [Crossfire Hurricane]… <a href="https://t.co/3kdf4RE8II">pic.twitter.com/3kdf4RE8II</a>
&mdash; Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) <a href="https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1671515590341586944?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 21, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) later asked Durham to explain why his findings were sobering.
&#8220;Let me give you some real-life views,&#8221; Durham said. &#8220;I have had any number of FBI agents who I&#8217;ve worked with over the years — some of them are retired, some of them are still in place — who have come to me and apologized for the manner in which that investigation was undertaken.&#8221;
Durham said he believes the majority of the FBI&#8217;s personnel are &#8220;decent human beings&#8221; who swear under their oaths to abide by the law.
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John Durham: 
&quot;Our findings were sobering. Anybody who actually reads the report would find that the problems identified in the report are not susceptible to overnight fixes. What is required is accountability!&quot; <a href="https://t.co/h2Xybjri1w">pic.twitter.com/h2Xybjri1w</a>
&mdash; Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) <a href="https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1671518451855130626?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 21, 2023</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;There were investigative activities undertaken or not undertaken here which raise real concerns about whether or not the law was followed, the policies in place at the FBI were followed,&#8221; Durham said.
After a years-long investigation, Durham concluded his probe, and the Department of Justice released his <a href="https://www.justice.gov/storage/durhamreport.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> last month. It accused the FBI of &#8220;confirmation bias&#8221; and being too quick to open a full-fledged investigation into the Russia matter.
Durham secured one guilty plea over the course of his investigation: that of former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who was accused of falsifying a document in efforts to renew the authority to conduct FISA surveillance on onetime Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Clinesmith was spared prison time and faced a <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/fbi-lawyer-clinesmith-one-year-bar-suspension-guilty-plea-fisa-deception" target="_blank" rel="noopener">one-year bar suspension</a>.
In a statement responding to Durham&#8217;s report, the FBI said it “already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time.” The bureau also said Durham&#8217;s report &#8220;reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.&#8221;
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Durham said in his <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/durham-testimony.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">opening statement</a> that he is &#8220;encouraged&#8221; by some reforms the FBI has implemented but stressed that &#8220;the problems identified in the report are not susceptible to overnight fixes.&#8221;
The special counsel added: &#8220;As we said in the report, they cannot be addressed solely with enhanced training or additional policy requirements. Rather, what is required is accountability — both in terms of the standards to which our law enforcement personnel hold themselves and in the consequences they face for violations of law or policy.&#8221;

John Durham Says FBI Agents Apologized To Him For Trump Probe

Carter Page

General

“If credibility is the lifeblood of journalism, the Mainstream Media is dead.”
Ashley Rindsberg, investigative journalist and author of “The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times&#8217;s Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History,” outlined the broad strokes of the Russian Collusion narrative that was manically propagated by the mainstream media and then quietly ignored after its claims were categorically discredited.
In January 2023, the Columbia Review, a highly respected journalistic publication, published an in-depth review of the “Russiagate” scandal written by industry veteran Jeff Gerth. Gerth concluded that every major claim made about the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion was false. “Let’s step back and consider what this means: for some five years, the Mainstream Media, the New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN fed a grotesque lie to the public, that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to subvert an American election.”
A similar fact pattern would emerge in many of the allegations — initial sourcing from opposition research or highly disreputable sources would be referenced by the FBI or other government agents in anonymous statements to the media, who would then parrot the claims as if they were credible because the FBI was investigating them.
These claims include:
<ul>
<li>Allegations that Trump campaign advisors George Papadopoulos and Carter Page were Russian agents</li>
<li>Allegations that Trump had close ties to Russia and Vladimir Putin</li>
<li>Allegations that Trump was financially connected to the Russian Alfa-Bank</li>
</ul>
“There were 533,000 articles published about Russia and Trump during just the 22 months of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s alleged involvement with Russia,” Rindsberg noted.
The Washington Post and The New York Times were both awarded Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting on the Russian Collusion story, reporting that was later revealed to be poorly sourced from ideologically motivated actors or completely fabricated evidence such as the Steele Dossier. Neither organization returned their prizes, and there has been little coverage of Gersh’s exposé in the mainstream press.
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“Journalism is no longer about gathering the facts and presenting an accurate picture of reality,” Rindsberg said.  “It’s about choosing sides.”
Rindsberg notes that this approach is the opposite of good journalism and it has completely destroyed the credibility of once-venerated outlets and institutions.
“The only Trump era collusion that has been proven was between the Mainstream Media, the Hillary Clinton Campaign, the Democratic Party, and elements within government agencies,” Rindsberg said. “Together, they did more to sow discord between Americans than Russia could have ever dreamed of doing on its own.”
WATCH:
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Russian Collusion And The Death Of Journalism

