Former CIA Director John Brennan said on Wednesday that his recent referral for criminal prosecution was clear proof that he was being targeted personally by Republicans.
Brennan, appearing on MSNBC, reacted to the news that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) had referred him to the Justice Department — via a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi — over allegations that he had lied to Congress.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
John Brennan says he&#8217;s “sad that this is the state of the country” after being referred to the DOJ for criminal prosecution.
&#8220;They don&#8217;t care about doing things like this to destroy individuals, to go after me, to hurt me and my family and others.&#8221;
Unfreakingreal. <a href="https://t.co/d6aui8PoTJ">pic.twitter.com/d6aui8PoTJ</a>
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) <a href="https://twitter.com/WesternLensman/status/1981145575551881467?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 22, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Well, when these things happen, I certainly get mad,&#8221; Brennan began. &#8220;I get angry. I also get sad that this is the state of our country and the state of our politics these days.&#8221;
&#8220;The fact that individuals like a Jim Jordan are going to go after somebody — I served nearly three and a half decades in public service, a lot involving counter-terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11,&#8221; Brennan reminded the audience clearly taken aback that anyone would dare try to hold him to account. &#8220;They don&#8217;t care about doing things like this to destroy individuals, to go after me, to hurt me and my family and others.&#8221;
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&#8220;And so I&#8217;m saddened by what has happened,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;Sometimes I&#8217;m dispirited and disheartened. At the same time, I feel motivated to be able to stand up and I&#8217;m glad that other people are standing up as well. And I see that more and more people are starting to realize what Donald Trump is all about, and so I&#8217;m hoping that the Republicans in Congress, and I know it&#8217;s a — it&#8217;s a wish that I&#8217;ve had for quite a while — they&#8217;re really going to draw the line.&#8221;
Brennan went on to accuse Trump of &#8220;abuse of power.&#8221;

Former CIA Director John Brennan

IRONY ALERT: John Brennan Says He’s Being Targeted By DOJ For Personal Reasons

Department of Justice

Donald Trump

John Brennan

Media

Politics

Steele Dossier

It was a long time coming.
On Thursday, it was announced that a grand jury had <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/morning-brief-comey-charged-ice-shooter-investigated-californias-crime-wave-intensifies?author=Morning+Wire&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=12&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=Morning+Brief%3A+Comey+Charged%2C+ICE+Shooter+Investigated+%26+California%E2%80%99s+Crime+Wave+Intensifies">indicted</a> a longtime target of President Trump&#8217;s, former FBI director James Comey.
James Comey has been on President Trump&#8217;s so-called target list for a very long time, going all the way back to when President Trump fired him during his first term. He fired him because James Comey almost certainly bootstrapped into the press the so-called Steele dossier. He promoted the Trump/Russia collusion hoax. He was deeply involved in every aspect of that — up to and including the use of the Steele dossier — in documents that were presented directly to President Trump, which was then used as an excuse by the media to push the Steele dossier, a compendium of lies about President Trump, into public view.
There have been open questions about whether James Comey, over the intervening years in which he testified repeatedly in front of Congress, among others, had actually committed perjury.
It is a very, very, very short indictment, a page and a half maximum. It accuses Comey by stating he “did willfully and knowingly make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement in a matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the Government of the United States, by falsely stating to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he, James B. Comey Jr., had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation concerning” President Trump.
The indictment continues, “That statement was false, because, as James B. Comey Jr. then and there knew, he in fact had authorized PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning” Trump.
The allegation is that there was a person lower down at the FBI who leaked to the press details involving the investigation into President Trump, and it is suggested that the person was authorized by Comey illegally to do that, and Comey subsequently lied about it. Or, if he had the authority to authorize the leak, he lied about it.
That lie is count one, which is the perjury charge. Count two is obstruction of a congressional proceeding, saying then on that same date, based on that same testimony, Comey did “corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct, and impede the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which an investigation was being had before the Senate Judiciary Committee by making false and misleading statements before that committee.”
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2287-breaking-former-fbi-director-james-comey-indicted-member-exclusive?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=The+Ben+Shapiro+Show&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
That is the entirety of the indictment. It is very specific. It is presumably about one or two lines in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The reason it&#8217;s being brought so quickly is because there&#8217;s a five-year statute of limitations on perjury charges. Comey’s testimony was September 30, 2020. It is now September 26, 2025, so we are about to expire on that statute of limitations.
It appears from much of the public information that this isn&#8217;t a particularly well-predicated indictment, and the indictment itself is quite weak and that it&#8217;s unlikely to survive in court.
Many of the things mentioned for the possibility of indictment of Comey are immoral and display ethics much worse than this.
But that&#8217;s not what he&#8217;s being indicted for.
At the end of the day, the indictment that&#8217;s left is pretty simple. Comey either lied about leaking to The New York Times in a tantrum because he was getting fired or he didn&#8217;t.
James Comey has decided to do what no one should ever do when hit with an indictment, which is to go directly on camera and talk. First rule of lawyering: Tell your client to shut the hell up.
But Comey <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/25/defiant-comey-video-defense-donald-trump-00581806">publicly stated</a>: 
<blockquote>My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn&#8217;t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees. And you shouldn&#8217;t either. Somebody that I love dearly, recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant. And she&#8217;s right. But I&#8217;m not afraid. And I hope you&#8217;re not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention, and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does. My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I&#8217;m innocent. So let&#8217;s have a trial. And keep the faith.</blockquote>
He is simply the worst. Such a self-aggrandizing ridiculous figure.
This person had brought our country to the brink — in terms of the Justice Department, the FBI — for basically a decade, and it turns out he was one of the most ridiculous figures in the history of American public service. Truly a ridiculous figure, not only blowing the Hillary Clinton investigation, but blowing the Donald Trump investigation, manipulating the release, effectively, of the Steele dossier, and then using his perch as the guy who got fired by Donald Trump in order to launch salvos at Donald Trump over and over and over again, while walking through the forest and taking selfies of himself, or walking on the beach and taking pictures of shells on the beach, saying, “86 Donald Trump.”
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So don&#8217;t mistake my questions about the indictment, that I somehow believe that James Comey is deserving of tremendous sympathy. I do not think that James Comey is worthy of tremendous sympathy. He was an awful director of the FBI, a joke of a public figure, and his “I&#8217;m standing up to authority. I am the hero standing in the breach” posturing is silly.
He&#8217;s just a silly, silly person. That doesn&#8217;t speak to whether the criminal indictment that is being brought here is weak or strong.
We&#8217;ll see what the underlying evidence looks like on the face of it.
But as far as personal sympathy for James Comey?
The guy is a schmuck.