Legacy Media

Media

Media Bias

PragerU

A current <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/biden-administration" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Biden administration</a> official, and former advisor to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/hillary-clinton" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hillary Clinton</a> during her presidential runs, will speak to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/europe" target="_blank" rel="noopener">European</a> officials in the coming week about countering “disinformation.”
The official, James P. Rubin, who is the special envoy and coordinator for the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/state-department" target="_blank" rel="noopener">State Department</a>’s Global Engagement Center, will be in the United Kingdom until February 28, which will be followed by a trip to Belgium on March 1.
“In London, Special Envoy Rubin will meet with UK officials to solidify support for counter disinformation efforts. In meetings with UK counterparts, he will discuss efforts by Russia, the People’s Republic of China, and other actors who deploy disinformation to undermine democracy and national security around the globe, and how our nations can collectively counter threats in the information space,” the State Department <a href="https://www.state.gov/special-envoy-and-coordinator-for-the-global-engagement-center-rubins-travel-to-london-and-brussels/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a statement.
During his London trip, which began on Thursday, Rubin will take part in the Phoenix Challenge Forum, a <a href="https://phoenix-challenge-new.webflow.io" target="_blank" rel="noopener">conference</a> that is put on in part by the Department of Defense and the U.K. Ministry of Defense.
The goal of the conference is to “drive knowledge collaboration and solutions across Defense and Security Organizations, Academia, Private Sector and International Partners to address complex issues related to Cognitive Security, Information Competition &amp; Conflict, and Malign Influence.”
In Belgium, Rubin will also speak with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/european-union" target="_blank" rel="noopener">European Union</a> officials about countering “foreign disinformation.”
Rubin, <a href="https://www.chartwellspeakers.com/speaker/james-rubin/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">who was</a> a foreign affairs advisor for both the Clinton and Obama administration, was part of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 and 2016 presidential runs. During the 2016 campaign, Rubin suggested that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a> was working with the Russians to hack Clinton’s emails.
“So the idea that a candidate for president is aiding and abetting a foreign power in its intelligence operations is, as I said, unprecedented. We really don’t know how to describe it, except I think it’s the clearest possible evidence of being – of the fact that the nominee for the other party is unfit to be commander-in-chief,” Rubin <a href="https://2009-2017-fpc.state.gov/260592.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claimed</a> in response to Trump calling for Russia to release the emails.
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He also suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin was in support of Trump’s candidacy because Putin believed that Trump would have a more favorable foreign policy toward Russia.
Democrat claims about Trump colluding with the Russians ended up falling flat, as an investigation headed up by Robert Mueller found no evidence of any collusion. Subsequent studies have also found that Russia’s influence on the election was much less than previously claimed by Democrats and the legacy media.
Rubin also has worked as a <a href="https://www.politico.eu/author/james-p-rubin/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">contributing editor</a> for POLITICO magazine where he blasted Trump and his foreign policy in several columns.

TOPSHOT-BRITAIN-EU-POLITICS-BREXIT-DEMONSTRATION

Former Hillary Clinton Campaign Advisor To Speak With European Officials About Countering ‘Disinformation’

Belgium

Europe

European Union

State Department

United Kingdom

World

Former Attorney General <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/william-barr" target="_blank" rel="noopener">William Barr</a> chastised The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/new-york-times" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Times</a> for its critical reporting of special counsel <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/john-durham" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Durham</a>&#8216;s investigation into potential misconduct in the Trump-Russia probe.
Barr broke his silence Wednesday while speaking to a reporter after delivering a speech in Sacramento, California. He challenged aspects of an article published last week <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/26/us/politics/durham-trump-russia-barr.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">detailing alleged</a> problems in Durham&#8217;s endeavor. “They ignored some fundamental facts as to why some of the information that Durham was seeking was very important information,” Barr charged, according to the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-02-01/bill-barr-says-he-didnt-overstep-in-his-involvement-in-the-durham-probe-of-mueller-investigation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Los Angeles Times</a>. He also said the article missed &#8220;obvious reasons&#8221; for Durham&#8217;s investigation.
The New York Times &#8220;stands behind this story and the reporting it contains,&#8221; a spokesperson for the newspaper said in response. The original report noted Barr declined to comment for the article.
In May 2019, shortly after special counsel Robert Mueller released his report, Barr appointed then-U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut Durham to investigate the origins and conduct of the FBI inquiry into alleged ties between former President Donald Trump&#8217;s 2016 campaign and Russia. Barr elevated Durham to special counsel status in the final months of the Trump administration, giving Durham extra protections to continue his work once President Joe Biden took office. Trump and his allies often champion Durham&#8217;s investigation as a means to unravel a suspected &#8220;Russiagate&#8221; plot against the former president. Democrats and others have criticized the inquiry as a politically tainted endeavor meant to discredit Mueller and top officials from the FBI.
The New York Times report gave fuel to Durham&#8217;s detractors in Congress. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senate-democrats-threaten-hard-look-at-durham-inquiry" target="_blank" rel="noopener">threatened an investigation</a> and House Democrats pressed the Justice Department inspector general to <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/Lieu%20and%20Goldman%20letter%20requesting%20inspector%20general%20investigation%20into%20Barr%20and%20Durham/d1a1af56f980a928/full.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">start a review</a> to determine whether Barr or Durham “violated any laws, DOJ rules or practices, or canons of legal ethics.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Goldman: Ted Lieu and I sent you a letter requesting that you conduct an investigation into Durham’s investigation to see if Mr. Barr or Mr. Durham violated any department policies, regulations, or law. Have you reviewed this letter yet? <a href="https://t.co/fXPvuk8ots">pic.twitter.com/fXPvuk8ots</a>
&mdash; Acyn (@Acyn) <a href="https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1620854379132891137?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 1, 2023</a></blockquote>
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The article, published on January 26, said a monthslong review by the New York Times &#8220;found that the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court.&#8221; The article also outlined how Durham&#8217;s investigation &#8220;became roiled by internal dissent and ethical disputes,&#8221; leading to resignations by some dissatisfied prosecutors on the team, including Durham&#8217;s No. 2 Nora Dannehy, who allegedly disliked how Barr spoke ominously about the probe&#8217;s findings in public.
Barr, who made an appearance at the <a href="http://capcon2023.com/#Speakers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">California News Publishers Association meeting</a>, outright rejected the notion that appointing Durham to the task was problematic from the start.
&#8220;The idea that there was a thin basis for doing it doesn’t hold water,&#8221; Barr said. &#8220;Because it wasn’t started as a criminal investigation. One of the duties of the attorney general is to protect against the abuse of criminal and intelligence powers, that they’re not abused to impinge on political activity, so I felt it was my duty to find out what happened there.&#8221;
In addition, Barr defended himself in response to one of the most explosive claims in the article — that Durham expanded his inquiry in the fall of 2019 to include a criminal investigation into &#8220;suspicious financial dealings&#8221; tied to Trump in response to a tip from Italian officials. However, the report asserted the details were largely unclear and said this line of inquiry did not result in Durham bringing charges.
Barr insisted the tip &#8220;was not directly about Trump&#8221; and argued it was appropriate to rope it into Durham&#8217;s investigation because “it did have a relationship to the Russiagate stuff. It was not completely separate from it. And it turned out to be a complete non-issue.&#8221;
So far, Durham has secured one guilty plea: that of former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who was accused of falsifying a document in efforts to renew the authority to conduct FISA surveillance on onetime Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Clinesmith was spared prison time and faced a <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/fbi-lawyer-clinesmith-one-year-bar-suspension-guilty-plea-fisa-deception" target="_blank" rel="noopener">one-year bar suspension</a>. Last year, Durham endured setbacks when prosecutions against former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann and Igor Danchenko, a key source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele&#8217;s anti-Trump dossier, ended in acquittal in Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia, respectively.
Whenever Durham&#8217;s report is complete, <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/obama-doj-official-durham-report-pause" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Attorney General Merrick Garland has said</a> he would &#8220;like as much as possible to be made public,&#8221; but he also stressed there will be Privacy Act concerns and classification to consider.
“I think [Durham]&#8217;s going to explain, to the extent he’s allowed to put it out, the whole genesis of [the Russia interference claims] and how it all occurred,” Barr said, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-02-01/bill-barr-says-he-didnt-overstep-in-his-involvement-in-the-durham-probe-of-mueller-investigation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">per the Los Angeles Times</a>. “So what’s wrong with that? You review something, you get the facts. Yes, we wanted to hold people accountable if something came up that indicated criminality, or you could prove criminality. But it wasn’t a criminal investigation, it was a review to get the story. And he got the story.”