James Comey Promotes His New Book FDR Drive At Barnes And Nobles In New York

The Comey Indictment

Ben Shapiro

James Comey

Opinion

President Trump

Russia Collusion Hoax

U.S. Senate

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified documents Friday revealing that the Obama administration changed intelligence assessments after the 2016 election to create a narrative of Russian interference, despite earlier intelligence community findings that Russia &#8220;did not impact&#8221; the election through cyber activities.
The intelligence community concluded before the election that Russia was &#8220;probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means,&#8221; according to the declassified records <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/obama-admin-manufactured-intelligence-create-2016-russian-election-interference-narrative-documents-show">obtained</a> by Fox News. However, following Trump’s unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton, their tone appeared to have changed.
“On Dec 8, 2016, IC officials prepared an assessment for the President&#8217;s Daily Brief, finding that Russia ‘did not impact recent U.S. election results’ by conducting cyber attacks on infrastructure,” Gabbard wrote in a thread on X. “Before it could reach the President, it was abruptly pulled ‘based on new guidance.’ This key intelligence assessment was never published.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🧵 Americans will finally learn the truth about how in 2016, intelligence was politicized and weaponized by the most powerful people in the Obama Administration to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a>, subverting the… <a href="https://t.co/UQKKZ5c4Op">pic.twitter.com/UQKKZ5c4Op</a>
&mdash; DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) <a href="https://twitter.com/DNIGabbard/status/1946271402971312514?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 18, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The presidential brief prepared for President Obama on December 8, 2016, stated: &#8220;We assess that Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure,” noting that any Russian activities &#8220;probably were intended to cause psychological effects, such as undermining the credibility of the election process and candidates.&#8221;
The brief concluded that it was &#8220;highly unlikely&#8221; Russian interference &#8220;would have resulted in altering any state’s official vote result.&#8221;
&#8220;Criminal activity also failed to reach the scale and sophistication necessary to change election outcomes,&#8221; it stated.
The FBI raised immediate objections to the brief and requested that its publication be delayed until the bureau could address its concerns. Under then-Director James Comey, the FBI drafted a formal &#8220;dissent&#8221; to the original briefing.
Subsequently, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence postponed internal publication of the Presidential Daily Brief, citing &#8220;new guidance&#8221; as the reason for the delay.
Just one day later, on December 9, a meeting was called in the White House Situation Room to discuss Russian election interference with top officials, including then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice, then-Secretary of State John Kerry, and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Following this meeting, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper threw out the old analysis and tasked intelligence leaders with crafting a new assessment &#8220;per the president&#8217;s request,&#8221; detailing &#8220;tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.&#8221;
Gabbard revealed: “According to whistleblower emails shared with us today, we know Clapper and Brennan used the baseless discredited Steele Dossier as a source to push this false narrative in the intelligence assessment.”
Intelligence sources told Fox News the new report “was based on information that was known by those involved to be manufactured i.e. the Steele Dossier or deemed as not credible,&#8221; and the CIA had previously dismissed it as filled with &#8220;internet rumor[s].&#8221;
By January 6, 2017, a new Intelligence Community Assessment was released that &#8220;directly contradicted the IC assessments that were made throughout the previous six months,&#8221; the ODNI office told Fox News.
Intelligence officials told Fox News they consider the assessment to have been blatantly &#8220;politicized&#8221; after it &#8220;suppressed intelligence from before and after the election showing Russia lacked intent and capability to hack the 2016 election.&#8221;
&#8220;The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government,&#8221; Gabbard told Fox News. &#8220;Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people.&#8221;
&#8220;No matter how powerful, every person involved in this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to ensure nothing like this ever happens again,&#8221; Gabbard said. &#8220;The American people’s faith and trust in our democratic republic and therefore the future of our nation depends on it.&#8221;
Gabbard concluded: &#8220;As such, I am providing all documents to the Department of Justice to deliver the accountability that President Trump, his family, and the American people deserve.&#8221;