William Barr

Barr Slams New York Times Reporting On Durham Probe

Department of Justice

New York Times

The latest edition of the <a href="http://dailywire.com/topic/twitter" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> Files from investigative journalist Matt Taibbi revealed that <a href="http://dailywire.com/topic/media" target="_blank" rel="noopener">media</a> outlets, academics, and policymakers who cited an initiative meant to track supposed <a href="http://dailywire.com/topic/russia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Russian</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/propaganda" target="_blank" rel="noopener">disinformation</a> fell for a not-so-elaborate scam.
Hamilton 68, a computerized dashboard that monitored purported Russian bot infiltration, tracked 644 accounts supposedly linked to &#8220;Russian influence activities online,” according to an <a href="https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton" target="_blank" rel="noopener">article</a> and a social media <a href="https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029772977455105" target="_blank" rel="noopener">thread</a> posted by Taibbi. Executives at Twitter “reverse-engineered” the list of accounts out of a concern that the users were influencing the American political conversation on behalf of the Russians. Only 36 of the 644 accounts were registered in Russia, while many of the rest were ordinary American accounts.
Executives wrote in internal company emails that the accounts were “​​neither strongly Russian nor strongly bots” and concluded there was “no evidence to support the statement that the dashboard is a finger on the pulse of Russian information.”
Yoel Roth, the social media company’s former Trust and Safety lead, characterized the project as “bulls***” in one of the messages. He noted that the site “falsely accuses a bunch of legitimate right-leaning accounts of being Russian bots” and earns “traction around partisan trends” to assert that “any right-leaning content is propagated by Russian bots.”
The project was launched by former FBI agent Clint Watts and received backing from the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Securing Democracy. The latter entity, a bipartisan think tank, has an advocacy panel that includes former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, former American ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, current Biden administration senior adviser John Podesta, and Bulwark editor-at-large Bill Kristol.
Allegations of collusion with Russia similarly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/in-other-words-it-was-made-up-jim-jordan-rips-trump-russia-conspiracy-after-latest-durham-filing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">followed</a> former President Donald Trump throughout his administration; Robert Mueller, a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, investigated claims that the Trump campaign illegally coordinated with Russian agents to influence the 2016 election, eventually concluding that no such evidence existed.
Taibbi found that media outlets such as NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Mother Jones cited supposed data on Russian disinformation from Hamilton 68 on “hundreds if not thousands” of occasions. He noted that the outlets often used the dashboard to discredit various political figures, such as <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/russian-web-trolls-boo-biden-often-boost-gabbard-report-finds-n1085216?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tulsi Gabbard</a> and <a href="https://observer.com/2018/09/russian-propagandists-brett-kavanaugh-controversy-division-online/?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Brett Kavanaugh</a>, by linking them to purported disinformation operations.
Academics at postsecondary institutions like Harvard University and Princeton University also cited Hamilton 68, as did lawmakers such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Social media users contacted by Taibbi were surprised to learn they were supposed purveyors of Russian disinformation. Conservative writer David Horowitz and businessman Dennis Michael Lynch were implicated in the Hamilton 68 list, as were “a range of political dissidents, including leftists, anarchists, and humorists,” according to Taibbi.
Many were unsuspecting everyday Americans. “I am a 73-year-old snowbird in Florida,” one individual said. “Supposedly in a free world, we are being watched at many levels, by what we say online,” said another individual, who told Taibbi she had experienced political persecution in Lebanon before moving to the West.
Previous editions of the Twitter Files, an initiative from independent journalists based on emails and other internal company documents provided by Twitter CEO Elon Musk, have shown that federal law enforcement <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-new-twitter-files-shows-how-federal-state-governments-monitor-americans-social-media-posts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">policed content</a> on the platform and asked executives to remove certain posts. There existed “an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community” aimed at “senior executives at news and social media companies,” according to journalist Michael Shellenberger.