US-POLITICS-SECURITY-INTELLIGENCE-FBI-OBAMA-COMEY

Obama Admin Suppressed Intel Showing Russia Didn’t Impact 2016 Election, Tulsi Reveals

2016 Election

Elections

National Intelligence

Russia

Trump Administration

Tulsi Gabbard

U.S.

Former Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan is accusing President Donald Trump and his administration of &#8220;weaponizing&#8221; the intelligence community in their efforts to investigate his actions in 2016 — which, according to a recently published <a href="https://www.cia.gov/static/Tradecraft-Review-2016-ICA-on-Election-Interference-062625.pdf">CIA review</a>, amounted to him weaponizing the intelligence community against Trump.
CIA Director <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-doj-puts-brennan-and-comey-under-investigation-for-russiagate-report">John Ratcliffe</a> referred both Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey to the FBI for investigation and potential prosecution pursuant to their actions during the Trump-Russia investigation — and Brennan specifically was cited in the review as showing &#8220;a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness.&#8221;
The review also indicated that Brennan accepted evidence that backed his predetermined conclusions — such as the widely discredited Steele Dossier — even when others in the intelligence community warned against it, and was &#8220;more swayed by the Dossier&#8217;s general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns.&#8221;
But now that Brennan is in the hot seat, he&#8217;s arguing that investigating the &#8220;multiple procedural anomalies&#8221; — over which he presided, alongside Comey — is what actually amounts to the weaponization of intelligence.
Brennan, speaking to MSNBC&#8217;s Nicolle Wallace, claimed that he was a victim of &#8220;the authoritarian playbook&#8221; and that the Trump administration was taking actions that were reflective of the early days of Nazi Germany.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨John Brennan says the investigation into him and James Comey for their role in the Russian Collusion Hoax is &#8220;the authoritarian playbook.&#8221;
He compares it to Nazi Germany.
&#8220;If a president of the United States is willing to weaponize intelligence and justice&#8230;we really are in… <a href="https://t.co/cl1sekq79x">pic.twitter.com/cl1sekq79x</a>
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) <a href="https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1943048051092001032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;If a President of the United States is willing to weaponize intelligence and justice and, you know, law enforcement investigators, and the people who head up these departments and agencies are willing to bow to it, we really are in deep, deep trouble,&#8221; he claimed.
Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume weighed in on the investigation as well, saying first that it was worth looking into and then reminding audiences that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had financed the Steele Dossier upon which Brennan and Comey had built their case.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 WATCH: Fox’s <a href="https://twitter.com/brithume?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@brithume</a> on the investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey: “It’s worthy of investigation.”
“It all comes down once again after all these years to the Steele Dossier which was a dogs breakfast of scurrilous… <a href="https://t.co/p1KSiUsxIZ">pic.twitter.com/p1KSiUsxIZ</a>
— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) <a href="https://twitter.com/TVNewsNow/status/1943075038745317684?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 9, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

House Intelligence Cmte Holds Hearing On Russian Interference In U.S. Election

John Brennan Weaponized Intel Against Trump. Now He’s Mad The Worm Has Turned.

John Brennan Weaponized Intel Against Trump. Now He's Mad The Worm Has Turned

General

Hillary Clinton

Russiagate

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shared her thoughts Thursday on what separated propaganda from education and how to combat false narratives.
Clinton made the comments during an appearance on MSNBC&#8217;s &#8220;Morning Joe,&#8221; where she raised concerns about TikTok and told host Joe Scarborough that propaganda was &#8220;the opposite&#8221; of education.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
&quot;Propaganda is not education&#8230; Anybody who is teaching in a university or anyone who is putting content on social media should be held responsible for what they include and what they exclude.&quot; 
— <a href="https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@HillaryClinton</a> on teaching history and responsible social media use <a href="https://t.co/fls20bNXkj">pic.twitter.com/fls20bNXkj</a>
&mdash; Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) <a href="https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/1788582846761771366?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 9, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Propaganda is not education. Propaganda, whether it&#8217;s TikTok or in the classroom, is actually the opposite of education,&#8221; Clinton said. &#8220;Anybody who is teaching in a university or anyone who is putting content on social media should be held responsible for what they include and what they exclude.&#8221;
Clinton, whose campaign team was eventually fined for funding the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-clinton-associates-fed-allegations-man-who-ryan-saavedra" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Steele Dossier</a> — which spurred the Trump-Russia collusion narrative and spawned an investigation into her 2016 political opponent — went on to complain that people were not doing enough to combat propaganda on social media.
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The former Secretary of State — whose State Department also helped to promulgate the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/remember-youtube-filmmaker-hillary-blamed-benghazi-joshua-yasmeh" target="_blank" rel="noopener">narrative</a> that the siege of the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi was driven by a YouTube video — noted that many used social media to promote specific agendas and said that more should be done to make sure that especially younger users were more aware of that.
&#8220;So we have to do a much better job in trying to number one, teach history at all levels,&#8221; she said. &#8220;But it&#8217;s also important that we recognize the propaganda value of social media. People are on social media oftentimes to press an agenda, an ideological, a religious, a financial, a political, a partisan agenda, and so of course you don&#8217;t get the facts. Of course, you don&#8217;t get any kind of context.&#8221;
&#8220;We have to do a better job ourselves, and we certainly have to do a better job with young people in trying to help them understand how to filter and interpret the information they&#8217;re giving.&#8221;

Hillary ‘Steele Dossier’ Clinton Has Thoughts On The Difference Between Propaganda And Education

Hillary 'Steele-Dossier' Clinton Has Thoughts On The Difference Between Propaganda And Education

Morning Joe

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/hillary-clinton" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hillary Clinton</a> suggested her onetime political rival, former President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a>, wants to &#8220;kill his opposition&#8221; because of his purported affinity for &#8220;strongmen&#8221; leaders such as Russian President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/vladimir-putin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vladimir Putin</a>.
“We haven’t talked much about the international arena, but, you know, his bromance with Putin,&#8221; said Clinton, who served as U.S. secretary of state and U.S. senator, during a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UpNrRNL8Gw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">podcast</a> released last week.
&#8220;And it was actually called that I think by the former prime minister of Australia, who said he saw Trump with Putin and Trump was like, you know, just gaga over Putin because Putin does what he would like to do: kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive, you know, journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance.&#8221;
&#8220;That’s what Trump really wants,&#8221; Clinton added. &#8220;And so we have to be very conscious of how he sees the world because, in that world, he only sees strongmen leaders. He sees Putin, he sees [Chinese leader Xi Jinping], he sees Kim Jong Un in North Korea. Those are the people he is modeling himself after, and we’ve been down this road in our world history. We sure don’t want to go down that again.&#8221;
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The interview took place on the &#8220;Defending Democracy&#8221; podcast hosted by Marc Elias, who <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/1616613/lawyer-linked-to-steele-dossier-back-in-spotlight-working-for-mcauliffe-in-virginia-race/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">served</a> as the lawyer who directed funding from Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and Democratic National Committee that went toward British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2153086/christopher-steele-holds-firm-on-defending-discredited-dossier/#google_vignette" target="_blank" rel="noopener">now-discredited dossier</a> that contained allegations of a conspiracy between Trump and Russia.
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Running with the &#8220;Russiagate&#8221; narrative, which allegedly was the opposite of what some U.S. intelligence information <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cia-manipulated-evidence-to-hide-evidence-russia-wanted-clinton-to-win-in-2016-not-trump-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">showed</a>, Clinton said one of the reasons Putin &#8220;went after&#8221; her is &#8220;because he knew I would deal with him in an appropriate way and Trump would basically do whatever he wanted.&#8221; She added, &#8220;It&#8217;s really important to think about what could happen to our world with Trump back in the White House,&#8221; adding later that it was a &#8220;very scary prospect.&#8221;
Trump is running for re-election as the presumptive GOP nominee after his major primary rivals dropped out and he garnered enough delegates to clinch the party&#8217;s nomination. He is poised for a 2020 rematch against President Joe Biden in the general election. However, this year&#8217;s contest has a wild card with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running as an independent.