Elon Musk Acquires Twitter

New ‘Twitter Files’ Drop Shows Prominent Media Source For Supposed ‘Russian Disinformation’ Was A Fraud

New 'Twitter Files' Drop Shows Prominent Media Source For Supposed 'Russian Disinformation' Was A Fraud

Mainstream Media

Propaganda

Former Rep. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/devin-nunes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Devin Nunes</a> (R-CA) accused the Justice Department of spying on his team at a time when he was leading a congressional investigation into the FBI&#8217;s conduct during its Trump-Russia probe.
Two senior House Intelligence Committee staffers were the subject of grand jury subpoenas sent to Google seeking personal email and phone data in November 2017, <a href="https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/doj-spied-house-intelligence-committee-investigators?utm_source=news.google.com&amp;utm_medium=news-app&amp;utm_campaign=external-news-aggregators" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to Just The News</a>. Nunes expressed alarm about the timing as the subpoenas were secretly issued when he was chairman of the intelligence panel and on the cusp of releasing a memo alleging misconduct in the surveillance of a Trump 2016 campaign operative.
“The FBI and DOJ spied on a presidential campaign, and when Congress began exposing what they were doing, they spied on us to find out what we knew and how we knew it,&#8221; Nunes told the news outlet. &#8220;It’s an egregious abuse of power that the next Congress must investigate so these agencies can be held accountable and reformed.”
The motive for these subpoenas remains unclear; The Daily Wire reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
In terms of timing, they were issued around when secret subpoenas were sent to tech companies seeking records of Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, including then-ranking member Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), their staff, and family members, as the Trump-era Justice Department investigated leaks of classified information, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/us/politics/justice-department-leaks-trump-administration.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The New York Times reported</a> in June 2021. The ensuing outcry by Democrats led to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/11/schiff-calls-for-probe-into-trump-doj-seizing-house-democrats-data-.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announcing that he would look into the seizures</a>.
The targets of the newly revealed subpoenas, who were informed by Google this week in compliance with a policy to wait five years after such law enforcement activity, included Kash Patel, a top investigator for the House Intelligence Committee who later served in multiple high-level national security positions within in the Trump administration.
“It&#8217;s so shocking,” Patel told the &#8220;Just the News, Not Noise&#8221; show Monday. &#8220;Because a co-equal branch of government, we as congressional investigators and Devin Nunes, his staff on House Intel were conducting constitutional demanded oversight of the fraudulent acts at the FBI and DOJ which we now know happened.&#8221;
What became known as the &#8220;Nunes memo&#8221; was released in February 2018 <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/02/trump-nunes-memo-released-384977" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in the face of opposition</a> from <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/democratic-rebuttal-to-gop-house-intelligence-memo-released" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Democrats on the intelligence panel</a> and the FBI. The memo alleged abuses by the FBI and Justice Department in seeking Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant authority to snoop on ex-Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page.
The crux of the problems cited by the Republicans was the FBI&#8217;s reliance, in part, on an unverified dossier compiled by British former spy Christopher Steele, a since-discredited document that contained salacious claims tying former President Donald Trump to Russia that <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-2022-midterm-elections-business-elections-presidential-elections-5468774d18e8c46f81b55e9260b13e93" target="_blank" rel="noopener">benefited from funding</a> via Hillary Clinton&#8217;s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Devin Nunes responds to report DOJ issued subpoenas to House intel staffers" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tbO_lvFxZ8E?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The memo was followed by a report by Horowitz criticizing the Justice Department and the FBI for <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/doj-inspector-general-unable-to-say-if-bias-tainted-carter-page-fisa-process" target="_blank" rel="noopener">at least 17</a> “significant errors and omissions” related to the FISA surveillance of Page, who <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/carter-page-calls-charges-that-he-conspired-with-russia-a-complete-joke" target="_blank" rel="noopener">denied being a Russian asset</a> and was never charged with a crime. The Justice Department also declared that at least two of the four FISA warrants targeting Page were “not valid,&#8221; <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/doj-finds-two-carter-page-fisa-orders-not-valid" target="_blank" rel="noopener">as reported by The Washington Examiner</a>.
As part of special counsel John Durham&#8217;s ongoing investigation, which was put together by former Attorney General William Barr to root out misconduct in the FBI&#8217;s Russia inquiry, former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to falsifying a document in efforts to renew the authority to conduct FISA surveillance on Page. Clinesmith was <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/29/fbi-lawyer-trump-russia-probe-email-463750" target="_blank" rel="noopener">spared prison time</a> and faced a <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/fbi-lawyer-clinesmith-one-year-bar-suspension-guilty-plea-fisa-deception" target="_blank" rel="noopener">one-year bar suspension</a>.
Nunes, who now leads Trump&#8217;s Truth Social endeavor, said Congress should push Durham to investigate the subpoena matter. &#8220;This is clearly in the realm of what John Durham&#8217;s scope was to look at,&#8221; he said in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday.