Hillary Clinton Suggests Trump Wants To ‘Kill His Opposition’

2024 Election

Former President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a> is suing British ex-spy <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/christopher-steele" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Christopher Steele</a> over the discredited Steele Dossier that was intended to paint a picture of alleged collusion between Trump and Russia.
The lawsuit was filed by lawyers for Trump in <a class="c-link" href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/london" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/london" data-sk="tooltip_parent">London</a> and says that Orbis Business Intelligence, a consultant group founded by Steele, violated British data protection laws.
In a written witness statement, Trump <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12636387/donald-trump-calls-christopher-steele-russia-dossier-untrue-golden-showers-prostitutes-moscow.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> that “not one of the damning allegations contained in the Steele reporting was ever corroborated.” 
Funds from Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bidens-sec-boss-confronted-over-steele-dossier-payment" target="_blank" rel="noopener">went toward</a> Steele’s dossier, which made claims tying Trump to Russia that were later discredited.
In his statement, Trump said that the dossier had “numerous false, phony or made-up allegations,” including wild claims of “sex parties” in St. Petersburg, and that Russia did not have “sufficient material to blackmail” him.
“The only way that I can fully demonstrate the total inaccuracies of the personal data in the dossier is to bring these proceedings and to prove, by evidence at trial, that the data are false,” Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, said.
The dossier <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/christopher-steele-holds-firm-on-defending-discredited-dossier" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claimed</a> to establish a “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation” between Trump’s campaign and Russia, an allegation that was not backed up by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the collusion claims.
Trump’s lawyer Hugh Tomlinson <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-steele-dossier-lawsuit-london-russia-de956b079a1216526b84822b121acd04" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> that the former president “suffered personal and reputational damage and distress&#8221; because of the dossier, which contained &#8220;shocking and scandalous claims.&#8221;
Antony White, a lawyer for Orbis, said that the case should be thrown out because too much time had passed and that BuzzFeed News was not supposed to publish the dossier.
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White claimed that Trump has “a long history of repeatedly bringing frivolous, meritless and vexatious claims for the purpose of vexing and harassing perceived enemies and others against whom he bears a grudge.”
Trump <a href="https://apnews.com/article/judge-dismisses-trump-lawsuit-against-clinton-1c49b9f65177507bb06115b631c8499d" target="_blank" rel="noopener">previously</a> tried to sue former top FBI officials and Clinton over the dossier, but his lawsuit was rejected by a federal judge.
According to a report from special counsel Robert Durham, the FBI <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fbi-offered-to-pay-steele-1m-for-anti-trump-evidence-paid-possible-russian-spy-despite-knowing-his-info-was-bad" target="_blank" rel="noopener">had offered to pay</a> Steele up to $1 million for evidence linking Trump to Russia and paid Steele’s primary subsource hundreds of thousands of dollars even after the source was unable to provide evidence for any of his claims.

Donald Trump Sues Former British Spy in London Data Lawsuit

Trump Sues Christopher Steele Over ‘Shocking And Scandalous’ Claims Made In Discredited Dossier

Trump Sues Christopher Steele Over 'Shocking And Scandalous' Claims Made In Discredited Dossier

Christopher Steele

Courts

London

World

BuzzFeed News is shutting down just over a decade after its 2012 launch.
BuzzFeed Inc. CEO and founder Jonah Peretti announced the closure to staff on Thursday as part of a wider plan to cut BuzzFeed staff by 15% “across our Business, Content, Tech and Admin teams.” Chief Revenue Officer Edgar Hernandez and Chief Operating Officer Christian Baesler will also be leaving.
“It might not feel this way today, but I am confident the future of digital media is ours for the taking. Our industry is hurting and ready to be reborn. We are taking great pains today, and will begin to fight our way to a bright future,” Peretti said in a <a href="https://twitter.com/BenMullin/status/1649067421766938624">memo</a> to staff.
BuzzFeed News’ closure will affect about 60 people, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/business/buzzfeed-news-shut-down.html">The New York Times</a>. About a dozen staffers in the news division will be offered positions at BuzzFeed.com and The Huffington Post, another of BuzzFeed’s subsidiaries.
The bulk of BuzzFeed’s reporting will now be done under The Huffington Post, a leftist outlet with “a highly engaged, loyal audience that is less dependent on social platforms,” Peretti said.
BuzzFeed has <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/shareholders-buzzfeed-nasdaq-bzfd-lost-111743541.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">struggled</a> to make a profit, and its news division added to the parent company&#8217;s financial woes.
“I made the decision to overinvest in BuzzFeed News because I love their work and mission so much. This made me slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media,” Peretti said.
“I regret that I didn’t hold the company to higher standards for profitability, to give us the buffer needed to manage through economic and industry downturns and avoid painful days like today,” he continued. “I’ve learned from these mistakes, and the team moving forward has learned from them as well.”
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BuzzFeed News won one Pulitzer prize, awarded in 2021, for its reporting on the oppression of Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province.
The news division is also well-known for being the first outlet to publish the infamous Steele Dossier that contained unfounded rumors and innuendo about former President Donald Trump. The dossier, funded by the Clinton campaign for opposition research, was used by the FBI to obtain warrants to surveil the former president’s 2016 campaign.

Jonah Peretti

BuzzFeed News To Shut Down After 11 Years

BuzzFeed

Huffington Post

Attorney General <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/merrick-garland" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Merrick Garland</a> shared on Tuesday his expectations for when a report from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/durham-loses-but-lays-bare-fbi-corruption-in-russia-collusion-trials/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Durham</a>&#8216;s special counsel investigation will be completed, and it doesn&#8217;t appear to be that far off in the future.
The rare update on Durham&#8217;s inquiry into potential misconduct in the Trump-Russia probe came during <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?526940-1/attorney-general-testifies-presidents-2024-budget-request" target="_blank" rel="noopener">testimony before</a> a Senate committee. Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) asked Garland about why former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-jury-clears-former-clinton-attorney-michael-sussmann-of-lying-to-fbi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Michael Sussmann</a>, who was found not guilty of lying to the FBI in a blow to Durham&#8217;s investigation, <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/legacy_files/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/HJC_STAFF_FBI_REPORT.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">apparently had a badge</a> to <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/05/19/how-fbi-bigwig-aided-and-abetted-hillary-clinton-plot/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">get into</a> the bureau&#8217;s headquarters in the run-up to the 2016 election.
&#8220;On the particular question about Sussman, I think we’re going to have to wait until Mr. Durham finishes his report, which should be relatively soon,&#8221; Garland said.
“I certainly don’t in any way want to interfere with him,&#8221; Garland continued. &#8220;And he’s the one who would know the answer to that. On the more general question, I can certainly ask my team to look into how lawyers have special badges.&#8221;
Durham has been working on this investigation for nearly four years, dating back to the Trump administration. Though Durham <a href="https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/u-s-attorney-for-connecticut-john-durham-resigns/2432294/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resigned as U.S. attorney</a> after President Joe Biden took office, Garland allowed his special counsel probe to continue. Garland <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/27/politics/durham-garland/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">testified to Congress in October 2021</a> that he hopes to make &#8220;as much as possible&#8221; of Durham&#8217;s report public, but not that he has &#8220;to be concerned about Privacy Act concerns and classification.&#8221;
The investigation has been cheered by former President Donald Trump and his allies while Democrats and others have criticized it as a politically tainted endeavor meant to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller and top officials from the FBI. Democrats have even begun to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/raskin-calls-for-weaponization-inquiry-into-durham-probe" target="_blank" rel="noopener">call for investigations</a> into Durham&#8217;s endeavor.
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 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-jury-clears-former-clinton-attorney-michael-sussmann-of-lying-to-fbi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sussmann</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/igor-danchenko-source-of-steele-dossier-acquitted-in-blow-to-durham" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Igor Danchenko</a>, 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.
The last public update on the investigation provided by the Department of Justice came in December, just before Christmas, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/doj-shares-update-on-john-durham-probe-spending" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in the form of a financial disclosure</a>.

John Durham

Attorney General Expects Durham Report ‘Relatively Soon’