Devin Nunes

Devin Nunes Reacts To DOJ Subpoenas Of His House Intel Staff: ‘They Spied On Us’

Devin Nunes Reacts To DOJ Subpoenas Of His House Intel Staff: 'They Spied On Us'

Congress

kash patel

Special Counsel <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/john-durham" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Durham</a>&#8216;s bombshell court filing this week is going to make it hard to paint the FBI as a dupe tricked into investigating former <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">President Donald J. Trump</a> for all that election collusion with Russia we now know never happened.
Durham says shadowy Russian operative Igor Danchenko — the key source for the anti-Trump Steele dossier — was on the FBI payroll from 2017-2020. The bureau should have known by 2017, and certainly knew by 2020, that the dossier, which it used to get a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page, was full of ludicrous lies. And the bureau also knew, or should have known, that in had investigated Danchenko just a few years earlier for trying to buy classified information for Mother Russia.
If you catch a suspected spy lying to you, but keep using his information to pursue, oh, say a presidential candidate, it gets hard to blame sheer incompetence or stupidity.
That might have worked in Durham&#8217;s last case in his ongoing investigation into the origins of the FBI&#8217;s probe of Trump. In that one, high-powered Democrat lawyer Michael Sussmann was accused of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sussmann-trial-opens-lawyers-spar-over-defendants-2016-lie-to-fbi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lying to the bureau</a> by denying he was working for Hillary Clinton when he met with a top FBI official to present  another phony claim, that Trump communicated with Moscow through the Russian lender Alfa Bank.
A Washington, D.C., jury acquitted Sussmann, despite a damning text he sent to the official the night before, saying, “I’m coming on my own — not on behalf of a client or company — want to help the Bureau.”
Some critics were cynical enough to wonder if Durham was going out of his way to protect the bureau by painting it as gullible, but not corrupt. After all, his only FBI scalp to date is that of Kevin Clinesmith, a bureau lawyer who lied while preparing a FISA warrant application to spy on Page by saying he had not worked for the CIA when in fact he had. Clinsemith got a year&#8217;s probation and is back to practicing law again.
Danchenko is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fbi-had-suspected-russian-operative-source-for-trump-dossier-on-payroll-durham-charges" target="_blank" rel="noopener">facing trial</a> in federal court in Virginia, also on charges he lied to the FBI. Maybe Sussmann and Danchenko both lied to the bureau, but when Danchenko did, it sure seems like the G-Men knew it.
Instead of getting mad, the FBI gave the Russian a job and kept him around all through the Mueller probe and right up until the 2020 election. Maybe that&#8217;s just another reason why <a href="https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/COSA-FBI_DOJ-Opinion-Full-Report-0824.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">polls show trust in the FBI is plummeting</a>. Durham might not smell a rat in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, but Americans do.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