Garland Shares Expectations For When Durham Report Will Be Released

Merrick Garland

The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/fbi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FBI</a> offered <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/christopher-steele" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Christopher Steele</a> $1 million if he could prove allegations recorded in his now-infamous <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/steele-dossier" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dossier</a>, a senior FBI analyst said in court on Tuesday.
FBI analyst Brian Auten testified in the trial of Igor Danchenko, the primary source of allegations in Steele’s dossier, that the bureau placed a $1 million price tag on confirmation of the dossier’s outlandish allegations. Steele was unable to provide any evidence.
Auten said he and a group of FBI agents met with Steele in October of 2021 and offered the former British spy $1 million for evidence supporting the dossier, according to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/durham-probe-fbi-offered-christopher-steele-1-million-corroborate-trump-allegations-dossier" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fox News</a>. The FBI’s offer came years after it had used the dossier’s claims to secure FISA warrants to surveil former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“On October 21, 2016, did you have any information to corroborate that information?” Durham asked Auten, referencing the date the first FISA application to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was filed.
“No,” Auten responded, according to Fox News.
Auten testified that the FBI offered Steele “up to $1 million” for proof substantiating allegations made in a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/politics/steele-timeline/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">series</a> of reports to the bureau over the course of several months in 2016. The analyst said Steele never received any money because he could not “prove the allegations,” according to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/11/politics/steele-dossier-fbi-durham-danchenko" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CNN</a>. Steel’s reports were eventually compiled into the dossier first published by BuzzFeed News in January 2017.
Danchenko has pleaded not guilty to lying to the FBI. His trial is the last scheduled as part of special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump/Russia collusion hoax before Durham issues his final report.
Durham has scored one guilty plea from former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/19/former-fbi-attorney-pleads-guilty-durham-398605#:~:text=Kevin%20Clinesmith%20admitted%20to%20altering,Trump%20campaign%20adviser%20Carter%20Page." target="_blank" rel="noopener">admitted</a> to altering an email that was used to obtain a FISA warrant against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Durham struck out against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-jury-clears-former-clinton-attorney-michael-sussmann-of-lying-to-fbi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">acquitted</a> by a Washington, D.C., jury in May of a charge of lying to the FBI.
In July of this year, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that according to FBI whistleblowers, Auten was involved in suppressing an investigation into Hunter Biden during President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.
“[I]n August 2020, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment which was used by a FBI Headquarters … team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease. Based on allegations, verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation,” Grassley wrote in a <a href="https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/grassley_to_justice_deptfbipoliticalbiasfollowup.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

FBI Offered Christopher Steele $1M For Evidence Backing Up Dossier Claims About Trump: FBI Analyst

The shadowy Russian operative who was allegedly the key source for the discredited <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/steele-dossier" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Steele dossier</a> that may have helped spur the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/fbi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FBI</a>’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/despite-these-facts-the-left-are-still-obsessed-with-russian-collusion" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Trump-Russia collusion probe</a> was put on the bureau’s payroll despite prior concerns he was an agent of Moscow, according to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/john-durham" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Special Counsel John Durham</a>.
Durham revealed the explosive claim about <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-durham-probe/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Igor Danchenko</a> in a Tuesday court filing. Danchenko was paid by the bureau to be a confidential human source as the bureau conducted its &#8220;Crossfire Hurricane&#8221; investigation of Trump&#8217;s 2016 campaign even though officials had reason to know he had lied about the wild claims in the dossier and had previously investigated him for espionage, the prosecutor said.
&#8220;In March 2017, the FBI signed the defendant up as a paid confidential human source of the FBI,&#8221; Durham wrote in the newly unsealed court filing. &#8220;The FBI terminated its source relationship with the defendant in October 2020. As alleged in further detail below, the defendant lied to FBI agents during several of these interviews.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The FBI caught Steele primary subsource Igor Danchenko in a number of lies.
What did the FBI do in response?
It signed Danchenko up as a paid FBI confidential human source.
Durham&#39;s latest:<a href="https://t.co/cwjDi0Rmrd">https://t.co/cwjDi0Rmrd</a>
&mdash; Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) <a href="https://twitter.com/Techno_Fog/status/1569768090027671560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 13, 2022</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Danchenko is facing trial in federal court in Virginia on charges he lied to the FBI. He was swept up in Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign, which appears to relied in part on a dossier of debunked claims put together by former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Danchenko was Steele’s primary source for the dossier.
Steele was also a paid source for the bureau until he was fired in November, 2016. Durham’s latest revelation means that the bureau, then led by fiercely anti-Trump Director James Comey, quickly hired Steele’s key source, despite knowing that his dossier allegations were at the very least dubious.
Danchenko was also hired despite the FBI knowing he had previous ties to Russian intelligence, Durham revealed. The bureau had conducted a counterintelligence probe of Danchenko during the Obama administration after determining had had tried to buy classified U.S. information.
&#8220;In late 2008, while the defendant was employed by a prominent think tank in Washington, D.C., the defendant engaged two fellow employees about whether one of the employees might be willing or able in the future to provide classified information in exchange for money,” Durham wrote. “Based on this information, the FBI initiated a &#8216;preliminary investigation&#8217; into the defendant. The FBI converted its investigation into a &#8216;full investigation&#8217; after learning that the defendant (1) had been identified as an associate of two FBI counterintelligence subjects and (2) had previous contact with the Russian Embassy and known Russian intelligence officers.”
Durham said the FBI shut down the investigation in 2010, but only because it mistakenly believed Danchenko had left the U.S.
When the FBI hired Danchenko, he first denied ever having contact with Russian intelligence, Durham charged. But he later admitted that he had contact with two unnamed officials from the Russian Embassy and known Russian intelligence operatives, Durham said.
In the filing, Durham asked the court for permission to use Danchenko’s previously undisclosed alleged lies to the FBI to establish a pattern of deception that lent credence in the bureau and media to the claims against Trump. The most salacious of the dossier claims was that Trump consorted with prostitutes who he had pee on a bed at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow.
Durham’s team intends to call the hotel’s former manager to testify that neither he nor his staff ever heard of or discussed the claims that the dossier attributed to them.

Clinton Attorney Michael Sussman Acquitted Of Charge Of Lying To The F.B.I.

FBI Had Suspected Russian Operative, Source For Trump Dossier On Payroll, Durham Charges

GOP lawmakers hammered former Secretary of State <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/hillary-clinton">Hillary Clinton</a> after her former campaign manager <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/top-clinton-campaign-official-robby-mook-says-hillary-clinton-approved-handing-alfa-bank-claims-to-media-despite-doubts">revealed her central role in disseminating false claims</a> about former President Donald Trump and Russia’s Alfa-Bank during the 2016 presidential election.
Court testimony in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sussmann-trial-opens-lawyers-spar-over-defendants-2016-lie-to-fbi">the trial of cybersecurity attorney Michael Sussmann</a> revealed that Clinton personally approved the dissemination of later-debunked claims of a secret backchannel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa-Bank to the press. Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, Robby Mook, said that the Clinton campaign’s evidence of the backchannel was dubious, but Clinton approved sending it to reporters anyway.
“Hillary Clinton and Jake Sullivan knew the Trump-Russia collusion dossier was false but pretended to play dumb with the American people,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) <a href="https://twitter.com/MarshaBlackburn/status/1527739050039328768">said</a>. Sullivan, currently the White House national security adviser, worked on Clinton’s 2016 campaign as a senior policy adviser.
“Everyone involved in cooking up the false Trump-Russian collusion narrative should be held fully accountable — including Hillary Clinton,” she <a href="https://twitter.com/MarshaBlackburn/status/1528740582348271618">added</a>.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said in a radio interview over the weekend that Mook’s testimony is a “major scandal” and has shown that Clinton’s involvement in the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory is greater than previously known, according to <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/05/22/sen-johnson-says-sussmann-trial-reveals-clinton-corruption/">The New York Post</a>.
“They used individuals who had contracts with our Defense Department to mine this data and develop some kind of inference that Trump was colluding with Russia so that they could report that to the FBI [which could then] … report that to the American public as an October surprise,” Johnson said.
Special counsel John Durham has argued that Sussmann went to the FBI on behalf of the Clinton campaign to generate a federal investigation into Trump’s alleged connections to Alfa-Bank, and in the process, make the Alfa-Bank story more palatable to reporters. Sussmann, charged with lying to the FBI about representing the Clinton campaign during a 2016 meeting pitching the Alfa-Bank material, has claimed he did not attempt to hide his client despite texting then-FBI general counsel James Baker the day before the meeting <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/durham-trial-baker-100-confident-sussmann-told-him-he-was-acting-alone">requesting</a> that he was not acting on behalf of anyone, according to Baker.
The Clinton campaign used server data gathered by tech executive Rodney Joffe, who had contracted with the federal government to advise it on cybersecurity, to evidence its claim of a backchannel. Both the FBI and CIA <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/fbi-agent-at-sussmann-trial-bureau-rejected-alfa-bank-claims-within-days">looked</a> into the server data and dismissed it as any evidence of a secret backchannel.
“The fact that the Hillary Clinton campaign manufactured this entire Russian collusion hoax and the FBI … concluded that this is preposterous — it’s BS … And yet they set up the Mueller probe,” Johnson said. “Hillary Clinton on the issue of Alfa Bank said, ‘I just heard about this on the news.’ No! Their campaign planted it in the news, and, of course, those news outlets that had the story.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, hammered Clinton in a radio interview last week.
“You get [Fusion GPS co-founder] Glenn Simpson to peddle it to the press. You get Michael Sussmann, who’s working for you as your campaign lawyer, to take it to the FBI. And then you act like, oh, we don’t know where this came from,” Jordan <a href="https://radio.foxnews.com/2022/05/20/rep-jim-jordan-the-fbi-must-have-known-about-the-latest-bombshell-revelation-regarding-hillary-clinton-and-her-2016-campaign/">said</a>. “We were the ones supposedly peddling disinformation and making things up when in fact, it was them who did it all along. And frankly, the only thing we were kind of wrong about was it was a little bit worse than we even thought. Everyone was in on this.”

‘Should Be Held Fully Accountable’: Republicans Hammer Clinton For Peddling False Russia Collusion Claims

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