FBI stock photo

Durham Zeroes In On FBI’s Real Problem, And It Is Worse Than Incompetence

Durham Zeroes In On FBI's Real Problem, And It Is Worse Than Incompetence

Last year, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/washington-post" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Washington Post</a> columnist David Ignatius wrote what he called a “profile” of former <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/trump-administration" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Trump administration</a> official <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-trump-official-classified-mar-a-lago-documents-were-actually-declassified-by-trump-before-leaving-office" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kash Patel</a>, making the explosive claim that Patel was under investigation for mishandling classified information.
In a column <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/19/trump-kash-patel-declassification-mar-a-lago-search/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published</a> late last week, however, that claim has disappeared at the time of this writing, even though the column is about alleged classified information being found at former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort Mar-a-Lago. Even more curious, emails provided to The Daily Wire show Ignatius asked Patel and his spokesperson about this claim but didn’t include their denial that any investigation ever existed.
“I noted in my April 2021 piece that Mr. Patel was ‘facing an investigation for possible improper disclosure of classified information’ because of a referral made last year by an intelligence agency. If that investigation has concluded without any finding of wrongdoing, I should say so. I have requested that info from the government but if you can confirm it, I’ll use that,” Ignatius wrote to Patel’s spokeswoman the day before the column ran.
The spokeswoman responded: “There has never been an investigation to begin with, so this and all follow up stories are inaccurate.”
Ignatius asked the spokeswoman which investigation she was referring to (the columnist also mentioned Patel’s investigation into Russiagate). The spokeswoman quoted Ignatius’ question about the investigation into Patel and again stated: “This did not conclude because it never existed.”
Yet, no mention of the alleged investigation into Patel or the spokeswoman’s statement made it into Ignatius’ August 19 column.
Ignatius could not be reached for comment.
Ignatius’ claim in his April 16, 2021, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/16/kash-patel-trump-intelligence-community/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">column</a> about the alleged investigation into Patel came from “two knowledgeable sources who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe,” adding that “the investigation resulted from a complaint made this year by an intelligence agency, but wouldn’t provide additional details.”
The anonymous sources angle follows a common tactic used by the media when writing about Trump and people who worked for him. First, the claim is reported from the angle that someone said there is an investigation, thereby keeping the media outlet from making a potentially libelous claim itself. Second, the sources are vague and not noted as having a direct connection to the alleged investigation. In this case, they are merely “knowledgeable sources.”
“It’s a disinformation campaign,” Patel told The Daily Wire.
Ignatius also suggested by asking a hypothetical in his 2021 column that Patel — who at the end of the Trump presidency was the chief of staff for Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller — may have been installed in that position “to gain control of the nation’s intelligence and military command centers as part of Trump’s effort to retain the presidency, despite his loss in the November 2020 election.”
Ignatius did include part of Patel’s spokeswoman’s response in his column, which said he was “acting as an unthinking, loyal mouthpiece for deep-state goons and the Democratic Party.”

Arizona Candidates Kari Lake And Blake Masters Rally Supporters In Tucson

Washington Post Columnist Fails To Correct The Record Regarding Previously Alleged Investigation Into Former Trump Official

David Ignatius Didn't Include Relevant Information Relating To Kash Patel In Recent Column

Washington Post

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